The way I see it, Wolverine Soft entered its second phase roughly two years ago, starting with the first 48 Hour contest in the spring of 2004. Before that, in its infancy, Wolverine Soft constantly struggled with organization and structure, and it nearly dissolved several times. Back in the winter of '04, our founder Ed Baraf sent a rather inflammatory email to the email list that resulted in a WSoft renaissance which carried WSoft into the second phase. The 48 Hour contest generated huge interest in the club, which led to a strong batch of new officers for the next year. In the '04-'05 school year, WSoft matured and gained a level of permanence at U of M that it lacked previously. Since then, we have made the 48 Hour contest a yearly event, we have regular, weekly meetings in the form of Development Sessions, we have a robust, fully-interactive website and most importantly, we have more members than ever before and our alumni presence in the game industry has reached a significant and visible level. However, there is still room for tremendous improvement, and now it is time to make WSoft mature yet again and enter its third phase.

In the spirit of the game industry, this is the sequel to the post-mortem that Ed and Alex wrote two years ago. The following are things that WSoft can improve on in order to further grow. I believe this is all very doable and necessary to take the organization to the next level. As you may notice as you read, very few of these things are actually new. This next stage of growth will be all about taking full advantage of the resources and opportunities that have been established in the past two years.

Dev Session

The concept of Wolverine Soft Development Sessions is great. Every week, we meet to work on our game projects all in the same place. However, Dev Session has never quite lived up to the potential of that concept. More often than not, Dev Sessions degenerate into screwing around in the lab and creating distractions for the few people actually trying to get work done. To make Dev Session better, it needs more structure. Having the computer lab reserved for 4 hours each week is not enough.

First, Dev Session should begin every week like a weekly meeting would. The president or other officers should address the group and tell everyone what's going on in the WSoft world. Even if this is just information rehashed from the email list or website, someone may have missed it and it's valuable to speak about the current state of WSoft on a regular basis. Treat this seriously and make sure people are paying attention. If the computers in the labs are distracting people, ask them to turn off the screens and show respect to the ones speaking. There is nothing wrong with informality, but at a certain point it becomes the enemy of productivity.

Second, it should be made clear to everyone at each Dev Session what everyone else is working on. At the very least, the officers should ask people what they are working on at the start of Dev Session, and even facilitate partitioning up the room so that people working on the same or similar project know where to sit to be near each other. Think about what the labs look like during the 48 Hour Contest - each team carves out their own space in the lab. People don't just sit down at random, and there is no reason why they should at Dev Session.

Gaming during Dev Session should stop. Officially banning gaming from the room is probably unnecessary, but it should to be discouraged, especially among the officers. If people must play their DS, take it to the far corner of the room. In the past, too many people walked into Dev Session and were greeted with the sight of the officers playing games. This is not the image that a serious student game development group should be sending to its members. Regularly scheduled gaming sessions (perhaps immediately after Dev Session, as they often informally are anyway) is a better time to trade umbrellas in Animal Crossing.

Finally, I think it would be a good idea to set some Dev Session time aside to just discuss game design and the game industry in general. If a good game just came out, talk about why it's a good game from a design standpoint. Talk about the video game medium in general (is "game" really an accurate term to describe it these days?). Throw out game ideas to the group and discuss them. Discussions of this nature are valuable because it gets people thinking more about video game design and possibly even more interested in it. You never know, one of these discussions could end up as a great whitepaper for the website.
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Contests

The 48 Hour contest is inarguably the best thing WSoft does right now. More student-created games, campus-wide recognition and game industry attention come out of this event than any other. Keep it up. I love the idea of inviting Spartasoft members to participate next year. Bounce some ideas off of their officers over the summer. I suggest keeping the format the same, and just noting at the end what school the top ranking teams are from. Don't make it too competitive just because they are there. Keep the competition friendly.

It's time WSoft introduced a second contest into the event lineup. We tried a game design document contest last year and it failed miserably (only 3 people entered), so don't do that again. Some other ideas are a character design contest, a longer (4-8+ week) game dev contest, and my personal favorite, a game idea pitch contest (participants imagine they are pitching a game to the execs at a publisher). Iron out the idea over the summer and plan it out, along with the 48 Hour, before fall semester starts. With the second contest, try to target a slightly different audience than the 48-hour contest in order to reach more people.


