Reflection: Pressure, Playtest Day, and Finding Our Way Forward
This week began with momentum. We completed a motion capture session and captured every scene we believed we would need. Our goal was clear: by the end of the week, we wanted every scene assembled in Unreal, with cameras placed and ready to render into a first draft of the music video.
But after that initial burst of progress, we stalled.
As the project became more complicated, so did the emotions around it. Questions of who should be doing what, how much each person was contributing, and whether everyone’s work was being seen began to weigh heavily on the team. Because much of our work happens in parallel, it became difficult to fully understand one another’s contributions, needs, and visions.
At the same time, the project itself had reached a difficult stage: animation takes time, our motion capture pipeline was not yet established, the details of our scenes were not yet fully worked out, and discussions about artistic direction were scattered. Instead of leaving conversations with greater alignment, we often left with more possibilities than clarity.
In many ways, Playtest Day arrived at exactly the right moment. It became a pressure test for both the project and the team. The pressure that had been building all week finally surfaced, and by Friday evening, the team may have been at its lowest point.
And yet, in that strained moment, we came together in the best way we could have.
Everyone renegotiated their time commitment to Playtest Day. We worked together to plan the Day’s division of labor, and the event itself went smoothly. More importantly, Playtest Day served its purpose: it gave us the outside perspective we had been missing.
The audience feedback helped clarify which parts of the project felt exciting, which ideas were resonating, and what we want to focus on moving forward. Rather than leaving Playtest Day feeling defeated, we left feeling more grounded.
During our Retrospective, we spoke honestly about what has not been working in our current teamwork style. We realized that each of us had been holding tightly to our own vision of what was “good,” while also becoming overly focused on what felt fair in terms of contributions. In trying so hard to make sure everyone had a say, we had unintentionally made it harder to make decisions at all.
People cared about different things within the project, and what felt most exciting or important to an individual did not always align with what was best for the project as a whole. Without a clear process for making those decisions, it became increasingly difficult to move forward together.
Our faculty advisor, John, reminded us of something simple but important: we do not have time to battle one another. We cannot let emotion take the lead. Instead, the process needs to decide our next move. For us, that means asking a straightforward question: how do we take what is in our heads and get it into Unreal Engine in a form that we can actually see and improve?
To support that process, we made an important change. Because our project does not have a client, an art director, or another clear decision-maker, John will now step into that role and make the final calls when needed.
We also set a concrete deadline. By the end of Week 11, on April 3, 2026, we will show what we have in a visual format. That may mean an animatic built from real Unreal scenes, or it may mean that every scene is laid out and functioning inside Unreal. Whatever form it takes, the priority is having something visible so we can begin improving it.
From now on, every idea and every process must earn its place. If something is not working, we will let it go.
For next week, our biggest priority is figuring out the motion capture and animation pipeline. If we cannot make that process work by the end of Week 11, we will pivot and find another way to tell the story.
This week was difficult, but it also made us stronger. We are leaving it with a clearer process, a more grounded shared vision, and a better understanding of what this team needs in order to move forward.
Lastly, here are some media from Playtest Day to close out this week’s blog.
Report on Playtest Day and Transcript Analysis, completed with human transcript cleanup, and the help of firefly.ai and ChatGPT.
3/23-3/27/2026