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Wow, we’re finally here. As of now, we still have a “week” of development to fix bugs and get the trailer up to par, but everything that’s in the game is in. It’s…a weird feeling. Even more so that this is the first game I’ve worked on that is on Steam (take a look here)! It feels very satisfying, but also a bit sad that it’s over. This is the longest I’ve ever worked on a game before (about 8 months), and it’s crazy to see how much it has changed. I think once I graduate (because that’s fast approaching) I want to make a comparison video about the changes we’ve gone through. Part showing off the new systems and art, part nostalgia. Regardless, let’s take a look at how the project went.
Personal Perspective:
What went well:
I did a lot on this project. I don’t think I can look back and see everything right now, but once I can step away for a bit I think it’ll be more clear. Guilded started as my idea, but it grew into something that was even better than I imagined. As Product Owner and one of the original designers, I had to have a cohesive vision of the game, and for the first half of this project I did. We make a really great vertical slice of what we wanted to continue with, and we moved forwards as a team to the second stage of production. Once we got new team members onboard, I transitioned a bit away from the hands on approach I was used to developing with, and I moved into a full time leadership role. I still occasionally worked in the engine, but the majority of my work was done in documents and in meetings. I approved ideas, managed the collective vision, and made sure everyone had the resources/knowledge they needed. The State of the Game presentations I did every sprint helped a ton as well, and I really felt like my work on them was making the team’s lives easier.
What went poorly:
Going back to my role as Product Owner, I was sometimes a little too eager to try out something new. I wanted to make sure that the new team members felt welcomed and included in the decision making process and not delegated to the “oh cool we can do more tasks” role. Because of this, I was more open to trying out new ideas that changed major aspects of the gameplay than I think a normal studio would be.
Also, I felt a little useless at the end of the project. The last few weeks of team projects are always hard for me because of my skill set (systems designer and tools programmer). I feel the most useful in the beginning and middle of projects, so towards the end I was grabbing up tasks that were less about my role and more about what needed to get done. I started working on the trailer as a quick addition to my other work, but as that decreased, I started working on the trailer full time. Since I wasn’t working in engine, I felt like I wasn’t making anything worthwhile and my motivation dropped. I know this was false, and I was able to make a trailer that the whole team liked, but it still taught me something about myself that I didn’t see before in other projects.
What I learned:
This entire project has been a great learning experience. I don’t think I can even remember everything that I’ve learned. But one of the big things I had to learn was how to work in a large team as a leader. This is the first time I’ve been in a leadership position for a team larger than 5 people, so I had to learn to adopt my leadership and development style to fit my new role. I like to think that it was a success, but I’ll just have to wait and see how my team feels when we do our personal postmortem.
Team Perspective:
What went well:
Everything really. As a team we meshed and worked well with each other. The core team (original 5) had thought a lot about about how they wanted to bring people in, so it was a really smooth transition. On top of this, our communication was really good, we responded to each other within a good time period, and everyone had a good understanding of the state of the game most of the time.
What went poorly:
After we were forced to go home because of COVID-19, we took a long time to get back into a good working structure. Various team members didn’t have equipment, or they didn’t have the best environment to work in, so this took about three weeks to get back to a level of productivity that we had previously. Also, I think we could have tested/balanced earlier. We prioritized getting new features and content in, so by the time we had slowed down enough to balance, we only had a few weeks left in the project. We should have balanced as we went, or at least included a balancing point in the feature’s definition of done.
What we learned:
Basically how to thrive when we’re told to do what we specialize in. For many of us, this was only the second time we were able to specialize in a team. Because of the smaller team sizes, we all have to be some level of generalist, or at least learn to work around our lesser known skills. Here, we were able to dive deeply into our desired specializations, and I think that was a really rewarding and informative thing for everyone. On top of this, we all learned what it took to get a game from concept to release. Some of us had released games or other projects before, but this was the first time we were delivering a game at such a high level of polish and refinement. It’s a lot different than developing for a class, and I think many of us learned about the ninety-ninety rule.
Overall, I’m incredible proud of the work that we’ve done. Guilded is one of the most interesting and fulfilling projects I’ve worked on, and I can’t wait to see what the future holds for us!
