What Went Wrong? A Survey of Problems in Game Development
Good Practices in Game DevelopmentIs The Game Industry That Bad?Is The Game Industry That Bad?
Francisco TrindadeTW London Geek Night
21st Nov 2008
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• Why?
• What?
Agenda
• How?
• Results
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Why?Why?
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• Survey of problems found in game development– Compare to the “traditional” industry
• Good practices in game development
What?
• Good practices in game development– Is Agile a good fit?
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How?
Read Analyzed Compared with
traditional
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Read
Postmortems
Analyzed
Datatraditional
industry
• Summarize project experience– Emphasys on positive and negative aspects
Postmortems
“The most severe blow suffered by all teams was
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“The most severe blow suffered by all teams was from accepting an unrealistic schedule. Despite endemic problems, . . . the concept that was floated at the time was that it would be possible to adhere to the original schedule if everyone simply worked around the clock.Foolish and naıve, we bought it, and started pushing.”
Problems Occurrence
Test Problems
Great Number of Defects
Over Budget
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0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
Unreal or Ambitious Scope
Feature Creep
Cutting Features
Design Problems
Delay or Optimistic Schedule
Crunch Time
Communication Problems
So...
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Is Agile a Good Is Agile a Good Fit?
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Best Practices
Good Programming Practices
Agile Modeling
Quality Control
Iterative Process
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0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Qualified Team
Creativity
Product Focus
Simple Tools
Good Programming Practices
• Game industry has the same problems as traditional software industry
• Agile is a good fit
Conclusion
• Agile is a good fit– Probably more than in the traditional industry
• Teamwork, Motivation, Cross-functional teams
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