Some Thoughts and Takeaways

Yo!

Ed here, reporting in from the toilet of the observatory deck in top left quadrant of the middle section of the principal ship of The Extinction Fleet. I’ll be taking this opportunity to share some of my thoughts and opinions on my experience this semester.

At the start of the semester, The Fleet took turns pitching ideas to each other, and then we all voted on which idea to move forward with in the class. I was extremely excited when my idea won the voting session, but I knew full well that being project manager and “creative director” wouldn't be easy. People don’t like being nagged, and they like being told what to do even less. Triple that when the people in question are your friends. As excited as I was to be working with good friends who I knew had the skills to see the idea though, I was borderline dreading having to be a sort of boss. But I knew that sometimes I would have to put on that hat, in order to get things done and to meet our goals.

Since the very beginning of my game idea, I was thinking of ways to incorporate everyone’s input and to make it feel like our game, as opposed to my game. I tried my best, but being a perfectionist with mild OCD, sometimes it didn't work out so well. I remember obsessing over the angle of the spike on our main robot’s head for several minutes, and it only took five of those several minutes to get the artists of The Fleet very annoyed. Don’t get me wrong, that spike had to be DAMN right in order to fully portray the sexiness of such a perfect mechanical creation, but it was something that could have been worked out over time, instead of having to perfectly nail it before moving on to more important matters.

Another challenge was the relationship with our programmer. I knew I wanted him on the team well before the start of our class, for his programming skills and his “take matters into your own hands” attitude. But due to our evil school credits, he was not able to get into the class! That created all sorts of issues. One, as our professor warned us, someone who is not in the class might not be as driven to complete their tasks and drive things forward, since they are not worried about their grade. Two, being external and not attending UB any longer, he was not able to join us during lab time. And three, having a demanding job that also required programming, he was not as available to work on our game as much as we would have liked. All these issues came together to create long wait times in order to see our game, and some disappointments when it was time to present during milestones. He tried his absolute hardest, though, and The Fleet is thankful for all the work he put into the game.

Despite the asteroids and turbulence in our journey so far, it has been well worth it. It feels amazing to work together with other individuals you trust and see a creation of your own slowly and steadily come into fruition. The greatest reward though, hands down, was the rest of The Fleet telling me they appreciate what I did this semester. After our disagreements, duels, evil eyes, silent treatments, lightsaber battles, gladiator matches, decapitations, and rib pokes, it was good to know my team members were glad to have me on board. Three highly-talented individuals are trusting me to do my part to get this project done, and I don’t plan on failing them.

That’s all for now, citizens. You may leave me to my bowel movements now.

Long
Live
The Fleet

Edwin Guerrero (Narrative Designer, Project Manager)