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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
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              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8">When 
          it's Done!</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rowan &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:sumaleth@frag.com">Sumaleth</a>&quot; 
          Crawford</font></b></font></p>

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        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="../../images/letters/a.jpg" width="26" height="40" align="LEFT"></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">nother 
          option is to actually set release dates, but once that date is reached 
          with the game still far from complete, you simply set another date. 
          There's no point singling out any companies/games, but I'm sure we can 
          all think of half a dozen without having to loose focus from that player 
          coming at you with a railgun. This is a risky way to make games, and 
          while no one intentionally sets a date they don't intend to keep (usually), 
          this practice probably makes investors more than a little nervous. With 
          so many games failing to recoup the cost of development these days, 
          the added costs of a game missing it's deadline, along with the greater 
          risk of it being out of date when it's released, means that missed deadlines 
          represent a serious risk to developers. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The other option, which is 
          going to seem pretty radical in this day and age of the Internet and 
          all it's wondrous possibilities, is to keep games quiet until it's <i>really</i> 
          close to release. While it does avoid having to say "when it's done" 
          or setting a date which is later missed, it doesn't get around the problem 
          of games these days being too complex to judge development times. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">With the Internet gaming 
          scene expanding exponentially, and gaming magazines often spending more 

          space on previews rather than reviews, the days of silent production 
          are probably mostly gone. Additionally, pre-release hyping of a game 
          is virtually essential today if you want to sell enough copies. So the 
          challenge ahead of the gaming industry now is to find a way to merge 
          all these competing elements - artistic integrity, financing, publicity, 
          musical chairs etc - into a system that works for everyone. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">One such solution may well 
          be based on the movie industry solution. The gaming industry has been 
          becoming more and more like the movie industry over the years, but there 
          is still one big difference; actors are hired on a movie by movie basis, 
          whereas game developers usually aren't. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Perhaps this is the way the 
          gaming industry will go, with artists, animators and coders all hired 
          individually to work on a game. It'll be different, not better or worse, 
          just different. It may work well, and a quick look at the lists of people 
          changing projects already suggests that hired developers may be more 
          comfortable working in this fashion. Game creation would never change 
          fully towards this method - there will always be core teams - but I 
          suspect that we'll see this practice becoming more and more frequent 
          in the coming years. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Another approach may be a 
          system similar to the one used by the advertising industry. With advertising, 
          the advertising agency plan out an advert, which may include things 
          like live action, actors, special effects etc, and once they have that 
          planned to a reasonable level of detail (and the client are happy with 
          it), they approach a number of production studios to make a pitch for 
          the job. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The point here is that the 
          finish dates are pre-set, with on-air time booked well in advance. The 
          production studios <i>must</i> take this into account, working out how 
          many people it will take to produce the commercial at the quality required 
          and in the time given. From those details they work out a cost and that 
          is their pitch to the agency. Often their pitch will re-evaluate the 
          details of the design to make things cheaper, or quicker to produce, 
          for example, using computer generated effects instead of traditionally 
          (hand draw) effects. The agency collects up these pitches and decides 
          which pitch has the best balance of speed, cost and results that they 
          wish to go with. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If you imagine this approach 
          applied to the gaming scene, you might have a game company approaching 
          a number of 3D animators with a breakdown of the models needed and the 
          time allotted, and the animators pitch for the project. The cost of 
          missed deadlines are then placed squarely on the shoulders of the animator 
          which breaks the game creation process down into many smaller, and far 
          less complex, individual systems which, when the output from each system 
          is combined, results in a game. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't seriously believe 
          that this approach will be fully adopted by the gaming industry, but 
          that would be a plausible solution to the problem. Advertisement deadlines 
          are rarely missed, but at the expense of fun and creativity. The gaming 
          industry thrives on these two factors, so a change like this would almost 
          certainly be for the worse. However, the "milestone" approach to development, 
          mentioned below, actually boroughs a number of ideas from this system. 
          </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There is, of course, another 
          obvious way for developers to set a deadline and then meet that deadline, 
          and that is to simply stop production at that time and release it. Christmas 
          is a deadline that a lot of developers and publishers feel compelled 
          to meet, and with good reason too; Christmas is a time when presents 
          need to be bought, and what better than a well priced computer game? 
