A
Primer for the Design Process, Part 3:
What You Need
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To] A Primer for the Design Process:
Part 1, What to Do
[Back
To] A Primer for the Design Process:
Part 2, What to Think About
This
article deals with what you'll need (or need to be asking for) from
your company and development team. You'll note a reoccurring theme here,
and anyone who has made a game that someone else is waiting to play
will recognize it. It should also be considered as a reminder to those
very people waiting for you to deliver your title.
You need
time, time to design, implement, experiment, and above all, have fun.
Don't forget time to fix bugs since there are no patches for console
games. Time, indeed is the single-most painful entity with which to
joust. Many (and I mean many) games have suffered due to lack of time
to finish the job properly.
Good design is not only about good ideas, it is also about the implementation
of these ideas. If you don't get the time you need to do your job, the
company is wasting money on a title that will fail in the marketplace.
This is a hard battle to fight. Corporate has their own considerations
such as money, product on schedule to generate revenue to make other
products, and other simple things like that. When schedules get bumped,
there are reasons for it. Sometimes you'll have to pick your battles,
others you'll need to cut-up your precious masterpiece to make milestones.
That's the way of the biz.
Know that you need to plan on experimenting at the start, and bug-hunt
at the end. Don't scrimp.
Communication
Communication is not only a two-way street, but it's everybody's responsibility
to maintain open channels of communication with people involved with
the project.
Nothing is more frustrating that to have a memo finally work it's way
down from upper management saying "you need to make these changes,"
when you're supposed to turn over in 2 weeks.
Conversely, you can't walk up to you're bosses and say, "oh by
the way, we need 2 more months," when they just spent a quarter
million dollars for print ads expecting to have product next month.
Getting what you need when you need it is hard enough when everything
for the game is being done under one roof. If you're dealing with contractors
for things like motion processing or sound, you have to stay ahead of
the game. You also need to know if this out-sourced talent is going
to keep to your schedule. Their slip affects your schedule, which in
turn will interfere with marketing, and so on. This is why upper management
needs you to give them a proper, realistic schedule to begin with.
Management, at the same time, should not try to interfere with your
scheduling by pushing your turn over date forward, or pulling resources
from your game to help on some other title. Once you're plan is set
and all parties involved have signed off on the timeline, you must stick
as close as you can to that timeline, even if it means dropping features.
And if you do happen to cut features, let people know so they can make
the proper adjustments. This is another reason to keep your design document
up to date.
Good direction and open lines of communication with other parts of the
company also help in keeping you from getting bit by sudden, marketing
driven changes. I say marketing as opposed to the market driven because
it's usually someone down the pipe hollering about the need to add some
thing for some reason rather than adapting to a new market standard
or good design feature in the genre title you're developing.
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Deliverables
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Features
