Being a producer in a cohort of MGS students feels a bit different than what I imagine being a producer at a professional studio feels like. Learning the nuts and bolts, completing homework, and having hours-long lectures are obviously more academia than they are work place--that's not what I'm getting at. I just feel that being a producer will likely have a different dynamic with co-workers than it currently does with student peers. As members of the MGS, we are all learning together. None of us has a paycheck riding on our performance (at least not directly, and not that I know of), so there are different motivations for each of us to do our work and to do it exactly as we are directed.
That's where being a producer has been difficult for me to figure out. As one in a group of students, I am certainly not "in charge" of the groups I am a part of; however, my duties as producer dictate that I manage development process and workflow. When not every member of the team has "bought in" to the system (Scrum, sprints, charts, etc.), things get a bit sticky. I guess my biggest challenge right now is to learn/figure out how to go about educating and motivating individuals about process: why it's important and how it bolsters the team when members are dedicated to said process.
In other (related) news, we finished production on our first prototype this week! In the final stages of the project, I did the following:
- Finalized our sprints and other process lists and documents
- Created/modified a few last art assets as suggested by our Executive Producers (faculty)
- Re-tooled some of the text popups to reduce their length and entice more emotional involvement from the player
- Tested and adjusted the level design and layout (I wish I had a bit more involvement in this aspect, but it was difficult with such limited source control over the master files [only one person could actively build the main file at a time, and the engineers typically had possession of it])
- Prepared the final presentation -- screenshots, verbal points, PowerPoint layout, etc.
- Gave the final presentation (along with Dan--he played the prototype while I explained it)
- Organized and recorded our team post-mortem
- Wrote an overview and captured screens and gameplay footage for a potential game trailer
- Created and submitted our project's official wrap kit
As a side note, I'm bummed that a few of the assets I created didn't make it into the presented build of the game. In one case, the engineers simply didn't have time to replace the placeholder art, but in the other case, feature creep distracted an engineer from implementing the documented feature that would have used my work. I was kind of upset about that last part. That's a bit about process that I'm definitely going to work on during future projects.
Now I've gotta start researching freshman mechanical engineering concepts and expectations--our next prototype is to be used in such an environment. Wish me luck!
- Troy
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