Production Process

Overview

In the echoes, students collaborate in cross-functional teams to develop games using a lightweight indie studio model. However, while day-to-day operations focus on game design and development, echoes is, fundamentally, a class. Students participate in order to learn. Students are never expected to join a team already having all the skills they’ll need to succeed. Processes, project plans, and task assignments take into account a consistent need for onboarding, while also incorporating feedback cycles to ensure that mistakes have minimal impact.

Similarly, while VIPs are long-term projects that encourage participation across several semesters, students’ time is never infinite. They have other classes, work, personal commitments, and, eventually, graduation. While this is a class and consistent engagement is expected, students should never feel compelled to crunch, work “for free”, etc.

The echoes production process is engineered to not only survive these constraints, but also to embrace them by:

  • Capturing key information (task progress, design rationale, etc) consistently and transparently
  • Including time & mechanisms for knowledge transfer and onboarding in all activities
  • Encouraging mentoring & personal growth
  • Respecting student schedules and external commitments by minimizing overhead and supporting asynchronous and virtual communications

Team Organization & Communications

The echoes team is organized in a small studio format with faculty overseeing project management & direction with the help of a team of student leads.

Meetings

We hold a single All Hands meeting each week, which is recorded for those who can’t attend. Each subteam also meets at least twice a week.

Discord

All teams use the internal team Discord server as their primary asynchronous communication mechanism. The expectation is that everyone will use it to keep their team up to date and respond to any messages within 24 hours (perhaps a bit longer on weekends and holidays).

Although dedicated channels exist for specific topics, everyone is encouraged to provide feedback in any channel and suggest the creation of new channels as needed.

Task management

All teams leverage GitHub Projects to plan and track progress. For more information about the echoes task management process and infrastructure, see https://github.com/rit-vip-echoes.

Documentation

The expectation is that teams will document as they go. There is no expectation of “pages and pages” of text for every task, but we do want to capture enough information that future stakeholders have what they need, where and when they need it.

  • High-level information relevant to all stakeholders that changes infrequently is documented here on the echoes website.
  • Project plans, tasks, technical how-tos, and development artifacts are documented and managed in GitHub.
  • Internal information, such as team rosters, design documentation, meeting notes, etc., is stored in a Google Shared Drive.

Roles & Responsibilities

Core Responsibilities

All Team Members

At a minimum, everyone active on the project is expected to:

  • Contribute to the progress of their team’s tasks
  • Attend (or watch the recording from) the weekly All Hands meeting
  • Participate in any relevant sub-team/game meetings
  • Keep their leads up to date on progress, plans, and problems
  • Submit a weekly check-in to the faculty lead & producer

GCIS-410

Should be prepared to mentor GCIS-210 students and lead small sub-project efforts if needed.

GCIS-610

Should be prepared to lead efforts within their domain, mentor other students, and proactively work to improve the processes and infrastructure for future students.

Potential Roles

Roles noted with an ** are on the echoes leadership team and require enrollment in GCIS-410 or GCIS-610.

Production

Aesthetics & Asset Production

Game Design & Development

Web Design & Development


Production Team

Erika Mesh

  1. Faculty Lead (Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025)

Ben Snyder

  1. Faculty Lead (Spring 2025)

Rebecca Greene

  1. Aesthetics Director (Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

Daijya Robinson

  1. Assistant Producer (Spring 2025)

Ayushi Parikh

  1. Assistant Producer (Fall 2025)

Max White

  1. Audio Producer (Fall 2025)

Marc Browning

  1. Composer (Fall 2025)
  2. Sound Designer (Fall 2025)

Mary Jacob

  1. Concept Artist (Spring 2025)

Kendyl Greer

  1. Producer (Fall 2024)

Sam Burgoyne

  1. Producer (Spring 2025)

Will Tallarico

  1. Producer (Fall 2025)