PRODUCTION

I was in charge of all content, which including managing and delivering it. I’ll quickly outline my approach to this aspect of the job below.

1 – CONSOLIDATE ALL TASKS AND INFORMATION
We gathered everything that needed to be done in one place. Thankfully this process was already happening before I joined, so we didn’t have to start from scratch. The entire system reference document containing the ruleset and open content had to be cut into pieces and organized into a huge table. All graphical assets and documentation were put into an easily accessible folder structure.

2 – ASSIGN PRIORITY
Simple production stuff, but the basics exist for a reason. Priority was chosen based on what the game needed to be playable as soon as possible, so basic rules and content that would cover the first 3 levels of play was the first to be done. After that we had to focus on monetizable content to get revenue going.

3 – BEGIN PRODUCTION ON HIGH PRIORITY TASKS
As obvious as this decision seems, it was difficult to make. The deadlines were unforgiving, so we had to start producing content before the overall vision was established in the next steps. It was risky and I consider it a mistake, but there was no way to avoid it. In a perfect world I would have pushed for a pre-production faze to really nail what we were going for first.

4 – RESEARCH AND PROTOTYPING
While we were adapting the most necessary content, I was delving deep into the ruleset and worldbuilding of D&D to create a coherent vision for the original creations. I describe more about it in Creative Direction. During this faze I completely reworked the team’s task management to make production easier using ClickUp. Because the team was split into two halves (development and content), communication between the two was important and a better, more transparent task management was my solution.

5 – SETTING DIRECTION AND ROADMAP
After some trial and error, we put together the final concept of what Dungeon Realms content would look like. I created a plan that would get us to that vision and the production cycle that lasted with some changes for two years began. The plan wasn’t anything fancy, a simple roadmap with enough space for unforeseen circumstances that always prioritized delivering a minimal viable version of the project. Complex plans rarely work, especially in start ups, so focusing on where we were going instead of planning every step of the journey there was preferable.

6 – FULL PRODUCTION
Once we established what the vision was, we steadily marched towards it. The workflow was flexible to accommodate different schedules. We maintained biweekly update calls that served as reviews and planning with the roadmap serving as the big picture guide. Most communication outside of the calls was done either in tasks or via Slack. I maintained control when necessary, giving direction and guidance on a task by task basis, but I always preferred to let people do what they do best and not interfere too much. We had our fair share of hick-ups along the way, but keeping it simple and effective paid off in the end.

This process saw us release many updates, content packs and finally cumulated in the 1.0 version released in 2022. Our pipeline for supporting the app was very effective, leading to a release plan that allowed us to publish new content every month after the 1.0 version launched as you can see on the blog. Since Dungeon Realms is a live service platform, maintaining that momentum was an important goal and I’m proud we managed to figure it out.

Because I can’t show internal production information, here’s a blog post I wrote after I joined the team where I shared some information on our early production struggles.