Lucha Megadrive Post Mortem

In many ways our final team reel for Lucha Megadrive is pretty accurate to our actual development experience these past few months. Last semester we were the underdogs challenging the taboo of making a fighting game and we came out victorious and arguably a fan favorite among our cohort. If last semester was Rocky 1 or Karate Kid 1 were no one expected us to win, but we worked hard and we succeeded anyways– this semester was the sequel. The expectations for our success rose tremendously, we got maybe a little over confident over winter break. When we hit our first major road block of figuring out our new art direction the team’s morale dropped off the earth, communication went out the window, and there were days to me at least were it felt like we were living the sequel that didn’t need to happen. But eventually we came around, we rose up from the ashes of the first half of the semester, and we started to live the sequel that everyone always wants– the sequel that is better than the original. 

I’m incredibly proud of what we have accomplished and my heart still fills with joy and warmth every time I watch that video. Let’s jump into the details now! 

What Went Well? / Where Did We Succeed?

People love our game.

All too often it is easy to get lost in the nitty gritty of game development and forget that you are making something for people to play and have fun with. There were certainly times were we didn’t know how much to design for the new player or the experienced fighting game player, but in the end I think we found a good balance. Ever since we started letting people play on the arcade cabinet in the halls of CCM, I obsessively walk by the cabinet before and after my classes and meetings. Only once was there no one playing on the cabinet. People love to come by and play our game. I see them bring their friends, crowd around the cabinet, and I even saw some people tag team trials mode. There are regulars that come by and practice their moves in training mode. There were people that noticed when we added new art to the cabinet– they would get all excited, point it out to their friends, and end up playing a match. Seeing people having fun with our game and getting excited whenever we added something new reminded me why I love to create things. Bringing joy to others feels amazing and it kept me going through the hard times these past few months. (Images below are from this super cool article we were mentioned in)

*May 4th 2018 update: we were also voted best technical achievement and game of the year! The whole team is humbled by this and we congratulate our peers for also winning awards! It feels incredible to have the support of the students and faculty– especially considering the original skepticism that surrounded our project. What a great way to end this journey! Thank you!

Our team is close and communicates well.

I’m going to throw in another analogy here… in the context of our team’s communication and morale… if last semester our team was dating and fell in love… everything went well– felt all rosey and perfect… eventually we got married… got used to each other… maybe even took others for granted a bit… wasn’t completely honest anymore because “we know each other”–– but then once we realized what was happening we all made an effort to work through it. We had to relearn a bit who each person on the team was. We even “renewed our vows” and had a meeting to discuss our development vision / why it is we are all here wanting to make Lucha Megadrive. Here is what we came up with during that meeting (I changed some of the wording to be a bit more “professional”):

Not only did we renew our vows, but we also committed more time to each other. We spent 15-20 minutes at the start of every Thursday meeting doing some sort of morale activity such as: rose, bud, thorn… hot seat… never have I ever… talking about our dreams… asking each other silly questions… etc. We also had weekend fun time activities like going to an escape room, playing call of cthulhu, going to a trampoline park, watching lucha underground together, cooking together, and more. Some of the other teams this semester were even calling us “the family team” because we had become so close by the end of it all. Like the marriage analogy above implied, we went to hell and back. A lot of my time initially this semester was spent mediating arguments and getting individuals to talk to each other. But eventually– after resting a bit from spring break and learning a lot from GDC– our mindset shifted– we decided we want this relationship to work and we wanted to make the best version of Lucha Megadrive we could. I’ve always believed that if don’t want to talk or share with someone about your life then you probably don’t want to work with them either– this semester has taught me to never forget that and to commit just as much time to developing the team as we do developing the game.

The show.

