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[PATV] Thursday, September 1, 2011 - Extra Credits Season 3, Ep. 1: The Pre-Production Problem
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
This week, we kick off the Guest Art Marathon with a discussion on why games really need to start making time for pre-production.
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The latter works well when you have a client waiting on a deliverable. You'll never be as productive, but you'll definitely have to make decisions on what to cut and how many overtime hours you'll have to put in. You may also have to ask for an extension. The product won't be great but it'll be on time.
Fortunately, there is a happy middle ground but it is usually very rare; it happens when your senior staff are explicit about the quality requirements at every phase and measure work. Setting quality requirements let you know when a thing is done. Measuring work lets you know when you're getting behind early and lets you know what your bottlenecks are so that you don't get crunched later on.
There is very much a science built up around process engineering and optimisation. Having never worked in the mainstream game industry, I don't know how readily this sort of science is applied.
For instance, suppose during one project you come up with an idea of a unique challenge in the game but it either doesn't fit the project or won't be ready. Why not shelve it or break up into 'micro-teams' to flesh it out? That way, you can build up an arsenal of nifty ideas that are pre-packaged and ready to go for future projects. It's a way of kind being in a constant pre-production mode without dumping a lot of manpower.
Sorry if this sounds stupid or ill-informed. I'm a writer so there's no way I can envision all the technical details and problems that will come up.
You have designers that simply need more time to do quality work.
You have other team who does their job faster.
The problem is chain is as strong as its weakest link so you try to rush designers so they fail. Rather than keeping them in one process why not parallel. Have more designers design, so that they're "average output" aligns with other parts of the team speed of work. Bigger pool of designers creates ideas, when one of them seems ready they get programming part. When they finish programmers go to other project.
The other solution is to outsource some part of the process. Well its pretty much the same, but across companies. Have programmers do sth completely different like implementing your community support site or some work for other company who has too little developers and go back to "main task" when new project is started. Or don't have you own programmers but have a friendly partner who has them and will rent them.
If the people in teams do not change too rapidly it could work... i think... i guess...
I suspect very strongly that the model would work well for the game industry. Game development is very similar to feature animation. The biggest difference is that the end product is so much more fragile than a sequence of images flashed on a screen. QA crunch, at the end of the production, is the single biggest problem, but since final QA doesn't have much to do with artists, writers, etc., this seems like an excellent time to shuffle people off to the next project while the programmers and testers do their thing.
This also has a solution for QA. Long after a game is released, bugs will continue to be discovered. Patches will be made. With a constant stream of projects cycling to completion, QA staff wouldn't have to be continually laid off and replenished, as is so often the case in the industry.
I guess the only wrinkle is having a game studio with the ability to turn profits like Pixar and DreamWorks, so all this can be funded. One huge distinction between the two industries is how much money big animation houses make on mechandising. For Pixar, it tends to run about 8-10x the box office take. Most games can't leverage that kind of residual income. DLC is changing that, and subscription-based games obviously have such a source, but keeping the funds flowing when there isn't a new hit game on the shelves is a trick the industry will have to get a little better at before a model like this will be easy to embrace.
Seriously, the idea of following Pixar's lead is simply brilliant. Yes, there is the wrinkle of keeping the funds flowing while waiting for a game to hit the shelves, but crowd-funding has already provided examples in this area. It is no longer uncommon to see a game on Kickstarter selling much more than just the game itself. Optional upgrades, add-ons, and merchandising (t-shirts, cups, mementos, artwork, etc.) all come into the picture as part of funding and people buy into them. Why? Because the customers are involved in the process, thereby becoming investors. That investment, in turn, gives the developers what they need to make a better product.
That used to be the same function software publishers fulfilled, but publishers have fallen "off the wagon." Just as happened with the film industry, the game industry (publishing houses) is now run by executives who know Business, not Art. In Business, you avoid risk, you cut corners, and you focus on profits. In Art, you take risk, you put everything you can into it, and you focus on appealing to your audience by providing a high-quality product. Business focuses on producing the same thing that sold the previous five times. Art focuses on producing something that will sell on its own merit.
The introduction of crowd-funding has given artists and designers the chance to appeal directly to those who appreciate their work rather than some guy in a suit whose sole concern is how many units he can expect to sell based on past performance. It is no wonder, then, that publishers are increasingly finding themselves "out of the loop."
Seriously, the idea of following Pixar's lead is simply brilliant. Yes, there is the wrinkle of keeping the funds flowing while waiting for a game to hit the shelves, but crowd-funding has already provided examples in this area. It is no longer uncommon to see a game on Kickstarter selling much more than just the game itself. Optional upgrades, add-ons, and merchandising (t-shirts, cups, mementos, artwork, etc.) all come into the picture as part of funding and people buy into them. Why? Because the customers are involved in the process, thereby becoming investors. That investment, in turn, gives the developers what they need to make a better product.
That used to be the same function software publishers fulfilled, but publishers have fallen "off the wagon." Just as happened with the film industry, the game industry (publishing houses) is now run by executives who know Business, not Art. In Business, you avoid risk, you cut corners, and you focus on profits. In Art, you take risk, you put everything you can into it, and you focus on appealing to your audience by providing a high-quality product. Business focuses on producing the same thing that sold the previous five times. Art focuses on producing something that will sell on its own merit.
The introduction of crowd-funding has given artists and designers the chance to appeal directly to those who appreciate their work rather than some guy in a suit whose sole concern is how many units he can expect to sell based on past performance. It is no wonder, then, that publishers are increasingly finding themselves "out of the loop."