Everything I Need to Know About Project Management I Learned From Making Games

When I was a kid, I would have told you “When I grow up, I want to be a video game developer.” As I got older and started thinking about plans to further my education, my sister gave me some sound advice. “Just because you like dogs doesn’t mean you have to become a vet. You can just get a dog.” I took that advice and kept making games as a hobby.

A few years ago, I decided to try the 1 Game a Month Challenge, where, hold on to your britches because this part is going to blow your mind, you make one game every month! It was a fun project because each month you find a game jam to participate in to keep on track with making a game every month. In these game jams, you have to build an entire game from the ground up in a given time frame. It could be 10 days, 7 days, a weekend, or even 24 hours. Needless to say, creating an entire, playable game, in an extremely slim time frame, teaches you a lot about project management.

The first lesson I learned was to identify the absolute minimum requirements for the project to consider it “done”. It might be to move the character around, jump up, place coins and collect coins. You always think of cool ideas as the project moves along, but when the deadline starts looming over you, you have your minimum requirement list that takes priority.

Speaking of “Cool ideas” the “What ifs” and “Hey wouldn’t it be cool if….” you have to learn how to let go of features that are not working out. It makes sense on paper, but when you’re in the middle of projects especially when collaborating with other people, emotions can run high. You want the feature you championed for to come to life. Learning how to let go can be a challenge for some people. When you do it over and over every month, it becomes very easy.

I also learned a lot of cool p-rogramming concepts (and trigonometry at one point) , Agile development, and digital drawing. I made my first game in January, then one in February, then in March. By April, I realized I could keep going and completed 12 games within the year. Some of the games were okay, some were not even playable and just fell apart, but I completed my goal and learned so much in the process.