In this series, I want to give an overview of what I'm doing (sort of) professionally from week to week. What projects have I been working on? What was the progress and what were the struggles? Any thoughts on that? Lessons learned? That kind of thing. The main goal is to document this for myself, but if you're interested you're welcome to read along of course!
As expected the Game Against Cancer took center stage this week. After a couple of video call meetings with everyone involved over the past couple of weeks, the **Slack channels** dedicated to this project started to become more and more active. I also started getting more and more suggestions for changing and refining the backlog, and the game designer on the project took the first shot at some concepts based on all the discourse.
After he presented his ideas, more discourse followed, of course - which I'm taking into account in further refining and expanding on the backlog, and so the process continues... All the while we're inching closer to finding creative solutions for pretty complex, but super interesting challenges. When we're a bit closer to actual development I think I might expand on how this process went (and what we came up with!) in a separate blog post.
Fortunately, I also get out from time to time. These pictures were taken in a park near where I live. Baby goats!
Fortunately, I also get out from time to time. These pictures were taken in a park near where I live. Baby goats!
There were some interesting developments in my search for paid work as well. For the past couple of months, my main focus in that area was to find a job as a producer at a mid- to big-sized studio or publisher. That's the work I know and love, and within the context of a company like that I feel like I could learn a lot while also adding value to great creative products, without having to figure everything out by myself all the time.
In the back of my mind, there was always something itching a little bit, though. So far, the way I've learned the most was exactly by figuring everything out by myself! Of course, when I worked at Abbey Games I was technically employed, but even there I didn't really have anyone telling me what to do... I just did things (and at some point: started telling other people what to do 😉). And I learned a lot from that approach.
Being unemployed in the past couple of months has given me a lot of room to rediscover this, in a way. And I feel that - through working on projects like Cat Cafe Manager and the Game Against Cancer - I'm starting to lean more and more towards that way of working (and living!) again. The re-launch of this website, and especially the blogpost on business development were examples of that as well.
Said blog post garnered a lot of sweet responses on LinkedIn, and a couple of great and unexpected reactions, by the way. Within an hour of posting it I got a message if I was interested in taking on a gig as a freelance business developer, by Wednesday I found myself talking about (maybe, possibly, sometime in the future) collaborating on setting up a new games studio, and by the end of the week, I had my first client interview! This potential client proposed that I got to work (on a project I might disclose later) for two days per week as soon as possible! And I think I'm going to do that!
This would have some pretty big implications, though, on my search for a job, on how I organize my life and livelihood, and of course on my time and flexibility in the short term. It would also require a fair amount of paperwork to even be able to get to work as a freelancer. So before I decide anything, I'm going to take a couple of days to let all this sink in and figure it out.
Fortunately, I also get out from time to time. These pictures were taken in a park near where I live. Baby goats!
Fortunately, I also get out from time to time. These pictures were taken in a park near where I live. Baby goats!
Since we signed a publishing deal, my work for Cat Cafe Manager is basically done. Every month, though, Rutger, Rick and Carmen (the devs behind the game) have a milestone delivery presentation with the publisher: Freedom Games. The presentation for the milestone of May was last week.
If possible, I join in on these presentations - mostly as a spectator but if needed I can help clarify some things or ask additional questions to make sure that everything that needs to be communicated is communicated. I can't remember unmuting my microphone this time around, though. The presentation went by smoothly (bar the occasional crashing game build - that typically only occurs in the middle of a presentation...), and all milestone goals for this month were met and often exceeded by the devs. Great stuff!
A couple of days before these monthly milestone presentations we usually have a preparation meeting with the Roost Games team in which I act as a stakeholder - this month was no exception. Together with the developers, we tried to evaluate if the milestone goals are being met, in what way we can best present our results, and what we need to discuss with the publisher to make next month go smoothly as well.
Next to that, we figured out to what work the team will commit in the coming month, in broad strokes. Since not only the results of the game but also the costs and the amount of work that go into it directly affect all stakeholders (including me!) it is important that we're always on the same page on these things.