Portfolio

Cursebreakers is a game by Don Pigeon Productions, a 10-person team that consists of 5 core team members and 5 external artists, with me as the Producer.

The project has been in development since August 2025. To keep development on track, the team is using:

• Jira: task management, time tracking & sprint tracking
• Discord: daily stand-ups & cross-discipline communication
• Google Sheets: asset tracking and prioritization
• Miro: visual design bible

As the Producer of Don Pigeon Productions, I:

• Managed workflows and task tracking using Jira.
• Facilitated Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, retrospectives, and daily standups.
• Fostered clear communication workflows between 5 internal team members and 5 external contributors spanning different countries and time zones, also delivering regular progress reports to 4 advisors.
• Acted as the central point of contact across teams, proactively identifying blockers and facilitating quick resolutions to maintain momentum and meet key milestones.
• Practiced proactive conflict resolution through regular 1:1 check-ins, creating space for team members to voice concerns early and collaboratively developing action plans to address issues before they impacted production.
• Maintained comprehensive project documentation and detailed meeting notes, ensuring decisions, action items, and design changes were clearly recorded and accessible to the full team and stakeholders.
• Organized monthly team bonding events to foster trust, morale, and a comfortable collaborative environment, supporting long-term team health.
• Identified skill gaps and recruited 5 external team members to meet evolving project needs, ensuring the team had the expertise required to maintain momentum and quality.
• Onboarded new team members, aligning on expectations and responsibilities, introducing workflows and tools, and ensuring clarity around task ownership and deliverables.

Coordinating a Multidisciplinary Team Across Internal and External Contributors

Cursebreakers relied on collaboration between 5 core developers and 5 external contributors spanning programming, design, 2D art, 3D art, VFX, and audio. Because work was highly interconnected and contributors often worked asynchronously, there was a high risk that communication gaps could lead to implementation conflicts, unclear priorities, and production delays.

To reduce friction between disciplines, I established structured communication workflows through Discord, scrum ceremonies, recurring art meetings, and clear documentation.

Asset production also followed a multi-step feedback and approval pipeline, in which work-in-progress assets received iterative feedback before final integration into the project.

This structure improved visibility across both development and asset production while helping the team maintain alignment throughout long-term production.

Adapting Production Processes Throughout Long-Term Development

At the start of development, the team established intentionally strict communication and workflow standards to build healthy production habits. However, as the project evolved across multiple semesters, some processes began creating unnecessary overhead and no longer reflected the team’s actual needs.

Rather than rigidly maintaining the original structure, I continuously reassessed workflows alongside the team and adjusted ceremonies, communication expectations, and collaboration practices over time. Processes became more lightweight where appropriate while still preserving accountability and alignment.

To support long-term morale and team cohesion, I also organized recurring non-work-related team nights, helping create a more comfortable and communicative development environment during an extended production cycle.

Managing Scope Within a Technically Ambitious Multiplayer Project

Because of our capstone class structure, early production moved rapidly into implementation before the team had fully aligned on long-term system architecture, technical dependencies, or realistic production velocity. Combined with the complexity of multiplayer and procedural generation, this resulted in a first semester that had frequent reworks, evolving technical requirements, and a project scope that exceeded what was realistically achievable within the capstone timeline.

Following the first semester, I helped facilitate a full scope reassessment focused on identifying the project’s core player experience and redefining the target deliverable as a polished vertical slice. Features were reorganized into minimum scope goals and stretch goals, allowing the team to prioritize critical systems while preserving the project’s creative vision.

This restructuring improved milestone clarity, reduced scope creep, and helped stabilize production for the remainder of development.

Supporting Asset Production Without Blocking Development

Because the project depended heavily on external artists and specialists, delays in asset production had the potential to block gameplay implementation and iteration. Additionally, the team’s understanding of external production velocity evolved significantly throughout development.

To reduce dependency bottlenecks, I implemented a dedicated asset tracking pipeline through Google Sheets, organized recurring review meetings with contributors, and maintained placeholder integration workflows, so gameplay systems could continue developing before final assets were complete.

When production needs expanded, I also coordinated onboarding for additional contributors and supported the selective use of existing asset packs to reduce turnaround time while maintaining visual cohesion.