Land of Morphie
ROLE
Producer/Team lead/Designer
DESCRIPTION
Land of Morphie is an online turn-based strategy game inspired by some of the extraordinary characters in Scottish mythology. The player controls 4 characters and must defend their base while trying to destroy their opponent’s base to win.
Team size: 10
4x programmers, 3x Artists, 1x Audio Designer, 1x Producer
Project management methodology
Agile Methodology
Democratic leadership style
Duration
12 Weeks - 15hrs per week
PLATFORM
PC
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
My Responsibilities
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Plan meetings to ensure important topics were covered in a timely manner.
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Record meeting minutes
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Lead team planning meetings, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
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Plan sprints, and use Jira to organise a task backlog throughout development.
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Risk assessment - Prioritising tasks based on importance and the needs of each department.
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Act as a scrum master.
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Liaise with mentors and clients throughout development.
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Ensure each department understands their tasks and communicates with each other.
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Solve disputes between team members.
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Check in with team members to ensure they are happy and healthy.
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Quality assurance and performance testing - I regularly tested the game and tested its performance on multiple PC's
Sprint Plan
I worked with the team to create a plan that would allow us to reach key milestones on time.
We held an hour long team meeting online at the start of each week, followed by a 10 minute stand up meeting each day.
Each sprint was planned with consideration for the next sprint and the final milestone we were working towards.
Mini-Postmortem
What went well
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Pre-Production: We had a very story pre-production and developed our concept effectively.
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Democratic leadership style: Team members felt heard and engaged in group discussion.
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Communication: Strong communication between programmers, audio, designers, and artists.
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Professionalism and team-work: Team acted professionally and worked well together.
What could be improved
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Scope: We were inexperienced in developing a multiplayer game and had too large a scope.
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Game design: We lacked a standalone game designer which showed in the finished product.
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Democratic leadership style: Caused delays when people couldn't make meetings.
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Dealing with underperforming team members: I had to be firmer when raising issues.
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In-engine work: Some artists weren't comfortable working in a game engine so avoided it. This held back production.
What we learned
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Scope: Time estimates improved across the team as the project progressed.
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Source control: Every team member should be able to use it.
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Research: Look into the difficulty of big tasks like networking early on.
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Communication and respect: Is and always will be key to a strong-performing team.
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Design: One primary game designer is better than multiple secondary designers.
Sprint Plan
I worked with the team to create a plan that would allow us to reach key milestones on time.
We held an hour long team meeting online at the start of each week, followed by a 10 minute stand up meeting each day.
Each sprint was planned with consideration for the next sprint and the final milestone we were working towards.
Image Gallery
