Crunch time = Producer failure

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What does “crunch time” mean?? In standard terms it means that the entire team is working insane hours. Some are sleeping at their desks and there is no weekend. Crunch time can happen any time in the project cycle but usually it occurs near the end, where the big milestones live.

I say it now, and I say it loud… if there is crunch time in a project THE PRODUCER HAS FAILED.

Really, I’m not kidding.

What does the producer actually MAKE during development, he or she makes the schedule. It’s tough to make these schedules because, as we all know, producers aren’t: artists, programmers, designers or even QA. Don’t get me wrong, the producer may fill these roles but it’s just because of some dire need, not because he or she’s the best on the team at that job.

And having made a few hundred of these schedules, I can tell you… it’s next to impossible to accurately predict what crazy artist #4 is going to do 16 months from now. But we do our best to estimate based on an 8-hour day, with weekends off. Sometimes we’re smart and we skip known holidays like… Christmas, 4th of July and MY birthday. (I usually give everyone a half day on my birthday, in case they want to gang up for a “pie in the face” type event.)

So the question that is maybe rambling around in your head is: How do you void this failure?

Great question!

The answer is, YOU don’t. You have a TEAM, the schedule is not ALL ABOUT YOU. It’s all about making everything MESH. You really don’t know how much crazy programmer #3 is going to produce in a day, but his or her boss better know!

At one company we tried the pre-production test cycle. We made one level of the planned twenty-seven level game. I joined the project later in the cycle, near the end of the test. I examined the result, time taken, shortcuts learned, and pronounced: “Your 27 levels have to be reduced to 6, to make the schedule.” I was instantly popular with the team, and the object of scorn from management. The sad truth was, I wasn’t conservative enough… should have been only 4 levels.

I could go on and on about how to make a schedule, but that’s another post. What I can tell you about crunch time, is… you as the Producer should see it coming, and do whatever it takes to avoid it. Crunch time in hindsight burns the team out, gives you a bad rep, and really… do you like it? No one does.

So don’t be proud of surviving crunch time, be proud that your team worked together and you never had to crunch!

Your turn…

Mac

He’s dead Jim…

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I’m still happy with the latest Star Trek film, and I’ve had 2 weeks to mull it over. Yes there are tech problems with parts of it… to many to list here, but I enjoyed how it all fell together. We even got to hear some great old Star Trek lines… but one that we didn’t hear: “He’s dead Jim..”. And I guess that’s a good thing…

But when do we know a game is dead? Its easy to look back and see, yes, no sales… its dead! But when do you stop making content for a game that has some DLC? When do you officially move on?

In board games we only do an expansion when the expected sales, 1/3 of the original sales, makes finanacial sense. That’s a hard thing to NOT do because as a designer and publisher, I think I can stir sales by subtley fixing some of the problems with the original. Also, it shows that as a publisher I support my products.

But at some point, its time to just hang it up. It doesn’t mean your product failed or that you did a bad job… it just means that the microsecond of our attention span has moved on. Recently I used a phrase: “Throwing sauce on the pig”, which means trying to dress up something that is not worth the effort.

As hard as it is, look at the sales and realize that a small percentage of those who already bought the game, will be buying the downloadable Content (DLC). If that number is not large enough to justify the production of the content, move on.

Comments? Need an example? Are you listening Germany?

Mac

Whats a AAA title? And how do I produce it differently?

The short answer to the second question is, you don’t. I would be more concerned with team size, then the visibility of the product. Of course with a larger team here will be communication issues and multiple status reports. A friend of mine was the Producer on a title that had 150 people. He came to the product late so its hard to turn a ship away from the brink but I doubt he did anything significantly different then he would with a small team.

He did tell me that every morning was filled with status meetings and so he felt he only did he job after lunch and, yes, on weekends.

When I was at SEGA we were never told our sales figures. We knew we had a hit from all of the talk about sequels and the number of press requests, but no one at the producer level knew the exact figures. It wasn’t until I left SEGA that the developer thanked me for working on Taz because it had sold over 500,000 copies, for a system, the GameGear, that only had 1.1 million units in the market. But had I known I was working on a hit, would I have done anything differently? No.

The process is the same if its a hit or something you HOPE is a hit. The process changes only slightly when the team sizes grows beyond what a weekly full team meeting can handle. the pipelines are the same, the marketing demands are the same, (until it hits the market and everyone goes nut for it and you), the deadlines are the same.

That last point is the big one, the deadlines don’t change if you’re working on A or AAA title. And if you work for a small developer I think you would agree that from a cash flow perspective, you HAVE to hit your dates all along, not just the final ship date.

So my premise is simple, I don’t think you do anything procedurally different, but there will be changes due to the scale of the project.

What do you think?

