A New Perspective

Being a Team Coordinator was a task thrust upon me by my fellow teammates. At first I was rather flattered that everyone had deemed me approachable and hardworking or it may have been that only minutes before the vote I was seen screaming down the phone at a lazy peer.

Either way I wasn’t going to let them down.

Naturally I thought that everyone else in the team would eat, sleep and work on the same hours I do.

How wrong I was.

Usually I would plow on with my work, jump head first and finish it in a matter of days or weeks but as I sat in labs nice and early, furiously texting still-asleep teammates, I realised how long and infuriatingly slow this project would be.

On the plus side we learn from our mistakes and I flat out refused to let the team start modelling before we had our detailed concepts. A stage in game-production I will never overlook again.

Having clear-cut concepts and a well prepared schedule has proved invaluable when it comes to production. As a result fewer mistakes have reared their ugly heads and what stressful problems we do encounter are mainly down to self-motivation.

One thing that has surprised me is some people’s complete disregard for deadlines. I understand that sometimes life just doesn’t go your own way but that seriously can’t happen every day for 3 weeks. If this was the real world and a real game-pipeline, I’m pretty sure your boss wouldn’t care that you’re hung-over or having a lazy day. Face it you wouldn’t have a job anymore.

Having voiced my concerns and letting off steam, I have now become more level headed. I now understand that not everyone works and behaves the same and most of my stress stemmed from a sort of motherly instinct to see everyone in the team do well and be proud of what they have achieved.

I have now tried to relax more, I clearly inform everyone of jobs and deadlines through various forms of communication and now it’s down to them and how far they want to go.