Blog Hours

This page contains my dev-blog information, where I break down my weekly hours, overall highlighting what I accomplished each week.

Continue reading to see how my hours are broken down.

Pre-Alpha 2 Sprint (Oct. 18th, 2021 - Oct. 31st, 2021)

Week 1: 12.50 Total Work Hours

*Oct. 18th - Monday: N/A

*Oct. 19th - Tuesday: N/A

*Oct. 20th - Wednesday: 2.5 Hours total, I strategized about what to do for my upcoming WolverineSoft Mass Meeting talk on October 21st from 8pm - 9pm ET and worked a bit on my slideshow for the talk. I attended and pushed ideas at the Playtesting session with Jordan from 9pm - 10:30pm ET.

*Oct. 21st - Thursday: 5.5 Hours total, I attended and was a speaker for the WolverineSoft Mass Meeting from 7pm-9pm ET. The topic I spoke about was "The Philosophy of Entrepreneurship". I prepared myself from 5:30-6:30pm ET for the presentation, finishing my slideshow and practicing what I would say and what discussion activities I would do. Overall I presented a 60-slide presentation covering 10+ basic entrepreneurship concepts from UM's ENTR 500 class, and related it to game development and how these tips are super helpful for any indie game development endeavors. The main point I drove home is that if one is going into indie game development then one needs to remember to build the company as well as the product. -- I also attended and played an important role in our Project Bloom Design discussion from 9:15pm - 11:45pm ET. Had Matthias--another Game Designer--and I not taken a stand about deciding the direction itself for Project Bloom I believe we would've had an even further project setback by at least a Sprint due to a lack of direction at all, and further if our raised points weren't realized in further Design discussions.

*Oct. 22nd - Friday: ? Hours total,

*Oct. 23rd - Saturday: 2.5 Hours total, I created some Marketing Docs and

*Oct. 24th - Sunday: 2 Hours total, I attended the regular WolverineSoft Studio meeting from 11am - 1pm ET.

Week 2: 21.50 Total Work Hours

*Oct. 25th - Monday: N/A

*Oct. 26th - Tuesday: 1.75 Hours total, I created a Narrative write-up document from 5:40pm - 7:10pm ET and shared it with the Project Tower's Narrative Lead to assign me with further tasks suited to my writing abilities. I employed concepts and phrasing from what I'm learning in Nordic & Celtic Mythology (MEMS 375) to create a unique writing style that blended old Medieval and new English tactics. I also attended a short meeting with Project Tower Prototyper Nikhil and Narrative Lead Crystal from 7:10pm - 7:25pm ET.

*Oct. 27th - Wednesday: 0.5 Hour total, I added more to the AirTable schedule for when I'm pushing social media posts from 4:00pm - 4:30pm, all the way through November.

*Oct. 28th - Thursday: 4.75 Hours total, From 5pm - 7pm ET I attended and participated in UM's 2nd-ever Pitch Night Mixer. I practiced my selling skills pitching my videogame startup yTAG Games and networked quite a bit to solidify an audience at UM to further ensure the success of my marketing for WolverineSoft Studio in the future. I attended the Ann Arbor IGDA meeting from 7:15pm - 10pm ET. From about 9:30pm - 9:45pm ET I talked with a fellow attendee who I may collaborate with on our game project for optiMize.

*Oct. 29th - Friday: N/A

*Oct. 30th - Saturday: 4 Hours total, I spent 3 hours sharpening up my LinkedIn profile around 11am - 2pm ET, making the visuals look impeccable and solidifying my bullet points. In order to get the word out about WolverineSoft Studio as I'm building its following base going to use my almost 6k person network to help bolster it and encourage others to follow it on there. I attended the Bear Jam Mixer event and prepared for the upcoming UC Berkeley Bear Jam (a game jam) from 9:20pm - 10:20pm ET.

*Oct. 31st - Sunday: 10.5 Hours total, I attended the regular WolverineSoft Studio meeting from 11am - 1pm ET for 2 hours. From 2:30pm - 11pm ET I reorganized my dev-blog website, finished organizing my AirTable schedule for Social Media, and wrote (albeit rough draft) social media content up to the end of the semester.

