Test CDF app below – hopefully
The game tsunami – who plays, how much and why
ch starts off with the story of nick who plays star wars galaxies
games will change the nature of work because of hte popularity of games and the future of work
we’re in an entertainment revolution – and games are a huge part of it – games are approx 10 billion USD market – hardware (1 billion in 2007), games sales make more money than movie tix, only 15% of all games sold are Mature rated, people pay money monthly to pl.ay the gmes, millions of people, there’s a huge aftermarket for game characters and objects – almost 2 billion USD. not just kids playing – all ages, men and women play
they think mmos have the biggest potential payoff for changing work and they h ave t he most varied player population
???ESA data on game players last year?
mmo players better educated, better incomes than regular population, play a lot – like 25 hours a week even tho they have full time jobs and families – - mmos very engaging, older players play longer per week, women play more than men tho there are fewer women players than men, they watch less tv than non gamers
gotta have fairly powerful computer, broadband, buy the initial software, register an account, pay monthly, have to pick a server to play on, have to create a character
games usually start with a narrative cut scene to get you into the story, give you the history of the world and set you up for the decisons you need to make as the player
when you play a game “you’re now in media, not just watching it. Television will never be the same. You get to determine where you go (you’re no longer saying ‘your character’), how fast and with whom. You are not free to do anythihng you want in the virtual world” p. 24
mmos are about “more than shooting, fast cars, and sports. They’re about developing characters and relationships in groups, strategies and tactics for collective action, sophisticated communication between players, and metrics and money that enable vibrant economics. ” p. 25)
???look for some youtube videos from star wars galaxies and lineage
virtual worlds different from games – virtual worlds becoming more popular – you have an avatar, there’s a virtual economy usually..but no missions, no narrative to drive the story, no explicit goals, no roles defined for your character..they’re a place to meet, do social things, might be games in the world but the world itself isn’t a game
why do people play
social motivations – competitions , socializing
personal motivations = achievement, immersion, exploration
achievement – personal rewards, gain power within game context, colect rare items that they can brag about, see their name at top of leader boards, want to advance in the game, clear goals, lots of score keeping, want constant game reinforcement
immersion – try out new characters iwth different personalities, good actors, players want to be case in dramatic roles where they can add an important element to the narrative, awant to escape to a fantasy world, like to customize characters, be involved in complicated plots, good soundtracks, great looking graphics, emotionally appealing stories
exploration – want to know how the world works, see interesting stuff, eye candy, could alo explore game mechanics to see how the game works
competition – points, levels, badges, rewards separate winners and losers, people wnat to win, want to beat other players, can have friendly competition, can have aggressive/hostile competition
socializing – comes require cooperation to win, want to list their friends, see their social networks, share that nfo with others
games coming into work need to take the following into account — and it appears that what gamers learn from games (these expectation) they take into real life, so they may overall be things like more willing to do tril and error
media may start out with a serious purpose but seems to gradually/not so gradually move to being used for entertainment
“people think and work hard when they’re excited. as media makes possible increasingly rich exchanges (more ways to commmmunicate emotion, excitement, and enthusiasm), engagement will determine how information influences and facilitates work. p. 32
starts off with descriptoin of woman working at a call center – one just working and the other working with a game wrapped arund the wrok
like the game wrapped work because – she’s engaged, knows the rules on how to advance, gets evaluated on objective measures, everybody’s stats are public, gets evaluated daily, more social contact with hte people on the team, learn from and teach people — things she was missing from the regular job
game wrapped job had a narrative and visuals – things to see while she worked and did the phone call stuff
people play videogames and are way more engaged, volunteer to spend time, to do tasks in the game – things they wouldn’t do at work, people are immersed, don’t experience time passing (no clock watching in a game like we do at work
their story – if yu want people to be engaged with their jobs..you have to think about how to bring in game elements..and the game elements shouldn’t be used just during training or orientation — not just about having fun at work
game elements can help people collaborate in distributed teams, help them share info, help them deal with boring elements in their jobs..games give feedback, rewards, tell ya how to get better, what ya need to do next
“real-world organizations that have trouble moving quickly because they are legacy bound, risk averse, overloaded iwth info and worried about hte future..Modern info owrk is tough” p. 4
