Revisiting the Group Dynamic

A.K.A. - My waning interest.

To begin: I'm very impressed with what our studio team has accomplished over the past 2 semesters. We've completed a relatively full featured game that really shows our all our individual talents of coding, art design, level design, sound design and management. I think a lot of our success is attributable to maintaining the scope of the project as something manageable and not overly ambitious, also the absurd amount of coding that Tom did in the early stages to put together a robust and full featured game engine.

The team has also fared well at working together, for the most part aiming towards the same goal that was set in semester 1. There has however been a large number of disagreements over design considerations that I have found to be particularly frustrating and has unfortunately resulted in me feeling mostly apathetic towards the project at this late stage.

Whilst my level of contribution to the game of late may not be all that apparent, I have in fact been quite busy designing and redesigning many elements of the game. The issue is that they've been largely met with opposition from the rest of the team, and hence left out of the design in favour for what was already present. It is arguable that this has been beneficial for the project, in that the rejection of new elements has helped to avoid dreaded scope creep that may have resulted in a directionless, underdeveloped game. The consequence however is that I've been left with a distasteful feeling of being undervalued in the design process, leaving me somewhat disenfranchised with the whole project. This feeling may be largely attributable to my desire of executive control over the game's design; admittedly the most important lesson I've learned this year concerns the difficulties of working in a group environment where differing goals and ideals must be somehow consolidated (something I'm obviously still coming to terms with).

Regardless, I've found it very discouraging to have the larger portion of my designs rejected by the team, whilst having to watch as the game design heads in a direction I'm somewhat displeased with. It is interesting to note the different levels of satisfaction felt by the team members: Jason in particular feeling adamant that we have created an A-class design worthy of retail release, I however hold some reservations as to the level of quality of our game when put in direct comparison with most retail releases (the method by which we release the game is a whole other issue alone).

We have declared the game entirely finished at this stage, whilst there is still a lot of things I would like to see reworked and further developed. Despite being proud of the work I have attributed to the project, the project as a whole has left me unenthusiastic about the prospect of working as part of a game development team in the future. The benefit of the process is that it has really helped me to cement in my mind what I value from a game design; it has been a truly interesting experience, though not without its negatives, that I feel will really influence my work in the future.