Party Manager 2020 Postmortem

Overview

Party Manager 2020 came about from the theme “2020” during this season’s game jam. The jam had to be moved to digital-only due to the pandemic, so a discord was set up for people to meet each other and find a group. I was fortunate enough to be recruited by a team that I was already familiar with, and I was able to bring in some fresh blood with me to show them how game jams go. I was a bit taken aback to find that the group was not the originally offered 4 people but in fact 8. However, we got to brainstorming quickly and ideas flowed fairly naturally. 

The group couldn’t seem to make up their mind, they were buzzing to use the diversifiers “only NES color palettes” or “greyscale only” which got them heavily focused on the concept of color rather than 2020. Originally the team wanted to make a Hue clone, but it seemed over-scoped and underdeveloped. A few suggestions were made based on pandemics and police brutality, but ultimately, we decided that we wanted to avoid a grim story. As a compromise, I had suggested we make a game that would satisfy everyone’s ideas, by having it be a lighthearted game about throwing a fun party. This way we could include the music some people wanted, the colors of others, and the cheerful theme of the rest.

My Role

Audio Design

My original first job was to be in charge of the audio. The team wanted to complete the diversifier “foley,” which was that all of our sounds and music had to be verbal from one of the team members. This sorta bound my hands, because I have no idea how to do music let alone with my voice, but I was up for the challenge. I ended up making three songs that I found very amusing, along with pickup sounds, food delivery, displeased party guests, walking, conversation, and more. They turned out better than I had anticipated, and it even earned us the award for Best Audio. For a first timer, I’m pretty pleased with that.

Programming

Once I realized the programmer was going to be doing it alone, I joined him in getting the game up and running. Because our git was very badly broken, a lot of it was watching his screen and offering advice, but there were a few codes I was able to do completely myself. The audio, for example, was scripted in by me because I didn’t want the programmer to be distracted with extra problems. I also handled guest spawning, music “minigame” solutions, and a few other odd problems here and there. I will always say the new kid was the lead programmer, but I think some of my gentle nudges got the code where it needed to be.

Level Design

A bit of an unexpected job was being the level design. Late at night on the night before the game jam, the artists were adding their creations to the game and getting everything nicely set up. I asked them if they needed any help with the repo, but they assured me that I could get some rest while they worked. Unfortunately, first thing in the morning I awoke to a dozen messages of panic, saying the build was impossibly broken. Worse yet, our “repo manager” gave them advice that ended up deleting everything they had added! 

Having the most recent working build, I asked them to explain to me what it took to get the assets into the game the way they wanted it and got to work decorating the party room. Due to the rush, I believe I may have missed an object or two, but for the most part, I was able to design the entire room and get everything put in the best places I could think of. I would be dammed if their hard work didn’t see it into the game, and with 17 minutes to spare it was turned in with full level design. The artist’s hard work ended up also earning the team Best Art. Pretty good for almost being nixed completely.

What Went Right

New Kid

Right off the bat, the best thing that had happened was the new blood. This kid had drive, motivation, was reasonable, and offered great suggestions. They never argued what role they would get, they simply offered their services and got to work. As days went by with no updates from anyone, this guy was cranking out content constantly. The best part was you could tell they weren’t the best programmer in the world. None of this came naturally to him, he was just working hard to get it to work. Basic issues that I could help with never upset me, because the workarounds he found were very clever, showing a determination to get the job done regardless of prior knowledge. Without him, the game absolutely would not have gotten done.

Artists

I was originally incredibly nervous with our artists. They side-barred during every meeting, complained when meetings got too long, and eventually stopped coming to them altogether. They stopped communicating with the team at all unless it was to impose a new expectation they had, which made having a clear vision a nightmare. However, to their credit, they did exactly what they set out to do. They laid out an art style they wanted to have done and worked like hell. Originally, I hadn’t seen a single upload for days. Nothing was submitted, no work cards were completed, and they never messaged us. My only assumption was that the work wasn’t getting done. On the contrary. By the time of the final build, there were almost three times as much as I had expected, all of it fully textured, animated, and ready to be implemented. I was floored!

Scope

I never thought I’d say scope was one of the three things that went right, but this team did a great job of keeping their objectives simple. We had plenty of stretch-goals to be sure, but they were immediately recognized as stretch goals. The core of the game was easily broken up into manageable jobs. With such a large team, it would have been easy to assume we could shoot for the moon and make it. With this team, we set very realistic milestones that were each reached with ease. The game is almost completely fleshed out with everything we wanted because we kept it simple: three core mechanics. Otherwise, it was just up to design. I’m very impressed with how well the game’s design turned out.

What Went Wrong

Lack of Vision

To say things went rocky would be a bit of an under exaggeration. To start, the team seemed very split in the direction they wanted to go. No matter how many times the core gameplay loop was discussed, somehow by the next conversation, it would be understood as something else. In order to alleviate that issue, it was agreed that I would make a brief GDD outlining what the general consensus was. Trouble was, nobody read it and would go back to arguing over what the game should be. The “team lead” began assigning roles to people on a task management software that nobody checked, not even himself, with the tasks themselves having specific game design concepts that contradicted the ordered GDD.

