Producer Devlog 4

Hello everyone! 

Welcome back to Sprint 4. This sprint we made some good progress and improvements! I was really trying to encourage my team this time to get cards done, cause we have a lot to do and it's really important that we stay AGILE. And they did great! We hit the same amount of cards as we did in Sprint 2 which was 116. I celebrated with them after Sprint Review with some Halloween treats since Halloween is around the corner! Happy Halloween for those who partake! 

Aside from that though, the progress from Sprint 4 put us in a really good spot. We're closing in on the amount of things that we have to do, so in our upcoming sprints the card count will be slightly lower. I want to highlight a key moment that we had this sprint. We had a Director from Crystal Dynamics come and playtest our game! Her name is Alisha Thayer, she gave us feedback on our next steps; On what she thinks would be the best route for our game. It was insightful, and she is a friendly person. 

Alisha did have a bit of a harder time when it came to learning how to efficiently use our game's movement mechanic. Which is something we do notice in our playtests. It is not intuitive at all, the player has to look away from where they want to go. But with that said, she noted that our mechanic was still unique and we should focus on how to make it feel good. We were glad to hear this! I especially was. It feels good to hear that we're on the right track from someone who has years of industry experience, particularly in leading teams and making design decisions. 

There was one thing that she noted we do, and it was to help define our scope better. Since our focus is on making the movement feel good, we needed to cut out other nonessential ideas. For us, that was our sublevels. There was a lot that was wanted and not a lot of time to do it all and still make it fun and polished. Especially when looking at how fast our current levels were getting done. Our scope was a bit squeezed in at the end. It felt good to hear that she thought we should cut our sublevels, because that would give us so much more time to focus on our main mechanic of the game. Matt was on the same page, and I went ahead and began cutting out other nonessential ideas that we didn't need! 

Now, we have in our scope exactly what needs to be done, and we're on a path to finishing strong. Even if things were to turn out not exactly like what we wanted, at the end of the day it's okay because it is just a game. What matters is that we take our experiences and grow from them. That being said, I'm still new to working with a bigger team and a bigger idea. I have more experience with smaller game ideas and smaller teams. So of course I'm still learning how to adjust scope within these constraints, and don't get me wrong I love learning new things. It's really fun to learn more about the industry and different ways I can approach and deal with all types of situations. 

But I want to takeaway from this and let everyone else know that you will always have a chance to learn new things and different perspectives. Don't let the amount of time it takes you failing to succeed, stop you from chasing your goals. Focus on how much you've learned and grown from the experience, and how much you have the ability to accomplish with that. 

Thank you for reading and I will see you next time,

Angeleen!