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

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.

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.

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. Smaller teams can very important. You need to respect the be more efficient at finding the fun. It is faster outsourcing studio’s perspective. Where do to iterate, easier to manage, and will not cost they want to get the work done? What is the as much. acceptable level of quality?

It takes a lot of manpower to build a large and By establishing boundaries, you can make sure engaging game like Madden. Even if a team that they understand where you are coming can build the game on top of a game engine, an from at all times. It can ensure that you allow entire world has to be created. There’s no sound the party to operate autonomously and feel in a game engine. No art. No logic. No physics. empowered. This avoids common pitfalls, Everything in our day-to-day world has to be like micromanaging or having to second- recreated in a video game. This takes massive guess what the studio is in charge of, or what effort to accomplish. production will think.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Open communication, clear boundaries, Build Trust To and understanding the vision are critical for scaling Agile in JP’s opinion. But situations Lead Production vary from title to title and team to team, making Another aspect of working at a large scale is it hard to generalize. that the teams will not always be fully cross- functional. You just need to build teams that If everyone is in the same room, communication can accomplish features in a way that is as is easier. But in a scaled environment, you need self-contained as possible. to use timezones, technology, and other aspects to your advantage. JP often refers back to the The vision holder needs to describe what Agile Manifesto. It does not dictate how you they want to see and set the goals for the should work, it dictates how you should think team. It does not matter if it’s the producer, about work. creative director, lead, or a programmer. Someone needs to own the vision and be able to articulate the goal posts. It is what will inspire the other people to believe in the vision. Throughout this process, it will become clearer what skills are needed in the team, allowing for more specialized work.

AVOID CRUNCH BY BALANCING DECISION MAKING

Building teams around a joint vision is also useful to further reduce the risk of crunch. Work-life balance is something central to how JP works.

Crunch is almost always an effect of failing project management. It is not because the team doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) typically because management keeps changing prevent smart people from contribut- the vision, or has signed a contract the team ing to supporting teams. couldn’t keep, or a myriad of other factors Instead, these people end up just double- outside of the team’s control. checking what the team is doing. Eventually PROACTIVE, COLLABORATIVE that tends to evolve into a lack of trust in DECISION MAKING the team. No team wants a really smart

It’s up to the producer to remove the need checker telling them how they would have for crunch. JP provides a mental model to built the game differently. That doesn’t explain this. Imagine a diagram where one axis further your team towards the goal. This goes from proactive to reactive and the other can be particularly challenging for axis goes from arbitrary to collaborative. independent developers.

As producers, it is important to constantly You Need to be striving for proactive, collaborative Believe It to Build It decision making. This is what will help overcome problems. If you want to be more successful as a studio and learn from EA, trust your team. ARBITRARY DECISION MAKING They need to know that they can do it. If not, you’ve got the wrong team — and a different If you want, you can make decisions using a set of problems that must be solved. proactive and arbitrary approach. But then you are relying on the judgement of one These problems won’t be solved by hiring person. The minute that you mess up, you are a tutor to tell people what they are doing left reacting. This area can be destructive and wrong. That is counter to leading and demotivating to the team. teaching a team.

JP points out that there is one very common To build a better game, you need to teach failure he has seen across many of the titles he more than tell. This is how leading game has worked on. A lot of publishers and internal studios work. Believing in your team and the development teams put in structures that can vision is what helps you build a better game.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) The Indie Studio Where Happy People Make Better Games

Sitara Shefta

Happy teams make better SITARA’S FAVORITE HANSOFT TIP: Hansoft is really easy and accessible for games. everyone on the team to use. We can see what everybody’s doing to make sure That’s the way we like to work. We’re everyone is included. Also, planning team trying to build a diverse team because holidays in Hansoft makes it so much easier we really believe that diverse teams make to account for time. better games. At the end of the day, games are played by all sorts of people Improve Visibility into from all over the world, so why wouldn’t Your Project >> you have a team that reflects that?”

