The Wulven Apprentice

This week the 10 candidates were split into teams to work on projects in secret. At stake is the ultimate prize: a chance to win a paid role at Wulven!


Task 1 Details

The Task: Work together in your team to produce resources aimed at helping new and intermediate players, particularly those who have either not used the forum or are new to the forum. The resources could be articles, tools, decks, guides, videos, audio - anything really, providing the aim is to help players get into the game and stick with it.

External help: You may reference other existing work. Don't reinvent the wheel - add value to what's already there or create new things to meet otherwise unmet needs.

Format: It's up to you whether you do it as forum posts or videos or audio file or whatever. If you want to host webpages and don't have any space to do that, Gondorian can help in that regard.

Reason: Shows off organization, co-ordination, understanding the customer base, team-working, presentation, confidentiality, attention to detail, standards of quality. What is produced should also end up valuable beyond the contest, so it will deliver real value to the community for your hard work in this first week.

Confidentiality: This task will not be revealed to the public until you are finished producing your resources, so please keep the task confidential. People will then use what you made and vote for which team they think did the best.

Support: Each team will either have Gondorian or Mojumbo available to help with any questions or logistical issues.

Winner: 80% determined by public poll, 20% by Wulven judges.



Task 1 Submissions

Both teams decided to produce websites. Please check them out via the links below, make use of them and consider which you think delivers best on what was asked of the teams.




The Results

After viewing the two websites the teams produced, the public overwhelmingly voted for Random Heroes, and the judges agreed. This team will have immunity to elimination this week, while the losing team must face Kyle in the Wulven Lair. As the project manager of the losing team, Tomm chose to take Brandon and Sean with him into the Lair, where they were given a final chance to beg for their lives!



Tomm

How do you think your team did on the task?
I feel that the work that my team produced did not live up to the vision we had in mind. Everyone, myself included, had one or more tasks that were left unfinished. Out of the work we did produce I feel that a majority of it was helpful and informative. However I do feel that some of the work submitted was not up to the standard that I had hoped to achieve.


How do you think you personally did on the task?
I am happy with the work that I was able to finish and feel that the articles I wrote (resource management, lance starter guide, and the beginners game introductions) were very informative and should maintain their use for awhile. On the other hand I feel that I didn't finish enough of what I had planned, I feel that if given another opportunity to prove myself I will show you that there is a lot more from me to be shown. Now after losing this 1st challenge I have a chip on my shoulder and motivation to show I belong here.


Why do you think your team lost?
There are a few reasons why I think the we lost but the most glaring of those I feel is that a few of my teammates are not at the level to compete in this competition. I feel that Brandon, Sean, and Caleb are all lacking in the amount of game knowledge and game theory needed to properly make decisions on game development. If you don't thoroughly understand a game how can you hope to advance it?


Who do you think should be fired?
It was a consensus pick amongst the team that Brandon is the person who deserves to go home. We all agree that he did the least amount of work, had the most work left unfinished, and turned in the most sub standard work. I personally feel like his knowledge and understanding for the game is not even in the same ballpark as the rest of the people chosen.


Why do you think you shouldn’t be fired?
While I feel that I didn't perform to my highest level, I do feel that I put out a higher amount and quality of work than the other 2 up for elimination with me. Anyway you cut it making 2 poor quality youtube videos is not nearly enough to show that you want this. If you do give me another chance I will show you just what 110% of my ability looks like. This has been a dream job of mine since I was a kid and I feel like if you give me another chance I will prove I am the right man for the job.


Any other comments to Kyle?
I feel, and have also had this sentiment echoed by a large number of the community, that at least for the 1st challenge the teams were very unbalanced. If you look at the names, in game credentials, and contributions of the other team on paper: Pandev: won several pop ups, created a deck builder widely used by the SE community; Jazz: hosts several unique tournaments, graphic design genius; Preybird: been writing articles pretty much since the beginning for new players, his articles are what taught me to be a better player; Nataku: one of the best players and minds in the game today. Then look at our team: between Samuel and myself we might have 3-4 articles and 10 or so popup wins and that's it. I feel this also played into the rather lopsided voting and results for this challenge.



Brandon

How do you think your team did on the task?
As a team we worked together very well. Communication was never an issue; Skype was always active with people chatting all day long. As for the content Nocturnal Advantage created, I believe our articles and the Shadow Era TCG Starter Guide video were well done. However our website itself left a great deal to be desired. After this first challenge the only part I’m sad about is that all of our content never really had a chance to be viewed. All our effort was for nothing.

How do you think you personally did on the task?
I gave everything I had toward this challenge, staying in contact with everyone, keeping up to speed with what needed done. My contributions to this task are not as viewable as the other members of my team. To my point, I don’t believe there is a single article on our site which I did not edit. The two videos I produced turned out well, however the starter guide is far superior to my other one. In addition I did write an article of my own, but unfortunately Sean did not upload it to the site.

Why do you think your team lost?
Plain and simple, being brutally honest, our website was not appealing in any shape or form. I wouldn’t go to it for information. There is no visual stimulation, no integration of video with text, as suggested. No real theme to it other than the color blue. It’s not a place I want to be, if I don’t want to use the site than why would anyone else. We may have all the help in the world for the new player, but if it’s hidden behind links and more links than all that great content is useless.