Last semester for our final presentation we surprised many by holding a wrestling match in the presentation auditorium to show our passion and prove our games concept (here is a link if you want to check that out). Back then, we had 10 minutes to say whatever we wanted to say about our game. But this time we only had 90 seconds to introduce ourselves before our team reel played for the recruiters that came to the senior show. There were talks of hitting each other with chairs again, or maybe this time ladders, maybe we would throw Paul through a table…. but in the end we decided to put the bulk of the passion in the team reel (the video at the start of this post). But we also showed who were are and our passion during those 90 seconds we had to introduce ourselves (because of the way the sound was recorded it’s hard to hear the audience– but I assure you they were roaring! They even chanted Lucha when we were first called on stage!):

After that our team reel and individual reels played! From what I’ve gathered we were a big hit with the recruiters! Many of them said we were their favorite game that night! Lots of people were always around the cabinet– many of them returning later for more matches with new people. We even got wind that a certain programming professor said that we were their favorite game and team of this year and gave us an 11/10! Our hearts were warmed, I was humbled, and many of our team members were invited for interviews the next morning!

Depth of the game / features accomplish.

Not every project makes it to the finish line, but we did. Not only did we complete the project, but we also hit all the goals we originally set out to do at the start of the semester (taken from my post mortem from last semester):

Original Goals:

• 2 Fully Animated Characters
• 1 Super Awesome Environment (2-3 Max)
• Updated Music
• Updated UI / Menus
• Button Remapping in Character Select
• Tutorial
• Additional Rope Play Systems
• Training Mode
• 1 Arcade Cabinet

Granted, training mode wasn’t as advance as we had hope to make it, we made 2 really cool environments instead of 3, and while we did create a full button remapping feature– we also took it out of the arcade cabinet build because players kept trolling each other by changing the controls. But we accomplished all of our goals and that is no small feat! 

I’m still extremely proud that we created the arcade cabinet! Now our legacy will continue on at Champlain College and hopefully the cabinet and our stories will inspire future game development students to take on complicated, risky, scary projects and continue to push The Game Studio to grow!

Struggles 

Communication in the beginning.

As mentioned in the marriage analogy, early on this semester we weren’t being clear with each other, we made assumptions, we weren’t committing enough time and focus to the project and things were falling apart. Our work felt like work and not fun. Our art direction took much longer to figure out then expected. We didn’t know how to handle a new dynamic with a larger team. We didn’t know wether or not we were going to release, form a company, and go indie at the end of it all. A lot of things were up in the air and we just weren’t giving ourselves enough time in the beginning to get to know each other again, to get everything out on the table, and to discuss everything that was being left unspoken. You already know the end result though– we made it through all the rough times. How? We kept talking to each other. No one gave up or would let others give up. We focused on being honest and learned to critique each other no matter how hard it was. We went through some serious growing pains as a team and we came out for the better by the end of it all.

Cabinet completion.

This part of the project was left way too close to the end of this semester. The cabinet itself was built half way through the semester, but we left the graphics at the bottom of our list until the end and prioritized in-game art (which was the right thing to do because the game itself comes first, but meant that the cabinet was standing around undecorated for awhile). This was probably the only crunch experienced in the project, were we only really had a week to finalize, print out, and apply all the cabinet decorations / graphics and it was really stressful. I ended up working close to 50 hours for the project that week! (We are only require to but in 12.5 hours a week since this is a school project and we have other classes to take care of) There are always little things that come up that you never expect and we didn’t leave enough time to figure them out. If I could change anything about this project I would somehow set it up so that the cabinet was completely decorated at least a month before the end of the project. This was the plan originally, but we didn’t set up our cabinet team soon enough to really accomplish this– and I don’t think we treated that team as serious as we should have. We never had any proper meetings about the arcade cabinet with either our cabinet team or our full team. It felt like a side thought for many and that was difficult for me because making the cabinet was probably the part of the project that I was most excited about. I really wanted to leave something at Champlain College that would truly inspire people to do great things. We had to cut features of the cabinet like full art on the sides, inspirational quotes, a written story of our development– but even with all the cuts I am still very proud of what we created!

Siloed work.

