Since my sophomore year at Cornell, I have participated in an independent study project for game design nearly every semester. This semester is no exception, and I am a member of a four-person team working on one project. When considering it as a cognitive system, our group works as both a group of individuals and an individual group - by which I mean, we have tasks that are both highly coordinated, in the same time and space, and tasks that are highly specialized, during which we all work separately to fill our specific milestone tasks.
Simply put, our group displays both loose coupling and tight coupling. Weekly, we have meetings during which we 'touch base'. We go over what we've done, what problems we have when passing off the next stage of the project to another member, and what we plan to do. We also brainstorm for new ideas. We do this all together in a discussion format. When not in meetings, we also work separately. I personally serve as the artist for the team, so I work alone on drawing backgrounds, characters, and interfaces, as compared to the programmers, for example, who work separately on other parts of code. No one works on the same thing at the same time - we may pass it off back and forth between artists and programmers to test how well it works, but that's an asynchronous process.
Information passed between members took the representation of both emailed files and messages left on a shared wiki. Everyone had access to change the files and the wiki, and to provide their input and insight when necessary. Everyone else, consequently, could see what changes were made at any time, as well as the opinions of the others. Our direct inputs into code and editing of files, whether on the shared SVN or on the wiki, transformed the representations the information took.
The goal of our system, is, of course, to create a playable game by the end of the semester. As past experience has shown me, this is not always an attainable goal, but the process is just as important. In that regard, the process of working together to find our mistakes and correct them, as well as the critique process with our advisor (who may, at times also be included in our system), is more of the true goal of an independent project group - the learning process.
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Developing a game sounds really excellent, what a fun thing to get involved in. I'm wondering if a group leader has emerged to facilitate splitting up the work, and making the weekly meetings go smoothly? It seems like using a wiki is a great way to share information, instead of having to send mass emails. I know we have talked about some of the barriers (no facial cues, body language, easy to get confused) involved in CMC in class, but it seems like working primarily online is efficient for your group
ReplyDeleteThis sounds awesome. What kind of games are you making? As a programmer I'm actually personally interested in what you're doing here. As a cognitive system this one is a textbook example. It's especially interesting how something like game development, which typically gets attributed to computer programmers, is actually an interdisciplinary effort. You mentioned you do a lot of the graphic design, an important aspect of game design that must be done by someone with that skill set. Very good example of how a cognitive system may require processors (people) with different skills in order to achieve a common goal.
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