Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
For short periods of time, perhaps a week or two weeks, truly extraordinary efforts
are possible. Twelve-hour days for a short burst can make a huge difference in your
game. Well managed and planned, it can even boost team morale. It feels a little like
summer camp. A critical piece of this strategy is a well-formed goal such as the
following:
n
Fix 50 bugs per developer in one week.
n
Finish integrating the major subsystems of the game.
n
Achieve a playthrough of the entire game without cheating.
The goal should be something the team can see on the horizon, well within sprinting
distance. They also have to be able to see their progress on a daily basis. It can be
quite demoralizing to sprint to a goal you can
'
t see, because you have no idea how
to gauge your level of effort.
Richard
'
s Midnight BBQ
On Ultima VII, Richard Garriott was always doing crazy things to support the
development team. One night he brought in steaks to grill on Origin
s BBQ pit.
Another night, very late, he brought in his monster cappuccino machine from
home and made everyone on the team some latte. One Saturday, he surprised
the team and declared a day off, taking everyone sky diving. Richard was long
past the time where he could jump into C++ and write some code, but his
support of the team and simply being there during the wee hours made a
huge difference.
'
There
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s a dark side to overtime in the extreme that many managers and producers
can
s too late. It happened at Origin, and it happens all the time in
other companies. When people work enough hours to push their actual pay scale
below minimum wage, they begin to expect something extraordinary in return, per-
haps in the form of end-of-project bonuses, raises, promotions, and so on.
The evil truth is that the company usually cannot pay anything that will equal their
level of effort. The crushing overtime is a result of a project in trouble, and that usu-
ally equates to a company in trouble. If it weren
'
t see until it
'
t
push staggering overtime onto the shoulders of the team. At the end of the day, the
project will ship, probably vastly over budget and most likely at a lower quality than
was hoped. Unfortunately, these two things do not translate into huge amounts of
money flowing into company coffers and subsequently into the pockets of the team.
A few months after these nightmare projects ship, the team begins to realize that all
those hours amounted to nothing more than lost time away from home. Perhaps
'
t so, company managers wouldn
'