Even long after the beginning of development, the artists would start working on projects they thought would be fun additions with no warning to anyone else, leading to a hodgepodge of random unusable assets such as a newly invented beer pong minigame that was never discussed. I was originally the sound design, and half of my assets had to be thrown out with each random change to the design. Up until the final build, I still wasn’t sure what the point of each “minigame” was (if they could be called that). After all, ideas had been thrown around so often, once we had run out of time the only thing to do was to scrap all of them and finish the game the way it was originally pitched. No “minigames,” just various appeasement mechanics.

All the Time in the World

One issue with the game jam being over a weeklong was that everyone had felt that there was more than enough time, never needing to get to work until it was too late. During an average game jam, time is set aside from the moment the jam begins to the minute it's over (with obvious exceptions). With a week-long jam, most team members would go missing for days on end, saying they were busy or had other things to do. Some blatantly admitted they had no interest in meeting during a predetermined time because they just wanted to watch a movie. It's no surprise to reveal that members such as them ended up having almost no addition to the final product.

I, myself, fell prey to this a bit. Because all the jobs were taken, I was under the assumption the only thing I needed to do was the sound. I would get a song or sound effect done once in a while, but I was never in any particular rush. Once the programmer expressed concern that he would be unable to complete all the work alone in such little time, I realized it wasn’t fair of me to invite the new blood in then let them handle everything themselves. It was only then I even knew nobody was getting anything done. I had to hop right into the engine and do the rest of the programming, level design, audio design, and become the team lead. 

Not My Problem

From the get-go, everyone tried shirking as many responsibilities as they could. It almost became a competition to claim as many jobs as possible, but then not do them because they were too hard or stopped being fun. Many jobs we were desperately relying on such as the Git manager fell to the wayside when it became too complicated. The Git was handled so poorly that by the final build of the game I had to complete everything alone because the repo was so broken that pulling from it wrecked the entire build (which is why I had multiple backups).

The hardest part that deeply discouraged me was that my hands felt consistently tied. Having so many people must have given everyone the feeling that if they stopped working on something, it would magically be picked up. However, if you didn’t guess exactly when they stopped caring, you risked upsetting them and overstepping your boundaries. The entire week was spent waiting for something to get done, finding out it was dropped by multiple people who passed it off on someone else, then do it myself anyway. I can live with doing everything myself, I can’t live with having to wait to.

Lessons learned

Team Size

If there’s one important takeaway from this, it's that I don’t know how reliable a large team can be on such a small scoped project. Yes, we won multiple awards because we had so many people that could each heavily focus on their own discipline, but it started to get difficult keeping everyone in the loop of decisions made or keep up with every deadline missed. I’ve worked on large teams before that did get their work done, but it required someone to be appointed the absolute leader, who spent just as much time as the developers keeping everyone on track. I was able to last time, but I felt discouraged that I didn’t work on anything myself. I didn’t care to repeat that, but without one, our team was too large and unorganized.

Patience.. For a bit

Long ago I’ve already learned that wielding an iron fist only upsets your teammates and makes them feel like they can’t afford to make mistakes, causing them to resent the project and do worse. Throughout the game jam, I made sure I stayed impartial, helping where I could but otherwise being calm and quiet. With each dropped deadline and blatantly wrong decision, my resolve started to waver. I didn’t necessarily need this game jam to be a success, after all, it should be for fun. However, this being the new blood’s first jam and seeing them trying so hard, it really disappointed me that the team wasn’t getting anything done. 

Once it got so bad that I was certain the kid would either kill themselves to get it to work or the whole thing would fall apart, my sense of humor dwindled. Teammates bemoaning that they didn’t get to do the audio design (that they originally pawned off on me because they didn’t want to) would be asked to help with something more critical like a menu system. Seeing them half-ass it, complaining that it was too hard long before finishing the video offered to them, then ultimately choosing to skip any step that added flair just to complete the assignment so they could go hang out with friends made me realize I had to either accept completely giving in or be much more stringent with the team’s expectations. Ultimately, I knew I wasn’t officially the lead so I simply suggested what could get done while the programmer and I finished everything on our own.

GDD or Something

A GDD isn’t always the best answer, especially for something as small as a game jam, but damn if it wouldn’t have made life easier. When I had written the GDD I didn’t write it in the form of being a holy bible that must be adhered to. Many of the word choice was “this may be best” or “expand on this idea, but this is a general concept.” Better than that, I should have written it as the meeting was happening, taking direct quotes and translating them to game design concepts. One of the biggest things we went back and forth on (many many many times) was how the games core loop would play out. First, it was an arcade that would play indefinitely, then it became a limited timer that you can win or lose. Then an arcade. Then a timer. By the time we had changed so often that I lost track of what we were doing, I read the task cards that were created that confirmed it was an arcade. There needed to be a specific direction.

Overall

I was a little disappointed with how difficult this jam had become. Despite the small scope mentioned before, this ended up burning me out far harder than I was hoping. Given the extra time, I was hoping the pacing could have been calmer, but with each new ball dropped I had to put in twice as many hours as previously anticipated until I became overwhelmed. It's not fair to point the finger at everyone else, because I could have been much more hard-working from the beginning, but I still will look back on this jam with a bit of dread. Overall, I’m very happy with how the build turned out, but I believe that level of quality could have been done by half the team size and a fourth of the time. This was just an agonizing week that didn’t need to go this way. But that’s game making. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it’s a job, but in the end, it's always rewarding.