Taming the Dragon: Petricore’s Project Manager Christina

It’s been a month since our studio Petricore released its first original IP game: Mythic Realms. Mythic Realms is our mixed-reality roguelite RPG, where you can live out the life of a mythical hero in your very own room. Despite the fantastical and adventurous elements of our game, shipping a game is sometimes everything but magical. In fact, shipping a game can often feel like creating a series of checklists within checklists that just create more checklists. Who better to highlight this than the Ultimate Checklist Wrangler herself, Christina Andriano (she/her). Don’t be fooled, though; Christina does more than Project Manage/Checklist Wrangle, she is also one of Petricore’s founding members and our Art Director.

Meet Christina

Christina told me she felt she would be a great druid if only she were able to keep plants alive. Pets, though? They love her.

Wait, Project Manager AND Art Director? Yup. She does it all. Hilariously, when I asked Christina to answer some initial questions about “her role at Petricore” she gave me TWO entirely different, fully-fleshed out responses on her experiences as both Art Director and Project Manager. Something to remark about Christina is that with 10 years of industry experience (all of which was obtained at Petricore), she is organized as hell, which I think is possibly the only reason she has survived this long.

If you’re familiar with our studio Petricore, you may know that Christina, Ryan, Oliver and Spav (i.e: James) met a decade ago in college. Having never been investor funded, they started by mostly taking on small client projects to keep a flow of income. However, with time and experience (200+ projects, believe it or not), Petricore has moved to a place where they now are able to do projects with longer timelines and bigger budgets, reducing the amount of taskswapping. That being said, even for most studios that have been open 10 years, 200+ projects on the roster is not common.

Christina was acting as the sole Art Director (and Artist!) for the majority of these ten years, but as of 2022 has project-managed over ten of Petricore’s projects. When I asked why she decided to take on this double title, as I’m sure most would shudder at the workload, her response was illuminating. She claimed that it was Ryan who pointed out to her how well she was documenting and organizing everything without even being asked to. Due to the smallness of the team, Christina was essentially already “managing”, just without the title. That, and “I personally enjoy [organizing and making lists], so when he asked me, I figured why not give it a try. I enjoy doing it, and I also enjoy being involved and helping people wherever I can.”

So, not only did Christina take on an entirely new role on top of her old one, she recently orchestrated the release of Petricore’s largest title, Mythic Realms. Still being relatively fresh to Project Marketing, Christina happily took on the studio’s largest budgeted project to date. Also, did I mention it was in a genre none of the team had worked on before? Mythic Realms included MANY first-time learning experiences.

A Checklist for Your Checklist

An image of Christina and Spav trying to tame a bug on a company outing.

“There is nothing easy or intuitive about Project Management. It’s a rollercoaster, and if you did something correctly on one project, there’s a chance that the same exact thing will be incorrect on the next”. When I asked what one of the most challenging aspects of the role was, Christina admitted that it was the fact that something can sound easy and simple on paper but ultimately can quickly become explosively larger.  Here are two examples of what Christina claimed were the spookiest and most unpredictable about Mythic Realms:

1. Being infested with Bugs

Mythic Realms gave birth to what Christina titled the “Queen Bug List”, which was named as an homage to the Queen Bee—who usually has a swarm of worker bees(i.e: more bugs) at her disposal. Christina reflects on a point where the team felt entirely infested, and that “…it wasn’t feasible keeping bugs local to individual sprints or a features/improvement backlog.” She admits that there was a point where bugs were one of the largest derailments of the project. The reasoning for this, according to her, is that it is nearly impossible to predict a bug’s severity or how much time it will require to fix it. But, good-natured as always, Christina humorsly notes how she liked to call these bug-focused periods “fumigations”.

2. Watching time go by at the same speed as the backlog grows (which it shouldn’t be doing!)

“My end goal/purpose is to make sure projects get released (ideally on time and within budget but ultimately just released), while still aiming for the highest quality”. Christina recalls that right around the midpoint of production is when the real nerves start to kick in; she would often find herself wondering if the game would make it or what would need to be cut.

However, sometimes, the thing you fear happens, and it’s not as bad as you thought it would be. So, what happens when something gets cut? Or, when a game needs to be delayed?

What’s the Worst Thing That Can Happen?

A picture of the Mythic Realms/Petricore team celebrating the successful launch of their game.

“Always keep an eye on the scope of your project, as nothing is ever that simple on paper”. I can imagine most developers feel this way as they move from the concept to the production stage of their game. Despite the fact there is no such thing as a perfectly scoped game and that many games delay release, when it happens to you, it always seems to feel…personal?

While on paper, Mythic Realms doesn’t sound super difficult to produce, what started as a “small” RPG ended up needing a few extra months of production time beyond prediction. Even with some of the most seasoned teams, things still happen. “During the final phases of our Beta testing, we had received some vital player feedback that we wanted to address before we launched, but these were not ‘in before the lock’ easy changes. These were changes that needed time to assess and implement correctly.”

Even with the release of Mythic Realms only a few months away, Christina and the team made the ultimate decision to delay the game by a few more months. This was not an easy or lightly made decision, and it meant entirely rearranging nearly every plan made. Christina recalls how during this decision-making period, she had to carefully measure whether they had the budget or even time to even consider this option.

Once the delay was affirmed, this choice meant a tidal wave of new tasks, “It messes up a lot of planning, since you first have to check to see if you have the budget to even do so, then once you do pull the trigger you need to find a new release window and re-scheduling QA and running through that process again. If you had scheduled anything with marketing, you also have to let them know you are delayed, so their schedules change too. It’s time-consuming in multiple ways, but our deciding factor was that the changes we wanted to make was in the best interest of both the players and the game. All in all, we believe we made the right decision.”

To Delay or Not Delay

An “action shot” of Christina working on the game Battle Billiards.

“Listen to player feedback,” a short, sweet, and definitely reasonable piece of advice that Christina feeds my way, “if we had gotten the feedback earlier we would’ve have fixed it sooner”.

While indie games come with a host of issues in comparison to AAA ones, Mythic Realms is an exemplary show of what a little bit more time and money can provide for a small game. Looking between the feedback received from players months ago to the glowing 4.4 out of 5 on the Meta story, as well as a number of positive reviews from press and content creators, could give someone whiplash. While Christina does wish she had gotten the team to do user testing earlier, she’s grateful for the opportunity to have turned it around. She feels that if she had done this earlier, as well as truly paused and considered it, there may have been an opportunity to salvage something sooner.

However, with that being said, leaving things on the cutting room floor is part of most processes, especially in this industry, “We went into the final stretch of Mythic Realms with ideas for “polish time” and “stretch goals” except we didn’t really know that you don’t have until you release to work on your game, you have until 2 months before launch to finish it. Goodbye those dreams of “in polish we’ll fix this.” Later is now. We didn’t learn that lesson until much later in our development cycle.”

Thankfully, none of these moments have deterred the team or Christina. In fact, they seem more determined than ever to produce updates and fixes for the game. While organization is certainly a required element of being a good project manager, so is the ability to learn from past problems and make strong decisions in times of inevitable peril. Christina does all of this with a grace and calm that is enviable. And, in honor of how Christina ends every daily meeting, I’ll be ending our blog similarly: Christina wraps nearly every daily meeting by asking the team if anyone has any questions or concerns, followed by a chipper “We’re all on Slack if anyone needs anyone!”. I can safely say she says this wholeheartedly because if an issue arises, Christina is always happy to help a team member in need.