Blood, Sweat and Pixels

Extracts

• “every single video game is made under abnormal circumstances. Video games straddle the border between art and technology in a way that was barely possible just a few decades ago”
• “there were certain aesthetic rules they needed to follow for a game like this. They shouldn’t have tall grass, for example, because it would hide the selection circles that appeared under Eternity’s main characters.”
• “The thing that makes scheduling challenging is iteration,” said Rob Foote. “You have to allow for iteration if you want to make a great product.”
• “Diablo III was proof that, even for one of the most accomplished and talented game studios in the world, with near-limitless resources to make a game, years can pass before that game properly coalesces. That even for the third game in a franchise, there are still an impossible number of variables that can throw everyone off. That even a game that launches with crippling issues can, with enough time, commitment, and money, turn into something great. In 2012, when Error 37 spread across the Internet, gamers had thought Diablo III was doomed. And then it wasn’t.”

Notes

• schedules have to be malleable as you can’t accurately judge the length of ‘art’
• budgets change with the needs of each month and the staff required
• it takes mastery of a tool to accurately predict how long something takes you without getting stuck on everything you can’t yet problem solve
• when kickstarter-backed the team couldn’t just return to funders for more funding as they might be able to with a publisher
• in isometric styles certain directions of travel can feel disorienting
• MVP - “vertical slice” - smoked and mirrors to make it look closer to the final product, more impressive at an earlier date to secure support
• pros and cons of working with fans and providing instant feedback. Paralives team would undoubtedly have a lot to say about this as this process is the most fan-involved from the bottom up that I’ve seen
• the uncharted team on scrapping a LOT and killing off their main to save the game.
• making fast decisions to keep the teams running whilst they rewrote the game. keeping them working on the bits they definitely wanted to keep
• making 80% of the right choices and making up for smaller bad decisions as they go, to keep the momentum going in the teams and not losing more time
• looking to retain as much as possible but killing what they needed to kill in pursuit of a clear vision
• gray asset boxes for fun testing
• “theorycraft” to see what ideas make sense together in practice
• when Druckmann and Straley disagreed they’d be totally honest with the strength of their positions and passions and on high numbers spend hours discussing why they were both so passionate until they reached any consensus