The ZeeGee Experience (Pt. 1 - The Rookie)

I'm a week into the production internship at ZeeGee Games, and I think I'm starting to get a grasp of what's going on. Actually, perhaps that's putting it a bit strong... I'm starting to get to the point where I can maintain tenuous holds on vague notions of what's going on. This is, however, a vast improvement from last week. In fact, most of what I learned last week was that I didn't know much of anything about what I was doing. I probably should have seen this coming, but I was, in reality, wholly unprepared for this realization.

The production internship at ZeeGee is not, I repeat, not, like Full Sail's Final Project.
This seems like a remarkably obvious statement, and, really, it is. It still seemed a jarring transition to me. I believe this is because Full Sail spent seven months preparing us for Final Project. I was prepared for Final Project. My classmates and I were ready for Final Project because we'd been made ready for it. Our instructors laid out teamwork and managerial and production techniques that would serve us well for Final Project. They had us make plans; oh God, the planning. We had the five month Final Project planned almost to the day. Our instructors discussed the processes, the team members, the External Producers. They warned us of repeated pitfalls, recommended new ways of thinking, instructed us to challenge the status quo. They really got us excited for Final Project.

When I got to ZeeGee, I'd say, oh, about 85% of that went out the window. Right out. The production methodologies are waaay more Agile than anything we'd encountered. When we ask about things like a PMP or a Cap Plan, they laugh at us. The entire staff of ZeeGee games is smaller than some Final Project teams; they don't often have the need or the time for that much planning, especially in the middle of a project. We were warned by our instructors at Full Sail that Final Project isn't like the real world, not by a long shot, and this was the real world.

This hit me like a bucket of ice cold spaghetti (water's so cliché) on Tuesday night. Most definitely. I like to consider myself a pretty calm, confident, and collected individual, especially when it comes to making video games, but I was on the verge of panic. I knew what I was doing for the next five months if I had done Final Project; I didn't (and don't, really) know what I'm doing next week at ZeeGee.

Once I'd realized I had some serious concerns with the situation, I could address them better. I talked some things over with Max, our producer, on Wednesday, and he assured me that there was a plan for the interns. We were not going to be getting coffee. We would be running meetings and tracking hours. He assured me our workload would ramp up very quickly, and oh, by the way, he'd be out of town Thursday afternoon and Friday.

They were rather light work days, but it was obviously time to step up. Flying solo went... fairly well, in my opinion. I had one project go better than expected, and my other has run into some unexpected obstacles that have yet to be fully resolved. Such is the life of a producer, I suppose. More importantly, it was definitely helpful in the confidence department, and I'm pretty sure that was the intended consequence. The broad strokes of our education still apply: teamwork, team management, time management, project tracking, quality assurance, it's all still useful, just in a more general form.

The internship will be much different from what I had expected, mainly because I went into it with incomplete knowledge and few preconceptions, but I'm learning to enjoy the thrill of the unknown after spending the past seven months compulsively erasing unknowns. This change in outlook may be among the most important things I take from this experience. Or maybe not. Who knows? I sure don't have a clue yet....