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Expert Tips from 5 Leading Studios MASTER GAME PRODUCTION Expert Tips From 5 Leading Studios www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) INTRODUCTION Few industries are as volatile –– and innovative –– as the game development industry. Dealing with demanding players, rapid changes in technology, and a crowded market creates fierce competition and copycats. So what makes some studios more successful than others? How do they compete in an ever-changing environment? We interviewed five leading producers using Hansoft –– the Agile planning tool from Perforce –– on how they build amazing and immersive experiences. Discover how these leaders approach work and optimize production methods for their small to large-scale teams. Each leader brings their own unique approach to uniting their teams and finding the fun. This is what allows them to move from idea to a real product. Because building a great game is not only about assembling a great team. It’s about leading a team to execute a vision that satisfies both customers and stakeholders. www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) TABLE OF CONTENTS www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) JP Kellams on Huge AAA Games JP Kellams The way that I JP’S FAVORITE HANSOFT TIP: like to think about Hansoft has helped us solve problems huge AAA games elegantly, one of them being backlog management. is your sprints are almost gears in a machine. Depending on your team size, and the things Master Your Backlog >> that you are trying to accomplish, some gears spin really fast and some spin super slow. The trick for production is to make sure that you maintain the spin rate of all those individual gears. They should all fit together to make the engine run.” www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Electronic Arts (EA) is undoubtedly one He was an integral part of anything of the largest and most famous game that required production and language skills. companies in the world. It was founded in With this background, he became a jack-of- 1982 and has been instrumental in defining all-trades. He was able to learn many of the what the game industry is all about. production aspects of making a video game. Their annual sports titles –– managed in How to Solve the the EA Sports division –– delivers some of Impossible Iron Triangle the world’s most popular games such as FIFA, NHL, and Madden. They continue to In Japan, JP worked on a lot of original IPs. innovate the entire sports games genre, both The production cycles varied, but it could be in terms of fun and business. And with the upwards of five years. At EA, they operate Ultimate Team feature, they have once again on an annual release cadence with Madden. proven their successful model. This has helped JP continue to evolve and grow as a producer. Multicultural Game Dev Background In project management, time, resources, and scope are often referred to as the The producer JP Kellams currently works iron triangle. You are only allowed to pick on the Madden franchise at the EA Tiburon two. The other must be sacrificed. If you Studio, located in Florida. He joined the have limited resources and time, you must studio after moving back to the United decide what to include from a deliverable States, having worked in Osaka, Japan for perspective to manage scope. If you have many years. a fixed vision and goals you need to deliver and a fixed team, you will need to adjust Throughout his career he has been able to the timeline. work on 20+ game titles, all with different constraints and challenges. Before EA, he PERFECT CAN BE THE ENEMY worked at PlatinumGames and Capcom. While working at different studios, JP noticed He was the only native English-speaking the importance that company culture played person on the team for many years. into planning. At one studio, the company 4 www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) had a tendency to focus on doing every- It can be difficult and sometimes thing perfectly. challenging, but EA has made it work. Solving the impossible iron triangle puzzle That often translated into timelines and has allowed them to produce annual titles sometimes budgets becoming inflated. since the original Madden release in 1988. This can have detrimental effects on a At the same time, Madden as a product project. For example, he worked on the title continues to grow in complexity. EA now Scalebound, which eventually got cancelled. offers a live service that continuously iterates over the course of the year. A key takeway from this time was how despite people’s best efforts, a process can How EA Does become inefficient. Having all decisions come from one central creative mind made It Differently it difficult for the team to share in the vision. So what’s the difference? JP argues that one important thing that EA does right is that JP could see how this impacted the team. they give the proper value to production Even the word ‘methodology’ started and associated methods. By having strong carrying a bad connotation. By going for checks and balances on quality and backlog perfect, they were getting in the way management, they are able to make of progress. decisions at the right time. If a team waits ESTABLISH YOUR TEAM too long to make important decisions, they AND SCOPE can run out of time or options, or might make a decision too early. At EA, JP has seen how this can be done differently. Madden works around a fixed At EA, they are experts at making decisions date, and as there is a semi-permanent fixed just-in-time. This has become one of the team working on it, the cost is fixed. The secret weapons that keeps EA competitive. game obviously needs to include important Their evolved production methods have value adds to keep their fans happy. This allowed teams to balance the aspects of helps define the minimum scope that must the iron triangle in a way few others can. be delivered. 5 www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) LEARNING TO BE OKAY This is a subtle but important difference. WITH UNKNOWNS Humans are inherently bad at estimating and designing a perfect game that A key focus area for JP at EA is to make survives unchanged over the course of an sure that there is as little crunch as possible. entire project. Things will change. And Because if teams are working more hours according to JP, the most critical thing to against tight schedules, quality can suffer. figure out first is a clear, concise vision. That To make this successful, JP and his team is where you need to start with every game. need to accept that they do not have to know everything. Being able to work despite some uncertainity of the final design allows the team to adapt as they learn. They are not tied down to exactly how things should be implemented. This can be hard to overcome because people can sometimes expect everything to be figured out before they start working. But the reality is everybody needs to know what the goal is, and the team naturally works to reduce the unknowns step by step. FOCUS ON WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW Of course there can be pushes from primary ITERATE YOUR VISION (NOT JUST THE GAME) stakeholders, engineers, and team members to have a clearly defined picture; however, After a vision is outlined, teams should start instead of getting too focused on the end iterating towards that vision. Iterations help goal, the idea is to instead focus on the things teams learn. And they help people hone in you want to know and need to know now. on the vision more clearly, even if deviating from the original. 6 www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) This way of building and learning allows JP’s Frostbyte has been the game engine team to take ownership of the process, and used for Madden since the 2018 edition. It is celebrate the successes. Even if an iteration also used for many of the other titles produced does not work, the team can learn faster and by EA. Production teams are under pressure take off in a new direction within the framework to clearly communicate their needs for the of that vision. game engine, and these needs must align with the needs of other titles. Scaling Agile across Building and iterating a game this way is very a shared platform used by multiple products different. Most teams let the results of an is a struggle. According to JP, good internal iteration dictate what the vision should be. communication is the key. Teams falling into this trap start throwing away work, inefficiently working towards a moving Bridge Internal and target rather than a singular vision. External Communication Scale Agile to Other internal divisions and teams are not the Meet Your Needs only things to consider. There is also external outsourcing brought in to work on projects. Being clear about the vision also helps define For this situation, having clear boundaries is the size of the team needed.
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