NoX, the project lead for Eternal Silence just stepped down as of sunday. We're soon sending out a short message about the sad fact, and announcing that Kage Musha and I are taking over. More specifically we've split the position into two: Kage is going to maintain communication with the world (you) and the internal tools while I'm in charge of the administration in the sense that I'm supposed to have the overview of the situation and get things done.
That, put frankly, isn't easy.
One of my first initiatives was to get a hold of each project lead. There's been a lot of changes recently and the mapping and art team lead had just been hired into our group. It turns out that it was a good decision: The art team lead decided to step down, which immediately threw me out in a search for a new one. At the moment I'm in touch with a potential replacement, but the details aren't fully in place.
Apart from that minor setback I've gotten in touch with people and had some awesome chatters. Lately we've been braining a lot about where we want ES to go, and how best to achieve the goals GMan elaborated in his post. There are a lot of options but my main impression from this talk has been that I've never been on a team that's this dedicated and motivated at creating a better ES.
My work so far has been mainly to get an overview. There are so many different tasks being worked on by so many different people that it needs to be organised incredibly smooth to run somewhat smoothly. We've started using a collaboration tool called Feng which is really starting to help things out. For me it's pure gold. And I'm amazed at how good the team is at using it :)
One thing that isn't going to be easy are the serious aspects of managing. It's clear that you as a project lead need to make sure that the initial plans gets carried out. It's also clear that sometimes things doesn't work so smoothly. As a project lead I think it's important that you brace these facts and prepare for anything that might come.. The great thing about a community-project though is that everyone knows what's expected and what's not cool. Yet another thing that makes this so easy to manage.
To sum things up: I can in complete honesty say that I think this is going to grow into one helluva game!
