in praise of deadlines

At last count, we’ve been talking about our next project for the last year or so. And while development is under way and things are definitely happening on the new project front (more on that soon), the work has been going on at our usual thoughtful, deliberative pace. But all that changed this last weekend… 

We had shown our games at a couple of the terrific Playcrafting events in Boston, and were thrilled when they invited Worthing & Moncrieff to participate in a unique GameJam opportunity. The Playcrafting folks have partnered with audio giant Bose to host a series of GameJam Augmented Reality weekends to develop gaming content for their new Frames platform. And the best part? They were looking for game ideas based primarily on audio mechanics. How could we say no? 
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​So last Friday night the W&M team, along with programming powerhouse Brian Jordan whom we borrowed for the weekend (thanks Brian!), headed in to the Bose facility in Brighton to get our hands on Frames of our own. Which are beautiful, by the way. The finish and feel are really lovely and the sound quality is (as you’d expect) brilliant. We’ll have much more to say about the game we built over the weekend soon.

​But I wanted to take this opportunity to note how clarifying a punishingly short deadline can be. We made big decisions at the drop of a hat. Issues were brought up succinctly, discussed by whoever felt connected enough to the issue to look up from their laptop, and a definitive choice got made. Every time. Not that they were all the best choices, or that we won’t go back to fix any of them, but a merciless schedule removed the temptation to dither. The natural tendency to hedge. A lot of decisions were suffixed by the shorthand phrase “...it’s a GameJam” which gave us permission to pick something and move forward. 

I loved it. We got so much done. So on this Valentine’s Day let’s raise a glass to the Tyranny of the Ridiculous Timeline and all the freedoms it brings with it.