Mac

"Too close to it"

A phrase I have heard a couple of times, I always smile when I do. My usual response is: “Of course I am, that’s why you hired me… to get close to things and to evaluate them”.

So how do you get “too close”?

I think that its used as an excuse to attempt to dismiss an opinion when there isn’t a good counter to the argument. As a Producer, and usually put into the position to evaluate products, I am required to know it inside and out. As a matter of fact, I have been chastised a few times for NOT being close enough to a product.

When I was at SEGA even as an Associate Producer I was given the veto power on products. I was expected to play the game and give my intelligent feedback. If I had not gotten “to close” to GunStar Heroes, the product would not have been picked up by SEGA and it wouldn’t have won Game of the Year and who knows what would have happened to the developer Treasure.

But how do you get close to it? Obviously the simple answer is to just play it. But I think you also have to play games LIKE the one you’re evaling. What does this game bring to the table that changes the course of the genre, even if only slightly.

Someone once said, that you have to give the consumer something that is vastly superior to what they are already using to get them to switch. Maybe one of my readers can suggest who said that so I can give him credit where its due. The comment is very true in games.

Products to me must “move the circle”. Let me explain what Imean by that. Lets say that Tomb Raider is the best third person title selling. Make that a point on a piece of paper, and then make a circle around that point with it being in the center. All games in that genre fit within that circle. If your game is to close to the center, its a clone, if its FAR outside of the circle then you’re asking the consumer to learn to much.

What you want to hit is the line of that circle. So that some parts of your game are known, but some parts are new and innovative.

So get close to your games and lets see where they hit in the circle. Don’t go for a clone, hit the LINE!

Your comments?

Mac

The difference between making and creating

When I first started in games my managers were good guys, they tried really hard to understand what we were doing but there was a clear limit. My boss in Broderbund asked me once: “When will that bug be fixed?” To me this is a silly question, if I knew what the bug was, I wouldn’t have written it in the first place. And so if I don’t know what it is, how could I know how long it would take to fix?

I’ve had bad bosses too. Some that felt the best way to get things done faster was to yell. They didn’t understand the difference between making something, and creating something.

When you make something, you know the exact steps. You can see your progress and know exactly if you are on schedule or behind. At the end of the day you can confidently say you completed the manufacturing of X number of widgets.

When you create something its never really done. There is always something that can be added or tweaked or polished. I’m often asked how many games I have completed, I always answer the same way: “I’ve completed none, but shipped about 25″. These blog posts are examples of creating.

If you need some examples, did van Gogh make a painting? Or did he create it? (creating)

Did Henry Ford create a car? Or did he make cars? (making)

When confronted with a “make” type boss I try to give them something visual to explain the difference, feel free to use this…

Imagine there are 5 tall glasses in front of you. A glass full of water is a completed level with the level of the quality, or above, required by the market today. A full glass means its done, anything else than a full glass means more time spent on it would lead to improvement.

Now imagine that as a manager you allocate time spent on the development of these levels. In this analogy time is represented by water in a bucket. Start by filling the first glass with water until its full, then move to the second. If you run out of water and don’t have 5 full glasses, you don’t get more water… you have to redistribute the water you have until all of the glasses are filled to the same level.

So now, add a 6th glass… a 7th glass and then get the idea that you’re diluting the completeness of each level by adding more levels and not adding more water (time) to the bucket. When the manager has added enough levels that most of the glasses only have a couple of drops of water, explain that the levels currently ready really aren’t ready… By adding levels without adding time, all of the levels suffer.

I hope that helps… comments?

Mac

Game Dev using SCRUM – a slight modification

OK, so you read my rant about using Excel for Project Management… (sorry, queasy feeling came over me while typing that) There is one exception that I will allow… keep track of the Product Backlog, and even the Sprint Backlog, for Scrum.

I recently attended a class and I saw Excel used by the teacher for this simple task. She had some other fields and it looked like good tracking, but there was a limit. The tasks were not broken down on her sheet and she have to cut & paste every day when things changed.

OK, now that you know what NOT to do. I love Scrum, so what are the alternatives?

Over the years I have found very few places that use 100% pure Scrum. I even worked with a company that refused to use Scrum, but agreed to a daily meeting and a list of tasks broken down every 2 or 4 weeks. (Ahem)

So to help these poor people, I made a MS Project file that tracks Scrum. The added benefit is that for each Sprint, its possible to create a GANNT chart. No really! I’ll hook up the files and you’ll see what I am talking about.

The files can be found here… SenourScrumPackage

In that zip file you’ll find a PDF of the basic instructions of how to use the other file, a MS Project 2007 sheet. There is still some copy&paste that’s needed every day. But it will satisfy those that want a wall sized GANNT chart, but still have daily meetings. (Admit it, you know who you are)

Good luck and hit me up with questions!