Q:Who are you and what is your role at Codemasters Online?
A: Hi, my name is Michael Rowland and I am a Producer at Codemasters Online, specialising in Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Q:What project specifically do you work on?
A: My current project has me based out in a space station within the Jumpgate Universe, having previously moved from Middle-earth and my house in The Shire. Having left my pony behind, I now get to fly around in a Heavy Fighter destroying pirates and aliens… it’s an interesting shift.

Q: What exactly does being a Producer entail?
A: As a Producer I essentially project manage the game, the budgets, the people and all that less than interesting stuff around the game which makes the game happen. The overall goal is to make a great game, on budget and on time and keep the men upstairs happy, the guys playing it happy and the guys making it happy. I occasionally have time out to do the odd interview, visit the occasional event and of course evaluate the game.



Q: What sort of tasks do you perform on a day to day basis?
A: Day to day is very different. Email is scarily prevalent in everyday life and is the main communication tool between ourselves and the various departments involved in the development of the game. I am in constant communication with the Dev Team be it feedback on the code from design ideas to build deliveries. My role involves managing the needs of many different people and departments be it Marketing, Community, PR, Legal, QA, Localisation, Web, Operations, Network Operations, Customer Service, Design, Finance and eventually the Live Operations Teams.

Q: What sort of technical requirements have to be met in preparation for Alpha, Beta and then release?
A: These key milestones and their requirements can differ from project to project. Alpha is the proving ground for core concepts and main features, games should be in a functional and playable state though not necessarily in a high quality state. Beta should be the point where the game is progressing to a better quality with further feature refinement and the core mechanics of the game is a pretty good state. For an MMO much of the technical backbones are in a reasonably complete state, hosted in a real world environment and at a point where the game is viewable by select members outside of the main development team. At Launch the game and service should be at a reasonable stable state, main features working as intended and the game of a good quality. Being an MMO, new features and updates are something that can be added to build on the game, address issues that have crept through and enhance the game ongoing.

Q: What are you currently working on?
A: Right now we have just completed the Alpha milestone in Jumpgate Evolution and planning in a host of new content plus a number of technical features to support the game for launch. We’re also working on localisation to support the European player base amongst a million other things like building ships and space sectors.

Q: How is Jumpgate Evolution looking from a production, and consumer standpoint?
A: From a production standpoint the game is coming along very nicely and there’s a strong focus to keep the quality high throughout development, so much so that we’ve been using the Alpha builds at a number of consumer shows such as GC Leipzig and PAX. Seeing people dog fighting in space, joystick in-hand, eyes fixated on the target reticule brought a big smile to our faces. As we populate space with vibrant new sectors and “special” content that just adds to the excitement hat we’re going down the right lines… the network of tunnels in one of the asteroids reminded me firstly of Descent and then the Millennium Falcon as it hid from the Tie-Fighters in The Empire Strikes Back… some very happy memories.

Q: Can you tell us a little more about what sort of preparation is being made to get Jumpgate Evolution into a Beta state?
A: Preparations are being done to ensure our servers are ready to go, so the latest server hardware is in our data centre now and being prepped by the Net Ops Team. Server code itself is also being worked on as well as all the technical stuff that links up the billing systems, tools, etc that most people don’t really think about. Game code itself is being worked on extensively to populate the world with more content, iterating on current and work in progress features and the ongoing process of bug-fixing and testing. The Marketing and Community teams are also doing their bit by getting word out for the Closed and Open Beta sign-ups to enable us to get game and service feedback, for those interested you can sign up at http://www.jumpgateevolution.com/ fill in a couple of fields and help us with aspects of the entire service.

