Steve Mcconnell has a great book on software estimation, but it's about enterprise software, where there are requirements and goals. [ http://www.stevemcconnell

Steve Mcconnell has a great book on software estimation, but it's about enterprise software, where there are requirements and goals. [ http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm http://www.stevemcconnell.com/est.htm ] The biggest problem with making games is the fact that there's no end goal of "Done." It's just a vague point in time, really. Is it done when you've made 10 levels or 11? Is it done when you've added 10 power-ups or 11, or 15? In a movie, you can't make the thing 50 hours long, no one would watch it all. But for a game, 50 hours is now considered medium sized, compared to MMO's and MOBAs that offer hundreds of hours of time to play. Scope creep is the biggest danger in the games industry. Reading this update, where they talk about going from 2D to 3D, my heart broke. That's such a major change, and as he writes, such a major uptick in difficulty, it was the beginning of the end. Terry Cavanaugh [http://distractionware.com/blog/ http://distractionware.com/blog/ ] gets scope right. Valve gets scope right. You can tell when it's done right because the pacing of the game feels damn near perfect, like Half-Life 2: there's little down time, and you're always moving forward, even if yer not always shooting. I feel bad for the Woolfe team, but they clearly had rose colored glasses on. There's a very good reason modern console games cost at least 8 figures. Hell, even with 8 figures of budget, many big name titles aren't even that good. The games industry is a harsh mistress. Like judging what's funny for a comedian, judging what's fun for a game developer is the toughest task they have.