up and coming employees play games, gonna want different technology to use in their job, want immediate feedback, want oportunities for trial and error, willing to take risks, accept failure as part of the game, expect competition, want the rules to be known to all, will have access to machines that deliver engageing entertainment at home..usually better tech at home than work, use the things they learn in games in making work decisions, in wanting to improve the job
in games players do many of hte same things info workers do in the real world – analysis, team building, grinding drudge work..”gamers organize, categorize, nalyze, evaluate, diagnose, invent, buy, sell, lead, follow.” p. 5
not all gonna be good..repetitive stress injuries, aggressive behavior, overwork…need to apply game elements for the benefit of hte worker to get positive results
“the future of work is about engagine owrkers more than commanding them” p. 6
he’s very positive and upbeat – about work, about workers
using game elements in work will
“internal motivation will become more imporrtant than external permission, encouraging people’s best efforts” p. 7
games are fast paced, give cnostant feedback, make levels nad reputations visible, provide stories that are compelling, and give you a way to represent yourself in the game in ways you can’t do in RL
work that is too easy/repetitive is boring nad people lose interest in it, don’t pay attention while doing it – it can be made part of hte story, put into a quest that will keep players interested
work that’s too hard causes people to give up..lots of reasons jobs are too hard – might just be too hard to learn to do or take too long to accomplish so you dn’t see any results for so long, sometimes the task keeps getting interrupted or there’s just too much info to deal with, job might just be designed wrong – using game elements give people immediate and short term feedback, give ways to clarify objects, might hopefully fix the bad work flow design
“successful businesses in the future will redesign work from the gamer’s point of fview” (p. 
“gamers also want to have fun – not necessarily a constant party but engagement that facilitates success and exposes their contribution to the larger good. p. 8
they hired grad students who were actual gamres – mmo players, guild leaders – to help them figure out what work aspects are in games – - some media ya can just study by watching once or twice but games take hundreds of hours to get to the end, to get to all the features, so need a guide, someone who’s already put int the time
“We believe the highest use of games will be to redesign work so that it is more like a game and to allow work to be conducted within games. ” p. 13
games are important to the people y’re going to hire – so that’s a good reason for yout o look at htem and figure out how they fit in your owrk…”These workers will bring new expectations about user interfaces, communication tools, and importantly, the pace of challenge and reward” (p. 13)
resources
agile manifesto – seems to be a core document – to be doing agile you need to buy into these core rpinciples, might implement differently or use any of the varieties of agile, but they should all use these core principles – http://agilemanifesto.org
mike cohn’s site – http://mountaingoatsoftware.com
lisa crispin – wrote book on agile testing - http://lisacrispin.com
elisabeth hendrickson – http://testobsessed.com
Dawn Cannan – speaker at the conference about agile testing – http://passionatetester.com
a good testing automation tool – http://fitnesse.org
there’s a yahoo group about agile testing – agile-testing@yahoogroups.com
new keywords to look up – extreme programming, lean manufacturing, regression suite/regression testing, refactoring, unit tests, suer stories, vertical slices, certified scrum master, certified scrum instructor
book – innovation games
book – succeeding in agile
book – collaboration explained by jean tabaka, 2006
agile testing
pair programming – can take longer than a single programmer working on a project but much higher quality
agile about defect prevention not defect detection
lots of testing during and at end of each iteration
testers and programmers have to talk before during and after iteration so testers know about any changes, can develop test cases as software develops so team can reach goal of releasable code at end of each iteration
feedback is given and acted on – testing is part of the feedback so are retrospective meetings
customer wants to see product, not 400 pages of documentation and a broken project
gotta figure out if you’re looking at a symptom or a problem – can’t waste tiem treating symptoms – have to figure out the problem and treat it, have to ask a lot of why’s to get to the real problem sometimes
agile isn’t dogma, everybody implements a little differently, there are many flavors of it
but if you say you’re doing agile then you should be doing short iterations, doing quick unit tests so developers know within say 10 minutes of integrating their chunk of the build fi they broke something or not, smoe places run automated regression tests twice a day to check integrity of the project
short iterations gets you lots of feedback, forces you to break user stories down into smaller and smaller chunks that can be more easily finished
teams
have stuff for testers to test iwthin a couple days of start of each iteration so they can catch many bugs and get htem fixed before the iteration ends
company has to buy into the idea of testing and quality that comes from testing