Q: What are your objectives for when Beta begins? Are you looking for anything in specific or for players to just drill the game code?
A: There’s a number of different aspects we’re looking to test from systems outside of the game environment such as the Player Account System, the integration between that and the game and of course the game itself. That real world test is core to ensuring we have a reasonably stable launch, fortunately Codemasters Online have a number of MMO launches under our belt and many lessons have been learnt from each one. As we move through the different stages of beta our objectives will change so early on we’re very interested in game feedback and how people play the game, later we’ll be going through compatibility testing with the massive variety of PC builds throughout the world and then the traditional en masse “let’s see how many people can break the server” test.

Q: Will we see Beta this year?
A: Some may see the beta this year… that’s all I’m willing to say ;)



Q: What are the challenges of being a Producer for a Publisher?
A: The main challenges are having to work away from the Dev Team and not seeing that day to day progress with the game. Not being able to see the Art team create and implement that awesome new Capital ship or finding that breakthrough coding fix that means we can through in more content at a quicker rate is very frustrating, especially as a lot of Producers are control freaks… it’s what we do :D

This of course gives me a great excuse to go out and visit the team every few weeks to catch up with them and see the excellent progress being made, seeing that new ship on an Artists screen being touched up one day and then in game the week after gives myself and the team a very good buzz.

As a Publishing Producer you are faced with the additional teams involved in getting the game to market, so there’s a lot of management of people within the other departments mentioned earlier, ensuring their priorities are met. Of course everyone believes their priority task is important, so a key skill is being able to prioritise their tasks on a project scale. As you can imagine, communication is a core skill internally and externally.

Q: What are the perks of being a Producer? What is it that makes the job enjoyable?
A: Being a Producer can be incredibly stressful keeping everyone involved happy and productive, on budget and on time. When that all goes to plan, then you have a very happy Producer. Of course you do get issues from time to time, some of them biggies, but there’s a tremendous buzz when running around having to get something fixed and ready for a particular deadline, and once done and dusted, a sense of satisfaction is felt… a feeling often seen around major events or just after.

The biggest perk though is making games, it’s not a one man job and being able to co-ordinate the people, tasks and costs to produce a great game and then seeing it on the shop shelf has to be the biggest buzz. Despite the stress, disgruntled other halves and the long days I love what I do and I love what other game studios do, and I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who feel the same way which enhances that enjoyment tenfold.

Q: What made you decide to be a Producer?
A: It was a long road to get to where I am now. I started life working in Quality Assurance, firstly at a brewery making beer and then followed my way to the Codemasters QA department. This is really the point where you get to work directly with the Development Teams who hate you and love you at the same time. It’s a great place to start learning about the industry and to discover the intricacies of delivering a game to the masses. I had worked with a number of teams and found that I really wanted to work with external studios as a Producer; we have a studio dedicated to working with studios outside of Codemasters and the team was awesome. This was my overall goal but I still wanted to learn a little bit more about the industry I call Game, and was asked to become one of the first Community Managers at Codemasters, working solely on our Action titles (I’m a big PC gamer and shooter fan). I took on this role and spent a good couple of years working with our great CodeM community from FPS titles to the RTS titles, eventually moving onto the MMO titles. At this point my taste for Production escalated and I joined the Online Studio as an Associate Producer and to take control of the current and upcoming MMOs.

My thirst for making games and to be a part of that team getting the game out grew, and I was fortunate enough to be put in charge of managing the Lord of the Rings Online MMO from pre-production to launch and subsequently the post launch content.

So to cut a long story short, I thought it would be cool and I was right :D

Q: What made you decide to join Codemasters Online?
A: David Solari our glorious leader was a key reason. Let me warn you, I have another long story coming up so you better go get a cup of tea and get comfortable.
So back before we had Codemasters Online I was in the PC Brand Team as a Community Manager, working with Sam “Satine” Russell and a couple of the other guys including Mr Solari. We all worked very well together and wanted to explore the MMO and Online space a little more, we essentially wanted to publish and service MMO games which no-one in Europe was really doing at that time. And so began the formation of Codemasters Online through business cases, game negotiations and recruitment. We went from a team of four people to forty in a year and have grown massively since then, we’re around 3 years old as a department and I’ve not looked back. The guys I work with are great friends and excellent in their jobs, making my job easier, and being apart of something that is as big as Online gaming puts a smile on my face. It’s the way gaming is going and we’re in a fortunate position to be able to offer that experience to a lot of people, be it customers or new development partners.

