After the last review, Daryl told me that I should take out some slices of our presentation. Although they are valuable information to us as a company and for internal communications, they don't really need to be there. To accomplish that request, I extracted almost all of then and only end with 4. The most important info: how are we going to slicing the pie, our initial expenses, all the explanation related to the game price and finally, Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Maintenance Cost, and Life Time Value. Those numbers, by the way, are the only ones need to finish all Finances slices before the final presentation. But I have the same problem I had before (or even worst): I need to know marketing final numbers to fill out CAC, CMC, and LTV. Fortunately, George call for our final meeting on Wednesday 15th in the usual spot (Gran Avenue Mall). So I hope that day (a few hours before the class) we could complete our work in a proper way.
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I was thinking of taking advantage of the thanksgiving break to be ready for the presentation next week. So I sent a message to Leo asking for another meeting on holiday weekend or some other day. But as usual he never answers and nobody else shows up. Also, I sent 2 emails to Jacob asking him for the reference salary list to complete our slicing the pie numbers. Again, he never replied me. So I decided to avoid wasting any more time on them, the only thing I needed to do was my part of the presentation. I took some hours on Black Friday to expand a little my slides following the explanation Daryl gave me about how I should calculate all our salaries. So the first thing I did was fix Unity info to add Unity Pro numbers in case we need it. Then I rearranged our initial budget because we did no need anymore our paychecks calculation as we are now slicing the pie. After that, I explained a little why we are going to slice 60% for the company and 40% for us. Then I calculated how many hours everyone worked (nothing actually) in this 4 months. Finally, in the last slice, I break down how much our salary would have been if we have work this 4 months.
After the epic fail, I was a little confused. I didn´t know how to refocus finances. I couldn´t understand how exactly slicing the pie should work. So I asked Jacob to help me doing a little research about the book, I also needed a list of skills, experience, and responsibilities everybody has in the team. Although I asked a couple of times nobody wrote anything. Then I spoke with Leo about the situation and he said he will put the requirement in the drive. Even so, nobody wrote anything. Additionally, I really need marketing numbers to complete my work and Tyreac (marketing chief) was rambling as always. In that moment I felt I had enough, this pseudo team was a joke. I was probably the only one trying to do something and I won't carry the whole team on my shoulders (I was probably already doing it in a way). Because I had pretty bad experiences when I tried to do that in the past. So, next class, I will be talking with Daryl about this situation. I just can't work with this people. The presentation was an obvious failure, I already knew that at least a week before. I must say I was pretty frustrated because nobody did anything even with the meeting we had the day before. I also was disappointed with Leo because he said he will paint my sketch to print a cover but he never did it. I was so naive thinking people from marketing will actually have something to show or at least send me some plans to finish CAC, CMC, and LTV. Because in my country people used to do homework a day before the evaluation but the things here are pretty different in that way. When the time came, nobody had even blogs to show with the exception of Sunny and me. I tried to defend the little I had but it was useless and even if a need the help of my classmates that does not excuse me, it was my responsibility after all. Although I probably had one of the best grades of the course, that was because almost nobody did anything else so I didn't feel happy at all. It was one of my hardest days since I arrived here that let me thinking how we will solve this situation because motivate other people is a really complex issue...
Just a few hours before the presentation I don't feel (at all) we are going to do an acceptable performance. We still need to finish: the back and both sides of the box (even if I did the cover art), update the pipeline, make the whole marketing plan, CMC, CAC (because I can't finish it without marketing) and even finish the slices. I am now sure that we will do a mediocre presentation. I tried to do my part properly as well help whenever I could but the team just didn`t respond as we should. The last class I didn`t do much because I was trying to figure out how the numbers could make sense. It is way more difficult than it seems the only solution I found was selling a lot of copies. In the second meeting, on the other hand, only 4 of us actually showed up so we only could make a couple of decisions. It`s been difficult to me have a good communication with Jacob (He has been helping me with Financial) so I couldn`t understand the last changes he did to the document. We seriously need to change the dynamic as the group if we want to pass this subject. In the last class, Leo and I were discussing game's story details. As he is so creative and I actually have studied modern narrative structure (a little of cinematographic theory for example). We decided that the main character should be a girl because make more sense with the message we are trying to tell. The idea, by the way, is talk about nature VS humans or how our relationship with it have always been contradictory. We would like to show these ideas through the gameplay avoiding cutscenes or traditional to tell stories. Megan Man-Style games don't usually have a lot of work in their message that's why we would like to innovate in this area. Besides stages, characters, and special powers we are trying to use Head-Up on display to tell details. The other issue we worked last class was the cover of the game. Aiden shows us an interesting program to design simple boxes. So everybody started designing their covers. After a while, we all have our ideas