Keith's Diary
Monday at Fuse Games
9.00AM Arrive
I get into the studio with enough time to sift through my personal emails and chat to a few folk on forums before the day starts properly. At this point I'm on my personal PC. Every employee has their own computer which is theirs to do what they want with such as games, internet surfing or whatever. I find this useful because I might be downloading the latest demos or trying to hunt something down online and I can leave that running while I get on with the day. At this point I am also sat at my own private desk.
9.30 AM "The Cow"
At the sound of "The Cow" (?!) we will all meet up in the middle of the studio. This is the stand up meeting and is an important part of the day. Standing in a wide circle the team takes turns to say what they have been doing on the project during the previous day and lets everyone know what they are going to do today. I find this a great reminder that we are all part of a team and it gives everyone a detailed picture as to how the project is progressing. At this point any potential problems are flagged and other company business can be discussed briefly.
On a typical day we then break away into the Art and Code teams. I'm an artist so I head for the art PCs. We operate an unusual system of pairing which is based on the principles of Extreme Programming. This has been a great advantage to us as a smaller developer and, after a period of adjustment and adaptation, feels perfectly natural now. Without going into too many details this will mean that two artists will work together on one PC.
So, today I have an active task first off. I pair with Matt to start with because he has worked on a related component in the game and I can benefit from his knowledge of how that was tackled. For the next hour we settle down and begin to piece things together and today that means a process of concept development. Within an hour we have our design and a plan for implementation. After a short chat with Ade , who is the project manager, we can proceed. Before I continue we swap out pairs so Matt goes to work on Kev's task while James comes over to join me on this one. I have predicted three hours for this task (which means I'd expect it done by lunchtime) but we are done and tested "in game" within two. Good stuff! I'm happy with the result and we can move on. I swap in with Matt on Kev's task and James and Matt get on with a new job.
At 12.00 Vicky comes around and takes my order for lunch.
1.00 Lunch
Back to our personal machines. A bit of a chat, maybe some Defender or Pinball and currently, a bit of Dead Rising on the 360.
2.00 Afternoon
Work continues in the same pattern as this morning. We finish with five tasks completed which leave our estimated "velocity" bang on track. By the end of the day I have paired with each artist at least once and have ticked off two of my own tasks for the day.
6.00 PM
Go home (which in my case takes about four minutes - I'm very lucky in that respect!).
