During this project there may be a wide variety of issues and problems that may occur during all of the stages of the production process. I will be stating all of these possible issues below and will be creating a contingency plan just in case any of the problems arise during the project, so I am able to continue working as smoothly as possible.

The most common issue that may arise is the Wi-Fi and Internet stopping or going down because I will be mostly working on a PC in college and at home. If this common problem does in fact happen I will either switch networks to a mobile hotspot or travel to college on my days off and continue my work there. I will record this issue for evidence and reflect upon this in my weekly reflective journal describing the issue that arose and how I overcame it. In addition to this, if my internet was to drop then I can also continue working using a mobile connection on my phone or iPad because Construct 3 runs smoothly on both of these devices and they can both connect to a mobile hotspot. This issue will affect all of the stages throughout the project and does not just affect one stage of the project. Furthermore, I am currently in the process of switching internet providers from TalkTalk to Gigaclear where I will be changing to a 500 mb/s package, so the slow internet connection may not be a big of an issue. 

The next problem that could occur and affect my production stage is if my SSD gets lost or is to stop working. As I will be working solely off of multiple shared PCs and large file sizes I will be using a 2TB SSD to quickly and securely load and save my work so I can access it across an array of PCs, so if the SSD was to get lost, damaged or even stops working then I will not have access to my work and I will have to start the production process from the beginning. Although SSDs are very reliable and are very unlikely to fail or break I still have to consider this as a possible issue that could occur. To stop this issue from affecting my workflow I will ensure that I back up my work in multiple places such as Google Drive and a separate USB Flash drive, by backing up to Google Drive I will have instant access to my work even if the SSD is to fail, so I will be making regular backups throughout the project. To evidence that this issue arose I will take pictures of either the physical damage to the hard drive or the unresponsiveness of the SSD in the PC, I will also reflect this in the reflection write up that I will carry out every week throughout the project. 

During the research and pre-production processes I may encounter an issue with my interview sources and or informational research visits, for example I may not gather enough information from my professional interviews or a large amount of my interviewees may not respond to my Emails or Messages. This will affect the level of quality of my primary research as the people I am interviewing are very busy people who are currently working at a game studio or are retired, and I am trying to gather relevant, high quality research. In addition to this, I may not be able to visit my research visits in person either due to a financial issue or personal issue, so I will have to plan additional visits that do not require a lot of money to visit, for example the Science museum carries out virtual tours so I will be able to attend this if I am unable to visit it in person. In terms of the interviews, I have come up with a fallback plan that will require me to contact smaller indie game developers because they are more likely to respond to Emails than a Non-indie developer. I will showcase all of my primary research in my research documents and on my website and with the fallback plan I should still have enough research as well as my secondary research to continue with my project.

An issue during my production process may arise where I work too far off of the path and start to create a too ambitious digital game. This issue can be very common and will affect the quality of my final outcome because I will have an incomplete game that does not live up to my expectations, this will also affect my final grade. As a fallback plan I will ensure that I carry out detailed planning and experimentation that will state every step that I will carry out and what I will include within the game. To ensure that this does not become a problem I will stick closely to my plan, but still allow a creative direction from the plan to improve the game further. I will evidence this on my website using screenshots of the game and the planning to show how I have either stuck to the plan or reworked my workflow to stick to the plan.

Another issue that could possibly arise is that my car breaks down or I encounter a car crash on the way to college. This will affect all stages of the project and not just a specific one and this will stop the workflow for the day because I can not successfully and safely travel to college. If this problem was to arise I will take photographic evidence of the damage and contact one of my tutors, at that point I would phone a parent to pick me up and take me back home or to college depending on the severity of the damage, at which point I will continue to work from home so I do not fall behind the several deadlines throughout the project. To ensure that this problem does not arise I will drive safely and or get a parent to provide transport to college so I arrive safely and on time prepared for the day. I will provide photographic evidence of this issue on my Wix site and how I overcame it. 

A further issue regarding post production may arise where my PC or Laptop may crash resulting in loss of work. This will definitely be a problem when it comes to implementing my mechanics into my Construct 3 game because it does not automatically save work, so if it was to arise I would lose my work up until the last backup and save that I completed. To ensure that this does not become a problem I will ensure that I carry out multiple periodic backups to ensure I have saved just in case a crash was to occur. I can evidence these multiple saves through screenshots and these screenshots can be provided on my Wix site. 

Another issue that may arise during the production process of my game is that the mechanic that I implemented does not work or function as intended, this would halt the production process as I would have to review the code and work out what is the cause of the bug. To ensure that this does not affect the workflow I will carry out multiple tests during each session testing and reviewing that my implemented code functions properly. I will evidence all bugs and the solution to the issues by recording the coding and production process to give a representation of the problem solving I carried out. This will be evidenced throughout the Wix website and also on my weekly reflection. In addition to this, I should reflect back on my research that should allow me to resolve issues quite quickly and efficiently, I should always be reflecting back because research is an ongoing process that will contribute to the final outcome.