Milestones and Glass Houses

Great Expectations
Milestones and Glass Houses
Introduction
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Conclusion

"I want to fund your game," the Big Money Guy tells you after your pitch your game idea. "But only if it can be finished in time for next Christmas. And I want it done for a reasonable price. Oh, and I want it to be a hit."

You flinch at first. Then you summon up your confidence. "No problem!"

But there is a problem. A big problem. You've doomed the project even before it's begun.

It is possible to make a game quickly. It is possible to make a game cheaply. It is possible to make a game that's great. The problem is that you can only achieve two of these goals simultaneously. To make a great game quickly, it will cost a lot of money. You're going to have to pay top dollar for a large and experienced development team, the best hardware and software, and extremely talented project management. To make a great game cheaply, it will take you a long time to find bargains on people and technology. But a cheap game made quickly will likely be a flop because it will be competing against games that had more time and money lavished on them.

Game development is a marriage of technology and creativity, and these two elements add a high degree of uncertainty to the project's schedule and budget for the following reasons:
  • The programmer is often called upon to invent new algorithms or techniques during the course of the project, and innovations are difficult to predict.
  • Technology changes so rapidly in our industry, it is often necessary to make unanticipated course changes in the middle of development.
  • Creative people sometimes suffer from writer's block or artistic temperament, their productivity unexpectedly dropping for stretches of time.
  • Talented developers are in high demand, and their availability is dependent upon what other opportunities are open to them.

Still, many businessmen can't understand why it is that experienced developers can't make products that are on-time and on-schedule. After all, they argue, many creative professionals are required to perform while sticking to a schedule. As for technology, the Apollo program had to schedule the invention of new devices and materials, and we still managed to land man on the moon on time. Therefore, businessmen conclude, you ought to be able to do the same with software.

And you know what? They're right. Many developers (myself included) started out as teenage kids in a garage operation with a "let's put on a show" mentality. Our industry is still quite immature, having yet to acquire the discipline found among other professionals. While creating a product that's good, cheap and fast is an extremely difficult task, the difficulties are not be excuses for sub-standard work. There are many techniques and practices we can adopt to improve our performance.

Skill at putting together a realistic budget is a good example. If you underbid a project just to win a contract or you put together a budget without factoring in all the details and contingencies, the people funding the project may hold you to your original budget. Somebody's going to wind up putting in a lot of long hours for free. On the other hand, if you bid a project too high or pad the budget, you run a gamut of risks from having the project be canceled to being sued for fraud. Developing games is not a hobby; it's a serious business that needs to be treated as such. Game developers must exercise good business sense.

But let's not let the Big Money Guys off the hook too quickly.

Many businessmen exert tremendous pressure on the development team from the start to be on-time and on-budget. However, deriving a development schedule to meet business needs rather than basing it on the actual time it takes to develop a project leads only to self-deception and disappointment. To add insult to injury, when the Big Money Guys are pinned down once the developer is out of earshot, they will admit that it is much more important to have a game that's of high quality than one that was on-time and on-budget.

The truth is that you need to have someone pushing for the project being on-time and on-budget, and another person being a champion for the game's quality. Both objectives are necessary to achieving an appropriate compromise. You need to be aware of your time and money limitations when you begin a project, and you need to be realistic about what you can accomplish within those limitations.

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