This week was midterm evaluations.
I got to talk with Jose and Roger one-on-one (well, one-on-two) at length about what kinds of things we've been doing well and what kinds of things that we can improve.
I was extra pleased to hear Roger admit that we had proved him wrong on the process we implemented for the team. I wasn't the as excited over proving Roger wrong (he also loves being proved wrong) as I was excited to hear that the rest of the team not only tolerated the process, but actually approved and appreciated it. It was a producer's dream come true.
The process was two-fold: first, put in tons of review-checks and roadblocks to prevent off-design-concept or sub-par features from making it into the build. This prevents people submitting things without a clear concept of what the feature is or how it's supposed to perform. Second, hand-assign tasks to our team (comprised almost entirely of engineers) to make sure that tasks are appropriate for our relatively wide range of talent. This also has the side-effect of making people very accountable for the tasks that they've received. There's ownership over what they did, and everyone can take pride in the specific thing that they were in charge of for the game.
A combination of the summer one-on-one approach for the team and Zac's insight on how EA worked helped make this process really shine, and the team is running smooth as silk. However, Roger and Jose cautioned that "functioning" is not a reason to celebrate. There's all kinds of things that we can be doing to improve where we currently are on the game to bump our game up from good to excellent.
Among those ideas, the most exciting idea is to start making visits to other professional studios to get feedback and show off the game. We've just set up a visit to Wahoo Studios in Orem for next week, and I'm crazy excited to get professional opinions on it.
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