Reflecting Upon Impending Failure - A Pre-Autopsy Rant
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I personally do not take failure lightly - and I will go to lengths to avoid it. That being said, I have rather recently come to recognize that one rather hard-hitting failure is bearing down upon me - and that there is nothing that I can do about it.
A few months ago I signed up for a game design competition. At the beginning of the contest, any person who was not pre-agreed among themselves to team up (such as myself) was allocated to other individuals to form teams.
And so it came to be that I was thrown together with two other individuals.
I held high hopes. I was energized.
I was ready to rock this thing.
It was quickly apparent that I was the only one who truly felt this way.
Now - three months later, I look at the November 17th deadline and toward one of my team mates' messages outlining his difficulties in implementing... platforms... in Unity...
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I really shouldn't be judging the fellow. I (presently) couldn't do it myself. But then again he is supposed to be our programmer... and platforms are about as basic as moving stuff in games gets...
At least he is actually trying - and he did produce a music file to go into the project (its something worth recognizing).
The third team member has very literally delivered nothing over these past months other than promises... and when I say nothing - that includes ignoring many, many requests for screenshots (its amazing how much unsatisfactory work he claims to have shredded without ever thinking of showing us that he did stuff).
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For my part - it seems that I smothered them in communication...
That and introducing too many ideas...
I apparently intimidated them...
I'm not happy with the amount of work that I've done but I can safely say that I've eclipsed the two of them thrice over. Still - I know that I am capable of better (and I already did a lot of learning both as part of the process of shoring-up what areas I could cover, as well as from the bitter situation as a whole).
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Well - I felt the need to get this off my chest today.
And while I did learn some things from this event - I have to admit that I feel cheated - not just because I didn't have a good enough team to deliver (and for the moment believe me when I say that I tried hard to sort that out) - but because the game could have been 'so' much better - even as I readily yielded to constant requests to cut back on this or that as features.
More-so, this was my first opportunity to work with a team for months rather than days on end and I was excited to see how far we could go. The dejection that I feel - that any amount of effort on my own part couldn't have been enough to do this (not least because both team mates very early on ignored my warnings 'not' to work on Unity 2017 as it is not 32-bit compatible (and thus I was and remain helpless and completely dependent upon their meager-if-existent efforts to implement a game that works - my decade-old machine being 32-bit)... has forced me to work upon documentation (as nobody else would dream of performing the task).
I shall unveil more in the coming month hopefully with lessons learnt from the bitter process still unfolding.
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Well that's all for the moment. :c) In spite of the impending failure and the bitterness that is sure to linger, I am looking forward to January's Global Game Jam - and I hope that I'll find the motivation to explore unity programming in the meantime (opportunity for which in this competition was robbed by my team mates when I had to take over art asset generation, game design and the like (plus the Unity situation shot my motivation for loading pre-2017 Unity)).
Have you ever had unpleasant experiences involving team members? How did you cope? Do get in on the discussion down below - as clearly I could learn from you (or be comforted in the knowledge that I am not alone). :c)
Also, if you found this post interesting and would like to share this with your followers and friends then a resteem is always appreciated.
Sincerely,
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Hmphf well I have been the camel with three humps in a few such situations. My best and brightest tool, my path forging hammer as it were, is always open and honest communication. I have found that if that won't work - not much will. Sounds like you tried. Take succor in the lessons learned my friend.
I am reading closely because I am about to embark on the development of a video game - one that could change the world!
I will take all lessons I can get at this point!
Thank you, @ecoinstant, both for your up-vote as well as for you heartening comment. :c)
Oh - as I reveal the various lessons that I've learnt it shall be far more readily apparent just how shafted I was by getting saddled with these individuals. :c) I do believe that you will benefit from some of the lessons learnt - and I intend on going through them topic-by-topic.
On the bright side (thanks to yielding to necessity and taking over the artistic roles of the non-deliverer - I can now say that I am fairly familiar with vector graphics, a big step up from the 32x32 pixel sprite work that I was doing as of just last January. Next step for me will be getting a 64-bit machine (when I can afford it) and (finally) getting familiar with Unity in the current (or future) version.
I am really happy to hear that you shall be delving into video game development! You have me greatly intrigued and I cannot wait to see how your journey goes. Fair winds! :c)
Very cool! I will try to keep abreast of your articles on this - I look forward to learning more!
Yes we are still defining scope, which is pretty big, but we will be dividing up the work and looking for people to help - potentially using steemgigs as much as possible. We have lore defined, much of the encyclopedia, gameplay mechanics mostly understood, some sketch art - slowly but surely - trying to make a game to define the genre - we'll probably need to bring an independent house onboard but that will require a lot of research.
That does sound very promising @ecoinstant. :c)
It is not every day that an entire genre of game comes about and I'll be very interested in following your progress. :cP It sounds like you've a fair bit of work done already (trying not to envy the apparent vast superiority of your team ^_~).
I sincerely wish you all the best - and do not exclude that I might be able to pitch some small contribution to your project's development (I am a little low-energy in light of current events - but I do not exclude this possibility). ^_^
Haha! We have a great team yes, but with zero experience in game design! We are all writers and creatives - although we do love playing video games. I will be revealing more as we go - would be great to keep getting your thoughts 😁
Having a great team (with a good coverage of the skills required) is half the battle... so I am genuinely optimistic as to for your chances. :c) Looking forward to hearing more about it - and sure - there is bound to be some input. ^_^
We just met about it and we should have some of the first art posts going up by the end of the month. I'll be resteeming, but I made the account @birdland
Thanks for your encouragement 😃
I have become a follower for updates ^_^
Curious to see how it starts to take shape. :c)
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