Discord Q&A Highlights!

29th March Ed and Jacob Highlights!

Lisa: Hi Ed, hi Jacob! Can you introduce yourselves, what you do at Netspeak Games, what your day to day looks like?

Ed (he/him): Oh hi! I'm Ed! I'm Creative Director, which means my job varies quite a lot from day to day depending on what we're trying to solve. Some weeks I work really closely with the artists and game designers, running workshops. Other weeks are quieter, and involve writing documentation or planning things. I'm also the only person in the studio with a background in writing and narrative design so I'm responsible for a lot of what goes on there (although I'm not the only writer whose work is in the game).

Jacob (he/him): Hi Lisa! Hi everyone! I'm Jacob (He/him). I'm one of the game designers here at Netspeak. My job is to design & implement content, rules and systems within the game to make sure the experience is what we want it to be! My day to day involves working on new or existing systems, fine tuning them. Having discussions about new content for the game and where possible fixing bugs!

From sachfe: Are you planning on adding ads?

Ed: probably not! we certainly don't want to. I think the experience we want from sunshine days is about getting drawn into the world, chilling out, leaning back in your chair, getting into a nice calm flow state... and ads disrupt that, they take you out of the world we might consider it if we felt like we'd exhausted all other options and opt-in ads where people choose to watch them to get some in-game currency are a different thing, I suppose - we might be open to that but in the immediate future (like the next six months or so) I doubt it

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18th April JJ and Rob Highlights!

Lisa: Hi JJ, hi Rob! Can you introduce yourselves, what you do at Netspeak Games, what your day to day looks like?

JJ (they/them): ayoooo, i'm JJ~! i'm brazilian, and my pronouns are they/them. at Netspeak, i'm a UIX designer - meaning i handle user interface/user experience. in simpler terms, i make menus, buttons, pop-ups, and aaaall the little things you use to interact with the game! so if we need to communicate something to the players, or if we need to make a menu they can select things from, i'm your guy.

Rob (he/him): Hi everyone! I'm Rob and I am an audio designer. My job is to create and implement all audio in the game, as well as audio outside the game, for example on our socials. Every day my job is very different! One day I could be composing music, another day I could be creating sound effects, another day I could be implementing sounds inside Unreal, another day I could be singing about golden trees on Tiktok!

From mani: Can you explain your strategy on how to make people look where they need to look?

Rob: From an audio perspective, my job is more to support what a designer like JJ is doing! I guess my strategy is to try and anticipate what a UI button would sound like if it were a real life thing. For me it's important to have a clear idea of the UI story and make sure that it makes sense. This is something I always tweak. It's important for me to be flexible as well, as UI designs constantly change as we implement feedback and bring in new features.

JJ: ahahah that's actually such a common challenge for UI. i hope you don't feel discouraged if you struggle with it, cause we do too sometimes. it's part of the process, lots of trial and error. essentially, we can rely on some pre-established strategies from aaaall the UIX designers before us who made sort of guidelines on what works and what doesn't. so, for example, we can use (Gestalt principles), or (Material Design) strategies as a basis, and work from there. we can rely on making the most important parts stand out through contrast, font size, and in our game we also have visual feedback/VFX (like clicking a button and some sparkles fly from the button toward where you want the player to look, which helps guide their gaze). and sound helps a lot as well! still, even applying all these principles, people can still miss/overlook important things, so it's an organic process in which theory meets practice and we see what sticks and what doesn't:

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3rd May Ryan and Cally Highlights!

Lisa: Hi Ryan, hi Cally! Can you introduce yourselves, what you do at Netspeak Games, what your day to day looks like?

Cally (he/him): Howdy Howdy! I am Cally, CEO & Co-Founder of Netspeak! I do lots of stuff! Talk...mostly... My day to day involves wrestling my 2 year old son & my puppy 🐾pets-and-cute-critters enough that they leave me alone in my office. I read a lot of industry news - I spend 80% of my time sitting, and thinking as deeply as possible about Netspeak. Are the team happy? How can we do more? Are our goals still correct? What is the philosophy we are working under? What strategy are we employing? How do the tactics across the teams add up? Where do the frogs come from? Who keeps adding these frogs to the game? Mostly, I sit and keyboard warrior into slack with awesome people who care about what they do. It's pretty charming.

Ryan (he/him): Hi! I'm Ryan and I'm the UI Guy here at Netspeak. What that means is a lot of different things at different times of the day / week / month 😄 Primarily I spend my time either writing code, or building screens that go into the game or building tools so that others can do that too. A lot of the time that also means being part of the design and QA processes too, bringing up edge cases and user interaction scenarios so that we can hopefully cover as many states as possible and make the way you all interact with the game a much easier and nicer experience! I've worked on mobile titles my whole career, and really enjoy working on a game that aims to bring exactly what I love in games, to other people: fun, friends, and frogs.

From giemltnt: How do you organize/approach your daily tasks? +++ do you have any habits or routines that help you stay productive & focused?

Ryan: The boring part of the answer is for organisation and approaching daily tasks company wide is done through a few productivity tools. We use JIRA and Miro which are really helpful for tracking tasks and bugs, and collaboratively working on ideas/designs together. As for routines and habits: I try to take a quick walk, or play with my dog for a bit if I'm getting overwhelmed or finding something hard to focus on, so that I'm not just sitting staring at a blank screen getting frustrated with myself for long periods of time. Resetting is really helpful.

Cally: I have ADHD, I take meds for Anxiety - some days my depression keeps me in bed and other days I forget to eat for 36 hours straight while working constantly and then pass out. Fortunately for me, I have people in my life who love me. My wife helps me stay hydrated and fed. My son helps me balance work & life. My dog gets me to go outside twice a day I couldn't do anything without the people that care about me. Well i COULD dont get me wrong I was competent enough but it was pure chaos Oh and MIRO. we use Miro a lot: it's a big whiteboard in your browser; it ALLOWS Chaos (important for Cally) but supports organisation (important for everyone else). It's a great tool and can be used for anything - I use it for keeping track of large multi-month objectives. At the start of the year, I made everyone write down 6 goals and every few weeks I check in on how they are doing… Miro is great.