Design Components and Processes - Fundamentals of Game Design - page 52

Once development shifts from preproduction to production, the team begins to
work on material that will go out to the customer, and it has to be built with special
care. However, you still can't simply design something, hand your design off to the
programmers, and forget it. Everything you design must be built, tested, and
refined as you go. This is why in modern game development testers are brought in
right from the beginning of a project rather than at the end as they used to be.
GAME DEVELOPMENT/SCRUM MANAGEMENT PROCESS
In the last few years, many game development teams both large and small have begun to
implement a project management process called Scrum . (Scrum is not an acronym; the
term is borrowed from the sport of rugby.) The Scrum process helps a team organize and
track its progress toward completing some body of work, usually creating a new product.
In the Scrum process, the team creates and tests updated, working versions of their prod-
uct in short iterations called sprints . Each sprint lasts from one to four weeks. The team
constantly examines and adjusts their progress so as to efficiently achieve both their
interim and final goals. This enables them to identify and fix problems early on. In addi-
tion, the team holds a very brief meeting every day, and all problems must be
revealed — nothing is held back. When a team is committed to the Scrum methodology,
the managers have a clear picture of what is going on at all times, which helps to make
sure the work is done on time.
This topic is about game design, not game development, so it does not discuss project
management or Scrum in more detail. Also, Scrum is intended more for actually building
products, especially software, than for design. However, you should certainly learn about
it if you aspire to become a commercial game developer. For additional information, read
the topic Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber (Schwaber, 2004). You'll
find many more Scrum resources on the Internet.
For more information about the details of managing game development, see Game
Architecture and Design by Rollings and Morris (Rollings and Morris, 2003).
The Tuning Stage
When you went from the concept stage to the elaboration stage, you locked down
the game concept—the foundations of the game. During the elaboration stage, you
fleshed out the concept and added new features as necessary. At some point, how-
ever, a time comes when the entire design must be locked—that is, no more features
may be added to the game—and you enter the tuning stage. This transition is
sometimes called feature lock . There's no good way to know exactly when this is.