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) No Brakes Games consists of a small team of Capitalizing developers located in Tenerife, Spain. Their studio culture is founded on sustainability, on Initial Success trust, respect, work-life balance, and Human: Fall Flat is a physical platformer quality. And above all of these values, they built using the Unity game engine. It works follow the fun. It’s what led to their success as both a single and multiplayer game. And with the new level releases for Human: Fall it was originally created by the founder of Flat. And the people are continuing to grow No Brakes Games, Tomas Sakalauskas. and work on exciting new projects. They are focused on building a value-driven indie With wide support from the community studio that produces amazing games. of gamers –– particularly streaming services –– the game became a massive success. The head of studio, Sitara Shefta, has built Since its initial release more than three this studio from scratch. With experience years ago, the game has continuously from large studios such as EA and Sumo evolved with frequent content updates. Digital, as well as leading production With a whole team now delivering updates at Dream Reality Interactive, she is now frequently, the business has been able to helping build up a studio where happy extend the lifecycle of the game. It has people make better products. become the foundation of the sustainability of the studio. The studio has been recruiting staff from all over the world to move to a relaxed and At the same time, the team continues to laidback lifestyle Tenerife allows. Sitara explore new games while still balancing oversees both the business side as well as the workload between the successful title production. In addition to doing content and what is coming up. Being Agile is an updates to Human: Fall Flat, they are also important part of that balancing act. busy developing a new unannounced title.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) How to Set Up whatever is fun, engaging, and feasible to achieve at the quality they Agile Right feel proud to deliver. Throughout her career working for larger The beauty with the way No Brakes Games studios, Sitara has been using Kanban, build games is that they can continuously Scrum, Waterfall, and various combinations release new content updates. They aim to of the methods. But it’s clear that for No build at a slightly smaller, higher quality Brakes Games, Agile is the most suitable. level rather than ambitiously large levels. No Brakes Games sets weekly or biweekly goals similar to a sprint concept. It allows them to prototype and explore what will be fun. While in an exploratory mode, they may need to change direction quickly and adjust their goals. Their processes are well- adapted to change direction fast. And this method avoids adding more pressure on people to deliver locked-down scope at a certain date. It keeps the team happy and helps them align with their company values.

LOOSELY MANAGING SCOPE

Sitara remembers a project where they needed to deliver set scope in a set amount of time using fixed team. Because of the rigid constraints, the only thing that they Train Small Teams to could adjust was the quality. That is Be Cross-Functional simply the wrong way to build a game. When you are building a studio from scratch, At No Brakes Games, they are focused on you have to be very careful to find people scope management. Backlogs can adapt to that have the right skillset and can fit the

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) company’s culture. It is difficult to have to grow. During feedback rounds specialists available in all areas. and reviews, the entire team comes together so that everyone is up-to-date For a long time, they worked without any on what is going on. designers in the studio. For example, a newly- released level was designed by a technical ENCOURAGE INDIVIDUAL’S artist, the programmers, and Sitara. This team OTHER TALENTS

dynamic has taught them to work and plan As they recruit, No Brakes Games looks for as a cross-functional unit. People need to do people that are very skilled within one area more than just their specialist skill. of game development. It’s a necessity to achieve their high-quality standard. However, an individual’s ability to do something else is a big plus.

By encouraging growth in other areas, better games are built, and people don’t feel restricted by their discipline. They can use and grow their passion in the best possible way. This is a big advantage compared to many larger studios.

