#vertical slice

You may have seen a lot of video game news recently about projects that have been in development for a long time while still in preproduction getting cancelled. This is normal behavior for the current economic climate - things are cooling off and the big publishers are essentially cutting all projects that aren't on track to ship within the next two years because they don't have the money to keep paying for such long term bets. Many of these projects are said to be "doing well" or "coming along", so why do these projects get killed if they're so promising? As somebody who's been on a couple of these projects (including recently), the view from the inside is often very different.

My studio was in a somewhat similar boat to many of these - we had one major money-making franchise at our studio that paid all of our bills and a small incubation [blue-ocean] project in preproduction (for several years) that studio execs hoped would be a new franchise we could start. All of the demos and video we saw looked absolutely amazing - the studio devs were super excited about it and most of the devs I spoke to wanted to join the team because of how awesome it looked.

This project was looking so promising that it got green lit for a [vertical slice] - the next step in the development process, where all of the separate demo and preproduction game systems get integrated into a single cohesive gameplay experience that's representative of the whole. As such, the small team that was working on this project got additional resources (developers) to build that vertical slice. I was one of the developers tapped to join this team to help build things out. I wasn't actually super enthused about this - the greater economic situation in the industry had already started to sour and I really would have preferred staying on the money making franchise for safety. I was also bit leery of the experimental project with its grand ambitions - the scope seemed like way too much for the number of people we had and the time we had to build it out.

Once I joined, it became clear to me that my concerns were validated. The project absolutely needed to switch gears from "make cool ideas" to "bring everything together and work towards this major goal", but the team's leadership was still very much in blue ocean mode. We chased down many cool new ideas, but the integration of everything lagged behind. For the kind of game we were building, we absolutely needed a well-established workflow and tool base to build enough content for players to engage with... and very little of that was even on the horizon - a large part of it was me personally pushing for it directly and personally because I had worked on the kind of game we were building in production and I knew that we needed those battle-tested tools and workflow.

Instead, we spent the first few months building another awesome set piece and cool one-off scenario that would look amazing in a demo. The set piece scenario was held together by shoe string and bubblegum but it mostly worked, was mostly playable, and it looked fantastic when it didn't break. I did my part and built the stuff I was tasked with, but the kind of hacks and shortcuts we were forced to use made it very clear that we needed a reliable and systemic method of creating much more content much more quickly if we really wanted to build a real game out of it.

This is the curse of these kind of projects - most games that have been in preproduction for years are stuck in this "cool amazing demo" mode and have a really really hard time switching gears to "making the damn game" mode. They show great in demos and videos, igniting the imagination on what the game could be if/when everything comes together, but the actual coming together portion is one of the hardest parts of game development.

Almost a year after I joined the experimental project, I was reassigned back to the mothership game because the main franchise needed more people to get it to a shippable state and the overall industry economic situation had continued to turn sour. Internally, I was actually extremely relieved for myself, but I felt very sorry for the team I was leaving behind. A few months later, the experimental project was cancelled and the remaining team was let go in a situation very much like what happened to Perfect Dark, Everwild, the Zenimax MMOG, and all the other preproduction games that met their demise during the recent Microsoft culling.

This isn't my first time (or even second time) on a promising project that failed trying to go from preproduction to production - the core problems have been very similar on multiple projects I've worked on. Dialing in the core gameplay, recognizing the need to shift gears, and then actually executing on that major change in team direction is one of the most difficult problems in game production. It's difficult to do and there are innumerable buried and cancelled projects over the years that were unable to do it. I mourn for what could have been but I also understand that many of these dream projects just weren't meant to be.

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vertical slice me and my friends worked on in the last 2-ish months for uni :)) based on that one meme about an immortal snail

When I look at the ratings on IFDB, I can see that I probably should have been testing with a different group. Most people who rated it highly are into choice games. Not necessarily exclusively, but into them.

The "let's split IFComp into choice and parser categories" crowd is still running wild in some places, and I don't think that's the right market for my game. Don't get me wrong, I had a few absolute superstars sign up, but they were exceptions.

I think I'll ask here instead. At least ask first. So please consider testing a vertical slice of my game! No need to respond now, I'm not ready. But think about it. It's a parser game that cares more about narrative than world models, just like the last one.

All elements in the vertical slice may not make it all the way to release, but the vertical slice game experience should be representative of the the final game. All core gameplay should be present, playable, and working. All major gameplay systems should be there and integrated. All major types of content should be there and working. All major visuals and rules should be there and working. The experience should feel like a slice taken from a whole game. We may have some changes to make, some gaps to fill, and some systems to flesh out, but playing the vertical slice should feel like a cohesive, self-contained, fully actualized part of a larger game - like a single episode pulled out of a TV series.

