I served on the production team at Studio Chyr on Hotel Infinity first as a Production Intern, then Associate Producer, then as Associate Technical Producer, when my role expanded to cover QA testing. I was the second primary member of our production team and accumulated many major responsibilities over the course of the project.

Production Process

For the majority of production, we operated under an Agile system, following Scrum methodology with two-week sprints and utilizing a Kanban board to track tasks. I maintained our Kanban board, monitoring and overseeing task flow, and a burndown chart. I also took ownership of keeping the team updated on incoming milestone submission deadlines.

Communicating with External Partners

I single-handedly delivered our Alpha and Beta milestone submissions to our external partners at Meta and Sony.

I handled the entire process of the submissions, from initially planning and preparation to delivering the submission build. This included reviewing milestone guidelines to make sure all the build requirements were met, coordinating with our engineers and designers for necessary bug fixes, performing smoke tests to assess build stability, and creating documentation overviewing any remaining bugs in the build and puzzle walkthrough videos.

Playtesting

I spearheaded our external playtesting initiative during the middle of production.

After a long pause on our external playtesting program, I revamped our playtesting procedures and began bringing in playtesters every other week to test puzzles and chapters in the game. I led the 1-on-1 playtest sessions from start to finish, then analyzed feedback to pass along to the rest of the team.

I integrated playtest feedback into regular design meetings, which designers used to inform changes to puzzle design and level flow. These playtests were vital to the design iteration process. Much of our finalized level and puzzle design in the game was directly dictated by the results of the playtesting process— not just by the feedback itself but the internal discussions within the team that arose out of evaluating that feedback.

Case Study: QA Testing Process Improvements

During mid-production, after upscaling our QA team, I observed that there were a few redundancies in our process that were slowing down the team. For one, I realized that the level of detail in our QA reports and bug reports was outpacing the rate at which new issues were resolved naturally. At this point in development, our designers and engineers were focusing on feature implementation and level design. Small audio and visual issues like z-fighting and misplaced SFX timing were common, as our visual and auditory assets were still largely placeholder and would remain so until our level design pass was complete. And yet the QA team was logging each bug in excruciating detail, even though these issues were extremely low priority and unlikely to be addressed soon.

So, I revamped the process, introducing a more lightweight model of QA report and bug card templates. The new templates prioritized a high level of detail on softlocks and other game-breaking bugs and simpler, more high-level information for smaller issues. These changes lowered the overall amount of time required for write-ups significantly, allowing testers to spend more time testing in-headset. The QA team’s output of QA reports completed a week increased by ~30%. Additionally, the changes to the QA reports streamlined the feedback going to our engineers and designers, creating much more actionable tasks for individual contributors.

Trailer Footage Capture

I captured PS VR2 gameplay footage on a Aja KiPro Ultra 12G capture card for our announcement and launch trailers.

For this, I had to learn how to use the device, configure its settings, organize and acquire all the shots for our trailer editor with a tight turnaround. I coordinated with our trailer editor regarding shot direction, as well as our engineers and designers for the necessary build additions to make acquiring certain shots possible.

Documentation

I was in charge of maintaining our production, QA, and studio operations documentation in Notion as our internal processes shifted and evolved. I also used this documentation to onboard several of our intern cohorts onto our production and QA testing practices.

I served as Co-Producer on Strata from the beginning of the project to delivery. I was in charge of sprint planning, regular communications with our external partners, and delivering major milestone submissions. All of Strata’s milestones were submitted on-time despite a 5-month hardware delivery delay, which took up nearly half of our 12-month timeline and made our design and QA testing much more difficult.

Directing Sprint Planning

I led biweekly sprint kickoff meetings, delegating task priorities and goals to internal team.

To prepare, I would review our sprintly progress and any upcoming milestones, planning out priorities based on existing task statuses and what work was necessary for the next milestone submission. During Sprint Review, I overviewed these plans and the reasoning behind them, and also took time to update the team on any upcoming deadlines and direct feedback from our external partners.

Communicating with External Partners

I reported to our external partners on a weekly basis, informing them of progress in the build and making requests for materials and feedback as needed by the team. I worked directly with our lead designer to explain ruleset changes and design decisions. I also helped to mediate milestone delivery requirements with our external partners in light of the missing hardware that prevented us from QA testing all features to completion, as was originally planned.

Supporting Design Iteration

I supported design iteration by participating in internal playtesting with our lead designer, contributing feedback to ruleset changes and design direction. I also helped coordinate external playtests and hosted several on-site playtesting sessions at the University of Chicago. I owned the process from beginning to end, coordinating with our contacts at the university, organizing the equipment and space, making detailed itineraries for our participating team members, supervising playtests, and performing the necessary outreach and scheduling with our student participants.

Manifold Garden is an award-winning puzzle-exploration game known for physics-defying puzzles and infinite, impossible architecture. While Manifold Garden released in 2019, long before I joined Studio Chyr, I had the opportunity to work on the game for a post-launch initiative.

Apple Arcade Major Milestone Submission Preparation

As a Production Intern, I was tasked with preparing for Manifold Garden‘s culminating milestone submission to Apple Arcade. I spearheaded preparation for the submission, researching internal documentation to establish milestone submission criteria and making a plan of bug fixes for the submission. I pitched a plan of bug fixes and feature additions to studio leadership for future use by director of engineering.