I had worked at Fabula for a few months, and then the Corona crisis hit. All companies were confronted with Corona and had to reorganize for months. Those who can, were working from home. We were in the middle of developing an information security game until someone from the company came up with the idea that we put the home office part of information security in a separate game and send it to all companies for free. That started the ball rolling and I was put in charge of it.
Why did I do this?
I had been working at Fabula for half a year by then, and I was given the task of developing the game Home Office Hero. I think it was the first time I had been given responsibility for a project. From time management, to game design and impementation, the project was in my hands. Of course, I don’t just say no to that opportunity. The only problem. No one knew how long Corona and the Home Office would last, so the game had to be developed as quickly as possible.
But I was excited and looking forward to my first big task with a lot of responsibility.
What did I do:
Since it was a project that we developed in almost a week, you can summarize what I did quite easily: My tasks were on the one hand the creation of the game design in consultation with the team and product owner and on the other hand also the programming of the game in the free trial version of the VTS engine.
In addition, I took care of the entire organization of the project. That may have only lasted a week, but it was still an educational experience.
What did I learn?
The most important learning here was the management of a project that had to be completed quickly. Before the project, I looked over my boss’s shoulder a lot and learned some methods of organization from him, which I was able to apply here.
But like every project, this one has mistakes that I could learn from: For a project that you want to give away to serious companies, a week is very limited time. Organisation had to be on point. It took one and a half or even two weeks. I am not so sure about that, because I missmanaged or wrongly estimated the duration of some tasks.
I do not like VTS. Especially the free trial. It just came with so much restrictions that it was hard to produce something good. We did it in the free trial that we could send the project file to companies that they can also adjust them to their own needs. It’s a neat idea but it limited me so much and in general: I do not like VTS.