This blog post is posted as a part of the Hurdles series of work and tell game development. To find out more about Hurdles, please check out our handy FAQ. This blog post was provided by the fine folks at HVRE for their game Mortimer’s Mansion.
When we signed up to do Hurdles for the HVRE dev 2016 VR project, , we knew we were going to have to show some serious progress since we had such a big team with big goals. Each week I would show something we worked on, give a summary of what everyone accomplished, and what our big goals along with my smaller personal goals would be. I also tried to encourage the team to speak up, which would usually be one or two that would have goals that they wouldn’t mind sharing. Sometimes it was difficult to fit in the 5 min pitch, and I’m sure we went over. But the time kept us focused on what the important stuff was, which in turn helped us see what mattered and what needed attention.
HVRE’s team, varying anywhere from six to twelve people, used Hurdles as a way to be held responsible for both major team goals as well as some individual goals every week. It was also good to get practice talking about our project. When we first started out, we didn’t even have a playable prototype. Over the weeks of Hurdles, we not only accomplished goals such as getting the game playable, testing the game on new people, getting models and scripts done, etc, but we also had to manage team losses, distribute those workloads, and rework the scope and means to finishing our project. I think this was particularly interesting to share with the group because we often forget that projects that have a purpose or deadline are the result of a process, and require compromise due to things like time and resources.
For those working on personal hobby projects, I think Hurdles could be a purpose and deadline all by itself if you want it to be. For those of us working on longer term goals, I think that Hurdles can be great motivator when you’re trying to do a major progress push with your team. Hurdles was also a source for us to find additional people that wanted to join our team, get new ideas from RunJumpDev members, and find valuable feedback after the Hurdles session was over. I’d like to take a moment to say that HVREdev has been really amazing this year! We are so lucky to have so many talented, driven, and curious people in RunJumpDev. I’m especially proud of all of the work the team has put in on HVRE this year, you guys and gals are amazing. Thank you so much for your time and talent.
All in all I’m sure I can speak for everyone in HVREdev, thank you for having us. We really appreciate the opportunity to show off and get feedback.