My Ownership Items

1. The Game Design Document - Google drive and Confluence

A living document, created prior to team formation and containing info (or links to the info) for all aspects of game design and development

While I am unable to provide the full GDD out of respect to the team and our project, the index of the work created is below

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2. Black Swan Membership/Outsourcing Contracts

Created as a composite contract to communicate roles, expectations, and terms of engagement at all levels and roles within Black Swan

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3. Design Backlog - Jira

An essential part of development, I lead conversation fleshing out our backlog during the "backlog jam", updated items, and assigned weekly tasks.

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4. Asset backlogs - Google Drive and Jira

Created by collaborating with team members and outsourcing agents I created several backlogs containing very specific tasks and completion goals.

In the case of outsourcing agents these tasks were translated into timelines which were reflected in their contracts. An example of our animations backlog and its reflection in Jira are both below.

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5. Publishing Pitch Deck

Another Living document created as one of our initial project artifacts. The publishing deck is used, at the moment, as a representation of our team

and our project in professional settings outside of the studio.

Looking Back...

• Communication is key: With a team of ~20 devs communication was never easy. As head of the design team the crunch was even greater due to the impact of our decisions and work across every team. Minor miscommunications almost always resulted in major blockage and often backtracking. To address this we distributed ownership of our living documents to ensure continuous upkeep, embedded design members in each team for easy clarification, continuously refined non-living documents, and addressed overall communication weekly at our design meetings. Although results weren't perfect we were able to intercept and course correct most major miscommunications in a timely and effective manor.
• Finding What Makes Black Swan: As creative lead it was easy to make something that came naturally to me. But as a team member it was readily apparent that was not what was needed. Through open forum conversation, consistent design meetings, and constant iteration; I was slowly able to form my thinking to making a product that was representative of our whole team and was cohesive to the ideas and design direction of my teammates as well.
• Keeping the Vision: With this being my first time in a leadership role pursuing a project this large it became apparent very quickly that the promotion of our goals was more important than ever. With new ideas flying every direction, each team setting their own sprints, and a very limited timeline, a prioritized backlog and consistent revaluation were key.