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Hi, I’m Nick Gackowski and this is my Personal Case Study video, in which I talk about my development through the module, and ways to take it forward.
One of the main reasons I joined the course was to build up a set of experiences and a portfolio of works that could help me switch careers to a game developer. We had two rapid ideation sessions during the module; both of them an opportunity to reflect on and inform my future practice.
Our first session began in week 4.
As I wrote in my blog: “less than a week before the theme announcement, I had barely begun learning about [the game engine] Unity – I was worried that I would spend too much time during the jam, struggling with the program rather than working on the artefact.”
Although expressed as a skill-related issue, it was really a problem of effective time management to let me learn.
I knew I had a tendency to fall into rabbit holes – and I responded to that by setting boundaries and limits on time spent working. This made prioritising tasks all the more important, and encouraged de-scoping certain items. This ultimately helped me track and time-box both my learning, and development time.
I overcame my unfamiliarity with C# by comparing it to Java – a language I was familiar with (McCown 2011) – and building a simple Java prototype first.
This prototype exposed an issue with a repetitive gameplay loop early on. This may not have been the optimal way to work with Unity, but porting familiar code into C# eased me into working with the language and understanding its relationship with Unity objects.
Throughout development, I had many questions and issues I had to seek answers to, in documentation and on forums. Ultimately, I was defeated by a null reference exception and a non-functioning debugger. But with the stricter time management approach, I knew when to stop and finalise the project.
A personal struggle for me has been impostor syndrome – I would be critical of my performance while aspiring to match the impressive outcomes reached by my peers. To counter this, in my reflection, I strived to keep a positive attitude. “this drive to ramp up the intensity of my study (…) does not invalidate the progress I already make each week, and I should continue to take a moment to look back and feel proud of my individual journey.”
With the second round or Rapid Ideation, again, I could practice idea generation techniques. And since I paired up with Will Ward – whose work on the previous sprint I admired (Ward 2020) – we split responsibilities – I could focus more on code and less on art assets.
I got the debugger working by the time development started, so solving technical issues became less aggravating.
Crucially, this time around, I had enough theory covered to try out a different learning approach. A sample project – Unity Playground – contains scripts to help quickly set up simple games using common mechanics (Unity Technologies 2019). By analysing them and the way they were used in a project, I was able to rewrite them to suit my needs. This was an improvement over porting Java code, as my project became more aligned with Unity conventions.
Before the sessions, my goal was to schedule time for Unity video tutorials. But after that experience I found it more efficient to learn through picking sections of documentation and disassembling existing examples. I hope to continue that practice throughout the rest of my studies when possible.
In the future, I’m likely to require not just development skills, but also testing, debugging, collaboration, and depending on the role, some aptitude as a game designer (AGCAS Editors 2020). The next module, Game Development, should provide ample opportunities to code, test and debug, while implementing game design theory (Falmouth University n.d.).
My challenge this module has been finding the time to read, so this December I joined our cohort’s book club on Discord. Not only can we discuss material relevant to our practice – starting with Norman’s Design of Everyday Things (2013) – we designate a time-bound goal which motivates me to complete the read. After the book, I plan to start with Introduction to game design, prototyping, and development by Jeremy Gibson Bond (2018). I believe the contents will align neatly with the aims for the next module.
When it comes to design – game designer and co-author of Game Design Workshop, Chris Swain, writes: Game Design is 1% inspiration and 99% iteration (Gibson Bond 2018: 62) (Fullerton, Swain and Hoffman, 2004). As noted in my interim retrospective post, my work on artifacts has been fairly linear throughout the module. Allowing enough time to generate multiple versions of an artifact can be a challenge for very short projects. For example, a natural opportunity for iteration and improvement arises when a project is divided into multiple sprints (Measey 2015: 38-39).
Therefore, seeking out opportunities to spend more time on a single artefact would be conductive to applying game design principles through iterative development. The obvious candidate for such a project is the Final Project, work on which is formally starting in a years’ time. Rather than waiting until then, I can join some game jams that last a month or longer – such as The Fresh Game Jam (Staber 2020), or PengJam (BlockyPenguin 2020). Ideally, this would involve others from the cohort so that I could practice collaboratively.
So with those lessons learned, and upcoming plans outlined, I am more optimistic about my future creating video games.
References
AGCAS EDITORS. 2020. “Game Developer Job Profile | Prospects.Ac.Uk.” Prospects.ac.uk [online].
Available at: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/game-developer [accessed 18 Dec 2020].
BLOCKYPENGUIN. 2020. “PengJam 2021.” itch.io [online]. Available at:
https://itch.io/jam/pengjam [accessed 19 Dec 2020].
FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY. 2020. “Falmouth University Courses and Modules – IGD720 – Game Development.”
falmouth.akarisoftware.com [online]. Available at:
https://falmouth.akarisoftware.com/index.cfm/page/module/moduleId/93554 [accessed 7 Dec 2020].
FALMOUTH UNIVERSITY. 2020. “Falmouth University Courses and Modules – MA Indie Game Development.”
falmouth.akarisoftware.com [online]. Available at:
https://falmouth.akarisoftware.com/index.cfm/page/course/courseId/9930 [accessed 23 Dec 2020].
FULLERTON, Tracy, Chris SWAIN and Steven HOFFMAN. 2004. Game Design Workshop: Designing,
Prototyping, & Playtesting Games. Focal Press.
GIBSON BOND, Jeremy. 2018. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development:
From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#. Upper Saddle River, Nj: Addison-Wesley.
MCCOWN, Frank. 2011. “Java and C# Comparison.” sites.harding.edu [online]. Available at:
https://sites.harding.edu/fmccown/java_csharp_comparison.html [accessed 16 Dec 2020].
MEASEY, Peter. 2015. Agile Foundations : Principles, Practices and Framework. Swindon, Uk:
Bcs Learning & Development.
NORMAN, Donald A. 2013. The Design of Everyday Things. Massachusetts: Mit Press.
STABER. 2020. “The Fresh Game Jam 2021.” itch.io [online]. Available at:
https://itch.io/jam/the-fresh-game-jam-s4 [accessed 19 Dec 2020].
UNITY TECHNOLOGIES. 2019. “Unity Playground.” Unity Learn [online]. Available at:
https://learn.unity.com/project/unity-playground [accessed 20 Nov 2020].
WARD, W. (2020) Sky Courier Heroes. [Online] PC. Available at:
http://wil1333.itch.io/sky-courier-heroes [Accessed 16/12/20].
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