So, what is the point of this section? I know that the motto of our education is “Fail fast and fail a lot”. But I personally prefer fair warnings about where I might fail so that may I pay attention to these queues, rather than stumble blindly around in the darkness. A lot of these things, if not all, can be predicted and foreseen. So instead of failing at the basic stuff, I would have preferred to avoid the potentially known obstacles and hit my face on something more interesting and unusual.
I also highly encourage people to share other patterns they’ve got to experience that are not mentioned here and together we might map out the dangers of this road together.
Slow withdrawal from the group. Losing a member is always a damage to the group’s morals. One must remember that the higher education in Sweden is free, so we aren’t forced to study (we being the Swedish citizens, but also EU citizens and Switzerland/Norway. ). So, we have a freedom to leave easier than someone who is paying for the education. Withdrawal can be caused by many different factors: real life problems; the realisation of not having an interest in the subject; the overall disappointment in the education; even a bad group can cause a person to quit, etc.
To those of you who are withdrawing – don’t be selfish jerks. If you are feeling like leaving the group and the education, then inform people of your decision. Don’t let people wonder where the hell is the girl/boy/Apache helicopter? Just tell people of your decision so that the group can adjust the allocation of the resources and consider the change in their working rhythm. Other team members might even be able to give you new perspectives that might reignite your desire to stay.
To those of you who are faced with someone’s withdrawal – get in touch, hear the person out, try to give your perspective and then let it happen whatever will happen.
Why am I bringing this up here? Because while many of the reasons for withdrawal are out of our control, one isn’t. That reason is a sense of strong disharmony in the group. The person might be sensing the symptoms of an unhealthy environment but chooses to flee instead of dealing with the problems. Not all of us are able to withstand for long obscured dissonance. But such people could help others to realise the subterfuge issue.
Shorter meetings. A red flag that appears usually when you are several weeks into the cycle. If people are hyped to meet up at first, but then start to leave from your workplace earlier and earlier, something might be wrong. Why don’t they want to stay? Does something make them feel uneasy or uncomfortable? I know that I felt like fleeing home after 4-5 weeks of production. I simply didn’t want to stay and work with people on the spot. This is something to stay on a lookout for the producers.
Inability to articulate/communicate as a giant red flag. Some of us aren’t good at speaking their mind, there is no shame in that. Let people try to explain what they are trying to say and be patient. But what if you are finding yourself confused time after time even after lead up questions? And is this the case for both written and verbal communication? Or several languages? And if you finally find yourself turning to someone else in the team and ask them “Do you understand any of this??” and they go “No.” then sound the alarm! Developing a game requires a level of high-quality communication. Someone who is not sufficient at this in all its forms becomes a giant obstacle in the way of the group.
Age of a team member as a point for consideration. Most of the student body that went to the 4 courses with me are young people, a lot of them are fresh out of high school (around age 20). These are usually people who might confuse their love for the games with the desire to make games, which I already brought up in 1.1.
Some are older. They, usually, have already tried things that they didn’t enjoy (around age 23-30). A lot of these people were faced with the fact they might have been in a wrong place, made a wrong choice and finally decided to embrace their love for the game as something that could potentially become their path. I’m one of these people. I knew that I loved games not as a simple pass time, but as a medium and as a creative line of work.
And then, there are few individuals who have already been around for a considerate time (age 30+). If these people have been gamers for a long time already, they are a boon. Their life experience in a combination with a long exposure to the medium turns them into a gold mine of different perspectives.
But an individual who decides to get into the game development at a considerate age without a proper exposure to the medium can be a curse. And the reason for this is that they have no game literacy and the game literacy is almost not taught here. Okay, it is unfair to say that it isn’t taught much, but I’m sure that most of us already come here when we are proficient at it. I mentioned this already in 1.1. You should also watch Extra Credits on the topic of gaming literacy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8np2I_gQgcY&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BIUqSDPmfBuKjTN2QBv9wI
I am not denying these people their right to learn, but there is a considerate difference between learning game literacy and learning the development process. The second one requires the first one. So, a fair warning for the other team members is a must and a close monitoring of these individuals is necessary.
And this is all I have on the general danger factors… This section felt bigger but I kept moving things around into more digestible chunks. So I’ll do it this way – there is one specific topic I want to bring up that deserves a post in itself. After that, I feel that this discussion should move on to the different specialities for when they are the source of the dissonance and the harm to the group environment. So, let’s first look at something that fits all profiles, which is a person that is a fraud, for the lack of a better word. And then I will move on to the dirty laundry of Artists, Coders, Producers, Designers respectively.
lostingame.design 