For the first half of the semester we really didn’t know how to organize ourselves after adding on new team members. We tried to have a leads hierarchy, with lead meetings, and getting approval from leads, but that super duper didn’t work. Everything that was being created felt disconnected and it took us 6 weeks before we finally merged our scenes! Thinking about things in terms of our disciplines simply wasn’t working and we were going no where fast. Then, I went to GDC– it was the only week I didn’t log any hours for the project, and I learned how other teams in the industry approach this problem. There was one particular talk that inspired me: “Teams Are Stronger Than Heroes: Bungie Development Evolved” by Patrick O’Kelley. While it was tailored towards large AAA development I was still able to adapt it to our situation with Team Nitro Fist. The way we fixed our siloing was the same way Bungie did by forming strike teams around features. We used to have discipline focused meetings and communications, but what we had found and what Bungie had found was that when you are stuck in a discipline focused mindset and everyone is off in their own corners it becomes really difficult to do anything that is cross disciplinary……….. which is a huge problem because all of game development is cross disciplinary. I’m pretty sure while our development was siloed it made working on the project really suck for everyone. Eventually we formed these initial strike teams:

Simply laying out clearly who each person should be talking or referring to on a particular feature improved our communication and development tremendously! Some other things we did to shift the mindset was to reorganize our discord channels to no longer be discipline focused “art, programming, design, etc”., but instead be feature focused “Characters, UI, Environment”. We also used these same feature labels when creating our user stories during sprint planning. Some strike teams even went as far as having weekly meetings around the features they were working on.

All in all, siloing is a mindset. It’s not easy to change and it takes gradual progress to undo, but we did it! We achieved that same feel a small 5 person team has where everyone knows what they need to be doing and knows who they need to talk to, and we did that with 10 people. It may not seem like that big of a difference but it is!

What I learned / My takeaways

Features > Disciplines.

This single mindset change completely refocused and upped our development output. Our communication improved, morale went up, and our game was better because of it all. From now on, I’m going to push the teams I work with to organize around the features we are developing rather then the skills we bring to the table. 

I also want to highlight mid-sprint check ins. While we did do daily scrum text check ins everyday at 8pm– by far the most useful activity we did to keep everyone on the same page was our mid-sprint check ins at the end of our Sunday work sessions. After we made the mindset change of features > disciplines, it seemed silly to still have lead meetings. Instead, at the end of our work session we would all sit together as a team and bring up the sprint goals for the week. We would go down the list and each strike team responsible for the features would report in on the progress of that sprint goal thus far. Once again, this was less focused on the individuals or disciplines, and more focused on assessing if we are accomplishing our goals as a team. It only took 15 minutes tops, but it got everyone on the same page and it was the most effective way to update the entire team on the progress for that sprint and it quickly identified and often resolved issues that previously would fall through the cracks. Our mid-sprint check ins reinforced a feature focused mindset and for our team it was a more effective exercise then the traditional daily scrum at keeping everyone up to date on the project.

Solve problems as a team no matter how long they take.

I’m the type of leader who likes to run democratic sort of teams– meaning I want everyone to have a say and to be involved. When working on small teams 3-6 people this approach works pretty well and because the number of people is so small we usually all end up leading together. But as I have come to learn, this approach becomes much more difficult as the team size grows. Particularly in the beginning of this semester when we were all still trying to figure out how to communicate with each other– meetings always ran over, not everyone got a chance to talk, and we didn’t always get to the things we needed to talk about.  We tried sub team meetings, discipline meetings, lead meetings, 1 on 1 meetings, but none of them were very effective and they all further contributed to our siloing issues. Eventually we got better and more effective at talking with each other, but by this point we had already written off full team meetings as being something that was ineffective. We tried revisiting it though, but this time we planned our meeting agendas the day before as a team and gave time boxes to the topics we need / wanted to talk about. Sometimes we didn’t always stay within these time boxes, but that’s okay because we were discovering what worked for us together.

The other thing I want to mention here is the value and hidden trap that is 1 on 1 meetings. Early on in the project I had to have quite the number of 1 on 1 meetings with various team members trying to solve disputes and concerns. I tend to end up being the therapist, and while I am good at 1 on 1 meetings, I think that activity actually reinforced our siloing early on. People got used to not being open with everyone on the team and instead only being open with a few people. People tried to talk through me to others, which caused problems with our dynamic and made our work move slower. 1 on 1 meetings are good for getting a pulse, and making an individual feel better, but more often then not the problem at hand doesn’t get solved until the whole team is aware and discussing it. In order to solve a team problem you need to be talking about it as a team. Often, this can take a long time upfront, but it will save a world of headaches, miscommunications, and hurt feelings from happening later on.

