Good April! It’s Almost Warm! Pillow Castle is thawing! Life is good.
We were able to discuss a lot of the “hurt feelings” created by our halves presentation this week, and feel that we addressed a lot of the concerns with our pitch and with thoughtful conversations with those affected. Hopefully no one thinks we’re a bunch of ego jerk heads. If they do, they should come hang out with us. Or we’ll come hang out with them. Or whatever. Maybe just camp outside their house. Hold up signs like “We Love You!” This is getting weird.
It’s interesting how something that we viewed as innocuous could in fact be taken so wrongly. A lesson on perspective and on audience. We neglected to think about the audience that wasn’t interested in a team from the ETC doing well and being a strong team at the same time — they are interested in the project work, the measurable results, the hard and fast academic bits and bobs.
We aren’t the best team at that stuff. Let’s just put that out there. No one would accuse any of us of being academics if we weren’t in graduate school, and there is definitely a gulf we as a team half to cross from “artistic expression” to “academic expression”. Xiao and Albert are definitely able to communicate on that level a little more concretely than the rest of us, and so we need to rely on them a little bit more to tell the factual aspects of our development process more clearly.
We also need to think about how our peers will consider us after this presentation. While we originally didn’t think that by showing us having fun we would be alienating people, it’s fair to note that jealousy is a thing that exists, and ignoring it doesn’t mean that it will go away. We in no way intended to inspire jealousy in our peers — in fact the opposite: we wanted to inspire them to have the same kind of fun — but according to some, that plan fell on deaf ears.
We regrouped and gave a damn good pitch presentation on Wednesday full of facts and figures and numbers. It was a little weird to spend the previous five days being embroiled in office politics, only to find that half of those people we were concerned about weren’t even in the room during the presentation nor were they intending to contribute feedback. That was either very good luck or a weird sign that we had our priorities crooked.
No matter – we have three and a half weeks to complete preproduction on the entire first chapter of the game. That’s a serious endeavor, and one we all plan to attack with fervor. Forget all this GDC nonsense and academic this-and-that, we as a team have a damn game to make. Lately we’ve forgotten that. Time to kick the tires and light the fires.
We are not fighting aliens. But we ARE fighting bugs!
Take care out there,
-Pillow Castle
