Work on Eira: Echoes of Adventure has finally drawn to a close. After 4 months of development, its finally going to be released on Steam in just about a week. I logged most of my thoughts throughout the process in my other posts, but I wanted to take a minute to talk about the project as a whole and how I think it turned out, despite the many setbacks we had.
Individual
From an individual perspective, I know there were a lot of hardships throughout Eira. Namely, not having access to proper equipment needed to be effective on my team. But there were others too. During the development process it felt hard to stay motivated as a solo audio designer. It was nice to have team meetings and designer specific meetings, but when it came to me doing my own work with the team, not having someone that was doing the same thing that I was made pushing myself hard. I really wish I had been able to work with someone else that could have helped me with audio so I could've had more time to work on music for the game. That said of course I had people like my lead programmer Scott, who were still very versed in sound design and helped me implement, which I was very grateful for. Also, it was never really talked about, but audio scope was hard on a team this big. Where most of the design work was being pushed into making new levels and mechanics, i never really knew the extent of the audio assets needed until closer to the end of the project. I think that was mostly my fault though because I wasn't really sure how to scope it early on in the project.
Of course, there were a lot of things that went well for me too. I have always loved designing music for games, but I had never been able to fully work on a soundtrack until this project. Even though it was slow going with equipment and such, I was still able to create music that I was proud to put in a shipped title. And my team really enjoyed it all too! Not to mention that when it came down to it, I was able to adapt to fit the changing ether of our development process. When we went remote and I lost access to equipment, I transitioned my efforts over to marketing, and when the team needed narrative structure and writing help, I moved my talents there as well to polish up our game. While these weren't directly under my "role" title, I felt as though my talents for expressing myself through writing were fully used on a project like this.
To take away personally, I would have to say that I learned a lot about team cohesion, and adaptability in our process. Being able to really feel like I was part of a larger team, while still being able to do my own thing was a little daunting at first, but I soon came to realize that I felt like my work meant something to the team, and it wasn't just busy work that was going to get overlooked or cut. I hope that what I've learned about utilizing all your skills and aiding a large team as a whole can be applied to my projects elsewhere in the industry.
Team
From a team standpoint, I didn't think there were too many things that went wrong! Sure we had to transition to remote work, but I think most of the team managed this with ease, and meetings actually increased in number, rather than dwindling out. I was very impressed with all of our leads' work on the team, constantly facilitating change, and moving the rest of us towards the best vision for the game. Communication was great throughout, and there were a lot of out-of-workplace moments as well that helped boost morale and solidify our relationships, beyond that of just work.
Of course no game dev cycle is perfect, and there were a few things that definitely could have gone better. Namely the way that we as a team handled stripping down the game and creating it from a bare-bones structure. While this was ultimately a lead decision, we as a team decided on this methodology of work, to better build the game with a larger team. This proved to be extremely difficult, as we had no content at the end of January, when our shareholders started expecting some. Yes, systems were able to worked on and fleshed out quicker, but not having anything to show, really hurt our game's image, and I think we all felt that as a team. It wasn't until late February that we really had an environment that started to represent the vision of our game, which meant we had to unfortunately cut a lot of the features we had planned.
Working on a team as large as this, I think I have a few good takeaways that I can apply to my other projects. The primary one is team organization. Throughout our development, we changed how teams were structured quite a few times; shifting members, changing groups, and meeting responsibilities. While it may have seemed a little too fluid, I think it allowed the team to try out all sorts of organization strategies, until we found one that best suited our work flow. That's not something I've ever been able to experience before as most of my projects have been on smaller teams that never change how they're organized.
Conclusion
All in all, this was a great learning experience of a project for me. It was my first chance to really explore my strengths as a lead audio designer, and also a chance to learn how to change and adapt to whatever problems life through at us. I'm glad the project turned out the way it did, and while I still wish we could've kept a lot of the things we cut, Eira: Echoes of Adventure will be published in a complete and finished state. And for that, I couldn't be happier.