A Note on Failure and Success
As I'm on the search for a new full-time role, my current 9-5 is largely centered around all of the wonderful ways to fold and refold my various resumes into a beautiful origami crane/toad/unicorn, pick your favorite. Much of that time is spent on LinkedIn, searching for openings that either fit my skillset and capabilities or of those roles at companies where I feel I could thrive for a year or more. Suffice it to say, I have no interest in selling insurance.
One thing about LinkedIn that I've noticed is that there's so much content based on the various successful efforts that other people have made, celebrating some sort of advancement or achievement from a company, individual, or industry that the person admires. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for having a party and congratulating friends, colleagues, and other professionals for the work they've done that I feel is worth highlighting. Congratulations on closing that deal! I'm so very proud to know you! I wish you continued success in your new role! Hell yeah! Chase that paper! Something I don't see much in LinkedIn's narrative is where people have stumbled, whether it's due to something they were personally responsible for, or maybe the situation just didn't shake out the way things were planned. These things happen. What matters most is how we, collectively or individually, course correct after adversity.
So, here's a short story about how I've recently failed and have begun course correcting:
After stepping away from corporate life (which itself is a story about systemic failures to be told a different day), I decided to take on what I thought was a small project that I'd wanted to work on for well over a decade, a small video game where you build and fight small robots. I began this project knowing that I'd never worked on games before, that I had only the most surface understanding of game engines, very little experience with 3D modeling for games, zero experience animating... the list goes on. I stacked the deck against myself almost intentionally where if I could succeed, it would show how capable I was as a creator, a designer, a storyteller, a producer, and lastly as a project manager.
Over the first few months of 2022, I assembled a small (paid) team to assist my efforts in the areas where I had the most to learn: software engineering, storyboarding, 3D modeling/animation, and narrative storytelling. The first 6 months flew by and we were all largely 'heads down' on our respective tasks, but that's where some of my own inexperience as a team leader/project manager began exhibit itself... feature creep had set in and we were behind schedule and overbudget. We'd gotten wrapped up in the bigger picture of what we wanted to do as a 5-year plan rather than focusing on what could successfully be delivered and ultimately fund said 5-year plan. As we exited 2022, the team working on the game was reduced to a lead developer and myself, but only as long as necessary. At the very least, there was a framework in place, and we knew what we needed to accomplish to deliver a minimum viable product, even if it was a laundry list of tasks.
Since then, 2023 saw a slow increase of activity, where we focused on the underpinnings of the project, and then later on the custom assets and animations and 2024 has seen significant clean-up of the entire project, implementation of all of our custom assets, and extensive user testing as we crawl closer and closer to a release. With any luck, we'll see an early access release in late 2024 as we expand in-game systems and add more and more content.
The failure of this project has been that, due to my own inexperience with how these things are done, the project has taken about four times as long to complete and has cost twice as much as I originally budgeted for. As the project manager, I made a call as early as I could to course correct, reel in spending, and to work with engineers and creatives to better determine our release schedule, as well as reducing the overall scope of the project so as to make everything that much less complicated in the long run.
The initial goal was to deliver an MVP within 6-9 months. With that expectation, this project has been a colossal failure. It’s frustrating, mostly because it showed me everything I didn’t know about building a game as well as how much more I have to learn about leading others. I’d be lying if I said these realizations hadn’t taken a significant toll on my mental health because I’d spent the last 15 years as part of ‘winning’ organizations, where success seems all but inevitable, especially when you’re a rank-and-file employee collecting regular paychecks. There have been more than a few days where I’ve sat at my desk unsure of every aspect of my being. Failure will do that to you.
But there’s a secret: Though I may have failed, I am not my failure.
Here's what I’m trying to say: It’s ok to fail. It’s ok to experience setbacks. It’s ok to be laid off. It’s ok to lose your job due to circumstances outside of your control. It’s ok for your project to be cancelled. It’s ok for your business to shutter. It’s ok to take time off. It’s ok to go back to the drawing board, reassess, and pivot. You are more than your failures and successes. You are more than anything that’s drafted on a CV. You are your passion, drive, and intuition. You are the quiet moments in-between, where you are building, learning, and collaborating. You are valuable, no matter how many times you've failed.