Project Manager of Spicy Mice
In December 2022 a few former classmates approached me and asked if I wanted to take part in their Game-Project as a manager of the Team, since their former manager found a job that restricted them to work on other projects.
Due to several reasons though, this project didn’t come into realization, but I want to share, what I learned through
High Concept : Useless League
Project Manager of Spicy Mice (German)
Working together
Since we were exclusively working remote on the project, we had to evaluate the terms of working together and I created a presentation, so everyone in the team could reread our values and knows the dates of our next milestones.
Another thing that was crucial to make working together a lot more fluent, was an „Organisation Bible“, which I wrote. There were many rule-sets that I copied from my former Job as a 2D-Artist, since I learned there that working with a structured order – as in folder, naming, etc. – brings simplicity into your work-pacing and you can focus on your project.
We had weekly meeting to update each other on the progress of our work. Each Sunday I made a protocol of the subjects that were talked about.
Protocols and Bibles
Here is an example of my protocols. It was the last I did, before we decided to drop the project.
This is the link to the Organisation Bible, which was the main guideline to keep our shared Drive neat and tidy.
Disclaimer:
These links will direct you to my Google Drive.
Thinking about advertising and Kickstarter
When we thought about how we should market our game, once we reached the production milestone, I thought about the different channels we could use and, like many games made by Indie-developer, I thought about Kickstarter and made an EXTENSIVE research on how other developer created their campaign on Kickstarter.
The research was, of course, a good thing, but we were lacking the crucial information on how a Kickstarter campaign is made, from the point of view OF Kickstarter! Only later, when I visited „Startplatz“ in Cologne I got a few pointers and realized, we needed far more development before even attempting to market ourselves on Kickstarter or Conventions.
In my opinion, the best choice of action would have been to start talking about our game on channels like Tiktok and – back then – Twitter to get the word out and even check how many people would be interested in our project.
The realization that we need a lot more development became even more apparent when one of our team-members offered us a little space on their Booth on the „Connichi“ 2023 in Wiesbaden. We didn’t have any merchandise and even if we had, we wouldn’t have been able to sell anything, as nobody even knew what this merch is about anyways.
Disclaimer:
Flyer Mock-Ups include artworks of a former member of Spicy Mice.
I merely worked on flyers to get the word out and shared a few ideas for merchandise in future conventions – but the hype of having some spot on a convention led to miscommunication within the team and it was for the best to drop „Useless Leagues“ intervention on our Members‘ booth.
Creative Feedback
What I enjoyed the most about the project, was the creative outlet in different aspects it provided. Whenever we had a bunch of Increments to review it felt amazing to take in the creativity of my members and – if something was off – to give them the push into a more fruitful direction.
For artworks, I could easily red-line the Images and give constructive criticism, since I have my fair share of experience in the craft of drawing and painting.
When it came to music it was a little more difficult and I tended to often share examples to get through what I meant. In a few meetings our Member for sounds and I were alone and we took a few extra-hours to fine-tune some jingles.