in the program or in a more traditional way (just a sketch with pencil) but most of them were sadly bad. We did a polling and my design won: a girl in flames looking directly ahead in front of the cover. Although I was glad my biggest preoccupation was making a good design so I spent 3 hours in this drawing. I hope everybody like, it, there was also no meeting again but at least I still worked on this. As you know Daryl, our team wasn't ready to your first evaluation last week. Of course, we all were aware of this situation but we expected to finish before our turn. However, (and that's why procrastination is always a risk) for some reason half of our team couldn't arrive (the CEO, for example, wasn't there). So Leo had to defend what we had which obviously was very little. We need to focus on main aspects of the game like gameplay, mechanics, or dynamics which still need more develop. In order to finish those issues, we agreed to meet on Sunday. Unfortunately, the meeting was canceled at the last minute because on
Sunday morning nobody showed. At this rate, we will fail the next presentation I hope we can put ourselves together. I have talked with Leo about this several times. Moreover, I really had a hard time trying to figure out how in the world we will monetize this mega man style game. Turned out it was very difficult, our budget was just too high (because we are a 9 people indie company) to our Life Time Value. Then, I tried to find alternative financing like DLC or Kickstarter but is never that easy. We need to finish the game before making this kind of decision. I feel true relief seeing that our team is finally taking shape. Last class the CEO asked to work in small groups (according to related departments) to have a few minutes brainstorm. So in only 30 minutes Open Door Games (they want to change the name I still don’t know why) came out with almost 15 different ideas to a video game. Leo showed his huge creativity and proposed around half of the total ideas. His 2D platform and action game (like mega-man) “Ignite” won the polling. I can’t deny it was a pretty interesting idea to control fire a see how the fire determine the gameplay (for example the main character could die if he overheats his body by shooting too much). But I would like work in something more experimental and less traditional… I suppose my idea of controlling time through ages it was too twisty for our first project I hope to have the opportunity to work in something risky anytime soon. Then we start talking about where the levels could be and how the mechanics should be. They already selected Lab, Woods, and City as the main levels (a little hasty if you ask me but that is the way Democracy works). The only bad news was that we didn’t agree our weekly meeting this time (I don’t know why honestly look like everybody just forgets about it). Even so, all my classmate seems interested with the project and I managed to finish my tentative budget so it is was a productive class.
After the last class, I feel a great relief regarding the behavior of our team. Everybody just hustles over their responsibilities all suddenly and we finally starting to do something. Of course, some people still goofing around. But at least, this time, I actually saw some ideas flow related to the game: Leo was coordinating every department while Aiden gives us more technical details. The Marketing team started to do a little research to find out what strategy they are going to do and at the end, we have our general contract. So in general everybody seems more interested. Although Ethan helps me to find a hypothetic place to rent the team spent almost one and a half hours discussing his commitment to the team. He has to work on Wednesday evening so he couldn’t be in the class. Nobody knew anything about him until yesterday. But as we already have our contract I suppose he is going to be in troubles unless he finds a solution. George, on the other hand, seems kind of loss and he is the CEO. I still don’t think he should have that title. At last, we put a date (Sunday) to our first out class meeting. I honestly don’t know if I can actually go (I will be in Chicago) but it is a progress. I can feel how the team got stronger this class and I hope we can continue that way. I honestly never expected we actually have to emulate a real video game company in the first semester. I mean is awesome we have the opportunity to do it and I am sure will be rewarding especially for our education. But I must say it has been a true challenge even with only 2 classes. The professor has forced us to make teams with total strangers to built together a solid company. Now this is what I call a challenge. I understand, however, why we should go through all this. There is no better way to learn than getting experience from real work environments. Even so, we managed to choose a really cool name, make an original logo, write (with help) a focused mission and select a truly inspiring company to emulate: Valve. Of course, our attitudes as a team haven't been proving yet. On the other hand, I must admit our meetings hasn't been too productive. Everybody is young and spent most the time making jokes about almost everything it is really annoying. I must be the older so I should try to ask for order but unfortunately, my conversation skills are still far from good. So I am feeling very frustrated with this situation. Our Pipeline needs improvement... I have doubts related to our CEO because he is the main reason of our dispersion in the meetings. He has problems to focus and is making jokes almost every second. I can't say anything remarkable about anybody else (of course we just met). With the only exception of Aiden: he has been really helpful to the team. His knowledge concerning programming and animation (he did the logo by himself) are almost the only valuable asset we actually have.
Leo, Jorge and I (we all talk Spanish) are concerned and aware of this situation. I often appeal to them when I need to express clearly my ideas. We (the whole team) need to make a reunion outside class immediately (we haven't done yet) and have a serious discussion related all these problems. |
AuthorI want to study Video Games in a theoretical way. Archivos
May 2018
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