I was also offered cookies and no-one can turn down cookies.

Q: What are your personal expectations for Jumpgate Evolution?
A: Jumpgate evolution in it’s early tech demo stages showed a lot of potential in where it was going and myself and others in the team were extremely excited about the title, so much so I asked to be put onto the team to work on it, leaving behind my hobbits. The NetDevil Team themselves are a great bunch of guys and there’s a tremendous skill set and passion amongst the team which in turn gives the Codemasters team a burst of passion themselves. The game will be fantastic and over time it will become greater, that I have no doubt. It’s that Wing Commander / Freelancer game people have been secretly wishing for with the persistent online world the early games were missing. I already have my joystick set-up to take on the early testers in our closed beta and prepping myself for some awesome dog-fighting and PvP, though I’m finding age and reaction speed have a very direct correlation to one another. Let’s hope that my Zimmer frame ship mod makes it into the final game.

Nicole "Awen" Hamlett recently sat down with Ohm, a NetDevil programmer working on Jumpgate Evolution. Below is the entire interview from start to finish.



Q: Hi, who are you and what do you do?
A: I’m Ohm, and I’m a programmer at NetDevil on the Jumpgate Evolution project.

Q: What specifically do you work on?
A: Right now I’m working on the AI collision avoidance for NPC ships and I’m about to submit right after this interview.

Q: Is being a game developer what you had expected?
A: I’d say for the most part, yes. There is a lot of hard work that goes into it. It’s not all fun and games like I expected.

Q: What had you expected?
A: In terms of atmosphere it lives up to the expectations, stuff like Pickup nerf wars and table tennis. However, in terms of the work it’s a lot harder. In school you get the impression that every problem handed to you will be solved in some finite amount of time. But coming to work here, a problem was given to me where ships weren’t avoiding obstacles as they should be, and it seemed like an easy problem to solve but two and a half to three weeks later I realized that it wasn’t. So in reality it turns out that game development is a lot more difficult than I imagined that it would be.



Q: What made you decide to be a game developer?
A: I had thought about that and it was a hard question. Basically I wasn’t motivated or happy to be in the field I was in. Before deciding to get into the video games industry I got a degree in electrical engineering and did some government contract work. So when you’re done with the project they expect it to be done and correct and they hand you the next contract. You don’t get to enjoy your accomplishments. There are no fun explosions or intriguing gameplay. It’s pretty dry.
There are, however, projects in electrical engineering that are fun. We made a robotic lawnmower and a paintball turret and those were cool. They’re fun to make but when it’s done it’s forgotten about and you move on. There’s no fire, you don’t care about that project. You’re not invested in it.
In making a game, there is a fire to work on it. For the last three weeks I haven’t had to use an alarm clock to wake up. It’s just so much fun to get out of bed and get to work. Sometimes on the way to work, I think, today will be the day I finish that task and something cool will happen on the screen.
Also, I’ve been playing video games since I was five so I love games. I never thought I could make a living from my hobby, but it turns out that you can.

Q: What did you have to do to change your career path?
A: It’s not too bad when you have such a deep degree. It’s so technical because there is a lot of math and technical programming involved. Going through a typical four year degree, you learn a lot of the skills that you need for a videogaming program. Time management, technical skills and work ethic are skills that can cross over into the different paths.
So I decided to go to Full Sail because I had already been in EE for six years and I didn’t want to spend another four at a Game Development college. There were also master’s programs that were an option but I really felt that I wouldn’t get the foundation needed to succeed. It’s very specialized at Full Sail. They focus on creating a game rather than all of the elective and basic college courses that you get elsewhere.