TEAM DIVERSITY SHOULD REFLECT PLAYERS

The team includes four coders, two designers, two QA testers, two artists (one technical and one generalist), and one producer. This creates a healthy balance. And since They allow people to dip in and out of everybody contributes in different areas, it projects at some points. And at other times does not matter that they are slightly code- they keep a narrower focus. Not isolating heavy compared to many other studios. individuals in a particular role allows them

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Having the studio located in Tenerife was CREATE FLEXIBILITY also a strategic choice. Since everyone IN DELIVERABLES on the team has relocated, the environment A key aspect of planning both within as is international. Being based in the Canary well as outside the studio is roadmap Islands provides the team members a lot planning. Sitara has noticed how, as trust of benefits and activities to do in their in the team grows, roadmap plans have spare time. The team is very diverse, with become increasingly more high-level with management aiming for a 50/50 split greater flexibility. She remembers from her between men and women at the studio. early days in the industry how roadmaps Because their games are played by all sorts would never move and be very static. You of people all over the world, they try to delivered the highest quality possible reflect that in their team. within that constraint. Construct Roadmaps With the Right Tools

No Brakes Games is also part of an ecosystem that includes publishers, outsourcing firms, and others who are not based in Tenerife. Making sure that these external stakeholders and the team in Tenerife have access to all the same things is an important priority.

Digital tools are a necessity to make that work. By being very transparent with information, they have a much better relationship. Therefore, the work flows more smoothly. They use a combination of products from Perforce ––like Helix Core and Hansoft –– as well as Slack and video conferencing.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Now with more flexible roadmaps, the No Brakes Games hires people shorter sprint times are more fluid. This that care about making great games for trend to focus more on the shorter time their players. They have an “everyone is intervals is really helpful for indie studios respected and deserves to be listened like No Brakes Games. This whole setup to” policy at the studio. It does not allows shorter development cycles, more matter if you have worked with games frequent content updates, and flexibility for 20 years or for a month. Everybody to fix issues that are discovered along comes in as equals. Communication is the way. once again the most important thing — ensuring that everyone understands PROTOTYPE AND PLAY VS. what they’re aiming to achieve, and how MAKING DESIGN DOCS they can deliver it together as one unit. The speed at which they are delivering means that they do not need to write For No Brake Games, everything they excessive game design documents. do is about finding the fun. From their When they have an idea, the first step is to location in Tenerife, to their team and prototype and discuss it as a team. They games, they build better. can then improve the prototype through iterations until they feel confident that it will work.

To understand what should be included in the next update, they do more frequent playtests at No Brakes Games than Sitara has done at other studios. They involve players, family, and friends regularly to get more insights and feedback.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Growing a Studio From 20 to 500+ Employees

Gerard Huke

We can’t have GERARD’S FAVORITE HANSOFT TIP: one kind of rule Structure your backlog by feature to get a for everything good overview of what is going on in your games. Focus on clarity and avoid over- because our games have to come first. nesting your hierarchy. So we tend to structure our production teams, pipelines, and workflows around Build Your Backlog, Your Way >> the needs of that game. We’re certainly not strict Agile, strict Waterfall, or strict anything else. We take the elements that work then blend them to fit.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Frontier Developments is a legendary studio Build Using based in the Cambridge Science Park in the UK. Since its founding in 1994, they have Multiple created games that have a strong foundation Methodologies in science and nature. Their most famous is Managing multi-project development the Elite franchise. Elite: Dangerous –– their involves coordinating many people. Building first self-published game –– is a science fiction different game franchises requires some game focused on exploration, combat, and flexibility across projects. How each game is trading. It’s impressive technical complexity being developed depends a lot on the type includes 400 billion star systems. But, that’s not of game. all. Frontier Developments has also expanded franchises to include Planet Coaster, Jurassic There is no one rule for everything except World, and most recently, Planet Zoo. that the game quality needs to come first. And the pipelines and workflows need to Like many other successful studios, they focus on how a team can meet that demand. have gone from doing work-for-hire to self- Instead of locking a certain team into a publishing their own games. And now they also particular framework –– such as Scrum, help fund other game developers as a publisher. Kanban, or Waterfall –– Frontier blends elements from each method. Then they can Gerard Huke, the Head of Production at Frontier apply them to each game, depending on the Developments, has been at the studio for the needs of the project. past 20 years. He has seen it evolve from a small 20-person operation to a team of 500+ people. The core of how Frontier games are His career at Frontier has allowed him to view developed has not changed over the years. game development from multiple angles. Every discipline is still focused on quality first Today, he leads a team of nearly 30 producers and foremost. The main difference is how the from their brand new studio building, which is organization evolved from teams of 10–15 quickly filling up. people working on a project to 120+.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Self-Publishing has helped them scale up and support their games long after initial release. They Challenges developed a method called the Board of Planet Coaster is a good example of how Belief. This is still a foundation for every project management methods at Frontier game at Frontier. changed when they started self-publishing games. The team was used to working with Creating the Board publishers. They were accustomed to short of Belief to Manage deadlines and incorporating publisher Backlogs feedback on deliverables. But with self- publishing comes more freedom and The creation of the Board of Belief starts control, as well as responsibility. as a big whiteboard exercise. It is used for many purposes from painting a vision to They needed to adapt to the new situation, understanding scope. This board helps keep and the methods evolved throughout the entire team aligned. pre-release, early access, and post-release phases during the development of Planet Columns correspond to various priorities Coaster. (typically ordered 1–10). Each row corresponds to an area of the game called a REORGANIZING RELEASE work stream. For example in Jurassic World, MANAGEMENT a work stream might be dinosaurs. On the One of the major areas where their old board, they place their ideas into various methods became obsolete was in release features and epics. planning. They went from a situation where With this approach, they can get a clear the publisher set the deadlines, to where visual overview of the game from a very early they could control the entire process. stage. Working together with stakeholders Obviously they needed to and key team members, they agree on the release the game to continue their priority of features to prove the game is fun growth so a release plan was necessary. as quickly as possible. They developed their own workflow that

