Boring statistics + preview image (Patreon)

This is a boring blog post about the statistics behind versions. You can skip all the way down for a sneak preview of version 0.9.

Recently I have lost my job, giving me more time to focus on what matters most in life: the game.

After a few weeks of working on the game much more than I used to in the past two years, I wanted to measure my velocity and throughput and check how (if?) my productivity has improved during version 0.9, the version I am currently working on.

There are many ways to measure outputs, but I decided to measure what takes most of my time: images and vids. That is not to say coding, story and marketing don’t take time, but I feel that sticking to one, more-or-less constant measurement would be the most beneficial form of measurement.

I keep all the images I render in folders based on their versions so I created a spreadsheet containing for each version the date of the first image, the date of the last image, total number of images (and vids) produced for the version and the number of (“idle”) days between the last image of the previous version and the first image of the new one.

What do I learn from this analysis?

• It should be noted that as of version 0.6, I have started adding animations to the game, which are obviously much slower to produce, although I am getting better at creating them faster.
• On average, I rest for two weeks between versions. During this time I throw ideas in my mind, render some wild concept images, write lore etc.
• Unemployment increased my productivity by 40%, from an average of 4.4 images per day to 6.15 per day. To be honest, this stat is a bit disappointing to me, I hoped to be much more productive since I sit at home all day. After thinking about this for some time, I thought about two possible explanations for this:
• Even during the time I was employed, I often spent long hours working the game. Covid work from home and good managers I trained offered me long hours of idle idle time every day, hours I used for rendering (when “working” from home) and coding/story (when “working” from the office). Hence, being unemployed was not such a dramatic change. For those who wink and think “you are unemployed because you spent time working on your game”, the short  answer is no. I started working on the game because there was little for me to do at work; I trained my managers well and was left with huge empty spaces in my calendar every day. Only Then I started working on my game.
• Another possible explanation to my less than expected productivity is that learning to be productive when you are unemployed takes time. I needed to learn how to make the best use of all those long (but not endless) hours at my disposal every day. Why do I think this theory might be true? Because I see my efficiency growing between April (5.8 images per day) and May (6.6). In other words: As time passes I learn how to better manage my time when I am completely my own boss.

So there you have it. Some numbers, stats and a lot of words. You know what? I’ll spoil you with a preview for 0.9 because why not?

Thanks for reading, 0.9 is coming in early June!