acceptance testing
make process and metrics visible – big charts publically displayed – so new people can see where they fit in, to remind old hands about all the tasks that needs to be finished
good to have a coach internally to help people with the transition to agile
use your retrospective to tackle little problems at the end of an interation or to address larger issues at the end of a project (bring in someone from outside the team to facilitate so everyone on the team can participate)
mangaers need orientation and training about agile – they’re afraid of it at first – some not happy about idea of self-organizing teams – so they know its benefits, so they see that agile can help make processes more transparent, more efficient, that products can ship faster and with fewer bugs – lots of rumors about bad code from agile and no documentation but that’s not a part of agile overall – chaotic development is not agile
failure to meet deadlines is so common in software development companies and folks are in denial big time – there’s so much room for improvement if you can get past the denial – and agile is one way to get that improvement
amazon has the concept of the 2 pizza team – no more people on a team than you can feed at lunch with 2 pizza – like 6 to 10 people – easy to coordinate – that’s what agile wants too
scrum meeting – what you’re finished yesterday what you’re working on today, what you need help with – then people can offer to help after the meeting – - team talks to each other – management stays out of hte conversation except to take note of where htey need to help remove impediments
user stories
be sure to get from users ways to know that project is done
need to talk with stakeholders to get details about what they want and why and what they want to do to figure out what they really need – what they need isn’t always what they say they need
split the user stories up into small chunks and prioritize
the list of chunks is the product backlog – the priority is based on the value to the business of each chunk
put some of the most important ones on teh sprint backlog and start
lots of people seem to like 2 week cycle
daily 15 minute scrum meeting
at end of 2 weeks have retrospective meeting to get feedback for future scrum, to deal with problems to prevent htem from recurring in the future, not judgemental, goal is to get better, develop metrics, start/foster discussion
at end of iteration have finished, tested releasable chunk
stuff that didn’t get finished – decide if it stays on backlog or gets moved to make room for something else
Lean
reduce waste like deadtime as far as customer is concerned, waiting for meeting, developing a piece of software that you can’t use for a year, feature creep
optimize the whole – use queuing theory to speed process up
build quality in
lean uses terms management and mba types recognize, agile uses engineering terms
waterfall
creative side has to play a lot of games to be able to do competitive analysis and feature comparisons, if you want to go into that you need to have a protfolio that shows off your creative ability, need to stay current on industry news – read gamasutra and game developer magainze regularly
producer side – learn how to owrk with teams, do project management, lead project, find out about the business side of hte industry, being a big gamer not as important but will give you some credibility with others, work up from QA and production assistant
QA testers – dn’t always need college degree – have to be avid gamer, you make contacts thru out hte company and hopefully after a couple of years you can find someone to show your portfolio too, have to be really good as a qa tester, be a self starter, have to build your own network
some game companies have you sign away rights to any game ideas you come up with while you’re working at hte company even if developed on your own time – so watch what you sign
localization is another good way to get into the business
Testing and Test plans
have a couple of core testers
hire some temps for a couple of weeks during the heavy testing
put more people on as you get closer to being doen – not something to be done with 1 or 2 people on a big game
testing is time consuming and if project gets behind people think you can just take time away from testing – ddoesn’t work
lots of QA crunch time
be sure to build testing dependnecies and adequate time/peple into budget/schedule
overestimtae the time and people because publishers tend to cut QA first
lead tester can be 1st alert if you’re behind on milestones because they also see milestone definitions and interim builds
types of testing – milestone testing, play testing, marketing and demo testing, wall crawls, bug tests and retests
gotta include time in schedule for fixing the found bugs and retesting
play testing means you need to have a bunch of testers early to make use of their feedback
producers and leads may need to prioritize bugs – fix now, fix in patch later
need a bug tracking pipeline – record in DB – version # of build, where in game it occured and the context, the type of bug (art, enginnerring..), severity (like crash bug that has to be fixed immediately or minor bug that’s just irritating or bug report as feature request), steps to reproduce
bug reports need to be detailed so we can tell later if bug fixed or not, include actual results and expected results
one bug per report to make fixed bugs easier to track
console manufacturer have specific requests for how game has to behave (also guidelines about your design)
code release phase
