It's Whale Time

End of Cycle

This week marks the end of a cycle (previously called sprint). We made significant pushes in all art and increased our productivity as shown in the task analysis. However, I (Anna) have made the drop in productivity after the first weekend of the sprint to the team. Everyone on the team understands that there is plenty to do, as many have been reaching out to their accountability buddy for more work if something in the pipeline is still being developed.

That being said... While concept art and Jonathan are less of a bottleneck, there are still some halts occurring. I will continue investigating this so that the team runs more smoothly with each passing week. Conflicts in communication have been noted. The other members have noted the value of the accountability buddy system and the performance check-in so we will continue doing it. However, participation in the buddy system has dropped, with the pace only picking up towards the last few hours of the work week.

During a meeting a week or so ago, students under the Digital Media Department are required 12 hours of work as the class is 4 credit hours while students under the College of Computing and Informatics are required 10 hours of work as their senior design class is 3 credit hours. While this requirement has been stressed due to the sheer amount of work floating around, some of the team members are still not meeting their quota. This will be addressed in the art meeting on Monday.

Amping up Marketing

With Alex completely on board--have you read his very professional and well-articulated posts?--we established another weekly meeting for marketing. The marketing team is composed of Alex, Desiree, Dylan, and myself with other members of the team chiming in as they wish. We spent time this week to establish the visual identity and worked towards selecting our font. We will be translating this information over to our website once we start the process of building it. In addition to building our visual identity, Alex is basically drilling who we are (public-facing) into our heads. Good times.

Possibly GDC

Whale House Studio is in an internal competition for the chance to go to the Game Developer's Conference (GDC). Before the new academic year started, most of us were already planning to go to GDC. Now with the competition, we are aiming to gain funding so the entire team can go and represent Gygan Reign. As the term draws to a close, I will begin planning the trip for those who are definitely going. We will be re-arranging our goals for each production cycle as a result of the internal competition.

Holidays

With Thanksgiving and then Christmas coming up, the team will face difficulties in meeting and checking in as most people will be off campus for the holidays. This week especially will be a challenge as many will be departing on Tuesday. I will be working towards ways to keep everyone moving while giving them time to spend with their families.

Looking for Sound

Our advisor, Stefan, has been constantly reminding me to find a solution for sound. While Gygan Reign is quite lovely without sound (we prefer the bantering between opponents when playtesting), we all recognize that the sound design will help tremendously in building the player experience. I will be discussing this with Jonathan in preparation to address this in our end of term presentation.

End of Term Presentation

The end of term presentation will occur the Tuesday everyone comes back from break. This will be the time to show off the progress we have made and the direction we will be going in moving forward to the faculty. Whale House Studios hopes to have a stronger presentation than the pitch presented at the beginning of the term.

Everyone has worked so hard thus far and we must continue to whale on!