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Apr
It's all about communicashun!11
posted by James Kay
Video games are all about communication, moreso the creation of them. It being such a collaborative process, each single individual relying heavily on his or her colleagues, it was quite a switch to move from a big, open-plan office environment to a tiny, home-office based working attitude. Paul, Dimitrios and I all work from our own respective homes most of the time so our biggest challenge was to find a good way of communicating with each other.
Instead of pushing back your chair and asking the persons you work with for input, fixes, problems and whatnot, we have only our digital channels. To be honest, it took a while to get used to and we certainly had our teething problems, but we finally settled on a semi-smooth flow of communication using several freely available tools.
Google Wave
For the longest time Paul hosted a wiki in which we collated information, design ideas and the like. But when we first got the opportunity to get a Google Wave account we jumped at it. Sure, it has its problems, but having previously experimented with a number of wikis to get a slowly accumulating dialogue going on certain issues we found the way Google Wave works fit perfectly with what we needed. When we have design or game ideas we add them to a wave. We all contribute, edit, give feedback and it's clear, easy to read and easily edited. Important emails and, well, blog posts like these too are created in waves, so we can all read them, add our comments and unanimously agree to a final draft before emailing or posting them. It works incredibly well for us, despite some small interface niggles with the waves themselves.
We still have a wiki in which we collect important information, usually business related, but Google Wave is functioning pretty well as our virtual whiteboard.
Skype
We also experimented with several different chat clients before finally settling on Skype. Google Chat was our first try, but there were too many little niggles. When Dimitrios joined, who works exclusively on Macintosh, as opposed to us two on PCs, and group chats were required, eventually Skype took over. It was especially the group chat, having all three of us in the same chat session, that was the deciding factor.
These days I constantly have the Score Studios group chat window open on my second monitor as I work and our chats cover everything from important work-related issues, for me rather boring code-related chat between Paul and Dimitrios to the usual silly buggery of funny or disturbing links we feel compelled to share with each other. It also has a very easy drag and drop file share function which we use to quickly show each other screenshots for quick feedback. For bigger files, though, we have a VPN set up, where we also collect all our project data. We have not yet had need for sharing our entire screens with each other, something I'm informed Skype does too, but it's good to know the function is there for when we will, inevitably, need it.
It really fulfils the function of the "colleague at the next desk" for discussions and distractions, especially for Paul and Dimitrios who have to work closely together on our technology, and often have voice-chat sessions, thankfully excluding myself.
Email
Though a certain type of people would like to evangelise the imminent death of email, we still use it, a lot! Not merely in communication with outside businesses, but also as reminders to ourselves or each other, keeping ourselves updated on important changes, which might get lost in our 1,000 page Skype chat window. Email is not going to go anywhere soon, certainly not at the rate we're using it!
Meat-space
Sometimes, though, having face to face meetings is better than anything. To this end we try as often as we can to meet up. Sometimes Paul and Dimitrios have coding sessions together, sometimes we meet up at a cheap family restaurant - the unlimited drink bar option is good for hours of refreshments for only a few hundred yen - and we discuss business matters, design ideas, all over a notepad and pencil. Talking is faster than typing, and it's also easier to recognise sarcasm or leg-pullery which can cause, and has occasionally caused problems in Skype when one or more of us foolishly started work before consuming enough morning coffee.
Communication is an integral part to any functioning team. There are plenty of free and paid applications out there to help you with this, and some for better for your needs than others. It took us a while to get into the flow and figure out which worked best for us overall, but now we have constantly open lines of communication, it really isn't that much different to working in an office, with the added bonus that I don't have to look at Paul's mug or have to smell Dimitrios' Pot Noodle at lunchtime.
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Instead of pushing back your chair and asking the persons you work with for input, fixes, problems and whatnot, we have only our digital channels. To be honest, it took a while to get used to and we certainly had our teething problems, but we finally settled on a semi-smooth flow of communication using several freely available tools.
Google Wave
For the longest time Paul hosted a wiki in which we collated information, design ideas and the like. But when we first got the opportunity to get a Google Wave account we jumped at it. Sure, it has its problems, but having previously experimented with a number of wikis to get a slowly accumulating dialogue going on certain issues we found the way Google Wave works fit perfectly with what we needed. When we have design or game ideas we add them to a wave. We all contribute, edit, give feedback and it's clear, easy to read and easily edited. Important emails and, well, blog posts like these too are created in waves, so we can all read them, add our comments and unanimously agree to a final draft before emailing or posting them. It works incredibly well for us, despite some small interface niggles with the waves themselves.
We still have a wiki in which we collect important information, usually business related, but Google Wave is functioning pretty well as our virtual whiteboard.
Skype
We also experimented with several different chat clients before finally settling on Skype. Google Chat was our first try, but there were too many little niggles. When Dimitrios joined, who works exclusively on Macintosh, as opposed to us two on PCs, and group chats were required, eventually Skype took over. It was especially the group chat, having all three of us in the same chat session, that was the deciding factor.
These days I constantly have the Score Studios group chat window open on my second monitor as I work and our chats cover everything from important work-related issues, for me rather boring code-related chat between Paul and Dimitrios to the usual silly buggery of funny or disturbing links we feel compelled to share with each other. It also has a very easy drag and drop file share function which we use to quickly show each other screenshots for quick feedback. For bigger files, though, we have a VPN set up, where we also collect all our project data. We have not yet had need for sharing our entire screens with each other, something I'm informed Skype does too, but it's good to know the function is there for when we will, inevitably, need it.
It really fulfils the function of the "colleague at the next desk" for discussions and distractions, especially for Paul and Dimitrios who have to work closely together on our technology, and often have voice-chat sessions, thankfully excluding myself.
Though a certain type of people would like to evangelise the imminent death of email, we still use it, a lot! Not merely in communication with outside businesses, but also as reminders to ourselves or each other, keeping ourselves updated on important changes, which might get lost in our 1,000 page Skype chat window. Email is not going to go anywhere soon, certainly not at the rate we're using it!
Meat-space
Sometimes, though, having face to face meetings is better than anything. To this end we try as often as we can to meet up. Sometimes Paul and Dimitrios have coding sessions together, sometimes we meet up at a cheap family restaurant - the unlimited drink bar option is good for hours of refreshments for only a few hundred yen - and we discuss business matters, design ideas, all over a notepad and pencil. Talking is faster than typing, and it's also easier to recognise sarcasm or leg-pullery which can cause, and has occasionally caused problems in Skype when one or more of us foolishly started work before consuming enough morning coffee.
Communication is an integral part to any functioning team. There are plenty of free and paid applications out there to help you with this, and some for better for your needs than others. It took us a while to get into the flow and figure out which worked best for us overall, but now we have constantly open lines of communication, it really isn't that much different to working in an office, with the added bonus that I don't have to look at Paul's mug or have to smell Dimitrios' Pot Noodle at lunchtime.
Comment in our forums ...
