Letting go

Those who have known me for a long time know that it's really hard for me to let go of things.

As my real life has gotten more hectic and busy, I've had to step back a bit from actively working in the trenches on Selatria to focus on some of the other studio projects to make sure that they were progressing in a serious manner.

At first, I'll be honest, it really hurt because I made most of the cutscenes and was constantly tweaking it so it's perfect. As of Chapter 4-2 of Selatria, the main assignments of cutscenes was passed on to one of our newer game designers in the team, while I play and review it and polish it and make necessary tweaks at the end as needed.

While I ported most of the script by hand into the game for Chapter 4, I left behind vague stage instructions for how I would have directed/implemented the scene and he rolled with it and then some. The newer game designer also develops cutscenes a lot faster and more efficiently than I can.

I had to let go of my vision a bit if it means we make substantial progress on the project. I'm happy with his iteration of the scenes, and that's just the first step in learning how to let go. I was telling Jon during one of our lunches that a big factor in me wanting to hold onto cutscene creation is that I didn't have suitable talents that would transfer well and cutscenes were the only thing I had left. People can program better than I can. People can map better than I can. People can design better battles than I can. And people can design better cutscenes than I can. But I think my talent is that I can manage several teams pretty well. (This is still something I'm learning) while I'm average at the other parts.

I'm really not sure where I'm going with this ramble, but the one thing that puts me at ease is this. I don't assign these because of whether or not they can do it and I can't, it's just better to assign and collaborate where people would be most efficient. Even if it means letting go.