wiki_ghostguild/content/articles/self-assessment.md

title	description	category	tags	accessLevel	author	publishedAt
Self-Assessment		programs		member	Baby Ghosts Team	2025-11-10T10:42:09.231Z

Self-Assessment Document - go to the File menu and select Make a Copy.

Preparing for Self-Assessment

In today's session, we will discuss the importance of self-evaluation and why taking time for it is necessary. We will cover two types of self-evaluation- personal and studio self-evaluation.

Measuring Progress

The expression "what's not measured can't be managed" is often associated with a profit-centred mentality. But measuring things can also be good for improving communication and alignment, as well as assessing progress in a project. In this program, studios assess their values, goals, structures, resourcing, and operational flows to varying extents based on factors such as when and why they started collaborating and how far along their project is. Assessments should always clarify what is already in place for individuals and the collective.

Building Capacity with Clarity

It's important to have clarity in order to encourage collaborative and equitable participation.

This may seem basic, but it's not always easy. When you have a clear understanding of your goals, everyone can participate more fully. This increased participation leads to building capacity. We often forget that the most important resource we have is people, not money. When we achieve clarity, we can increase our capacity for participation and work together towards the development of the co-op. The only requirement is to have enough time and space to do so.

Making Space and Time

All of this work requires time and space, and you have already dedicated a lot of both in this first stage of the program. You've made time for meetings, allowed room for thinking, brainstorming, and dreaming, as well as for getting clearer strategically and practically. Some of you even brought more than one member of your studio into these sessions and workshops. Congratulations to those who were able to create that time and space!

For those who haven't yet had the chance to make that time and space, there's still time to do so. We've talked a lot about reflection, and we'll talk more about that shortly.

But reflection isn't really going to help you move forward until you write the things down.

Writing Things Down

We have created project and studio Miro boards to help you visualize your ideas and work collaboratively. These boards allow you to see the big picture and prioritize tasks accordingly. You can identify top priority items and their dependencies, ensuring that the necessary steps are taken before moving on to the next tasks. This helps you work together more smoothly and achieve your goals faster.

When you write down your thoughts and ideas, assess and evaluate them, and continue to refine them, you are creating pathways to transparency. This is because when you work with a team, or even on your own, you may have certain thoughts and ideas that you may not even be aware of until you put them down in writing.

If one person on the team is only working on what they already know or are comfortable with, without writing it down and sharing it with the rest of the team, they may be working in a way that is not transparent to the others in the team. So, this process not only helps you refine your own ideas but also makes you more transparent and helps you collaborate better with your team.

An Intentional Practice

This process is also vital to preventing yourselves collectively and individually from making decisions in haste or making decisions out of fear. As we discussed in the decision-making session, making decisions out of fear is never really helpful.

It often leads to having to redirect, correct, troubleshoot, or put out fires or even conflicts that have to be resolved. The time and space put aside for this is really, really key to preventing fear-based or rushed decisions that you will likely regret.

Last but not least, putting together this time and the space to do this work is about building intentional practice as opposed to a reactive or uninformed practice, which end up being way more work and way more costly in the long run.

Personal Assessment

We would like you to begin with a personal assessment, which is a combination of a personal and professional assessment that requires self-reflection. We have developed this assessment over time and tested it on the proto-members of the Gamma Space co-op over a year ago.

This is only for your personal use and no one else will see it. The purpose of this assessment is to help you reflect and gain clarity on your personal and professional status, and to establish a baseline for yourself. It will enable you to understand where you stand in your life, where you are with respect to your professional work, and what you're being called to do in the role that you're playing in your studio.

All of the studio members come in with a personal baseline, and these provide a basis on which you can begin to align with each other. This helps you all get on the same page – because you've all filled out the same questions and have the same understanding.

It's important to do personal self-reflection before joining Stage 2. This will help you assess whether the program is right for you, and if it's helpful at this time. You don't have to talk about your self-reflection with others, but it's essential to go through it yourself.

By doing this self-assessment, you can answer some essential questions, like whether the program is working for you or not. If you find that it's not helpful for you, you can make an informed decision about what to do next.