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Ideas will of course evolve throughout vision, Frontier has introduced a Game development. But because the board is very Director role. As they have scaled, this role visible, it’s easy to communicate changes has become increasingly important. It is their across the team. The board is also used to job to focus on the what and why. This way identify the initial “cut line.” This defines the producers can work on how to execute what will make it into the game for the initial the plan and vision. release. If a feature is to the left of the line, the goal is to include it. This is the foundation of their product backlog in Hansoft.

UNITE TEAMS THROUGH PRODUCTION

The workstreams in the Board of Belief are designed to be activated or deactivated depending on the phase of the project. It helps bring the team together to discuss the status of features. Although Frontier prefers to have feature-based teams, sometimes a different approach is needed. For example, when building a game like Planet Zoo –– where animal behavior is the key element –– some teams needed to focus solely on animation.

For each project, there is an assigned production team. This team ensures that Leverage Global Talent each workstream is progressing as expected. to Conquer the World On their largest titles, there are up to five producers on the team, with each producer As Frontier Developments is growing their assigned to a designated area. Those areas studio with successful titles, they need to correlate with the title, workstream, and/or tackle new challenges to stay competitive. platform. And to help maintain the project One challenge is managing increasingly 19

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) large and complex projects. This creates a teams that can efficiently work with need for more specialized talent. And that is team members in remote locations, and not always possible to find in Cambridge. At managing communication barriers (time the same time, despite having moved into a zone, language). large, brand new building, they are quickly Making sure that everybody feels like they already running out of space. are a part of the same team is key. Building strong relationships helps people trust each other’s work and create better games. Continuous Learning Cycle

Every team benefits from holding retrospectives to maximise team performance. Gerard Huke is fully aware that things don’t always go according to plan. One of his key takeaways is to ensure that they always learn from mistakes and acknowledge success, as a team. The team can gain valuable learning experiences that benefit the next release or project.

This helps create the positive continuous To resolve this issue, they have invested cycle of innovation. This is highly visible more into outsourcing work across multiple in Frontier’s award-winning games. By disciplines. The goal is to give teams access understanding how to work and conquer to additional high-quality talent, rather than as a team, they will surely build even more saving money. This global talent pool is great games in the future. essential to help them deliver increasingly ambitious titles. The focus is in building

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Delivering AAA Quality With Publishers

Johan Tengå

I believe that JOHAN’S FAVORITE HANSOFT TIP:

most large-scale Watch the videos Perforce provides. products today There is a lot of information that is really useful. have their own way of working. And one thing that we really brought from Agile was Easily Create an Agile Project >> doing retrospectives. We’re not afraid to test new things. Try it out, see what’s working, what’s not working, and change. Always.”