closing kit – after code release and console approval – bundle up everything used to create the game – all the raw data for models, audio, tools used, documentation, master version of game – - it’s a project archive so you can go back later and create patches and sequels – use the kit to recreate your previous environment —- store it lots of places – onsite, offsite, at the publishers
gold master is version 1.0, patches are 1.1, 1.2
most don’t accept unsolicited pitches because of potential lawsuits over content – so set up a meeting
ask the publisher to sign a NDA (most won’t sign because they might already have a game in development with certain features of your game)
pubisher may ask you to sign an NDA in case they mention their own future project
s
ch5 in textbook
publishers are very selective because games take much time and money to develop
they might hear hundreds of pitches and there’s usually a pitch process that you have to go thru
publishers can also send out their own RFPs requesting specific information – maybe they wnat gameplay elements or a schedule and budget draft, rarely asked for on spec prototype – too costlyy but you can show them work n other projects that do the things they’re asking for to show you can do the job – they don’t sendout blanket RFPs – they send them only to a few companies that they really want to work with and who they think can do the job
sometimes publisher is looking for the best quality, sometimes for someone to just do the design they already have worked out, sometimes for lowest cost
publishers have their own creative teams to come up with ideas but also go outside for ideas so they can be open to pitches
don’t give up if first pitch turned down – if you do a good pitch, make a good presentation then your reputation is enhanced iwht hte publisher and they’ll keep taking your pitches….screw up tho and the door is shut…don’t waste their time
if hte developer is owned by the publisher then they have access to the decision makers so don’t have to do so much blind pitching
independent studios have to find publisher who will help with the retail chain and up front money
the pitch is your chance to communicate the game experience even tho the game isn’t done and there might not even be any assets to show – the publisher has to be able to “get” the game in order to make a decision about going forward
several depts at the publisher wil be involved in the decision to greenlight a game – marketing, sales, product evelopment
pitch might include
deals
pitch idea to management
once ya get the deal – you have to build/strengthen the trelationship
keep the publisher informed of your progress on the game – otherwise they think you’/re not making any progress and get frustrated, or the game you come up with might not be the game they thought they were getting and you don’t get paid or you’ll have to make changes which costs you and the publisher money
ask them for resoruces when needed (to keep that progress going) – if you haven’t been talking to them about your game they may give resources you need to other projects because htey don’t think you’re ready for htem
publisher usually assigns a producer ( book calls them PP publisher producer) of hteir own to hte project – have to make sure the duties of each are clearly spelled out so they’re not confused and neither are team members, the PP keeps the publisher’s depts in synch/informed of game progress, reviews the deliverables nad if acceptable, authorizes $$$$. they can be the developer’s advocate at the publisher – that’s a big help. they know what resources the publisher has and helps the game producer draw on them – for like localization and marketing
the DP (the producer at hte development studio) takes care of hte day to day management, makes hte game development plan, makes sure everybody stays on track, deals iwth HR issues, equipment needs – anything that affects the developers people directly, make sure your studio’s systems interface with any systems at the publisher – bugs, approval processes, any request forms
independent developer – huge risks – publisher doesn’t like product -> you don’t get paid
publisher owned studio – have to stay on schedule and on budget, consequences a bit lower if you don’t – you’ll still get paid (might get fired) but publisher has their fingers more tightly into your business – you have to negotiate a feasible schedule and feature set and work wth marketing – you have to mangae the organization and all it’s levels
publisher’s job – take the developer’s project and turning it into into a product to be sold/marketed. they test it, submit it to console folks for approvals, create the marketing – publisher in the job of selling games (developer’s job is to make games
when ya provide prototypes and milestone versions – they’re most likely not pretty, not as much f8n as the end game – the developer has to set them up, give them context – getting them to understand what done means at each milestone
publisher has to figure out which developer can really do the project on time and on budget, they’re gonna want references, they’ll want to meet the leads and your development team
scrum is a type of agile development
agile = develop product using short iterations so you can fix problems while they’re small
everybody involved (on the team) knows what’s done, what needs to be done still
ned early and often communication
a lot of team mentoring and support
have a working game at the end of each iteration – and be sure to keep updating the design doc
