Blind Horizon Studios Postmortem

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post·mor·tem

pōstˈmôrtəm/

noun

     1.

an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death.

2.

an analysis or discussion of an event held soon after it has occurred, especially in order to determine why it was a failure.

     "an election postmortem on why the party lost"

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void setup()

Blind Horizon Studios is an independent game development team at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), composed of members Dustin, Blake, Matt, Amanda and Tori. The studio started from a victorious game jam, where their serious game Energy Drive won them 5000 dollars for serious game creation.

The students were inspired by this event. They sensed that they are onto something. Serious games expand the limit of traditional games, allowing the media to be used in more aspects and areas. Blind Horizon Studio is formed to create them while they take classes in RIT.

function manager()

During a co-op Dustin worked at, his company used the Scrum development model. He also found out that he enjoys pitching very much. Dustin took the role as President of the Studio and producer, overseeing the development and handling the business side.

The milestones their projects pursue are often tied to game festivals, university exhibitions, etc. They would look at one incoming event, and say, "Ok, this is what we need to show at that event. To get there we need this much to be done, and to do that we need to do these this week."

BHS is using Trello for project management now, but Google Drive is also a great help (Changbai: Yes! Can't agree more!).

function $$$()

As an indie game studio that produces non-profit serious games, BHS hopes to get their income from grants - that's how they got their first bucket of 5000$ fuel. BHS also sold Energy Drive back to MassDigi.

function school()

Stressful schedule and lack of meeting is back for works, and attending school puts the studio into that situation.

BHS spent 1000+ hours on Energy Drive, and unknown amount (but large, for sure) on the other projects. 

/*** lessons ***/

 - Game Design > Technology. For Memento, the studio decided to create a custom 3D engine inside Flash, but it turned out to be much more time-consuming, and it limited the available time to design and test the game. 

Energy Drive is their most successful game, and Blake pointed out that the intense iterations BHS put into it really made it shine.

 - Scoping is very important. Memento's art is very over-scoped. As a 3-d game, along with the fact that this game's environment is very important to the feeling, the art workload is way out of scope for a single artist. The studio tried to bring in other student artists, but these students can't be as dedicated as BHS members, and their art style often doesn't go along. Dustin also mentioned the danger of adding 

 - If something needs to be done, do it right now. This builds up the passion and it pushes the entire studio to work efficiently.

//TODO

The members are graduating. The company will still exist in name, but its activity will cease for a while. Blake is going to work at Microsoft, Dustin co-oping at Uncorked Studio, and Amanda will go back to school to finish up her Bachelor, hoping to pursue a Masters degree in Visual Communication.

Being in a game studio while working at another company could be tricky. The company might not allow the employee to produce competing projects during his time there.