Details

Since writing my massive to-do list for the Incident at Long Rock Junction project, I've done a lot of just looking at it. The phrase the devil's in the details has repeatedly come to mind, because it 's the details that I spent a few hours writing down last Friday. Those details represent a very labor intensive, deliberate form of work which, if done right, will all connect and make sense. In hindsight I'm very glad that I took the time to determine a priority order, because I think otherwise I would have spent a lot more time just staring at the document, transfixed. I've found that there's a difference between knowing "there's work to be done" and knowing "exactly what every stitch of that work entails".

4 Month's Later...

As evidenced by the dates on these two most recent posts, the pause in development has been significantly extended! And truthfully, what had been planned as a two week, "get everything you can done" push has evolved into a 4 month "let's make what we're already working on as high-quality as possible" extravaganza. A popular phrase among game-makers is "a late game is only late until it's shipped, but a crappy game is crappy forever".
Taking into account the changes that the Help Desk (and the CITES organization as a whole) has undergone, the longer-then-expected development cycle makes sense. We went from having 3 team members to only 2, and one of those (Nathan) was given a heap of much higher priority responsibilities. This triggered a need for me to get used to HTML, and jump into the world of training content creation (an arena I previously stayed out of). Changes of this type are rarely anticipated, even in the relatively stable world of education, but they do not always have a negative impact. Nathan and I have had a golden opportunity to inject some much-needed love and care into our Voyage to the Unknown game, and I believe that our extra work significantly contributed to it's success when it was recently released to our student staff. So there's an announcement for you; we've got one game in the can.
Additionally, Voyage to the Unknown is also nearing completion. In the interest of good project management practices, I've created a master to-do list, assigning item priorities and tentative "due by" dates. As I'll be in Salt Lake City for most of this summer, our having a clear picture of what we need to accomplish and when is going to be critical. More updates next week!