Image Source - Falmouth Online university Canvass For this week's Spark activity, imagine you were to hypothetically incorporate a company tomorrow. Each of your group members would be listed as directors for this new company.
As a team, or individually, consider and answer the following question:
What scenarios can you envisage that may impact your chance of finding success together?
Write a paragraph (up to 250 words) to summarise your thoughts. You can use the following points to support your answer.
Your role(s) at this company
The aim of your company
Your company name
Your working strategy, eg
Will you be remote based?
What will your working hours be?
How will you maintain communication?
As an added bit of fun, you can also create a potential logo for your start-up and propose a company 'motto' or tagline that clarifies your new venture’s mission.
Starting a company is no small feat. It requires a lot of dedication and hard work and there are many underlying factors that can result in the business being a success or not. Looking at the question I would say the following scenarios that could impact on the business being successful or not are as follows: Scenario 1: Our ideas for games are too niche or do not fit the current trends of games that are currently industry leading. In turn, resulting in demotivation from the team and not being able to make what we want as we will have to make money to cover costs. To do this would mean following said trends which the team may not enjoy making. I feel you should be able to enjoy your work so that the output is represented in the game. This would also tie into the aim of the company not being met. We don't just want to be known for creating the types of games that others make. We want to be know for creating exciting, new and engaging titles that everyone can play regardless of your ability. Scenario 2: The team are too far stretched location wise. We have Pedro who lives in Portugal and Bartosz. Miranda lives in Somerset and Michael near Cornwall. I live in London. Whilst 3 of the team members are technically in the UK, it does however mean we are based several hours apart and in other instances, different time zones. This could prove challenging due to our working hours being different, communication could also be an issue and important last minute meetings could also be nearly impossible for them to get to. Working remotely would be the easiest option to take here as it would also cut down on costs for the studio. In an ideal business world, we would all be taking a salary so cutting down on this expense would be a must. To combat this, we would have to use a free communication service such as Discord or Microsoft teams or Skype. Combine this with Slack or Monday.com we could use this to set objectives and tasks for the team members to complete whilst we are uncontactable because of time differences. Working hours will be the traditional 9 to 5pm because it is important to maintain a work/life balance. For those who are in different countries, there will be the same working hours for them, however with the caveat that there is to be a brief handover to the team the next day or when we cross over via video chat with a run down on what went well and what didn't go so well.
Scenario 3: Our roles at the company will all be based on our skill levels and what our abilities are. It makes sense to have Miranda work as a character and design artist and also any concept art that she thinks of. Bartosz and Pedro can both work on animations, materials and modelling with anything else shader related. Michael can be the modelling and rigging animator with myself being the programmer along with Pedro if I need help. The main issue with this set up is it is limiting people to grow into other areas. Bartosz and Miranda and Michael have little to no experience in this area and this can lead to the programmers quickly getting burnt out from doing all of the heavy lifting.
As part of the company mission and goal, I would want to see the team members undergo a series of courses to bring their skill levels up so that all aspects of the business can be covered by them as well. This will make for vacation days easier on the rest of the team.
Team Logo: By Miranda
I had already asked Miranda for this logo as I felt it was important to have one. This is included in our project at start-up like most companies have on their intro screens.
The reason we have chosen this design for our business is because we all have dogs in our lives and they are very important to us. It's a simple concept but i think it shows the kind of people we are quite well. Animal lovers.
The AMPMB part is all of our initials. Aaron, Miranda, Pedro, Michael, Bartosz.
Image Source: Falmouth Online University Canvass Spry Fox: Spry Fox is a video game producing company, founded in 2010 by David Edery and Daniel Cook, with headquarters in Seattle, United States. We have been asked to watch a short video watching Andrew Fray discuss how Spry Fox is able to operate as a distributed team. Consider the following questions:
Based on your experience so far, can you relate to the way the company operates?
In terms of the way the company operates, we definitely share some similarities. Especially around how the team is based all over the place and how they have to implement communication strategies in order to stay in sync.
What principles can you apply to your own day-to-day operations?
I would probably adopt the strategy in which that they don't do any artwork until the game is ready to go into production. mainly focusing on the mechanics side of things before implementing artwork. I like this idea, because I feel a lot of time can be wasted on artwork and design if the mechanics don't work or the idea doesn't pan out. I also like the fact that they don't have pages and pages of documentation. What stuck out to me is that they only use 2 pages MAX of ideas and then work on the ones that excite them the most before moving on.
Recording how many minutes o fun at any given time is being used on the app or game is also very useful to know. This will allow me to know what features work and what needs to be adjusted or even removed from the game. Even knowing when to kill a prototype.
Image Source: Falmouth Online University Canvass Hi9 Business start-up The focus this week is to prioritise the team project development.
However, you should engage with the content in parallel to the project development, especially if you have aspirations to evolve the team project into a tech start-up, go self-employed or start a business. We have been asked to watch another video from Wo King, founder and CEO of Hi9 who discusses the importance of having more than one team member to carry the load. I especially liked the area he discusses around technology for people who aren't confident for with it. How they take existing technology and make it more acceptable for people and fit for purpose. It's for everyone. I liked that Wo King also discussed that the whole "getting funding" is a success and that people who believe that are idiots. It's the successful implementation stage and selling it to people after is the success stage and that is when it should be celebrated. Sharing the workload is very important to each person. This stops any one person getting burnt out and also looks after their mental health and wellbeing. For this particular subject I used a wellbeing site to cross reference some of my ideas. Sharing the load can improve the following:
Productivity Boost Promotes Innovation Improves Morale Gives equal value and share Establishes strong relationships with your co workers and peers Enables flexibility. CIF Training. 2021. The Benefits of Teamwork in the Workplace | CIF Training. [online] Available at: <https://ciftraining.ie/2018/03/the-benefits-of-teamwork-in-the-workplace/> [Accessed 3 August 2021].
Image Source: Falmouth Online university canvass
Avoiding Crunch:
For this week's activity, to avoid crunch, devise and propose a strategy or method with your colleagues.
During your next team meeting, add this point to your agenda, carry out this activity and make a plan, in whichever format is best for you. Your devised methodology should ideally be based on existing research or your own experience related to team work.
After your meeting, your team leader should post your notes in this forum, explaining the approach your team will take to avoid crunch mode. You are also encouraged to review the other comments and provide some insight to your strategy, aiming to learn from each other. For this session we decided to talk after our meeting and come up with a game plan so as not to have to deal with crunch time towards the end and also allow ourselves enough time to complete the journal entry as well. Game Plan: To avoid crunch the following needs to happen during these dates. Failure to adhere to these dates will mean time for debugging and testing will be reduced. August 6th - Content Lock: No more mechanics and code to be implemented unless it is beneficial for the game and is not time consuming. This will allow Aaron to focus on fine tuning existing code in order to ensure gameplay works and is smooth.
August 13th - Asset & Art Lock: No more art assets and artwork to be used in engine. This should now all be in and live and working as this is one week after mechanic deadlock. The artwork is to accompany the mechanics so this makes sense to end it after. August 14th - 19th: Debugging and testing to commence. 5 to 7 days is enough for testing purposes and to get our game tested for the final pitch. Aaron to take back to Harlow college to have it play tested a final time and to get floating head interview and testimonials from students and teachers. All footage to be sent to Pedro for implementing into final pitch video.
Resources: https://ciftraining.ie/2018/03/the-benefits-of-teamwork-in-the-workplace/#:~:text=Improves%20Morale%20%E2%80%93%20when%20the%20workload,that%20improves%20their%20self%2Desteem.
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