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Avalanche Studios is an independent Create Methods AAA game development studio dedicated to creating huge, open worlds full of to Balance Business explosive and emergent gameplay. With Needs studios in Stockholm, New York, and Avalanche Studios works on delivering Malmö, Avalanche Studios is steadily many large-scale AAA game projects growing. To date, their titles include Just simultaneously. Johan’s team is constantly Cause series, theHunter: Call of the Wild, working together with a publisher, and with and Mad Max. We sat down with Johan the Stockholm and New York studios. As they Tengå at Avalanche Studios to learn the get further into product development, both secrets behind their success. the game owners and the publishers expect the project to scale up. Such a massive Johan’s career in game development started undertaking puts pressure on timelines, in 2001 in Norway. He started working on efficiency, and quality. And working with the game Anarchy Online and Age of Conan publishers while creating work-life balance at Funcom. He then moved back home to for the team is vital for success. Sweden and worked for DICE, Starbreeze, and FEO Media studios. NO ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL APPROACH TO AGILE It has been a tough ride building competitive titles. He has experienced At Avalanche Studios, teams primarily use some extreme crunch periods, even leaving Agile to plan their work. But they have added the industry for a while to work for H&M’s their own custom flavor. They are not afraid IT organization. But he eventually came to experiment in order to reach the quality back to the game industry, and is now Lead and speed needed for development. Producer at Avalanche Studios.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) For example, they recently introduced Communicating an Experience Owner role. This position is similar to a Product Owner. They need Frequently With to ensure that the game’s vision is broken Publishers down into appropriate backlog items. At Avalanche Studios, employees often Their goal throughout development is work with publishers on their projects. The to advocate for the game experience. publisher needs to understand how much they need to invest, and what they’ll get out To accomplish their goal, experience of it. Balancing game development between owners work very closely with directors. the expectations and needs of the publisher, The directors are in charge of managing the while being Agile, can be a challenge. portfolio of different experiences. As they Avalanche Studios has learned to master this get futher into product development, both balance. It has become an important the game owners and directors continue part of their success. to customize Agile to meet their goals.

BUILD A METHOD AS UNIQUE AS THE TEAM

Avalanche Studios does not use this same approach for every project. They have producers run their teams using more hybrid methods of Agile, Kanban, and Waterfall.

The development approach is completely dependent on the project and team. But the goal stays the same. It’s all about getting the job done in the most efficient way while adhering to their standard of high quality.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) By keeping a good relationship with the sometimes Avalanche Studios puts together publisher, they can align around common Strike Teams. These teams have all the goals. Frequent and ongoing conversations people –– coders, artists, designers, and help address any issues or questions that quality assurance (QA) –– necessary to make pop up early in development. And it helps the final push to complete a goal on time. avoid some of the common pitfalls in developer-publisher relationships. Leverage QA Talent to Solve Challenges Equality and Flexibility Across Teams Johan Tengå has also worked to resolve one common challenge in the game Often games that are developed across development industry. In most teams, geographically-distributed studios work people working in QA are overloaded very with one head studio and then other late in the project. This is typical with the studios that feed into it. Avalanche Studios phases of a game project. Most of has chosen a different way. To collaborate the testing work comes in close to the across their Swedish and U.S. studios, they first release. have put the studios on equal terms. And because QAs tend to be great gamers, They do not use a set structure for their Johan makes a point to include them as early teams. Some of the teams may be more in the project as possible. They not only test, feature-based, while others may include but also review designs, create lists of great/ only artists and are solely focused on bad features, etc. This helps to both motivate creating assets. It is all based on the needs the team and utilize their valuable insights. of each project. They also use their internal teams to do as So rather than following an ‘Agile-by-the- much playtesting as possible. This ensures book’ approach, and considering top talent that the final game is fun! The earlier you get in the industry has limited availability, team feedback, the quicker you can realize what dynamics are very flexible. So flexible that works and what doesn’t.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Agile Tools Make Ensuring that people estimate their work helps facilitate good discussions around a Difference what the team can achieve. And it can help Most of the people at Avalanche Studios are address any scope issues early on. The visibility ‘born Agile.’ Johan Tengå practiced Agile even they gain with estimation techniques also helps in the method’s infancy. Agile became easier them avoid waste. Teams can ensure that work to scale as tools became available, giving doesn’t go down the drain — instead of into teams the ability to use their preferred the finished product. methodology more often. ABSTRACT ESTIMATIONS VS. STORY POINTS