Asking these questions and being self-reflexive will help you feel clearer about your decisions and identify any cognitive dissonances that you may have with the program, your studio, or even with yourself. It's essential to get with the program and ask these hard questions to make the most out of the peer accelerator program.

Personal Assessment Overview

The personal assessment has four major sections.

The first part is focused on your project.

The second section is focused on your life.

This is not something most people are asked in job interview in a collaboration project setting.

There's always a default set of assumptions that people make: That you're ready, you have all the supports you need, here we go!

But what we have found (each of us in Gamma Space and Weird Ghosts, and many of the people that we've collaborated with over the last few years), is that if you don't have the supports or stability you need in your life, you either cannot fully participate in the project, or you put a disproportionate amount of pressure on the studio to fill all those roles for you in your life. And so this is just a bit of a reality check and a balance check.

There's also a brief section about co-op integration, which asks you some questions about your own defaults, programming, nature and your choices, priorities, and social behaviour.

Finally, there are a couple of questions about why you want to become a cooperative game studio. This is from your personal-professional perspective – once you've had a chance to reflect on those privately by yourself, you can be more clear as you enter into the next stage.

Self-Assessment Document - go to the File menu and select Make a Copy. Remember, no one else will see this – not Gamma Space, not Weird Ghosts, not other members of your team.

Studio Assessment

After each member finishes their individual self-assessment, it's time to look at your studio assessment. A template has been added to your studio development Miro board. This should be completed as a collective and synchronously if possible, since discussion is a big part of the process.

If you just do it sort of by adding points individually, you're probably going to miss out on some of the nuances that people have pulled out in their personal assessment.

It's important that you do this together, and that you make some space and time for it.

We're going to step through the questions so everyone understands what these questions are.

Step 1: Values

As you probably guessed, Step 1 is about values. We've asked you to list 3-5 value statements that your studio may employ to help further its development.

Review what you already have and see if it's still relevant, or if you need to make some tweaks based on the last few weeks' presentations.

This doesn't have to be super deep and complicated, but it should be something that the whole team agrees with.

Step 2: Studio Structure

Take a moment to describe your current ideas around your studio structure. Just provide us with some idea of where you might be heading, what responsibilities look like, how investment might come in, how shares might impact value, and if you want to use a value accounting system.

This doesn't have to be a giant list of things – it could be a series of sticky notes, or it could be a paragraph.

Step 3: Decision-Making

In this section, describe your current ideas around decision-making. We would like to see your thoughts at three different levels: At the co-op level, the management level, and at the production level. You might have other levels and other ways to break this down further. We just want your thoughts – there is no "right" answer.

Step 4: Tools and Process

Describe your evaluation of how your tools satisfy and support your studio's workflows and values. Anything that you collectively have recognized, even thinking about this at a high level, would be really helpful.

How are you deploying new tools and workflows to more effectively and meaningfully achieve the work of your studio? Again, this doesn't have to be something you've really committed to yet, since you're in the early stages.

Some studios have already started implementing what they learned into their work. However, not everyone is at that stage yet. So, if you have something that you have been working on or even just an idea on how to approach this in the future, that would be great.

Step 5: Storytelling.

How do you see storytelling as valuable to the development of your studio? And how might you deploy storytelling techniques within your studio?

During a recent session, we explored storytelling and how it can be used to make our studio more visible, knowable, and understandable. We discussed techniques like micro-journaling and how they can help document our history and decision-making processes. If you have any thoughts about this topic, please share them. Have you experimented with using your own Discord or Slack channels for this purpose? If so, please describe your experience so that we can learn from each other and improve the process if necessary.

Step 6: Reflection

Here, reflect on any collective growth or changes in thinking that have occurred as a result of your participation in the Baby Ghosts program. It doesn't have to be a grand epiphany that has completely transformed your life. It's perfectly fine if nothing has changed significantly.

If some aspects of your thought process have been altered or have become topics of regular discussion, it would be great to hear about those changes. There may be a few different ideas based on the experiences of everyone involved, but whatever is shared will be an idea that is embraced by the entire group.