Q: Why NetDevil?
A:I have Josh to blame on this one. He spoke volumes about how cool it was to work here. Also, I wanted a smaller company because of the ability to work cohesively with a team. There are little office politics and the ability to contribute on many different aspects of the game. You aren’t locked into one specific job without the ability to move into other areas in which you could be better utilized. I can implement new code or fix bugs. There is unlimited possibility for what I can do on this project.
It was really cool when I was assigned the AI on this project. I asked if I could re-write a function and I was told that if it worked and was better than the old process, it would be implemented. I don’t think that would have happened on a larger project or at a bigger company.
It was hard to find a small company that wasn’t doing casual games and the Jumpgate Evolution project was more of a hardcore and interesting game. That’s the type of game that I would enjoy working on more rather than a simple flash game. I like the complexity of the problems and the challenges of creating something expandable and cool.



Q: So now that you’re here what do you enjoy the most?
A: A boss who cusses is great. Also the no-clothes policy is fannntastic! Just kidding! I like the open atmosphere and I really enjoy how me coming in as a new guy, people treated me with equal respect as they treated the veterans. For instance, everyone has been really helpful when I get stuck and ask a question even if it’s the 100th question I’ve asked that day. I found this odd, because my schooling taught me to try to figure it out on my own. These guys are just patient and friendly.

Q: What would you tell people who want to get into the gaming industry.
A: It really is a matter of who you know rather than what you know. However it is good to have the base skills. As a programmer going into this industry you have to know how to program obviously, but I’d recommend getting to know people who are already in the industry. The biggest point is that you absolutely have to love videogames because it requires dedication, long hours and repetition and if you don’t love it, you’re not going to be happy.

Inside Connect with Hermann Peterscheck

Connect was an important event for the Jumpgate Evolution team. It was the first time we showed the game and allowed the public to play in a more or less uncontrolled way. Whenever you prepare for a public demonstration of a game, there is a period of extreme stress and anxiety. You never really know what is going to happen. Will there be some odd configuration on the target machines that breaks the game? Will the servers run well? Things like that. Then there is the game itself. Will player's like it or hate it? There's added problems that MMOs face which I think other kinds of games don't have to contend with. The most notable issue is that MMOs tend to require a long term commitment. Players are generally expecting to sit down for many hours and really get into the game. Timed events do not allow for that experience and thus players may feel like their activities matter that much less.

The competing issue is that it's really important to get feedback on your game as soon as you can. We have been doing testing for over a year at this point, but we have always had a great deal of control over the test. While we wanted to make sure that everyone had a great time playing the game we also wanted to use this as an opportunity to collect data on what could improve the game while we still have time to do it.

I think Connect succeeded in both these areas. The game clients and servers ran well and people seemed to have fun playing the game. We discovered a number of issues which kept happening to people which we used to immediately improve the game. One of the dangerous things for game developers is to believe that we have all the answers. Many times we try and do something that we think is a great idea only to find out in testing that it's terrible. This is why we try and rapidly prototype as many things as possible. Fail early, fail often is a reasonably good approach to game development, early being the key.

Beyond those things Connect was also a great time to just kind of relax and get away from the development environment a bit. We work pretty hard on getting the game working, adding features and lots of time polishing and those hours can get people dangerously close to burn out. We feel that without the work environment being fun, it will be difficult to make a fun game. Sometimes just getting away for a few days can work wonders for motivation. It was also very rewarding to sit and talk with people who are interested in the game. Some of them are just people who are casually interested, or had never heard of or seen the game before. Others were die hard, dedicated fans of the original game. These were the people I was the most interested in, and, to be honest, nervous, about meeting. Some of the people we met with have as much or more invested in the game universe as we do. I first knew about Jumpgate back in about 1996 when I first met Scott and he was telling me about this game he wanted to make that would bring to life the Star Wars movie experience. I thought that was a bold and crazy idea but he had the drive to push it through and despite all odds was able to finish and release a working game that runs to this day. The history of the original game weighs heavily on myself and the rest of the team and we want to make sure we are creating something that meets and exceeds the internal and external expectations.

