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What About Putting Snakes in a
Row?
Putting
your snakes in a row sure seems a lot simpler. And isn't simpler often better?
Well, yes. But unfortunately, putting your snakes in a row will not work. At
least not if you intend to have your entire team in house.
Sure, outsourcing
the pig might do. But aside from the whole team approach and control issues, even
the most efficient outsourcing creates an internal pigish overhead.
And if
you don't outsource, feeding the pig while only the snake is working will drag
your budget into hell and your studio with it. I have seen this occur over and
over with even the most talented of developers.
In fact, aside from issues that
arise when trying to grow a studio into a larger organization, this issue may
be the most difficult for any studio executive to successfully manage.
The
problem is that the same key people needed to finish the game in the final
stages are in crunch and in no position to be working on the prototype for the
next project. Moreover, they will likely be unfit to do much of anything for a
few weeks after crunch is over.
The solution is having the foresight to put
your pigs in a row -- not your snakes. This demands that the snake's head be
redirected at some point in the development process of project A to start
thinking about and actually working on project B.
 When Pigs are in a Row...
If we
assume that it takes between 6-9 months to land a deal, then working backwards
from there should give you an idea of what point in the current project work
needs to be started on the next project.
You will need to have enough of the
next project completed to get it picked up without there being a serious cash
crunch in the space between the projects.
If it
takes six months of designing, prototyping, and documenting to get to the point
to pitch the next game, then you need to get started on it about 12-15 months
before the GM delivery of your current project.
Sure, that seems like a lot of
time... but think it through, and it's really not. Especially if you consider
the alternative.
When Snakes are in a Row....
When your
snakes are in a row your studio is only looking at one project at a time. This
is great for THAT game. But it can spell disaster for the studio. Remember what
I said about building a great studio to make great games instead of making a
great game to build a great studio? Here's where that comes to life.
And this
is not mere conjecture on my part. I have seen this happen time after time. You
finish your current game and it is great. So, the team takes a month off to
celebrate a job well done and to recover.
Then you the start the design and
prototyping process and are lucky enough to get a deal a year later... if you
are still in business (most are not). Unless that game you delivered has the
legs to recoup and deliver revenue within 6 months, you're DOA.
And
realistically, that is not going to happen. Even with a hit it takes longer
than that to get to first royalty report, and two to three quarters to recoup.
So, unless you have about 18 months of overhead in the bank when you deliver,
your dream of having your own studio just died.
The Benefits of Good Pig
Management.
Getting
those pigs in a row will lead to a long and economically sound life for your
studio. The pressures of living on the edge of economic disaster will lessen
and, who knows, you may even be able to have some fun, have a life and enjoy
making games.
After all, that is what this is supposed to be about. Being
fortunate enough to make a decent living doing what we love to do. As an added
bonus, if you get your pigs in a row, you are on your way to a smooth
transition from a single project studio to a multi-project studio in the
bargain.
[No
animals were harmed in the writing of this article.]
Til next time, GL & HF!
(© 2008 Thomas H. Buscaglia. All rights reserved.)
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If you exclusively rely on buying 3rd Party grown snakes all the time, how do you know you did not fall prey to false advertisement and your first product doesn't even get off the ground?
IMO, your pig-model will only work if you perhaps gouge out their eyes and shut their ears so that they would never know how life is like outside of the meatpacking factory.
We really pay the C-students too much money in our industry. Seriously.
Don't ever make a game unless you have enough money in the bank to make a game 3x as large with 3x as much staff.
If you don't have very much money in the bank, this means you start by making very small, very simple games.
Studios should never be sailing as close to financial ruin as Tom is suggesting here unless they are founded by someone who is expecting a high risk (i.e. probable insolvency) for a high payoff.
Yes, most game developers today (and for the past decade or two) have been in the habit of producing stuff on very thin budget constraints -- and they also never really have control of their studio, they crank out mediocre game after mediocre game just so they can get deals signed in time and make milestones, and then they eventually (usually) just go out of business. Also, walking such a thin line is exactly what enables publishers to exploit developers to the current degree.
A developer should never be looking to land a deal as soon as they can, whether "the pigs are in a row" or not. The developer should have the means to create the entire game without worrying about an advance, and sign a deal at his convenience, at the time that will give him the best possible deal and/or best distribution.
In the modern day when there are little flash games that make money from ads, coexisting in the same world as GTA4, there is really only one excuse for taking as much business risk as is outlined in this article: "Yeah, I was driving the studio hard and I kind of expect it will go out of business, but if it does, no biggie."
@ John Blow:
I disagree that being aware of your business model will keep you at the edge of financial ruin and force you to make mediocre games. Knowing your numbers will allow you to deal with problems intelligently when they come up.
Don't be afraid of losing your creativity by giving the business side of things the attention it deserves.
Ideally, this would be great, but a lot of studios are doing projects that only have 15-18 month schedules for the "current" game, so this may be unrealistic in many cases.
An idea that might help is to not just have your core leads (snakes) and production staff (pigs), but also have a third team that's sort of in between the two. This team would be "production leads" that would be in charge of the bulk of the production, whereas the "snakes" would be the "creative/preproduction leads" who generate new game ideas and prototype them without being involved in the day-to-day of the game in production.
So, the preproduction team hands off to the production team, then goes on to something else.
Time management, time management, time management. Absolutely crucial to complex project development.
That sounds great but it's incredibly hard to pull off - few (if any) studios have the kind of maturity required to make that kind of transition work. The problems with that would be enough to fill one or several articles.
The closest thing that anyone (to my knowledge) uses would be a prototyping unit. You need strong leads (snakes? I don't know, the article's imagery went way over my head) in both production and preproduction, and it's much easier for the core of a preproduction team to remain as the core during production as well.
This still means you need to have two core teams, experienced people that can be hard to find and expensive to retain.
It's probably beyond the reach of most studios, sadly.