In this GDC 2013 video, 24 Caret Games co-founder Matt Gilgenbach delivers a personal postmortem on how his obsessive-compulsive behavior led to a crunch-heavy, four-year development cycle for the PlayStation Network and PC rhythm reverse-shooter Retro/Grade.
Courtesy of the GDC Vault, this free lecture reflects on the 750,000 lines of code in the game and the personal sacrifices Gilgenbach made to maintain 80-hour work weeks. But one lesson learned, he says to question the extra time spent on features, to debate if they will increase sales or at least impact the player's experience.
Overview:Retro/Grade was featured in the 2009 IGF, with nominations in Excellence in Design and Excellence in Audio. After almost four years of grueling crunch, the game was finally released to positive reviews. Although 24 Caret Games was silent during development, Matt Gilgenbach will now talk about what went wrong on the project and in his personal life, as his obsessive-compulsive disorder caused development to spiral out of control. He will also discuss what he learned from the mistakes on Retro/Grade, and his new and healthier approach to indie game development.
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This presentation is the definition of "brave". Who would expect game development could be such a personal drama? Kierkegaard and Kafka would be speechless.
All the best for Matt Gilgenbach to keep up the good fight.
The slide at 10:36 on 'Circular Logic' applies to my own project, which I am about 2/3rds of the way through and have so far spent twenty years on. Obviously, this is just a hobby indie game, not something that has to feed and clothe me - indeed, it has been a remedy against boredom and depression inevitably taking hold. To keep my intellect busy is of more importance than seeking success and I too have been diagnosed to be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (among other personality disorders), so Mr Gilgenbach has my sympathies. If there was one thing that jumped out of the presentation it would be that he wanted to be free from corporate deadlines. However, bad these can be to creative development they do have a way of forcing you to allocate your resources sensibly, get a producer/manager involved to ensure that time isn't squandered on things that no one will notice enough to value in the end product and a total absence of any kind of deadline (such as I have given myself for my game), almost leads to it taking an indefinite period.
Without a deadline you tend to finish when you have explored (if not implemented) all possible bullet points in its feature set. I cannot recommend this exhaustive methodology for anyone interested in making a profit...
All the best for Matt Gilgenbach to keep up the good fight.
Without a deadline you tend to finish when you have explored (if not implemented) all possible bullet points in its feature set. I cannot recommend this exhaustive methodology for anyone interested in making a profit...