Postmortem

If I had to pick a common personal theme between my time on Twig and Musical Harmony, it would be getting comfortable in my own skin. I found that the majority of the growth I did over the past half-year was struggling with finding how I fit into a team setting. For the longest time, I always felt like I was on the outside on projects, due largely to the fact that as a producer I had to keep an overall idea in my head and steer people in said direction. Which never sat perfectly right with me, it always felt like I wasn’t doing enough for the team, that I wasn’t helping.

That was pretty well relieved with my work with Twig and the other phase one projects. It was there that I came to the revelation that yes, I’m not going to be doing the kind of recognizable work that my teammates are doing. However, I am doing something, I am cultivating creativity, giving people a place and environment where ideas can grow and change under a set of guidelines in the hopes of making them better. Once I had that in mind working on a team felt a lot better, it felt like I was constantly contributing and helping the process along even if none of my work is instantly viable when you look at the game.

Something that helped this revelation was the discovery that I can convey a game idea pretty well to an audience in a captivating way. Not only did that help get me comfortable with myself and the team, but it gave me something instantly recognizable when we present a game.

Now all of that said it was still a learning process even once I found these things. There was plenty of times I felt as if I didn’t communicate the right information or tone to an audience or team. More so to team members, as those times I was less prepared and the idea was more abstract than when I present in class. On top of being in a smaller room with fewer people also didn’t probably help. So there are some nerves and world chose issues I still have to work on, finding the right comparisons seems to be key, but that also leads to our idea ending up similar to the example. Ori and the Blind Forest was a title cited frequently when working on Twig and while it gave the team a great idea of what we were going for it confused a lot of people into thinking the two games are the same.

I also gave away too much info during Greenlight that did cause a lot of confusion on the intent of Twig that may have caused its downfall. As I focused too little too hard on the narrative element of the game without exploring the extent of that narrative in the context of the game. On that note, there has also been this lingering notion in my head that I didn’t fight enough for Twig when it came down to it. That I didn’t put my foot down enough during that meeting similar to how I didn’t put my foot down in other meetings. Something team members told me throughout development and are currently the thing I want to work on the most.

That is at the top of the list when I look at what needs to change about me. What I need to do to be a better team member and developer. That inability to control my environment and stand up for my ideas lead to a lot of one-sided meetings and discussions between two very powerful voices, which did nothing for the less vocal members of the team. If I had to hypothesize on the root cause of this it's my fear of seeming like a jerk. Of falling off that line between stern and unreasonable. So some experimentation of where that line is would be helpful, especially with people I haven’t worked with before as that defiantly helps. As I’m not afraid of losing a friendship in the process, just a business relationship.

That is what’s going to be dominating my forward progress from here on. Polishing and refining the position I have made for myself while also getting comfortable enough to be able to put my foot down more often.