At the start of preproduction the individual team members pitched game concepts to the group - we had some success but never complete buy-in from the group. We wanted a game concept that every team member would be passionate about developing, and would allow each of us to flourish in our respective roles. After a few false starts with brainstorming sessions we decided we needed a more structured approach.
We had the people, and the desire to do great things, but how would we go about extracting then developing those ideas into something that we would be proud of?The individuals within the team and the roles they wanted to manage within the project were:
We had very clear roles on the Project, and little to no cross over, which gave us a well rounded development team.
As a team we agreed that we would set aside a 3 hour block twice a week to develop the concept of our game, but we needed a set of rules that would allow us to achieve this. Those rules evolved to:
Focus - everyone agreed to come prepared to each meeting ready to discuss all issues
Professionalism - everyone respects the ideas of others
Commitment - everyone acknowledged and agreed that we're all here to make a great game
Honest - speak your mind; regardless of whether it's for or against the idea
Group Collective - the ideas that exist are owned by the group, there are no individuals in the room
We utilized Google Calendar to preschedule our weekly meetings. Agenda's were also created a few days before each meeting allowing team members to know what was going to be discussed so they would be prepared for each meeting.
The process was to create very short and focused design sessions that would allow us to create, detail then iterate on a piece of the game. We would then take these micro pieces and integrate them into the game and verify the feature against our goals.
Once we knew what our group expectations were, we set forth on preproduction of our game. The process we used to maximize our preproduction time was:
Vision/Goals - The team decided our priority was to focus on the player experience vs the genre of the game. We wanted to make something accessible to all levels of gamers with a simple mechanic on the surface, but hidden underneath that simple mechanic was a depth that could be explored. Other goals we defined was to have a common/strong mythology and theme, unique art style, a level of maturity and education with adequate time allowed in the project plan to add polish. With these goals defined we created detailed agendas for each meeting to ensure we achieved these goals. During the beginning of preproduction the agendas were broad for example "what type of game did we want to create". Near the end of preproduction the agendas became very detailed for example "what are the characteristics of heavy field".
Brainstorm - Brain dump ideas, words or game play that define the pre determined vision/goal. The goal during this phase was to focus on what we wanted vs. what we could accomplish. Blue sky ideas - we tried not to scope ideas at this point.
Prioritize - We would pick the ideas from the brainstorming phase that we wanted to develop. Our selection process was more about which was the best idea, as opposed to which idea was feasible or time permitting. We would prioritize the blue sky elements by always keeping our goals in the forefront and asking ourselves questions such as - what did we really want to make? Which ideas had the most group buy in, and the best impact/implementation/idea?
Detail - With the prioritized list of ideas, we allotted a set amount of time to further develop the details. The goal wasn't to come up with every detail but to create as much detail as we could in a short amount of time so that we could get an idea as to how this idea would integrate into the game. The reason we chose to allot a certain amount of time was to prevent us from spending too much time detailing a feature that would not fit with our game concept.
Integrate - With the features detailed we integrated them into the existing game infrastructure. Did the new feature change how any other feature is perceived? Was it for the better or worse? If it was for the worse, what rework was required to make the feature fit?
Proof - With all the features integrated we stepped back and walked through the game play step-by-step and confirmed that the features had the desired results and that the changes we had identified were correct.
Confirm Vision - With the proof completed we went back to our original vision/goals to ensure that we met our original objectives. Were there any further features we needed to develop to meet these goals?
Moving into Production we kept our core values and processes that had worked well for us, adapting them to meet the new Production Cycles as opposed to the Preproduction procedures. One significant change was to remove our biweekly meetings and replace them with a 5 minute daily scrum meeting and a weekly status/feedback meeting.
The daily scrums were where each team member reported what they accomplished the day before, what they were going to be working on, and any roadblocks that may exist moving forward. We would also take this time to point out direction shifts that were happening. These meetings were meant to provide status updates, not resolve any issues. At the end of the week we would then do an update and cross reference that against the Project Plan.
At the end of every week every group members would play the game and provide feedback to the group. These feedback sessions allowed us to take a step back and review what we had so far. We would then review that feedback as a group and see if any course corrections were required and/or identify bugs as we progressed. We would then integrate any course corrections into the following week's development cycle.
The process of vetting course corrections were verify those feature requests matched our predetermined core values. If the new feature or course correction did not match the core values, the idea would be immediately tossed - if it did meet the original goal it would be prioritized, detailed, reviewed and then integrated into the development cycle.