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This is a good approach. The only downside is that depending on the scope of the game and features involved, the prototype phase can become super expensive. Wh

by timavr 9y ago

This is a good approach. The only downside is that depending on the scope of the game and features involved, the prototype phase can become super expensive. What if the design says, that we are going to have characters talking to each other and it involves voice recording and mocap studio time. This is cost prohibitive for a majority of the projects at the prototyping phase. Overall though the two biggest problems in game dev are building what people want and R&D. When prototyping starts both of those are unknown. Often prototype proves that certain game mechanic MVP is super fun, but in order to make it scalable across the whole game, months and months of R&D needs to be done. For example, one can put a quick level together which plays great, but to make 40 more levels, a level editor needs to be created, which is a huge undertaking. In my experience, if people want what you are making, 9/10 times you can survive the "bad" production process, due to the fact that even if project 2x-3x over budget, the market will easily 10x-100x initial investment lifetime.

movedx 9y ago
> ... the two biggest problems in game dev are building what people want and R&D. What's even harder again about point one, building something people want, is this is a purely creative industry so it's REALLY hard to know what people want. Making a new coffee machine would involve simple market research to understand what people want, but painting a picture is a different story entirely!
- timavr 9y ago
  Yes and No. When Blizzard makes Overwatch or HotS, they have a good initial idea that it is going to be popular because games of similar gameplay already exist and popular. On top of that when they play internally and if it is fun, they can be pretty sure that it is going to work. Obviously, if someone like Jonathan Blow is making a completely new game like Witness, then all bets are off.It is basically up to him and people who he trusts with feedback to determine if this is the game worth making. Making Call of Duty version 21 at the same time as close to risk-free as it comes.
- emmelaich 9y ago
  >> ... the two biggest problems in game dev are building what people want and R&D. Surely that's where getting a production quality level one helps? You really need to know that as early as possible. You must resist the Siren's Song of rough prototypes. They could be great gameplay but awful to look at. Or vice versa.
  - movedx 9y ago
    Yep, and I completely agree. I like producing an MVP, but even what the MVP offers should be production ready. I think people read "Minimal" in MVP and believe it means, "No monitoring, logging, error checking, or stability" which of course it does not :-)
  - timavr 9y ago
    In terms of production quality, sometimes it takes years of iteration on art side and tech to get the look. You want to nail it down early, but in real life concept artist does the image, artists model and texture the scene and then art director comes back and says, those bricks don't look good. Engine guys say, if we put more polys to make them look good, it is going to kill performance. Then someone says, look we can write this shader using this new GPU feature which is going to make everything awesome, but it might not work. And in any game production, there are 1000s of cases like that, where the thing you want does not exist or you don't have people who have the knowledge. So you just roll into production hoping shader works out and that you are going to hire people who are going to solve XYZ.
bartread 9y ago
> In my experience, if people want what you are making, 9/10 times you can survive the "bad" production process, due to the fact that even if project 2x-3x over budget, the market will easily 10x-100x initial investment lifetime. (Emphasis mine.) But this is the point, isn't it? If people want what you are making. But how do you know they want it? If you already have a successful franchise, it's easier, but many games don't, and with a well known franchise there's often an incentive not to be _too_ innovative (I'm looking at you COD, FIFA, Assassin's Creed, etc.). For most games, if you're building something that simply isn't fun then you should stop, and ideally you want to stop early in the process so you can spend your time and money on something else. The issue I have with your conclusion is that in a very specific set of circumstances it's true, but not a useful observation. Look at it like this: the PS2 has over 2500 titles and you know full well that a lot of them were costly to produce, yet are still absolute bilge. You also know that there are a lot of great games in there that didn't succeed commercially. So you need to hit sweet spots on multiple axes, and you need to de-risk on all of those as early as possible to succeed. You _might_ get lucky even with a bad and overly expensive production process for something that people really want[1], but it's a very high risk to take, even if you don't end up at the extreme of a Daikatana or a Duke Nukem Forever. [1] I wonder if something like Half Life 2, which was quite heavily delayed, might fit this category.

by timavr 9y ago

movedx 9y ago

> ... the two biggest problems in game dev are building what people want and R&D. What's even harder again about point one, building something people want, is this is a purely creative industry so it's REALLY hard to know what people want. Making a new coffee machine would involve simple market research to understand what people want, but painting a picture is a different story entirely!

timavr 9y ago
Yes and No. When Blizzard makes Overwatch or HotS, they have a good initial idea that it is going to be popular because games of similar gameplay already exist and popular. On top of that when they play internally and if it is fun, they can be pretty sure that it is going to work. Obviously, if someone like Jonathan Blow is making a completely new game like Witness, then all bets are off.It is basically up to him and people who he trusts with feedback to determine if this is the game worth making. Making Call of Duty version 21 at the same time as close to risk-free as it comes.
emmelaich 9y ago
>> ... the two biggest problems in game dev are building what people want and R&D. Surely that's where getting a production quality level one helps? You really need to know that as early as possible. You must resist the Siren's Song of rough prototypes. They could be great gameplay but awful to look at. Or vice versa.
- movedx 9y ago
  Yep, and I completely agree. I like producing an MVP, but even what the MVP offers should be production ready. I think people read "Minimal" in MVP and believe it means, "No monitoring, logging, error checking, or stability" which of course it does not :-)
- timavr 9y ago
  In terms of production quality, sometimes it takes years of iteration on art side and tech to get the look. You want to nail it down early, but in real life concept artist does the image, artists model and texture the scene and then art director comes back and says, those bricks don't look good. Engine guys say, if we put more polys to make them look good, it is going to kill performance. Then someone says, look we can write this shader using this new GPU feature which is going to make everything awesome, but it might not work. And in any game production, there are 1000s of cases like that, where the thing you want does not exist or you don't have people who have the knowledge. So you just roll into production hoping shader works out and that you are going to hire people who are going to solve XYZ.

bartread 9y ago

> In my experience, if people want what you are making, 9/10 times you can survive the "bad" production process, due to the fact that even if project 2x-3x over budget, the market will easily 10x-100x initial investment lifetime. (Emphasis mine.) But this is the point, isn't it? If people want what you are making. But how do you know they want it? If you already have a successful franchise, it's easier, but many games don't, and with a well known franchise there's often an incentive not to be _too_ innovative (I'm looking at you COD, FIFA, Assassin's Creed, etc.). For most games, if you're building something that simply isn't fun then you should stop, and ideally you want to stop early in the process so you can spend your time and money on something else. The issue I have with your conclusion is that in a very specific set of circumstances it's true, but not a useful observation. Look at it like this: the PS2 has over 2500 titles and you know full well that a lot of them were costly to produce, yet are still absolute bilge. You also know that there are a lot of great games in there that didn't succeed commercially. So you need to hit sweet spots on multiple axes, and you need to de-risk on all of those as early as possible to succeed. You _might_ get lucky even with a bad and overly expensive production process for something that people really want[1], but it's a very high risk to take, even if you don't end up at the extreme of a Daikatana or a Duke Nukem Forever. [1] I wonder if something like Half Life 2, which was quite heavily delayed, might fit this category.