Who do you think should be fired?
I believe our failure was based on our website and the person who volunteered to make it (and ultimately did make it) was Sean; he should be fired. I say this because with all the communication we had it would have taken him seconds to send a Skype message asking for help with design ideas or creating content. The fact that all the pages are PDF is also odd. We may forget that all this competition really is is a job interview and the website Sean submitted looks similar to a project a high school student would make. Actions should have consequences and the consequence for Sean in this case is to be fired.

Why do you think you shouldn’t be fired?
In this section I could tell you about what all I did to help out and how amazing a person I am, but that’s not me. All I need is a Skype screenshot from the night before our challenge was due.
Brandon: ok hold on
Brandon: ther are olny two of them btw
Brandon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1clUNxPCeg
Tomm: OK whatever u made the page and did alot of other work on screenshots and pics
Brandon: first one
Brandon: huh?
Tomm: U did a sh*tload of work u act like "oh I only made 2 vids" like its not a lot or something that's all I meant lol
Brandon: oh ok
Brandon: lol

Any other comments to Kyle?
Everyone knows that someone has to be the first to leave and if it’s me then I just want to say thank you for allowing me to compete for a chance at a job I’ve wanted all my life.


Sean

How do you think your team did on the task?
I think my team did very well on the task. Since the task was aimed at providing valuable information to new players, I feel that we had strong articles, good videos, and helpful links that would provide information to new players and allow them to quickly advance in the game.


How do you think you personally did on the task?
I feel I did well on the task. I designed the website for the team and set up our youtube page to host our team's content. Since the task was announced on Friday (which is my last day off of a given week) and I work Full Time, I had limited hours to work on the webpage. My original design was to code the website in Adobe Flash using ActionScript, but that can take a long while to debug and can be very time consuming. Granted, the design would have been a lot more smooth and would have included interesting effects, but I felt that with my work schedule, using Adobe Dreamweaver would have been a better option to ensure it was turned in on time. Given the time I had, I think I did a great job getting my webpage developed and posted.


Why do you think your team lost?
I was surprised to see that my team lost, but looking over both submissions I can see where the other site had a little more information and was a little better geared towards new players.


Who do you think should be fired?
I have a hard time picking someone that should be fired, but since I have to pick I would say Brandon. Brandon did a good job with the videos, but he was the hardest person to keep in contact with and compared to the rest of the team the videos seemed to take less time and effort overall.


Why do you think you shouldn't be fired?
I have been working on supporting Shadow Era for over a year now since I have found the game. I have been a pre-order customer for both Call of the Crystals and Dark Prophecies, and have been promoting the game at local card shops all over my area. In terms of the Wulven Apprentice, the week we were given to complete task one was bad timing for me, I worked full time and had all closing shifts, so I did not have as much as I would have liked to put out the perfect webpage. I feel I shouldn't be fired because I have already taken precautions with my boss to switch more of my shifts to be opening ones to allow for more time in the day to work on future tasks. I will not allow time to be an issue again. I also believe that since I have a degree in game design from the University of Central Florida, and am working towards my Masters Degree in Game Programming from Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy, I have a lot I can give to Wulven, this game, my team, and to future tasks.


Any other comments to Kyle?
First off I just want to say I am honored to have been picked for the Wulven Apprentice. I love this game and I love this community, and I am honored to have the opportunity to have a chance to be a part of such an amazing team. That being said, I feel I have a lot more to give to this competition, this game, and this company in general, and I humbly request the chance to prove myself and to have another shot at showing off what I am capable of. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope I am able to move forward.



Kyle's Decision

Alright folks, let's get down to business. And let me be brutally honest here.

Tomm, your team lost because your website sucked. It looks like something from 1995. New players won't want to read whatever you guys wrote because it's not presented nicely. Shadow Era has some beautiful artwork, and it would be easy to spice things up by throwing in some pictures here and there. And nobody said you had to create a website. If your team isn't good at web design, you could have made a downloadable pdf book or mini magazine for new players which is much easier to design and format. As project manager, you need to understand your team's strengths and weaknesses and make your decisions based on that. You also need to follow up on people and check their progress to ensure that the end result of the work from many people is cohesive and of high quality.

Brandon, other members of your team felt that you put in the least amount of work this week. Making videos isn't so easy, you need to have a script, practice it and perfect it. It feels like you just hit the record button and rambled on a bit. Your team also said that you don't understand the game well enough, and several people noticed what you said near the end of your match commentary, "He knows that mages don't have that amount of destruction. Even my large destruction cards deal only one or two damage to a large number of allies." Did you forget about Supernova? That is a hugely powerful board wipe that could have won you the game.

Sean, as creating the website was your responsibility, you really let your team down this week. If your website design skills weren't up to par, then you shouldn't have taken on that task. You have to understand your own limitations and how much time you have available to put into a task. The website is ugly, and having all the articles linked as pdf files just seems odd. If your team was set on having a website, the easiest route would be to use a free web template which would look nice and be really easy to edit.

All things considered though, you all made a good effort this week. I hope you learned some good lessons and what it means to have your work publicly scrutinized!

Based on your work, team feedback and evaluation from the judges, it's time for one person to be eliminated. For a position like this, it comes down to knowledge of the game. You really have to know your stuff or people will call you out on it...

Brandon, now you're mine!!