Website

The improvements to the website this year have been massive. Now, let's start using it. The WSoft website should be a major source of game industry and development news and opinions that people check on a regular basis. There were only 12 posts to the front page of the website the entire school year. That is not how to get people to check a site regularly. The website has the capability for any member to post an article about anything. Even if it's just a reaction to some piece of gaming news, it's worth writing because people will read it. There are a number of blog-style gaming websites (kotaku, joystiq) that we can look to for inspiration. I imagine the WSoft website being a cross between kotaku and gamedev.net or gamasutra. Daily posts are not so difficult, and weekly posts are trivial. I think with minimal effort, our site could become widely enough read that it could easily get members that write for it press credentials for any gaming convention like E3 and GDC.

Another thought I had for the website is to add Wikis to the project pages. Wikis are a really good way to organize design documents because they encourage collaboration and constant evolution of the ideas. This may require we move the website to a log in / log out session format, which, regardless, is a good next step for the website to take in terms of functionality.

Speakers

WSoft was lacking in the speaker department this year and this should not continue in the future. Alumni, if you are ever in Ann Arbor, you absolutely should set up a time to speak to WSoft. Even if you aren't working in games, any insight into what it's like being out of school would probably be valuable to members. Members, you must attend every speaker event that WSoft puts on. There have been a number of WSoft speaker events in that past that got pitiful attendance. This reflects terribly on the club and it's downright rude to the speaker. Regardless of whether you think you are interested, I guarantee you will get something out of the hour you spend listening to what the person has to say. I'll announce right now: I will return to Ann Arbor at some point in the fall or spring and speak to WSoft about working at EA and on the Revolution. I expect the room to be full.

Talk to Professor Laird about bringing industry speakers in. He helped us out a lot with it in the past and I'm sure he'd be happy to help again. If anyone has ideas for speakers they would like to see, it can't hurt asking him, as he may know that person or someone who could hook it up.

WSoft is STILL not a "programmer's" club

This is one of the most important philosophies of WSoft. We have done a fairly good job of integrating more artists and other non-programmer types into the club's weekly workings, but there is still much that can be done. Remember, not only is WSoft not a programmer's club, but game development is not a programmer's activity.

I think WSoft should make it a goal to encourage and teach all types of game developers, whether it's programmers, artists, designers or musicians how to communicate more effectively. I have witnessed countless times in both amateur and professional game dev situations in which the conversation moves to something technical and the programmers start throwing out CS buzzwords and all the non-programmers immediately tune out. This isn't healthy for the game development environment. In general, programmers have to learn how to communicate technically in a way that doesn't completely alienate non-programmers. Non-programmers need to learn how to understand, at least on a basic level, the technical aspects of game development, or at least make a conscious effort to not tune out.

The reason this is important is because, in general, game development is most successful with strong input from each of these disciplines. The better they understand each other, the more effective each can be in working together to help the disciplines to come together well to form the resulting game.

I realize this is no easy task. It's something that I think gets far too little attention in the game development community at large and it's an area that WSoft can really make an effort to pioneer. Some ideas for how to start off such an effort are workshops on basic CS concepts and terminology, taught in a way that anyone can understand. You don't have to understand how computers work to understand the concepts of loops and memory. Make it a WSoft policy that when someone uses a term at a game dev meeting (like Dev Session) and a non-programmer has no idea what they are talking about, make a note of it and ask. On the flip side, programmers should make an effort to appreciate and communicate well on artistic matters. Just because you can't draw doesn't mean you should just ignore it and be happy with programmer art. Hussain, with you being both a non-programmer and a non-artist (sorry man, but you know you're worthless), you are in the perfect position to lead this effort.

Projects

Projects are both the most important and most difficult part of the whole WSoft deal. Not coincidentally, this is the area that WSoft has struggled with most in these past few years. I realize we can't ignore the amazing productivity that the 48 Hour contest has brought us, but beyond that, most of the significant game development done at Michigan is for classes, namely EECS 494. And most 494 games still do not make their way into the WSoft fold. Next year, I want to see every single game made in EECS 494 posted on the WSoft website. If the creators are not willing to do this, then it's the job of the Projects/Publicity Coordinator. Go to the showcase in December and ask every team if they are willing. Follow up with an email afterwards and get the games up there. On top of that, offer to help promote the 494 showcase. Imagine the combination of Laird's efforts with the massive fliering campaign we just saw for our showcase. If WSoft truly does represent Michigan game development, then we need to tap the major source of it.