agile takes a lot more mnagement need a scrum master for each tem (someone who’s ful time production person no programming or drawing – they need special scrum master training)
going to agile development takes management buy in, publisher buy in – because you need extra resources, but as payback they get less wasted time, less need for crunch time
key to this kind of development – have to find the fun first in each feature (with waterfall might not have anything playable till all the work done nad hten you find out it’s not fun)
get sense of ownership by the team, especially important wiht big teams
many companies donn’t use pure scrum (maybe too expensive, not good for every develpmetn project, not good for creating lots of art assets for instance)
agile good when there’s lots of risk and uncertainty
team members like seeing hte whole project scope – can suggest changes with full knowledge of hte project, without stepping on toes of other groups
but the scrum philoosophy of communication can go across the whole project
scrum is a process, there are specific rules based on teh agile philosophy, can get certified in scrum ($$$)
waterfall – traditional project management, create lists of tasks, assumes you can break project down into tasks and know what sequence to do them in and how tlong they’ll take – most game development doesn’t fit this model
with straight scrum – each iteration starts with an 8 hour meeting, each day starts with a 15 minute scrum short meeting, management has to let go and let developers and programmers do what seems best day to day
outsiders can’t demand/stop the project during a sprint, only at end of iteration
have prototype to test at every step
average spring lasts 14-30 days
morning meetings point out what’s going wrong, people held personally responsible if htey’re holding up the project
not an excuse not to plan – but rather not to waste time overplanning
agile – gotta let go of the ego – get everybody involved in the development/discussion but also bringing ego in in terms of being responsible and motivated
marketing and busienss decision play a part too – designers can’t dedcide everyting – not a democracy – there’s a leader with authority to make decisions
short sprints – make progress on an idea, set milestones to finishe during that sprint, set length of time – no slippage
waterfall – fixed steps, time flexible – not good because it leads to late projects
at end of every spring – ask is the product fun, does the new feature add to the game, if it’s not fun have to work on fixing it
hard to hide bad engineering or sucky ideas because everyone can see right away
tools – pivotal tracker, accumate, fogbuzz, basecamp (not great, outgrow it quickly), shared whiteboards with sticky noes, google tools, unfuddle, Hansoft, MS Groove
MS Project good for waterfall, good for big overview
can’t plan away uncertainty – in game development there’s a lot of uncertainty – agile is about feeding feedback back into the plan
agile about delivery of features, not finishing tasks
sharp focus on short term goals
future goal/end goal is known but less clear than near term goals
disaggregation occurs each sprint – as you go along sprint works on only highest priority stuff and you break it down into pieces that you can work on in that short sprint period
with agile shippable products are created each iteration – each round you keep building ont he project, make it more fun
front load the high value parts of hte project so you get done in the time given
scrum is one kind of agile developement
it’s results and collaboration focused
sprint planning meeting – 8 hours at start of each sprint – this meeting is for them team, to keep updated on progress, not to update scrum master. scrum master not running the meeting, just htere to solve problems, to keep people on track if they start solving problems. meeting is to update – - problems solved elsewhere
eaily 15 minute stand up scrum team meeting – what did i do yesterday, what am i doing today, what’s holding me up
at end of each spring have a 2 hour or so long retrospective meeting to see what went right and wrong, keep everyone in a state of improvement
agile developed for products with lots of releases, short development, games aren’t like this either – could use internal play test builds or beta test builds as artificial ship dates – don’t use marketing builds (they usually have a lot of smoke and mirrors)
scrum master cuts thru bureaucracy, has to be invested i how well the process worked, did things product owner want get imploement, did team collaborate, doesn’t care if project sucks
gotta have design doc, user stories – these still needed to build features
user stories – what are we letting user do, what happens on the screen
burn down chart – estimates vs actual work time
war room – wher eyou keep track of backlog, current stuff, finsihed stuff – - could be note cards on a wall
doesn’t wrk out of hte box for artists and designers
large group don’t always have a sense of ownership
scrum is hard to get started – people gonna need coaching/mentoring, regular reviews to let people know how they’re doing
easy to fall back into waterfall methods
bad habits – over design, over planning, delayed integration
get improved morale, productivity, quality, build reliability
easy for anyone to see/find out progress of project at any time – and that makes management happy
might take up to a year to get really up to speed with scrum, easy for management to panic and torpedo the process
to avoid crunch time – estimate good, don’t commit to doing more than you can do, you mess up the teams if you over commit and burn yoruself/them out – so under comit and over deliver
