Assignment 7.5: Postmortem

 Assignment 7.5: Postmortem

     This class really pushed me and took me out of what I was comfortable with. It was a great experience being able to share this class with my kids and working with them. By the end of this class, my son who is 13 is now working with a friend of his to design a mini-game from Roblox. This class has opened my eyes to a whole new world that I was never aware of before.

What new ideas did you learn?     

     For me, I learned how much more goes into making games then just what I thought did. I always knew there was a lot of programming, but really did not think about how much teamwork and creative ideas sharing go into the game process before it gets to the programming part. There are so many steps that all have to come together to get to the end project.

What did you find the most helpful or useful?     

    Hearing classmates thoughts on game design and how to get their ideas into reality was very helpful to learning the process. Listening to the discussions on Fridays was very useful to learning some of the different terms that are used in the industry.

What did you find the most puzzling or confusing?     

     Confusing was working with the undergrad team. It was hard to get a hold of them, so I was confused most of the time trying to understand what the team was doing and seeing what they needed my help with. Trello was also a challenge for me, just because the team did not talk about the different cards and actives they had in there with the group as a whole. So someone coming into the Trello, and seeing the cards and would have no idea what they were for.

What surprised you the most about this class?     

    Working with Enitza, she was a breath of fresh air. She had lots of great ideas and also echoed the same frustration that I was having with the undergrad team. She helped me to not just give up on this class. Through her, I was able to see the positive viewpoints of game design.

How will you use what you have learned in this class?     

    What I will take away from this class, is just because you get a team that does not work communicate well, you can still create something great and see opportunities that you did not see before.

How this this class make you a better innovator/creator/programmer/designer/artist/etc?

    This class as taught me patience, which will make me better in any career that I am in or class in the future. It has really taught me to listen and see things through to the end, ask lots of questions, and trust others directions. 

What went right?

    1. With making the pitch video, I so did not know what I was doing. I was bouncing ideas off every surface and wall I could find. It felt like I was running around in circles, then I just thought about the audience the game was designed for, 3-5 year olds. Once I started thinking more about kids, I was just able to have fun and add the creativity into the pitch.

    2. Working with Enitza and getting to know her personally and as a student. She had some wonderful ideas, and learning about how she wanted to use game design to eventually use to advance medicine, was very eye-opening. She gave me new ideas about how game design can work into different fields that I had not thought of before.

    3. Thinking differently, that was something that I would say really went right in this class. I came into this class with one idea and left with many ideas. This class has left me with lots of new questions about how game design works and how to best manage a team with sharing ideas and coming together to create something amazing. 

What went wrong?

    1. Well, of course I can say communication with the undergrad team. In the future if this happens again I will stand up and say something from the beginning and see if breaking the team into small teams within the large team would work better. Making sure the Scrum Master understand what their role was and how to help them, and make sure the rest of the team had what they need to be successful.

    2. We had too many platforms that the team communicated on. I would have just one main platform that everyone needed to meet for meetings on, and only one place for file sharing. With the team right now, they used both Teams and Discord to communicate on, but they were not consistent from week to week. Never knew which one they would use, which made it hard to follow where they were at in the sprints. They also used Google Drive and Discord to share their files, but a lot of time if they shared their files on Discord they would not update the Google Drive with the information and vice verse. Just was very unorganized, I would have changed that and made a simple plan and what platforms to use for each part of the project.

    3. Getting to know the undergrad team, I did not get to talk with each one individually and learn their strengths and weaknesses. In the future, I will take the time to get to know each person on my team and help them to complete their goals and the goals of the team.

What is the most important takeaway you gained from this project? 

    Most essential thing I learn from this project is working with a team you need to have good and open communication, clear goals, trust, and everyone being on the same page. I saw how without these things how a group with lots of very talented individuals will fall apart. I believe if a team has effective communication, they can do great things in the future.