*

PRE-ALPHA SPRINT 2 RECAP:

TOTAL NUMBER OF HOURS FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS:

*Target Number of Hours: 30 Hours (for 5 Academic Credits 15 Hours Per Week, 15 Hours * 2 Weeks = 30 Hours)

*Hours Achieved During this Sprint: 34 Hours (12.50 from Week 1 + 21.50 from Week 2 = 34 Hours)

IMAGE AND VIDEO EVIDENCE

*Currently I do not have video evidence except for simple GIFs, yet I have image evidence throughout this website. For next devblog post I plan to procure my best image/video evidence of results for the sprint in this section as well as throughout the website.

BUGS AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:

*Problem: Due to taking on 20 academic credits I was slowed down during Week 1 due to Midterms and catching up with grading for my 2 ENTR 500 classes I am IAing for.

*Problem: Creating the Marketing Legacy for WolverineSoft Studio pretty much from scratch.

*Problem: Time Management (Due to Midterms I Completed Much of My Work Again Towards the End of the Week in Week 2, I also haven't yet successfully pulled 1 all-nighter this semester, as I haven't felt I needed it yet until now going into Beta)

*Problem: Finding ways to develop my Game Design and overall Game Development skills creatively without hindering others.

*Problem: Project Bloom lacking direction/purpose of entire project (many felt as though their work was aimless) and amount of design input right out of the gate for the project.

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES USED:

*Last-minute Hustle (Somehow I have managed to recover from falling behind during a 20 credit schedule while working 2 part time jobs). Also with using stuff I've made in the past to speed up my progress (such as using previous website code I created last semester for my Dev Blog).

*Implementing strategies I learned from my time during Startup Boston (such as using AirTable to quickly create and organize a social media post schedule))

*Just wanting it bad enough! Making sure I'm choosing roles that I WANT to do so when I'm discouraged it seems like less work.

*By working as a Narrative Designer I think I'm a perfect fit for such a loose role on the Project Tower team and still being exposed to the nitty-gritty of game development. I still get to be invested in the project, and I'm a great fit for it, as I'm currently learning about Nordic & Celtic Mythology in UM's MEMS 375 course.

*By embracing my role as a bad cop, essentially by bluntly challenging Project Bloom's Director and Game Design Lead to assist Game Designer Matthias (the good cop) in order to help them focus their attention on defining the direction/purpose of the project as a whole rather than only on small-scale mechanics changes.

SUCCESSFUL TASKS:

*AirTable! This is going to be a long-term platform of information for the marketing of WolverineSoft Studio once my time is done, I'm leaving behind a legacy I'm proud of.

*Helping Project Bloom's Director and Game Design Lead focus on creating the vision for the entire project and to add purpose to it in a very intense and long Discord meeting.

*Keeping up with WolverineSoft Studio hours and maintaining overall grades in heavy University of Michigan class courseload (despite Midterm Exams and working part-time as an IA for 2 segments of ENTR 500 and with Goldcast--a fast-paced Harvard Business School SaaS startup--as a Customer Success Intern)

*Gaining permissions to start posting and for being able to use type of content prepared, also for networking with individuals--such as Colleen, Yolked's Marketer--that will help me do a better job with marketing WolverineSoft Studio.

UNSUCCESSFUL TIME INVESTMENTS:

*Organizing my files! (Organizing my images and dev-blog website code due to procrastinating on reporting my hours has set me back several hours)

*Lack of time spent on HTML tutorials (I still have much to learn with using HTML as I did during Winter 2021)

*I still overall don't feel like too much of my time was wasted, despite having much of my time spent on loose/soft game development and business skills. I believe I've needed time spent on those so I can focus on the tangible hard results of social media posts/implementing narrative creations into the game/playtesting/creating game design docs/etc. with an organized efficient approach rather than a random and haphazard one so I have tangible results immediately.

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING IN FUTURE SPRINTS:

*Distributing time more evenly throughout the week (Failed this sprint, yet shall try again, midterms is a pretty good excuse to me, yet I realize this happened to me during Winter 2021 also)

*Using more time going over tutorials (specifically for marketing and sales tactics, while I have an unparalleled informal experience in them I am definitely not the best at professionalism or business acumen)

*Using more time to research ideas (Thus far in the semester I have not researched enough about game mechanics or wildly successful marketing strategies seen in past examples with studios similar to ours)

*Continuing to format this website, continuously updating Blog Post formats, immediate focus on learning how to add/embed videos as well as record videos of game development/progress and updating regularly throughout the week as opposed to rushing it on a Sunday

*DMing more people one-on-one, as I'm soon going to be featuring their work and want to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime experience as I finish up my senior year of college in this awesome studio.