Roles and Responsibilities

As a producer on Keepers of the Trees I assisted the team by monitoring tasks in Jira, taking meeting notes, and updating documentation. My favorite project was when I helped the tech artists improve their productivity on the team. I noticed their hours spent on the project decreased during pre-production. I learned from their 1 on 1 meetings that they were struggling to balance class time with their time for capstone development. My objective was to determine when they have class, when they have free time, and when they are most productive. I created a revised schedule in Excel with cells color coded by class and assignments. I met with the artists two weeks after creating this improved schedule. I found the production of visual effects increased by 62%.

My biggest challenge was creating a remote playtesting pipeline as the team transitioned to working from home. While the team’s friends and family were recruited first, the majority of them had experience with video games. When the game hit the alpha phase, I began to post the sign up sheets on the game’s social media pages. The play testers joined a Discord server and picked a time slot to play the game. Once the session concluded, they submitted a screen recording of their gameplay and a survey on their impressions of the game.

I also managed Social Media for the game. I started a blog on Wordpress where I posted interviews with team members. Not only did it give me a chance to highlight their work, but I also came to appreciate how everyone’s roles fit together. I also used Twitter and Instagram to post daily updates and recruit play testers.

You can download the game for free on Steam here.