Whenever we travel we try and set up a time and place to meet with our fans and show them what we're working on. They are really fun visits and I think they help us a great deal. I'm constantly amazed at the range of people that play games. I'm also amazed at how many ideas and how much information people have about what we are working on. I hope we are able to go to many more events and I hope that they continue to go well and draw lots of diverse people. There really is no greater reward for a game developer than to see someone enjoying something you helped to create.

The Emotional Attachment of a Game’s Rules
by Nicole "Awen" Hamlett

I am fortunate enough to have a family of gamers. At our family dinners, eventually, someone brings up the topic of what games are hot, what games we are playing and why so and so should join x guild. It’s as inevitable as eating pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. No matter how many times someone brings apple pie into the mix, the pumpkin pie is always there. It’s always going to happen.

Generally I will jump into a debate and put my two cents into the conversation but I don’t get worked up about much. This year was no different. However, I sat in as not only a gamer, but also as part of a development team. I found the conversation interesting from a different perspective and instead of adding my opinion; I simply listened; trying to delve into the player psyche.

What happens next in this Holiday tale goes beyond any normal and sane comprehension and I need to share it simply because it points out that I finally understand what I’ve been reading in the forums. It doesn’t concern any particular MMO, but a game of Spades.

The back-story is this – For the last seven years, my husband and I have been playing spades with my little sister and her husband. We get together a few times a month. We have dinner and no matter how much groaning and grousing that occurs, a game of Spades invariably happens. We never play couple against couple. A word of advice, NEVER play on the same team as your spouse / significant other. It never ends well. So, Kelly and I partner and we almost ALWAYS win.

I like to think that it’s because we have greater skill. We can play off of each other, bid better Nils and arguably, we’re so good that we once pulled off a double blind nil with a ten for two hand. That one went into the “we get to brag about this for the rest of our natural lives” book. After the table was cleared and people were settling down after dinner and the general MMO chat was waning, Kelly and I busted out the cards and made the men sit down for a final game of Spades for the year.

After the third trick was played and Kelly had gone nil for the second time, Casey bursts out, “You shouldn’t be allowed to go nil ever again. The only reason you two ever win is because you’re playing to lose. You should play to win!”

What followed was not a heated argument but an all out brawl with phrases like – “We’ve been playing this way for the last seven years, you can’t bloody well change the rules now!” There were quite a few expletives left out of this quote for the sake of our delicate readers. Threats were made, one threat was carried out. It was ugly and never in my memory has a family discussion been so balls out evil.

After I got over my personal angst at not being able to play as I had for that last seven years, (yes we caved) I realized that this debate about Spades was no different than a debate about our own MMO game mechanics. The game was different, but what if it weren’t? What if we were discussing whether or not small ships should be allowed to carry heavy missiles at the expense of cargo space?

As the primary (read only) moderator of our forums, I see arguments pop up frequently about what is right or wrong and while I have to stay impartial, I suddenly realized that all of these opinions stem not from being argumentative for the sake of argument, but from an emotional attachment to familiar rules.

While most can argue that the majority of MMO players don’t play a game for more than six months at a time, personally I have played a single game for more than three years without unsubscribing. I imagine that the majority of our community can say the same. In that time we become attached to the familiarity of our game’s mechanics.

Changing those mechanics is, in our minds, abhorrent because we’ve become familiar with them. We live our gaming lives by those rules. We become so close to the subject that we can’t see that perhaps there may be a necessity for that change. Maybe the rule was a valid one seven years ago, but in today’s game play, we need something different.