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The games with extremely large scope tend to be the ones that have the hardest time to go from prototyping to full production. This is primarily because there's just so much content and so many features and systems to build out even after prototyping. It provides a new challenge - scaling the size of the team up in order to build all of that new content.

Think about games like Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, the Witcher 3, or even the recent Crimson Desert. If we were building a prototype for the various game systems, it wouldn't be too difficult. If we were building out a single area to prove that the gameplay would work, even that wouldn't be too difficult. But then you actually have to build out the rest of the game. Now, instead of just one single area, you need a thousand. Instead of three quests, you need three thousand. Instead of one set of equipment for the vertical slice, you need a hundred for the final game.

There's an enormous amount of content that must be planned, scoped, and built. There's an enormous amount of work that must be done, which necessitates increasing the number of developers working on the game. This also means the team needs producers to keep those developers tasked and working towards the proper goals, and so on and so forth. Scaling up a team like that is a whole different kind of challenge with a whole different type of difficulty.

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It's been a few days since the Dragon Age Veilguard gameplay video was released. I posted a challenge for aspiring developers to identify as many specific features and systems as they could spot. My expertise is in gameplay, so that's where I will be focusing. Expertise on visuals like lighting, rendering, shaders, etc. should be directed elsewhere.

0:22 - In-Game Cinematic with moving cameras 0:30 - Seamless cinematic transfer to gameplay, quest tracking UI element, different walking speeds 0:36 - Interactable element with UI 0:43 - Camera movement - orbital motion, but likely not detachable 0:53 - Party member movement, including waiting for the player as part of an escort sequence 2:08 - Uninteractable NPC actors perform animations 2:13 - Scriptable terrain changes/destruction 2:18 - Scriptable interactions with multiple actors 2:29 - Uninterrupted conversations when transitioning from gameplay to in-game cinematic 2:39 - Context-specific traversal method with special traversal animation (balancing across a thin beam) 2:50 - Small sequence that is likely unloading the last area and loading in data for the next environment. Likely also locks players off from returning to the previous area. 3:22 - Conversation wheel with "personality" icons and paraphrased words 3:39 - Dynamic inventory in game cinematics, show player's items 3:46 - Scripted Player equipment change during cinematic 4:04 - Quest variables (e.g. player background) result in different NPC response 4:27 - Combat UI including current target (four red dots), Combat log 4:30 - Player can jump 4:33 - UI Melee danger indicator for incoming attacks - silver for enemy attacking, gold for shortly impending damage 4:35 - Player can dash/dodge 4:39 - Event log - Items/Loot notification 4:42 - Shooting UI including hit/miss indicator (red reticle), time scaling, arrow charging (rounded purple bar above arrow count), arrow refill cooldown 5:03 - Some kind of special charge/jumping attack 5:09 - XP gain UI, Quest objective completion UI, Quest objective map indicator UI 5:12 - Auto sheath weapons 5:15 - Potion use/Health recovery 5:18 - Recover potions from the environment 5:40 - Quest objective indicator change on approach 5:49 - Ranged attack danger indicator 5:51 - Defensive action (player reflects damage back on ranged attacker) 6:06 - Enemies can be knocked off edges when fatal 6:10 - Destructible objects in combat, can be scripted 6:16 - Some kind of "special" dodge skill with VFX, likely a rogue class skill 6:51 - Second context-specific traversal method (sliding down a slope) also likely a second "can't go back" type of lockoff 7:01 - Action/Command UI (party/self ability commands) 7:06 - Specific skill used, skill cooldown, enemy debuffed + UI (weakened), resource used (purple bar at bottom of screen) 7:07 - Quick use button mapping, likely for controller face buttons 7:09 - Resource bar refills on its own and on attack damage 10:47 - Different kinds of health bars (likely magical shield and armor) 11:59 - Boss UI with both magical shield and armor bars. Not sure what the number 4 there indicates 12:15 - Telegraphed danger zones projected onto the floor 12:22 - Quick recover timing event 14:45 - Conversation option for branching cinematic 14:51 - Follower approval UI event log 18:49 - Destructible object with health bar and UI highlighting

Each of these elements is something that would need to be designed and implemented by someone on the gameplay team working with UI, engineering, and art. See anything I missed? Which did you get?

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Looks like they released the Dragon Age: Veilguard gameplay reveal today. Aspiring developers, here's a homework assignment. Treat this as a video of a vertical slice. Make a list of the individual features and systems you observe working from the video. I'll work my own list and post it on Friday. If you're feeling confident, tag me and we'll compare lists!

If you need an idea for what such a list might look like, read my [Vertical Slice Glossary Entry].

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