*Planted: 16 March 2025 | Last tended: 16 March 2025* There is a perpetual expansion and contraction in a game’s development. At first, you’re in an expansion phase — the game can be anything and the job is to find the fences. Once you have that, you go into a contraction phase where you’re hyper-focused on making what you said you were going to make for a milestone. But then after that milestone, you go back to expansion where you’ve opened things up again and have to think big. I’ve struggled with the end of a contraction phase and the beginning of an expansion phase because this is typically where the team says that they struggle with the vision and don’t know where we’re headed. *Sources:* - 15 March 2025 mentor chat, MJ