Evolution is a positive example of game mechanics that may be changing for the good of the game. Some things that worked years ago may be outdated. Some may not be and will be left alone. The primary focus however is to ensure that the majority of the players can have a good time while in the Evolution universe. With said, I completely understand where a panic may set in when the explanation of the changes are still in flux. Because we’re still in the early stages of development, there are just things that we can’t explain yet. As a developer I understand the changes better. Were I a player, I expect that I would be very anxious as to where this will all lead.

So, in conclusion, I get it. With so much time invested, it becomes a part of your life. Games in general are places for us to escape the daily doldrums and some of the reality of our lives. They’re places for us to have fun. My biggest benefit is that I know that the team is keeping this in mind and in the end, they are striving hard to create a game that is FUN.

So, why Jumpgate Evolution?
A Developer Log from Scott “Scorch” Brown

When we started Netdevil 10 years ago to create Jumpgate Classic, we were just a handful of people. Most of us were still working fulltime jobs, but every free minute we had was spent developing the game. For us it was the game that we always wanted to play. At the time the most popular space games were Elite and Wing Commander and those games were our inspiration.

Jumpgate Classic was a true labor of love and because of it we have some great stories to tell. It really shaped us as developers and we gained a lot of experience from it. We often joke that the game was finished on passion alone. Well, passion and a lot of Pizza…

Knowing what we know today and being in possession of much better resources then we were 10 years ago, we felt very confident that we could make a much better game that was based in the Jumpgate universe. A game that would be really special. Thus, the decision was made and Jumpgate Evolution was born.

While Auto Assault didn’t perform to everyone’s expectations, it did teach us a lot about what it takes to make better games. We realized that if we wanted to make a successful game, it needed to be done on our own terms and without the pressure of development milestones. So, we went to work.

Developing Jumpgate Evolution is a great opportunity. Because we funded the development ourselves, we needed to make sure that - given the limited resources - we had the best possible people working on it.

Initial meetings were very exciting. The old passion was back. We realized that sometimes different is not necessarily what’s best, but we also knew that we could make a great space game using a different set of mechanics. We thought of all the best space games, movies, TV shows and were inspired by the most incredible moments of those properties. Then we came up with new ways to confer that level of suspense and excitement into our game. I think that in the end these initial ideas will pay off. Our highest priority is that people have fun playing Jumpgate Evolution. And initial reactions from the public are indeed great.

The fact is that finally, with our own funding, we are able to make the right decisions about changes that need to be made to make this game great. With an entirely new graphical update, some great fiction from D&D Eberron writer Keith Baker and a lot of enthusiasm from the team, Evolution is going to succeed.

My name is Cole Eggen and I'm a 3D artist at NetDevil working on Jumpgate Evolution (JGE). Currently the art department consists of 3 individuals: Darrin Klein, Kirk Lunsford, and myself. What makes this project so interesting to work on at the moment is the small team size. The process is very intimate so we find that the specialization that occurs on larger projects (where you have one person doing one specific task) is heavily minimized. That’s not to say the three of us don’t have our areas of expertise, but we usually tend to get our feet wet with many different types of tasks, so working on Jumpgate Evolution is anything but mundane.

Because of this, the art pipeline is a very casual where at times (when its necessary) we are free to explore creating visual aspects or take stabs at new ways of achieving the same end goal. That’s not to say this is strictly a learning process, but what it means is that there are constant attempts at thinking outside of the polygonal videogame box. One of the things we’re trying to do with Jumpgate is make it run silky smooth on a large and different types of systems. Coming from an art background, restrictions are always something that provoke innovation, not only in process, but also in art style. My hope is that when Jumpgate Evolution is complete, this will be something that is more than apparent.

An example of this is the Jumpgate itself. I can’t even remember how many iterations the jump-o-sphere went through before we finally decided upon the version that is in the game now. I tried throwing just about every particle configuration under the sun to try and emulate the original effect. The problems we were running into was that in order to achieve the appropriate look, we needed to utilize both small and large particles to pull it off. The problem with this is that any configuration that improved the visuals would hammer the frame rate. I then worked along side the lead programmer and came up with some ideas for cheaper FX, using geometry particles, etc. We began prototyping up several shaders we could apply to a simple sphere in an attempt to create what looked like a turbulent ball of energy that could be perceived as a gate for long distance space travel.

