Virtual Femme

I’m learning to get into this blogging thing. Sometimes writing, in general, organizes my mind or relaxes me, so I can go back to projects feeling refreshed. When coding and designing games, there are simply so many things to do that organizing the game itself is a gigantic job. I find myself with so much to do that I simply freeze up.

We recently introduced a project management system to our second game, Primordiax . We had our meeting last night, and it was extremely well received by the rest of the devs. While, initially, the system itself seems like a lot of additional work, I expect productivity to increase dramatically. People really do like specific tasks that they can check off and feel they’ve finished. Having a deadline seems to be very good for those who are creative. We tend to bounce around from project to project and fitter about writing things that interest us immediately. Then we get bored and flutter to our next project. That’s not the most productive way to go. I had gotten to the point where I was spending so much time assigning projects to everyone else (It was a constant flow of “I need something to do!”) that I wasn’t able to have any time to get my own projects, which are considerable in number, done. I personally don’t like managing, but in a small company, I don’t really get a choice of doing exactly what I like to do. Luckily, one of the people we keep on staff and a good friend of mine was able to step up and take over the project management system.

The system itself is pretty simple at its core. It consists of a task, a way to claim it, and an assignment with a due date. The difficulty comes in creating the tasks and having someone to check the tasks in and out for those interested in doing the work. The system inherently creates a competition between developers as well, which is an unintended side-effect but should be beneficial to the overall progress of the game.

Last but not least, putting up the task management system allowed me to note that we need more builders/writers. If you’ve got interest, contact me!