Brief 1

This first brief for GIM110 was an introduction on researching and analyzing specific aspects of the video game industry, which part exactly being assigned to each group. I had Zayne Carrick work with me on researching Black Lab Games, a video game development studio situated in Perth, Western Australia, who are known for making recent titles such as Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock. 

We had to create a library (or as I call it, repository) of resources for things such as who the company is, what they've worked on, etc. My role in this task was finding useful and reliable sources, pasting them in the document, and explaining what the source is and how this source is useful and reliable, in the form of summaries. For the most part, getting sources was not the hardest task in the world; I think the hardest part for me in this task was writing up summaries for the sources as it did take me a little bit longer than it did to find the sources, but this also wasn't the hardest thing in the world to do. 

One major difficulty I ran into was working on my own; my partner, Zayne, unfortunately provided little to no help on getting this document written out. He did provide his own opinions and information on games that Black Lab Games have made, including that for some games he has played, and he did also get in contact with Black Lab Games about an interview with them, to which they declined an interview but offered to answer some questions we might have had, but that was about as far as his contribution to this brief went; every other aspect of the work was done by me alone. He did explain to me why he wasn't able to help, which I suppose does make it a bit more understandable why he couldn't help much at all, but a difficulty with working with Zayne was the failure to establish communication, which when trying to correlate his explanation with this point, is still a bit inconclusive, as he had a lot of time to respond to the messages I sent him in an attempt to get him to help me on this brief.

In saying all this about my partner, I wasn't exactly the best at working on this brief either. A lot of time was wasted procrastinating and doing other not-as-important things, except the times when I worked on my learning journal for my other courses (GAD170 and GAD171). The document was the only part of the brief that I was able to get done during this time for this reason. I also spent a lot of time formatting the document instead of just finding the sources and writing up the summaries first, and then worrying about how I'm going to lay out and design the document with all the bells and whistles I like (within reason, of course). I also received feedback from another peer that I provided a lot more sources than me and my partner needed to find combined, and I also didn't realize until it was too late that I didn't provide diverse enough sources (not enough video resources, for example).

Overall, I do think this brief turned out okay, however I am a bit disappointed in myself that I didn't pay more attention to the project requirements, and even more so that I spent too much time doing other things, such as shooting hot dogs with guns in Hot Dogs, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades (Rust LTD., 2016), which was definitely a mistake that I should have thought twice about and have never done in the first place. I realize that, not just my brief but also the rest of my college work, comes before any leisure activities such as video games.

I think there are a few things I mentioned in my 'What?' that I would like to reflect on.

About my partner, Zayne—honestly, I'm not 100% sure what I in particular could have done to make this aspect work better. I did try multiple times to get in contact with him and help give him a sense of direction on what to do in this task, but he seemed to take in that information and then do nothing else with it. It bummed me out a little that I had to do this task effectively on my own and got to the point where I was really starting to stress out because of it, and it really didn't help that communications were dead most of the time. I believe I should have messaged him more about the brief to help him get on track, but in saying that, I didn't want to pressure him and possibly stress him out. 

It wasn't until one day after the due date that he told me the reason why he wasn't able to participate, that of which I can't say in this reflection as I don't have his permission to share outside of our Discord DMs. If I'm to be honest about that, even though he did give me some insight on what was happening and helped me understand better, I'm not very happy that he waited until a day after the due date to tell me, even with the problems he was having. 

I was told that I did more than me and my partner needed to do combined, but that wasn't because I was trying to fill in for my partner, rather I misread what the brief said and used a system for laying out my sources that required a lot of sources overall. I grabbed around five sources for who the company is, and then when focusing on the games they developed, I grabbed around five sources per game, which was way more than what was expected of me according to feedback.

About how I went on working on the document—I absolutely feel I could have done better in this case. I have always had an issue with time management and getting distracted or side-tracked, and that was very clear in this brief. I do feel proud about how the document turned out; I find that, in my personal opinion, it looks tidy and, in a sense, professional, which was what I was going for. That, however, is about as far as the positive personal opinions go. 

I don't feel good about the state of the brief that I submitted it in, as at the time I submitted it, the document was the only part that was completed. The slides for presenting the information on the document wasn't even started when this brief was submitted for grading, and the same goes for this reflection, the reason for that being at the time that I had completed the document, it had taken me until 5 in the morning that Friday, around 5 hours after the due date, to even complete the document, and by that time I simply couldn't do any more and succumbed to exhausted.

The fact that I only managed to get the document done and nothing else even after the extended time we got is the part I feel the most ashamed of, and the part I wish to improve on the most. My time management, as said before, was never good, and that is definitely the part that needs to be given the most attention for fixing. Even though I did work alone on this project and therefore it took more time to do, I still spent way too much time doing other things that weren't as important as not only this but also the rest of my college work.

About what I think and feel overall—this brief, in my opinion, was a bit of a mess to do considering every point made here happened leading up to the due date. In saying that, however, I do believe it absolutely could have gone worse, and if anything, I can use this as a learning point on where I can improve for future briefs; what to do and what not to do, and I believe this reflection will also help in doing so.

I definitely believe there are things I can do differently in the future to make things easier for me and possibly my partner, and obviously the lecturer as well.

Regarding my partner—I think in the future, when I realize that it might be a bit difficult to work with the partner I'm working with, I should see that as a call to action and get in touch with my lecturer to see what I can do about it. I shouldn't rely as much as I did on waiting for my partner to reply to be able to get to work. In future, I will try to help direct my partner and motivate my partner if need be like I have tried to, but while also paying attention to the side of the work that I have to do.

Regarding my performance in this brief—I've had a good think about how I would go about changing this. A mentality I'm aware of that I think would really help in my situation, considering that I get side-tracked by video games or otherwise and spent more time on that than doing work, is the 'work first, play later' mentality. Basically, get the work done beforehand (with breaks throughout, of course), and then spend the free time I'll have to do what I want afterwards. If that doesn't work out the way I plan it to, which could be caused by burn-out if spending too much time and effort on work constantly, I could set up a work schedule where I have one day dedicated to work, and the next day dedicated to video games or whatever it is I want to do, to kind of break it up a bit and prevent burn-out. These two ideas need more testing, however, so that'll be something I shall experiment with.

These two ideas are to do with time-management, which is the more problematic part of doing assignments for me. By playing around with these two ideas, and maybe more if they come around, I hope to create a better work schedule and, therefore, make better use of my time.