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-Beta 2 Sprint (Mar. 21st, 2022 - Apr. 3rd, 2022)

Week 1: 9.50 Total Work Hours

*Mar. 21st - Monday: N/A

*Mar. 22nd - Tuesday: N/A

*Mar. 23rd - Wednesday: N/A

*Mar. 24th - Thursday: 2.50 Hours Total
From 7:00pm - 9:30pm EST I attended the IGDA Ann Arbor meeting in-person.

*Mar. 25th - Friday: N/A

*Mar. 26th - Saturday: 2 Hours Total
From 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST I researched how to attain more reach on Facebook and got the word out about the WolverineSoft community event as a last minute reminder.
From 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST I attended the Bluebird Studios dev-meeting, where we mainly ideated a Phase of the game and started planning on how to integrate all the game parts together.
From 8:00pm - 10:00pm EST I attended the WolverineSoft Community Event. I am not counting this towards my studio hours, as this was just a casual gaming hangout. Well-needed rest, this was pretty fun!

*Mar. 27th - Sunday: 5 Hours Total
From 11:00am - 12:30pm EST I attended the general WolverineSoft Studio meeting.
From 12:30pm - 1:30pm EST I worked a bit on my dev-blog website, downloaded and organized the WolverineSoft Studio slides for this semester so far, and continued to plan out my Marketing goals.
From 1:30pm - 4:00pm EST I participated in an in-person Bluebird Studios meeting, where we did a lot of ideation and game design related tasks. We actually met in BBB 1670 for this important meeting to discuss about the game's productivity tools that help people become more productive in their work. I don't have any screenshots since it was in-person/mainly ideation that way.

Week 2: 17.75 Total Work Hours

*Mar. 28th - Monday: N/A

*Mar. 29th - Tuesday: 1.5 Hours Total
I sent out emails to various points of contact at gaming companies we hope will be sponsors for WolverineSoft Studio.
From 2:30pm - 3:00pm I created a brief playtest form for Bluebird Studios.
From 7:00pm - 7:30pm I attended the WolverineSoft Gaming Book Club. I am not counting this towards my WolverineSoft Studio hours.

*Mar. 30th - Wednesday: 0.75 Hours Total
I attended the WolverineSoft Studio Playtest session with Jordan Ajlouni.

*Mar. 31st - Thursday: 2 Hours Total
From 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST I attended the WolverineSoft general meeting and Officer meeting.

*Apr. 1st - Friday: N/A

*Apr. 2nd - Saturday: 4.75 Hours Total
From 1:00pm - 1:30pm EST I thought up and shared marketing advise directly with Spartasoft Studio Producer Gaby.
From 2:30pm - 4:00pm I learned how to use Figma (a prototyping/design tool) and shared word about the Playtest List for Bluebird Studios.
From 4:00pm - 4:45pm EST I had a Discord conversation with the President of Spartasoft and Assistant Producer of Spartasoft Studio David. I asked to market the Playtest form, which quickly turned into a somewhat intense conversation about the future of Spartasoft Studio and what my thoughts were for their future plans. I agreed with much of it and think they're going in a good direction overall.
I don't have photo evidence as I would rather not share what we discussed; regardless, I gave well-thought marketing and internal workflow advice for Spartasoft Studio with the President of Spartasoft who I get along with great.
From 5:15pm - 6:00pm EST I used Figma to create basic designs for a home screen for Bluebird Studios, which I later presented.
From 6:15pm - 7:00pm EST I attended the Bluebird Studios debrief meeting, where I presented my design ideas, saw my meeting suggestion enacted (using a PowerPoint to keep meeting time more in check during meetings), and made several advising suggestions for Phase 2 of the app game.
From 7:30pm - 8:00pm EST I talked with some people to raise the amount of playtesters we have on our playtest list for Bluebird Studios and I reached out to someone to help work on the project as we're looking for a 2-D Animator.

*Apr. 3rd - Sunday: 8.75 Hours Total
From 1:00am - 2:45am EST I organized some of my weekly screenshots and files of time I've completed during this Sprint.
From 9:00am - 11:00am EST I organized some of my weekly screenshots and files of time I've completed during this Sprint. From 11:00am - 12:30pm EST I attended the WolverineSoft Studio meeting.
From 12:30pm EST - 2:00pm EST I continued work on WolverineSoft Studio marketing stuff.
From 2:00pm EST - 3:00pm EST I cleaned up my dev-blog entry for this project's Pre-Beta 2 Sprint and completed the journal part of it.
From 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST I attended a playtest session for Professor Austin Yarger's game Greek Tragedy. I didn't talk much yet I learned a lot from it.

*

PRE-BETA 2 RECAP:

TOTAL NUMBER OF HOURS FOR THE PAST 2 WEEKS:

*Target Number of Hours: 24 Hours (for 4 Academic Credits 12 Hours Per Week, 12 Hours * 2 Weeks = 24 Hours)

*Hours Achieved During this Sprint: 27.25 Hours (9.50 from Week 1 + 17.75 from Week 2 = 27.25 Hours)

*I should note that I am not counting my time with the WolverineSoft Gaming Book Club or the WolverineSoft Community Event, as those were casual, and while beneficial for my game-dev experiences, did not translate into me adopting relevant skills for the game-dev industry or directly for WolverineSoft Studio results.