Johan Tengå personally is a fan of abstract ways of estimating, like story points. But it can be hard to explain to the teams. Often they would use estimation that is more concrete, like hours/days.

When Johan’s project started in Hansoft, they dove into the backlog to break things down. After the first couple of sprints, they used estimates to gauge how the team worked. And after running a couple of sprints, they realized that Hansoft allowed them to quickly change their approach. At Funcom, Johan succeeded in changing Hansoft supports multiple project methods. their issue tracking system. The goal was to It gives visibility into everything going on at aggregate estimates on a daily basis, and Avalanche Studios. Considering how flexible manage their release estimates. Using tools, Avalanche Studios needs to work, the planning they could estimate more efficiently. The tool must support everything. That’s why they team knew what was actually going on, chose Hansoft. allowing them to be radically more efficient in their planning. 25

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Bringing Game Dev Practices to VR

Michele Antolini

Retrospectives MICHELE’S FAVORITE HANSOFT TIP: help you stop The integration with Helix Core allows a fire while it’s developers to quickly close issues and still small. tasks as they submit their work. Accelerate Development With Because when you see a huge one, Helix Core + Hansoft >> it’s already too late.”

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) inVRsion is a pioneering company Michele has used his technical specializing in enterprise virtual reality experience to structure project deliverables. solutions for the retail industry in Milano, He combines technology –– such as version Italy. They are a prime example of how game control from Perforce (Helix Core) and development technology, practices, and Hansoft –– with game dev best practices methods are successfully taken to other for how a product should be built. Though industries. For inVRsion, they are creating the inVRsion worked in a fairly Waterfall-driven next generation retail experience. And they way historically, they have now transitioned are working towards a long-term vision of to Agile. Because if there is one thing he v-commerce where VR plays a critical role in has learned from building games, it is that how people buy. “something will go wrong.” This is where the inner optimism in a Waterfall plan is Michele Antolini is the CTO of the doomed to fail. company and has a deep game developer background. Most notably, he was the lead CUSTOMIZE AGILE FOR TEAMS programmer for the MXGP video game from But it is not an all-or-nothing Agile type of the studio Milestone. In addition to being project setup. Michele is convinced that CTO, he also acts as a Product Owner (PO) “Agile by the books” probably would not for the development of new features for work in a multi-project, multi-team setup inVRsion’s solutions. regardless of industry.

Structure Teams to Most of the development team works in full Conquer the Unknowns Agile. They anticipate customers’ needs and create user stories in the backlog. Customer projects present the biggest Then stories are committed to sprints. But difference for inVRsion compared to building the 3D artist team works differently. Given games. To deliver, they have to work the nature of their work, with several small differently. The typical project does not last and repetitive tasks, a more Waterfall-like more than two months. It can be as short as method is used. The way they maintain an a two-week sprint. “Agile” flavor is by still planning in sprints.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) But only progressive refinement is expected, The team has responded positively to not a completed piece of work. By the end the change. Many team members were of every sprint, they can show a very rough only vaguely familiar with Agile before they draft as long as it reflects progress towards started. Michele acted as both PO and Scrum the goal and vision. Master, which was a bit of a risk. Although this is not part of traditional Agile, it worked. Soon after, a couple of the leads took over the Scrum Master roles.