This brings us to the next major project topic - the IGF. For those of you who don't know, the IGF is the Independent Games Festival. It's an international contest for indie game dev that takes place at GDC every year. Since it's a contest, there is an entrance fee and a cash prize. However, they conveniently have a student showcase in which they display the top student-made games for free and they give the creators free passes to GDC. MSU (Spartasoft) had a game in the student showcase this year at GDC. It's time WSoft stepped up to our potential and got in there. We deserve the major world wide game industry recognition that comes along with being in that showcase. This is the absolute best way to make the world and the industry aware of WSoft and therefore, I consider it the top priority for next year. If game industry recruiters don't ask about WSoft now in interviews, they will after we have a game in the IGF. The deadline for submission is in November and they only select the most polished games to display. Originality in the design can't hurt either. Check out the games that were selected for the 2006 showcase here http://www.igf.com/2006entrants.shtml (scroll down a bit).

So how do WSoft members go about making a game that good enough to make it in? Well for starters, come up with an idea that people actually really want to make. The WolverineWare project failed because no one was into the concept enough to lead the project so it died. We need a game concept that someone wants made so badly that they are willing to lead the project and do all the work if it comes to that. Passion is usually contagious, so if you show tremendous passion for a game concept, others are likely to follow you in developing it.

Once you have an idea that you're crazy about, prototype it. Don't just dive headfirst into full scale development unless you are sure the concept will hold up. Try not to rely on familiarity with U of M to make the game good. While these sorts of games are great (I am a big fan of the Wolverine Trail idea), people outside of the university won't get it. The game should be universally entertaining because of its merits as a video game.

Work on the game daily. Once a week for a few hours at Dev Session is not enough to make a game of the quality they are looking for. Use Dev Session to work on the game, but also schedule frequent development meetings outside of WSoft. As development progresses, make sure to constantly show the progress off to the WSoft community for feedback. Remember, even though only a small team is actually making the game, it will represent all of WSoft and our school, so make it that way.

Finally, I want to stress that quality is more important than quantity when it comes to how WSoft is perceived as a game development organization. All it will take is one amazing, original and highly polished game to put WSoft on the global map. Having a large number of games developed under the WSoft banner is great, but until a WSoft game makes it out to the larger public (through the IGF, most likely) we will remain just a U of M campus organization. Keep this in mind when deciding how to most effectively use our game development talents.

University Resources

Like Crisis Wolverine 2 did in the past, the recent events (Atlas of War demo release and the showcase) have proven that if we propose a budget for an event or game release, the University will give us a substantial amount of money to promote it. This is definitely good progress, but I think the school should be helping us out with more than just printing fliers and CDs.

As most of you probably know, WSoft was recently given an office in the new CSE building. Unfortunately, the office came with nothing to help with game development except for a sweet whiteboard. The school has thousands of computers, and there is no reason why WSoft shouldn't be given a couple for the office. Ideally, these should be our computers without all the administrative restrictions that force us to work solely from the desktop and prevent us from installing software. It's pretty annoying developing a game when you are constantly battling the restrictions of the computers in the labs. Ask Prof. Laird if he could help out with this or even try going straight to the funding people and proposing a budget for the next project that includes computer hardware for the WSoft office. Don't squander the office by turning it into the WSoft arcade and Hussain's private study. Make it a mini game dev studio right in the heart of the otherwise boring north campus. Use the office for the frequent dev meetings mentioned above. Right now, the whiteboard is way too clean. Let's change that soon.

In Conclusion!

WSoft has done a phenomenal job in these past two years. It is remarkable that a club that was on the verge of extinction just over 2 years ago has risen up to become the community that WSoft is today. We truly have become the face and name of student game development at U of M. But let's not get comfortable and stop there. I believe WSoft can grow far beyond what it is today and become a name commonly recognized in the game industry. We can be the model for student game development organizations that every other university in the world looks to and we can have the influence and industry credibility that comes with that. Video games are a medium that is here to stay and it's only a matter of time before everyone, including all of academia, realizes it. Make WSoft the authority on the subject when that time comes.

I wish all the new officers and everyone in the club the best of luck next year and for the future. I hope you guys agree with what I've written here and put it into practice. I'll be keeping a close eye on WSoft, so make me and all of our former leaders proud. Feel free to contact me about anything, whether its WSoft related or not.

Hayden Cacace

hacacace at umich dot edu

AIM: comradehac

XBL: chill bitter

Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.