          With games being such complex beasts, as previously mentioned, stopping 
          production and tying up all the loose ends into a neat bundle quite 
          often proves to be just as difficult as meeting the deadline in the 
          first place, and invariably leads to a product which is both messy and 
          not reaching it's full (and originally intended) potential. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A messy release is no good 
          for anyone, but with the Internet slowly easing it's way into our everyday 
          life, a slightly "truncated" game isn't quite the problem it once was. 
          So long as the original release covers just enough bases to keep reviewers 
          and gamers generally satisfied, the practice of adding new features 
          and maps later may well prove to be a feasible, if not perfect, approach. 
          </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Recent examples spring to 
          mind, particularly the splitting of <b>Quake 2 </b>into the main "single 
          player" game which was released by the aforementioned Christmas deadline, 
          with the fine-tuned multiplayer elements released a few months later. 
          This practice was met with a lot of skepticism, yet in the end it wasn't 
          such a bad arrangement; how many players would have preferred to wait 
          2-3 months for the deathmatch side to be finished just so they could 
          play the single player game? Not me, I really enjoyed Christmas that 
          year. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In recent times, a new approach 
          to development has appeared which aims to put more responsibility on 
          the developers in a similar way to the advertising industries production 
          system mentioned above. The "milestone" system, in use by many companies 
          right now, divides the project up into a number of smaller milestones, 
          with the developers under contractual commitment to have the required 
          results at the end of each period. The price of missing a deadline is 
          a loss of royalties. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Most developers have always 
          worked to similar internal milestones, the difference is that with these 
          now being set in conjunction with the publishers, they are far more 
          concrete than they have been in the past. Developers really are putting 
          in the heavy work required to reach these milestones. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">A number of interesting effects 
          appear from this approach. Firstly, developers are <i>far</i> more likely 
          to reach these deadlines than they are from a single "final" deadline, 
          due both to the financial commitment and the subsequent confidence boost 
          gained in reaching these deadlines. As with most industries, it's the 
          people who do the most work in the gaming industry that earn the least 
          amount of money, so it's a bit worrying to see even more risk placed 
          onto the shoulders of the people who already put in the most hours. 
          Game development isn't a 9to5 job; 10+ hour work days are common place, 
          and we've all heard the stories of developers working 24 hours a day, 
          sleeping at work, and the like, just to reach these deadlines. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Time will tell whether developers 
          continue to be comfortable with this approach, but with the acquisition 
          of publishing deals so difficult at the moment, the leverage is definitely 
          in favor of the publishers. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Worth noting is that some 
          companies working by the milestone approach, meaning that they do have 
          intended deadlines, are still reluctant to give out release dates, preferring 
          to instead use vague phrases such as "in the fall" or "3rd quarter", 
          and even "when it's done". So even with this breaking down of the development 
          process into bitable chunks, developers are still finding it difficult 
          to be completely sure of deadlines. Also interesting is even with this 
          system being used, deadlines are still being missed. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The majority of the difficulty 
          is based around the phenomenon of that other catch phrase, "two weeks!". 
          It's a hard process to write a game, but the hardest part, by far, is 
          finishing it up. The end always, sincerely, appears to be no more than 
          two weeks of work away. It's impossible to predict the unexpected. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Game developers are in it 
          for the creativity, publishers for the money, and players for the entertainment, 
          so there are always going to be clashes between what everyone wants. 
          It's only natural that everyone priorities are dependant on which category 
          they fit into, and it's probably optimistic to think satisfying all 
          parties, all of the time, is a simple task. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If history is anything to 
          go by, you can be sure that developers and publishers will eventually 
          find some even ground. A system will be found where making a game isn't 
          as risky for the publishers/developers as it is now, nor as constraining 
          for the developers, although there are always going to be developers 
          keen to work by the "when it's done" principle. It's their choice. </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The trick is simply to accept 
          that it is the way it is. </font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><i><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">- 
          Rowan &quot;Sumaleth&quot; Crawford is a member of Team Impact. His 
          most recent project has been the upcoming <b>Quake 2 Internet Pack: 
          Extremities</b>.</font></i></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Illustration &copy; 1998 Mike Sanzone. When It's Done is &copy; 1998 Rowan 
      Crawford. All other content is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, dangit.</font></i></td>
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