Week 4.5: Production
Hello! My name is Max Couch, and I'm the production guy of Hidden Pizza. This week's post is going to be peek into the general process of getting ideas from a whiteboard into a new game build. The team has two scheduled weekly meetings: one at the beginning to brainstorm the tasks for the week, and the other at the end to finish up anything we haven't completed. Using software like Slack and Asana, the team can communicate with one another and update tasks throughout the week. Between time tables, communications between teams and members, and slowly approaching deadlines, the team manages to stay in high spirits as the deadline for our beta approaches.
Every week begins with the Monday meeting. The team gathers 'round a whiteboard table to discuss the goal for the sprint. We analyze the target milestone for the next 2 weeks, and break it down into individual tasks for every team member. Some tasks are split between different fields (i.e. the designers needing to communicate with the programmers on how the tower upgrades will work), and team members coordinate with one another to ensure the smoothest possible implementation of the new mechanics. In theory, this sounds simple and easy. In practice, it's a little more complicated.
The week ends with our Sunday afternoon game jam at our fearless leader's apartment. It's an "out of office" environment where we still get work done, but in a more relaxed setting. It's been great for communicating and progress, especially during crunch times, when some problems are unclear and difficult to effectively discuss online. We show up, sit down, crank out the work, and find ourselves enjoying the process. This isn't to say there are dark times, because there are dark times.
At this stage in the development process, the milestones are seasoned with a Bioshock Infinite inspired blend of spices: constants and variables. The milestones at end of the sprints are the constants, the planned additions and alterations to the build. The inevitable complications are the variables. Often times a task will seem like only an hour of work, but somehow it's been five hours, there's a bug in the code is making the piano start eating a coffin, customers are vomiting, and the pumpkins have formed an aristocracy to elect the new Pumpking. You know. Casually breaking the game.
For the most part, it's just a bug in the code causing mild frustration, and only requires a coffee and deep breathing to fix the problem. Every now and then we come to an impasse, and cuts need to be made. Deadlines are crucial, and reaching them without compromising the integrity of the game is a balancing act. What is absolutely necessary for the end of this sprint? Is anything blocking that? How do we remove those blocks? All these questions need to be taken into consideration when deciding if a new mechanic is worth the time and effort, and it really sucks when it isn't. When a task is canceled, it doesn't feel good for the members that devoted their time to ensuring its completion. It is an unfortunate circumstance, but a necessary one to ensure milestones are met on-time.
The end of sprints are written into postmortems, a summary of what happened during production in the past two weeks. What went well? What complications arose? How were they dealt with? Is everything still fine, or is everything on fire? If everything is on fire, how are we going to extinguish the blaze? If any complications are still an issue by the end of the sprint, they become the new variables of the next sprint to work with and overcome. As we draw closer to the release of the beta, the game is reaching its milestones one way or another, and members still have dry eyes and full hearts.