Logline:
Role & Responsibilities: Production/Management: - Nickey oversaw the various creative decisions that went into the design, art style, narrative, audio, and engineering for this project.
- Nickey recruited and led a team of 35 people to create this game over the course of a year where we presented it at the USC Games Expo. His team was separated into various disciplines: Art, Audio, Production, Engineering, Design, Narrative, Marketing, Usability , and QA.
- Nickey led bi-weekly meetings in each of these disciplines and cultivated a safe and productive community to ensure a smooth development process.
Narrative: - Drafted overarching plot, initial story outline, and character outlines.
- Wrote scenes including the opening tutorial, Richard (the character) scenes, and endings.
- Made final pass and edits to scenes to ensure consistent character voice and story consistency.
- Oversaw connection of narrative design and system design to ensure player immersion.
Design: - Drafted initial system flow and statistic structure for the player.
- Created event structure with careful consideration to how narrative events and player mechanics represent socially manipulative bullying.
Art: - Collaborated with artists in order to establish an artistic style that conveys the game’s themes visually in synergy with the system and gameplay design.
Audio: - Oversaw audio iterations and communicated creative feedback with analogous examples to ensure effective communication about the overall creative vision.
Academic: Richard also served as Nickey’s Master’s Thesis. Nickey met weekly with two advisors in USC and an external advisor, met milestones in academic writing and research for his degree, and successfully defended this work to the USC games faculty.
Lessons Learned: Hard Skills: Unity, C#, Yarn Spinner, Google Suite, Notion, Discord, Perforce, Game Macro
Soft Skills: Direct Communication - Kindness and conflict resolution
- Don’t let insecurity drive feedback timing. If there is significant discrepency between vision and execution, settle individually to make sure you’re on the same page before other people are involved.
- If you’re worried about significant quality drop, communicate as directly as possible about what’s not meeting expectations and offer an opportunity to correct it before you assume it won’t get done.
Making decisions quickly is a skill that can be honed
- Decision making speed affects production speed. You may be holding up more people than you anticipate if you take too much time to consider an option. It’s likely better to offer a direction based on your gut (if you’re unsure) and correct the direction in feedback later. Trust that your team will make choices that can surprise you.
Positive community, greater productivity.
- When team members know there aren’t any secret group chats or hidden communication, then they can feel secure in knowing they can work without worry.
Team:
Creative Director
Celine Tang
Lead Artist
Annabel Luo
Artist
Jeremy Yiu
Engineer
Nile Imtiaz
Lead UI/UX
Vivian Yuan
Marketing
Ari Jeng
Marketing
Thesis Chair
Corrinne Banganay
Artist
Johh Chung
Audio Lead
Shaoqiu Li
Engineer
Jiezhong Yang
UI/UX Engineer
Qianhao Tang
QA
Thesis Advisor
Joey Liao
Artist
Josh Ingeneri
Audio Engineer
Wenxuan Li
Engineer
Sky Rayleigh
UI/UX Artist
Wilson Zhang
QA
External Advisor
Oliver Mei
Artist
Jane Tilly
Design Lead
Yuqi Qin
Engineer
Darcy Bergstein
Lead Narrative
Matthew Kassorla
Lead Usability, Narrative
Lead Producer
Shelby Zhang
Artist
Ally Guo
Designer
Bona Suh
Engineer
Sydney Walker
Lead Narrative
Adrienne Yahiro
Usability
Art Producer, Artist
Ziya Tang
Artist
Louis Mullarkey
Lead Engineer
Julian Avrinth
Engineer, QA
Brent Holtz
Lead Marketing
Andy Jin
Usability