company culture has to commit to no crunch – sometimes have to be willing to say we overcommitted and can’t do this in the alloted time and cancel the project
lots of team members will be young, not have a lot of experience as employees or as team members or as professionals
producer
leads
team building
long game development time means the team core is together a long time
as team grows you have to make sure everyone knows everyone else – intro new people around
make sure people know what they’re supposed to be doing, who they report to, who’s in charge of what aspects of hte project – - this will increase efficiency and morale
have job descriptions especially for new positions on the team so everyone knows what they’re supposed to do
cross training the leads – when you have down time – give the leads more respect for what others don ont he team, also really good for new employees to get the big picture, good for people who think they want to work on another part of hte team – shadowing, spend time in the departments, rotate people across departments
space organization
team meetings – keep focused and as short as possible, important to do regularly but not necessarily every week, good for discussing changes so you address concerns earlier rather than later
team wiki
keep all documentation, meeting minutes, handy references
still email around critical stuff, but wiki or websit is good for day to day stuff
it’s a place for people to collaborate and discuss
migth put up a team directory with photos, how to pronounce names, personal blurb (look at that article about the guild websites)
by the time you start to see warning signs of low morale, problem is probably huge, might have personal problems, might be pissed off about something on the project and they stop working hard – gotta address problems right away
sometimes people get burned out – need to find a way to change things up for them
everyting goes back to having build up strong communication lines in the group, int he team, int he company – don’t take hearsay as proof – gotta talk to al lthe people involved
show appreciation – buy snacks or lunch occasionally, celebrate birthdays with a cake
ties in the the company’s quality of life – people want different things from a job at different stages of life — (check out the quality of life sig at igda)
gonna make a lot of different types of pitches – to venture capitalists, to the IP holders, to assistant producers who act as screeners, to marketing guys who need just a low level pitch with a little detail, inside your own company to get a greenlight for your idea…
need an “elevator pitch that’s a minute or two long and convenys the high level macro concept and is designed to pique their interest and hope thatt hey extend the conversation
to publishers
some notes from the vgexpo game pitch session
gotta be able to say who’s your main competition, know what’s gonna make your game spcial/what makes it different from other existing games (might be price, feature sets, IP, way weapons work, input device…)
pitch meeting is a time to develop an internal champion at hte publishers – try to make a connection with someone at hte meeting
have to give the impression that you can get the job done – on time, no budget
know clearly who’s your intended audiance (sometimes you know and it’s just not an audience the publisher is interested in reaching
at first you’ll pitch to screeners – they’re someone you can make a connection with, they’re on their way up in the company and your game might help them advance. don’t piss them off
internally you’ll have to pitcha the game and the feature set to members of your team, to other teams
most ideas get thrown away originally – they might already have a game like yours in projection, might not have a team available right now
need a narrative for your game, the when and why of hte game, majority of games the actual story isn’t that important – it’s the core mechanics, but you need to put the game in a narrative for the pitch
if you’re going to pitch an MMO – need lots of detail when talking to the developers; need to show how you can beat WOW if you’re talking to the suits especially if you’re leaving off features that WOW players are used to, be able to tell them how you’re going to make non-stupid NPCs – MMOs becoming very specialized right now – need to work with MMO expert to help you develop your pitch
gotta know what topics are hot and play up your games topic if it’s popular right now – pop culture trends, community features, ugc, microtransactions – hot right now
hard to sell a game with a content driven pitch – don’t start with the long backstory – if they just don’t like your content you’re screwed because that’s all they hear. better to talk mechanics, short content pitch
pitch goal – get listeners excited about something right from the beginning
remember – game is entertainment product – going to take liberties wiht content to be more entertaining and be cooler
if yo’re making a cell phone game – you have to understand mobile play habits (short bursts of time, text updates) know your competition on that platform, in US SMS costs money
some catchy terminology gives the audience something to ask you about
gotta show you have worked thru and analyzed problems/industry issues and have some solutions
think about using different technology for different parts of your idea – maybe some on the console version, some on the mobile game
create little widget games (??not sure what they meant – prototypes im thinking) to test ideas