Exactly how the teams are composed depends on how many projects they have going on at the same time. If they are working on more than two or three projects, the composition starts to make a difference. They might split up the team into more departmentalized roles. When there are fewer projects, one team can stay focused on the project-specific tasks. This is similar to a cross-functional feature team, adapted to something that works in their context. USE RETROSPECTIVES TO DISCOVER ISSUES EARLY Using Prioritization

inVRsion has experienced many benefits to Solve Challenges

working this way. One of the most valuable The most difficult aspects of being a is that they can discover issues much earlier. producer are finding the right focus and Because there is one Agile event they never having the team work on the right details, in skip –– the retrospective. This helps not only the right order. This was something Michele the team to improve, but also Michele as a experienced and learned how to handle leader. They can identify issues and resolve back at Milestone. Here he could have been them, avoiding fires to put out later. 28

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) working on up to four large titles at once. a single source of truth. He recalls an The main challenge was that everything was experience in the past where this was not flagged as urgent. the case. One team member believed they were 10% done, and another 90% done for Since he became CTO at inVRsion in 2017, he a project. Without a single source of truth, has been able to help the startup with these there was no visibility into the entire project. challenges. The teams need to continuously It is vital for everyone to understand status develop new features. Building a solution and have it clearly communicated. for VR, they have additional technical complexity. They not only have to consider what the user sees in the VR headset, but also what is seen in the external screen.

One challenge with VR is dealing with motion sickness. To make sure that new features do not cause this, they need to spend up to 30% more time on building than a standard game would require. And as the scope increases, prioritization becomes one of the key ways to get it right. Also, inVRsion works with a number of outsourcers to help with the workload balance. To prioritize effectively, they need to take time to define what is needed, verify, and review what is being delivered. Now the entire team plans collaboratively. CREATE A SINGLE SOURCE By doing things like gamifying the estimation OF TRUTH process, they can also learn from each other about what it takes to complete a part of The first step to successfully prioritize is to the project. create a common view across the team,

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) Experience is user experience, they have even created an interface where customers Everything can configure the system in depth on The player experience is crucial for game devel- their own. Customers are also able to see opment studios, and so is the user experience the partial results often and early during for inVRsion’s products. One practice that development process. Michele ensures that they use from the gaming inVRsion doesn’t take any shortcuts when world is to prototype and iterate continuously. testing their products. Every shortcut they But being in the shoes where they work more potentially could take would create a weak B2B than the typical game studio, they have point. Instead they make sure they test all some advantages. They can be less secretive new versions in exactly the same way the than the typical game studio. And the customers customer would do it. They download the can be directly involved in the packages and use the right controllers and development process. To promote the headsets, etc. This creates overhead, but it also guarantees a good user experience at the end of the project.

For inVRsion, building the user experience is what drives innovation. From designing to testing, they rely on their teams to make quick decisions in development to deliver superior products to customers.

No matter your team size, Hansoft adapts to work the way you do. That’s why leading studios build the best games using Hansoft.

www.perforce.com © Perforce Software, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (1220AD19) How Do Leading Studios Build Better Games?

Hansoft is the Agile planning tool that helps teams work faster, smarter, and with unrivaled efficiency. Easy to use, it empowers everyone — designers, developers, and product owners — with the insights they need to ship better products together.

PLAN FASTER

Hansoft accelerates your team. It’s 10–100x faster than similar tools, plus it allows batch updating and eliminates your click/wait experience. You can change attributes and workflows on the fly. Teams powered by Hansoft experience up to 20% increases in planning efficiency.

SINGLE SCALABLE BACKLOG

Know your scope and prevent creep. Refine, prioritize, estimate, and give any other custom attribute to your deliverables. Everyone works from a joint backlog that scales.

DASHBOARDS FOR ALL

Teams track tasks. Leads track teams. Producers track project success. Decision-makers get reporting and analytics they need. With Hansoft’s custom dashboards, you can find out what is wrong and correct it fast.

Leading Studios Choose Hansoft.

TRY IT FREE

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