The Ups & Downs of Developing a Game During a Pandemic
We received word just as our spring break was starting that campus would be closed and classes would be remote for two weeks. At first, it seemed like it was just a simple precautionary measure, and I didn’t think much of it at the time – honestly, I kind of saw it as an extended vacation. But as the severity of the pandemic and the importance of quarantine became abundantly clear, the time we would be spending away from campus continued to increase. Now, nearly two months later, we’re preparing to enter our third semester and it’s still unclear whether we’ll set foot on campus before graduating in December.
Coursework and lectures have transitioned pretty smoothly to the remote format. Sure, there’s the occasional hiccup with Zoom meetings or wrestling with internet bandwidth, but in a game development program, most, if not all, of our work is done on computers anyway. In fact, I think this experience will illuminate the merits of remote education, and hopefully force us to reevaluate the current paradigm of higher learning – but that’s a discussion for another time.
However, while our individual coursework hasn’t seemed to suffer too much from this predicament, remote work posed some problems for team collaboration. Our cohort is about halfway through the development of our capstone projects. Split into four teams of roughly 18 people each, we are developing games from scratch to ship. It’s no secret that these projects are the highest priority for all of us – they will be, after all, the most significant achievement from our time at FIEA.
As the lead designer of my team, I was worried. Leading a team already had its fair share of challenges, even when all of my teammates were only a few desks away, so the prospect of guiding development remotely was nothing short of daunting. The other leads and I did our best to adjust the team’s schedule to ensure that we could still work easily and efficiently while trying to maintain some sense of normalcy. This, of course, meant more meetings and stand-ups, which was a little bittersweet, as our meeting to development ratio was a point of pride for us. Additionally, we decided to implement core hours, a three-hour period each day where everyone is required to be online so that they could be easily reached if needed.
It was definitely difficult at first. Beyond some technical issues, and moving our primary collaboration platform from Tandem to Discord after only a few days into remote work, there were so many seemingly insignificant aspects of in-person collaboration that I sorely missed. You couldn’t just walk over to someone’s desk and tap them on the shoulder to ask them about the status of an art asset or feature, you couldn’t pull your chair up next to a teammate’s computer to help debug code. Instead, we had to suffice with messaging, voice chatting and screensharing, which added steps to certain tasks that would’ve been nearly instant in person. And, of course, we’re not just co-workers, we’re also friends that enjoy each other’s company, so we all missed the daily social interactions we had in our workspace.
But after a few weeks and ironing out the major kinks, we fell into the rhythm of it all, and things started to go smoothly. In fact, in many ways, there was an improvement in our overall workflow and team cohesion. People were communicating more, productivity was up (I think my weekly average jumped up by about 2 hours, as did the hours of many other team members), and we began to plan out ways to still have fun and keep up the morale – weekly gaming sessions, cooking with our teammates over video chat, etc.
As we prepare to move into the final leg of development, I feel really good about the progress we’ve been making and our prospects for the future. Above all else, the defining factor in how we’ve overcome these obstacles is the team itself. They’ve really risen to the occasion. Everyone is invested in the project, passionate about their work, and have done their absolute best to adapt to our new circumstances. To say I’m proud to be a part of this team would be an understatement – I’m honored. Despite the bumps in the road, I have no doubts that at the end of August we’ll have made a great game.
If you’re interested in following our game’s development, you can follow us on Twitter @Keepers_Game or check out our website!