Build in prep time / giving myself prep time.

I had to relearn to give myself prep time. I was a bit over confident with my abilities and the projected performance of the team at the start of this semester. I wasn’t giving myself the same head space I used to to prepare for our meetings– often running on auto pilot or making things up as I go. I felt my own performance lacking because I wasn’t giving myself prep time and the team was looking to me to lead or to give direction and I simply wasn’t always prepared for it. Even a quick 15 minutes before a meeting can make a worlds difference in how well that meeting goes. I ask myself now “What is the desired outcome of the meeting?” and usually that question alone helps me think about all the things that need to be discussed or need to happen. Eventually I took this idea of prep time to the next step and I started to prepare agendas for our class sessions. We were in a unique situation where every week during class time a producer meeting would happen, I would have to leave the room, and the team would be left up to their own devices. I did my best to teach them how to lead sprint planning and they did get better at it, but what I think what was most helpful was that I created agendas for them. It forced them to get engage more with the coordination of the project and not relay solely on me as much. Here are examples of what I assigned them to do while I was gone during these producer meetings:

I’d also leave them notes and have pictures of calendar events coming up. 

Additionally, I would ask them to log all of their tasks and get an approval via a check list on weather or not those task were appropriate for the sprint. Here is how those lists evolved:

Over time, the team got pretty good at being self managing and I’d like to believe it’s because I helped teach and guide them. 

Have people focused goals and tasks too.

This is another mindset shift that ended up totally changing our team dynamic and my personal enjoyment of the project. At the start of the semester, a lot of my tasks mainly focused on the project it self, stuff like creating slides and write ups, going to meetings, etc. While at the end of the day or sprint I could feel good about completing my part of the project it felt like something was missing and that I was working in a silo. What I eventually realized was that I was doing a good job progressing our game’s development, but I wasn’t committing time, focus, thought to how our team was developing. This was before we reimplemented morale activities and weekend funtime hangouts. If you have read all this you know by now that team development was a crucial part of our success and enjoyment this semester, but I think it is so important that it needs to be said again. Checklist might reflect what has gotten done, but don’t always reflect how people are doing.

For example, right before spring break everyone on the team was feeling pretty beat and drained. I noticed Joey in particular seemed stressed about getting his work done before going off to GDC. He posted a gif one day of a work in progress animation for Nuclear Winter that he was struggling with. 

The footing was taking him a while to get right– he laughed it off and others did too. Then I had a stroke of inspiration and found time in between my other classes and work to make this for him before spring break started:

The response was great.

Joey was happy, it brought joy to the team, and it was definitely a turning point for our morale. I noticed since then more jokes being cracked and more laughs being shared. 

This meme video was a task for myself to help boost the team. I did other things like this too… We had acknowledgement sessions for about an hour were we would go around and compliment each other professionally or personally. Throughout the project I learned that some of our team members like fruit snacks, chocolate peanut butter cups, and other snacks– so I made sure I always had snacks on me to give to them when I saw them around or when they were having long days in the labs. Right before the senior show we did an acknowledgments session and I gave everyone personalized gifts. I always made sure to ask people how they were doing. I gave people rides when they needed them. The small things you do for others can make huge differences and sometimes people just need someone to help them out. 

Game development isn’t easy and we have to remember to be there for each other and take time to focus on how the team’s developing as well. I absolutely loved working on this project. It has been my life and love since August 2017: I have a Lucha Megadrive wallpaper for the laptop I wrote this on, I change my cover photo’s on both Facebook and LinkedIn to our Team Nitro Fist photo around the cabinet. I never want to forget this experience– I have learned so much and gained great friends along the way. Who knows, maybe in a few years after we’ve all gotten some industry experience I’ll be writing about / you’ll be hearing about “The Return of Team Nitro Fist and Lucha Megadrive”! 

Until then–