Step 7: Stage 2 Focus

What specific areas do you want to focus on in Stage 2? This step brings everything together for the next stage of the program. Even if you feel that there are challenges, it doesn't mean that you can't participate in Stage 2. It may just require us to work together to find solutions. That's why it's important to be honest about your individual assessment, as some people may have specific needs and challenges that require collective solutions or rethinking.

We have discussed how this work is both iterative and recursive, which means that we'll use what we have learned so far to focus on specific areas in the next few months. These areas can be related to things we have discussed before, or they can be deep dives into decision-making processes, documentation, or specific aspects of your game, such as pitch decks or pipelines. Please take some time to think about what you want to focus on in Stage 2, as it will be customized to your specific needs.

Examples

• How to turn our various ideas on processes into a workflow that can help us create a prototype for a game or project we are working on
• How to create a community-based resource
• Reevaluating how we present our services online and how they impact business development.

In the new year, we will customize cohort meetings based on people's needs and interests, and studios can work with Gamma Space and Weird Ghosts folks to set individual goals and plans to achieve them.

Ranking

At the bottom of each of these on your studio boards, you will find a rating system that allows you to rate the level of depth of the exploration on each of the subjects. This rating system will help us in improving the content. Please rate the exploration from one to five, keeping in mind that there is no wrong answer.

• The first is "Considering/Reflecting," which means you are thinking about the issue in question.
• "Discussing Collectively" means you have discussed the topic with others and made some space for it.
• "Brainstorming" means you have actively planned and worked on the issue.
• "Sifting and sorting" involves prioritizing and making decisions based on the brainstorming information.
• Finally, the fifth is creating the first draft of the documentation around the issue.

It's important to note that we don't expect everyone to have gone through all five steps. So, if you haven't reached step five, don't worry about it. This categorization is just a way to help us understand where you are in the decision-making process.

Assessing Your Priorities

If you're feeling like you had certain priorities when you applied, such as decision-making or studio structure, and you later found out that you only had time for other things, don't worry. It's important to be honest with yourself about where you are in the process. For example, if you're still brainstorming and at stage three with your studio structure, but you've made progress with your values, acknowledge that. It's important to assess where you are in a non-judgmental way. It's not supposed to make you feel bad or ashamed or anything like that.

It's just a reality check.

Even if we don't complete a specific task or project, we can still acknowledge the effort put into it. We can also ask ourselves how we feel about the progress we've made. Has it been helpful? Has it brought clarity to the situation? Has it helped to resolve any differences between us? Even if we haven't produced any documentation yet, this exercise can help to create alignment among the group.

So please know that if you're going through this evaluation and you find that you're trying to measure time spent, space made, and these five indicators, none of this is meant to feel bad. If it starts to feel bad or if you start to hear a fellow studio member say things that are kind of dismissive or minimizing, try and help each other to not feel that way.

Remind each other: No value judgments here. This is just an assessment.

This is something that many of us are not very good at, and some of us have never even tried before. These assessments can be unfamiliar and may trigger negative emotions, negative self-talk, or even memories of past negative experiences in school or a workplace. However, this is an opportunity to assess how these things are affecting your current project and goals. Take a moment to reflect and evaluate these factors. Let it breathe.

Conclusion

If you feel like this is too much work, don't try to force it into a short amount of time. It's better to take the time you need, even if that means breaking the task into two sessions. If you need to talk about this with us, our studio meeting this week is a good opportunity to do so.

When discussing diagnostic vs. high-stakes assessment, it's helpful to think of it as explorative versus terminal. This is similar to what we practiced last week with low-stakes storytelling and communications. This task is also meant to be relatively low-stakes, meaning that disagreements or misalignments shouldn't result in a complete breakdown of working together.

As you discuss with each other, take the opportunity to use the Layers of Effect tool that we introduced, which involves examining the impact of dissonance or issues in the task. Give yourself the time you need to digest and understand any implications that arise from these discussions.