What do you do if you want to boost productivity in game development?

Efficient task management is crucial for productivity. Start by identifying the most critical aspects of your game development project. Break down these tasks into smaller, manageable pieces and prioritize them based on their impact on the overall project. This way, you can focus on what truly matters without getting overwhelmed by the enormity of the project.

Start with the big picture - define your core goals and vision. Break into must-haves vs nice-to-haves. Assign tasks urgency levels - critical path vs enhancements. Deadlines determine priority order. Estimate work realistically. Leave a buffer for unexpected hurdles to avoid rushing quality. Evaluate the impact of each task. Core features support your vision statement the most.

Create two lists, one with items that are core to the gameplay, and another that is nice to have, or cool features. Get the core game done first before adding content you think is cool, or is fun to work on. Once your core is there, you'll be better placed to know which additional features are best suited for your game.

Define clear objectives for each development phase and prioritize tasks accordingly. This helps maintain focus and ensures that efforts are directed towards the most important aspects of the game.

Planning and Prioritization: Clearly Defined Goals: Set clear and achievable goals for the project. Break down large tasks into manageable subtasks to create a roadmap for development. Prioritization Techniques: Utilize prioritization frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix to identify and focus on the most critical tasks first. Project Management Tools: Implement project management tools like Trello, Asana, or Jira to track progress, manage deadlines, and visualize workflows.

Consider adopting Agile methodologies, which are iterative and incremental work sequences commonly used in software development. Agile encourages adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continuous improvement, all of which can be beneficial in game development.

Make your version 1 the smallest it can be in scope. Once you have this, you can more easily identify which features should be worked on next, and you can plan these features into sprints. Getting a v1 rapidly also often stops bottlenecks if you're working in a team by allowing other team members to provide QA, tweak designs, take screenshots for marketing and balance the game among other things.

Agile methodologies help tremendously with getting the most important tasks done as soon as possible, iterating quickly, and prioritising efficiently. Setting sprints to remove the biggest obstacles helps keep your team focused, and good sprint retrospectives help you understand the strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities of your team.

Use daily standups to touch base, and update progress and roadblocks. Listen actively. Feature backlog prioritises what's next. Stay flexible to pivoting needs. Show progress regularly through iterations. Frequent feedback fuels continual learning.

Implement Agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban to organize development tasks into manageable iterations or sprints. This promotes flexibility, collaboration, and iterative improvements throughout the development process.

Building a successful game team involves technical skills, creating inclusive environment where ideas flow freely, regardless of position. Regular meetings to review progress and priorities, coupled with demos or team play, can spark innovation. Open communication through platforms like Slack or Discord and automating repetitive tasks with CI/CD pipelines are also key steps in streamlining workflow and achieving project goals.

Have regular meetings where possible to review your work boards, update on progress and reprioritise. It's also a great idea to give as many demos as possible, or even better, play the game together because ideas naturally percolate. Create an environment where, regardless of title or responsibility, ideas are all given the same weight and are respected.

Minimize your meeting durations; shorten discussions for distant future topics. Many meetings serve as mere oversight, where trust is key. Consider if constant check-ins are really necessary during slow progress. Utilize chats or face-to-face communication for updates and operational queries. Assess if full team attendance is vital and if recurring topics can be avoided. Ensure meetings yield outcomes for all involved, and explore alternative information-gathering methods while questioning the necessity of the information itself. When you lift the burden of meetings from your team you boost their work energy.

Foster open communication among team members to ensure everyone is aligned with project goals and aware of their responsibilities. Tools like Slack, Discord, or project management platforms can facilitate communication and collaboration. Automate Repetitive Tasks: Identify repetitive tasks such as building, testing, and deployment, and automate them using tools like continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

Daily Stand-up Meetings: Hold short daily stand-up meetings for the team to discuss progress, roadblocks, and dependencies. Version Control: Implement a version control system like Git to track changes, maintain compatibility between team members, and allow for easy rollbacks if necessary.

This is practice - videos and books are grateful for an overview, but the only way you're going to become an expert in your tooling is by using it over and over again. Make your set up is familiar and easy for yourself, for example in Unity, change the window layout to suit you, and make sure (if you have the luxury) you have enough screen real estate to see everything you need to at once without having to constantly minimise and maximise.

Invest in tools and technology that improve productivity, such as game engines like Unity or Unreal Engine, asset libraries, plugins, and middleware. Evaluate the specific needs of your project and choose tools that best suit your requirements.

Working in unreal or unity is a must if you want to make some major games especially as the game market has so many from those engines. Being proficient at the tools that are in their systems such as any type of coding, environmental, and as well as timelines and cameras are all important in a full game release.

Burnout can creep up on you and have serious consequences for your physical and mental health. Often, you don't realise how stressed you have become. Take a step back from the screen and go outside, take a walk, or do some other exercise. You might think this is a waste of time but its really not. There's two benefits to taking a step back, firstly you give yourself a break and do better work when you return, and secondly you often get sparks of brilliant ideas when performing mundane tasks away from the screen or exercising. I myself have found taking a walk to be the best way to create new ideas.

Promote healthy work-life balance among team members to prevent burnout and maintain productivity over the long term. Encourage breaks, set realistic deadlines, and foster a supportive work environment.

Encourage team members to continuously learn and improve their skills through training, workshops, and knowledge sharing sessions. Staying up-to-date with industry trends and best practices can lead to more efficient development processes.

Some lessons take years to learn. For me, it was learning that my time is better spent making smaller scoped games that are less likely to burn me out, and more likely to keep me interested. When you learn your lessons, don't repeat the mistakes. It's easy to be "set in our ways" about of lot in life, but be logical and make decisions that make you happy, or maximise the chances of your success (whichever outcome you're aiming for).

Be receptive and make room for change. Quality trumps rigid schedules or plans. Embrace challenges as puzzles worthy of your ingenuity to solve together. Celebrate accomplishments both big and small along the way. Motivation matters.