Elliott Hübinger Strait

Vegismite was my first time making a game from start to finish working alongside a team of developers, and will likely (and hopefully) hold the title of my least enjoyable experience in game design for many years to come.

 

The main reason the project failed to produce an enjoyable experience is due to clashing egos between myself, the project’s design director, and an anonymous teammate with the role of programming director.

 

Though this project was executed early on in my training as a game designer, I felt confident enough in my skills at this point in time to lead the project, which is why I took the role of design director. As a designer, I was eager to challenge myself by making a unique experience, forcing me to come up with creative solutions to never before seen problems, this is what led the project into its downfall. The programming director hated the idea of taking such risks as it wouldn’t guarantee the project would turn out well. This resulted in a tedious and petty dispute between the two of us, where I argued I wasn’t being challenged as a designer if I were to just replicate some existing game and the team should be more confident in itself to create something unique yet enjoyable, while the programming director argued that my desire to challenge the team was risking the grades of the project.

 

Over time, the dispute devolved into the programming director deleting the code to any unique systems I put into the game, leading me to give up on the project and just work on systems the programming director was indifferent to. In turn this led to a drastic drop in team morale, where every teammate had given up on the quality of the project. Though the project managed to meet the requirements of the class, it was nothing any of us were proud of.

 

Ultimately, the main point I’ve learned from the development of Vegismite is the importance of prioritizing the quality of the project and morale of the team. Though I stand by my belief that it’s important to challenge oneself, especially for the creation of a unique game, if said challenging will lead to the team and project’s collapse, then it is nothing but a hindrance to production.