IMAGE AND VIDEO EVIDENCE

This week I primarily have image evidence, yet have some things without it due to nature of time being in-person (Bluebird meeting), confidential information (my Discord messages between Spartasoft members), etc.

BUGS AND PROBLEMS ENCOUNTERED:

*Problem 1: Slammed with complicated job negotation stuff for Summer 2022 on top of my 23 credit workload this semester.

*Problem 2: Doing more poorly than I wanted to for an important test in my 1-credit class this semester (a Natural Science credit I must take for UMich LSA degree requirements).

*Problem 3: Emails sent out to external organizations have had a 0% return rate (meaning no one replied after about a week).

*Problem 4: Organizing and collecting several WolverineSoft Studio members' work for social media content posts about individuals' work efforts.

*Problem 5: I am stressed with preparing to take a language placement test (which determines whether I graduate this semester or in Fall 2022), my 2+2 business school applications, my finals for the 23 credits I'm taking, applying for an internship thing that basically just supports my income for my current part-time internships lined up for Summer 2022, and graduation prep (along with backup plans in case I can't graduate due to the language requirement for LSA this semester).

TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES USED:

*Solution 1: As much as I hated it I had to push most of my WolverineSoft Studio efforts towards the weekend in a few crunches as opposed to consistent work.

*Solution 2: Telling myself it's ok to fail sometimes, as you learn more through failure, and that the consquences aren't that grave, as this is a 1-credit class.

*Solution 3: I haven't solved this yet, but am aware of the problem. I am preparing either non-intrusive follow-up emails or to simply find new contacts; regardless, I've created a successful external outreach workflow for the studio that can easily be replicated at a much larger scale if desired.

*Solution 4: Communicating with individuals ahead of time (by at least a week or so) with what work they want featured; this also has helped me more directly understand what each member of the studio is contributing to, and is exposing me to art, audio, game design, and programming workflows.

*Solution 5: I'm prioritizing myself and my career goals, and am working tirelessly (watching less YouTube/etc.) to make the impossible possible if I'm able to, also a lot of prayer.

SUCCESSFUL TASKS:

*Pulling off the 1st-ever email MailMerge for WolverineSoft Studio (only got 1-2 duds, meaning emails went through!) outreach to companies such as Epic Games, Activision Blizzard, etc.

*Providing Marketing/Studio workflow advise to Spartasoft President David and Spartasoft Studio Producer Gaby. I've solidified my relationships with them and am helping lead the game-development education scene in the state of Michigan by doing this! Also I just get along with them both great, they're pretty cool.

*Applying Studio concepts into the real-world with leadership in a completely student-driven game project (that being Bluebird Studios LLC, for the Treat Team game); these workflows I've learned from WolverineSoft Studio have concretely and noticeably sped up and organized the Treat Team project along with its pace of development, which is proof to me that WolverineSoft Studio is doing something right, as this is a high-quality student project founded by an individual in the elite University of Michigan Entrepreneurs Leadership Program.

*Organizing and preparing social media content for individual studio member work; the next Sprint should have a VERY active WolverineSoft social media presence.

*Working on my dev-blog consistently throughout the week! I'm no longer crunched with completing it this Sprint.

UNSUCCESSFUL TIME INVESTMENTS:

*Attending the March 31st WolverineSoft general meeting; while I enjoyed the Audio talk (yet I do admit I knew a lot of the concepts introduced in it), I didn't learn much from the Networking talk and disagreed with much of it.

*I view this as both successful and unsuccessful, but chooosing to develop Marketing skills for game-dev through action (Bluebird Studios) instead of research (through articles/video tutorials). I view it successful since it tangibly and measurably is improving one of U-M's most impressive student game-dev projects and since I learned a bunch of the business side of indie game-dev such as prototyping with Figma, creating a Playtest list, what methods are successful for acquiring playtesters quickly, designing not just game mechanics but also mechanics that make the game provide real-world value, working in a team and challenging ideas, etc. I view it as slightly unsuccessful simply since I might be missing professional game-dev startup strategies that I otherwise would've learned from more articles; basically I wish I also researched marketing/bus-dev skills a little bit beyond experiential learning. However, this time spent with Treat Team was ultimately successful in that it has provided me several skills and insights that are helping me make a more solid Marketing foundation for WolverineSoft Studio that is covering more angles of the bus-dev side of the Studio than I otherwise would've done without this time spent this way.

*This week I strongly felt that my time was used wisely.

STRATEGIES FOR IMPROVING IN FUTURE SPRINTS:

*Distributing time more evenly throughout the week if possible (This will be possible since my social media posts must be spread out anyways throughout the week.)

*Using less time on experiential learning/applying what I'm learning with WolverineSoft Studio with Bluebird Studios (while I learned a ton, I should normally put forth more of my time for tangible WolverineSoft Studio efforts--which should be easy given the nature of the next 2-3 weeks with the game being showcased soon).

*Using more time to specifically research marketing strategies/principles (while I gained much through experiential learning, I should still continue raw research)

*Continuing to format this website (I won't be able to do this much for the next two weeks, yet should remember to after this project is done)

*Prepare for my role on the WolverineSoft Studio Planning Committee and how I can apply entrepreneurial leadership to make this a smoother process. Excited for this!

*Spend LOTS of my sprint time on action! (I did this a lot more this sprint and am glad I applied my learning in external environments and visibly seeing that learning make high-quality impacts!)