SEAR DevBlog week of 6/2: Reprioritizing across the board

Not unlike Needle, we're going as fast as we can in a dangerous environment and making tough calls as we go.

Last week's decision to focus on quality over speed and [somewhat] arbitrary deadlines made me do a little more reflection this week. My previous minimums for what I thought would need to be in an initial release trailer were, when push came to shove, inadequate. So I sat down and redid that list. It ended up quite a bit longer than the original, and just about everything I want to be sure is in the first trailer would end up needing to be in the initial prototype as well - in fact, if anything, since the prototype gives direct feedback to a player who is hands-on with the game, the trailer may actually need to do a little more heavy lifting to make sure the viewer is making the connections we need them to make even without pressing the SEAR button.

Once you start down the quality over speed path, forever shall it dominate your destiny... or something like that. In any case, last week's reckoning established a framework in my mind which carried through to this week. It's not so much about quality over speed as it is about making sure we are telling the full story we need to be telling for the game's first exposure to the world. We only get one chance to make a first impression, and I think that impression can be really powerful if it's delivering on the vision. So we're taking more time to get as close to that vision as possible. If that pushes us past some deadlines, like the end-of-June deadline to hit a Kickstarter this year, so be it. If all the conversations I've had and witnessed about this style of game have taught me anything, it's that pushing out the marketing for this game before that marketing can really explain and sell the idea will be catastrophic.

So. Refocusing. That starts with the first round of feedback on last week's video share in the community Discord, and to everyone who jumped in on that - thank you! The positive feedback is always welcome and I'm glad some of the visuals and music synchrony are landing with people. As always though, an ounce of constructive criticism is worth a pound of praise (though of course I'll always take a pound of praise!), and Lemon came through again with a lot of food for thought. The main conversation right now consists of the best approach to conceiving, creating, and implementing a library of music-synced events for a game like this. It's an engaging conversation for me (and, hopefully, Lemon) and I'll be popping out to catch up on it as soon as I finish here.

If you're in the community Discord, I'd welcome all thoughts on the video posted last week. I'm not doing a new one this week because most of this week was spent on bug-hunting, architecture planning, and other miscellany which didn't result in a whole lot of changes to the way the pre-alpha plays or looks. This week was primarily about deciding the next steps and what the rest of this year looks like for the studio and the project if the Kickstarter ends up delayed out until early next year. That prospect is scary - but the prospect of launching before we're ready, to me, is scarier.

I've got my list of must-haves, and I've started assigning them to the team. Now I just need to get time estimates on all of them and make sure enough time is also built in for squashing bugs when we start trying to create a ship build for the prototype.

Along with all this reprioritizing, we're having our first studio-wide call on Tuesday! Call me a dork, but I'm kind of excited about that. Up until now just about every meeting I've had has been a one-on-one check-in with a single team member regarding a few particular agenda items. Now and then I've had a call with two people on it. This will be between 5-7 people and will be a real strategy call. Exciting stuff. : )