The end result ended up being pretty far from the Jumpgate in Jumpgate Classic, but it was for the better, not only for performance reasons, but for the visuals as well – thus we were able to find something that both looked great and ran well. We’re finding that if we focus a ton on performance we can also use the same iterations for art passes as well, so we’re not only figuring out the best way to go about making things run well, but also finding the best way to take advantage of our engine and its various shader and particle abilities.

Probably one of the biggest things I’ve learned while making games is that the engine is very much a medium through which art is created. Half of what makes the art aesthetically pleasing however is not just how good it looks, but how well it runs.

As most may know, I recently joined the Jumpgate Evolution team as the Community Manager. Since the team is small (I believe we’re working with 9 now) everyone has many roles. This means that even though I have a CM title, I also jump in wherever I can and am needed.

Before I came to NetDevil, I worked in games media. I had this thought process that building a game had to be fairly easy. It had to be fairly easy because there are loads of mediocre videogames out there. A monkey could do it right? I generally take this same stance when I’ve finished reading a book that was less than spectacular. “Oh for the love of… I could write better than this!”

However, there are also a lot of MMO games that are fantastic. They seem flawless! The developers make it look so easy.

It’s not easy.

I can’t imagine now, seeing what I’ve seen, what made me think that just anyone could create these games. I couldn’t even program my VCR much less program the thousands of lines of code that go into these games.

This was the situation that lead to my enlightenment.

Last week, Friday to be exact, there were a group of us sitting around discussing the UI. It started out very informal. Josh our new programmer had completed the new station market interface. It looked awesome! The group started with two. Then it expanded to four. We sat there and talked back and forth about what we needed to make sure that it was intuitive and that the common user would be able to figure it out.

By common user, we’re talking about me. I’m the lowest common denominator in our team. Don’t take that as a negative role. I don’t. I call myself this because a. I am not intimate with the game mechanics yet; and b. If I can jump into it, have fun and know how to play we’re good to go. (Meaning I’m hardcore without being hardcore. Ok back to the story)

By now, most of the team was in on the discussion. After spending an hour in what I like to call “an informal design meeting”, talking about how much we liked this option or that; we suddenly needed to figure out how to makes sure we could implement “this or that”.

The group became quiet for a few minutes. I stared off into space during this time. I’m assuming that the others were deciding which would be the best way to code it, and since I have no clue there, I imagined myself flying through the stars and mining rare metals from far off distance asteroids. Then someone piped up with a solution. “Rabble Rabble Rabble!” (Those are voices of debate.) Twenty minutes later, we determined that it was something that was going to be put on hold because we had other systems that needed more attention first. While the thought process had to go on hold, it’s in our backlog.

In a nine person team, making the game becomes a TRIAGE scenario. Instead of levels of trauma / blood and guts, we have levels of comprehension/ fun and solidity. Is this feature understandable? Check. Is it solid? Check. Is it fun? No? It’s not fun? Crap! How do we make it fun? Do we have the manpower to focus on this? Is it something that we can ship with? It goes on and on.

These informal design meetings are important in so many different ways. We get to really flesh out ideas with a group and discuss the pros and cons. The amazing thing here is how positive it stays. With limitations, there is always going to be struggles and despite our limitations and struggles, our team just keeps chugging along to make sure that we’re building this amazing game that people are going to be able to spend hours upon hours playing.

I can’t imagine that it’s much easier for a larger team. They just have more bodies to put to work for their solutions. Needless to say, this experience so far has definitely opened my eyes. I better understand feature creep and I can say that I won’t be so harsh when judging other developers on the game flaws. It’s complicated and it’s challenging… But it’s fun.