Dev Diary — New Guy

the ramblings of Josh Lilly …

Being a new team member on any team can present certain challenges, especially if it’s your first real project dealing with what you’ve wanted to do for as long as you can remember. Little long winded first sentence, but it sums up my feeling as I jump aboard the Games Omniverse team. This is my first real chance at creating a game that will be put out to the wild for every person to go see and enjoy. So needless to say the excitement and nervousness levels are equally peaked.

So going into a team/project that has already started and had certain aspects of the game in place, you have a couple of big decisions to make. You can either take the initiative and hit the ground running or fall behind and slow progress down as you try and play catch up beyond normal conditions. Now I think of placing myself in the former of the two options because I like to see progress materialize quickly and let the team know I’m here for the right reasons. I know that there is always a period where you must play catch up no matter what because the project has already started and you need to familiarize yourself as quickly as you can. This is important because you can really hinder overall progress if you fall into the ill-fated second decision.

I guess this portion might be sufficient to include some basic information regarding jumping on board a wonderful project like this. So right before I signed on to work with the Games Omniverse team, I had only known the absolute basics of the game. This is because the nature of beast with projects like this, everything is kept secure until you sign some form of NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). Then you are free to soak in as much as you can because you are legally bound to not say anything to anyone about aspects covered in the NDA. This portion is hard for me right now because it is such an exciting time and I want to just tell everyone everything.

Continuing on, you just can’t start to spill the beans to whomever you please as you want to protect the integrity of the game you’re making. As in any business, the video game business especially, you want to be as creative and imaginative as possible. So it’s important to keep your baby (game) as safe as you can up until is fully ready to be released to the open public. Now, the more I work on the game and the more I learn all the little details regarding this project, it just solidifies I made the right decision. That decision is working with such a talented group of individuals. As time goes on there will be new ideas, new visions, and possibly new people coming on board. This is both extremely exciting and interesting because from the initial design to the final product, so many things change and I’m along for a ride of a lifetime.

One final side note that I must mention is the non-traditional work style. That being said, what I mean is that the original core members of the team reside about 2,000 miles from where I am. So this alone is something that is very different from what I’m used to, coming from the more traditional ‘everyone works together in the same building’ type structure. So needless to say, work is done from home and over the glorious Internet. This may not be anything new for many people, but for me it is and it’s such a refreshing experience.

That’s it, until next time……. overly excited new guy on the team, out.