Sticking to the game plan
At Polygon, Arthur Gies did an interesting interview with Dean Hall not to long ago. They cover a lot of ground, but it was the stuff about Early Access and having a lose game plan going into development that stuck out to me,
I actually worked with them on it for quite a while. Iād probably have to revise the description of DayZ a bit. Iād say Kerbal Space Program is the perfect example. DayZ ā In some ways itās ⦠itās not a problem child of early access, but it got so big. It got so popular so fast. Itās a first-person shooter game. People have an expectation of it.
Xbox One as a platform has quite an element of that. Microsoft has a walled garden. Theyāre very particular. Thatāll help them quite a bit. Anyone theyāre looking into bringing on, theyāre going to be putting the thumb down on them to make sure things actually happen. They want it to be a success story. I guess Steam is further down the track. Theyāre trying to grow an environment where they donāt have to be the police.Towns, 2012For me, I learned one big thing: you need to have a good road map. When I was in charge of DayZ, we didnāt have a good road map. Thatās a huge pitfall. People get excited about the end result of it, like Kickstarter, right? But they donāt know all the steps it takes to get there. That was a huge lesson for me, doing a really good road map.
I look at DayZ. It gets really frustrating. You get people who are very upset with the development. And thatās why, to be honest, Steam refunds are a bit of a godsend. At least you can say, if someoneās dissatisfied in two hours they can return it, and you havenāt lost a future customer. But for people who have played longer than that, it can get quite frustrating.
I love that as a game developer. I donāt like us saying, oh, well, this is our scope, this is our budget, everything else gets put in the sequel. Itās nice to be able to be agile about it. With Ion, for example, weāre being really agile about how we approach it.Ā
To me, the idea that Hall learned his lesson with DayZ regarding having a design road map is questionable. But itās not just Hall or Peter Molyneuxāthis is a problem that plagues lots of different developers. And not just developers, but creatives in any industry or medium struggle with this.
That wouldnāt necessarily be a problem in and of itself, but as fans and consumers get roped into the creative process more and more with Early Access and Kickstarter, best practices matter even more. Being clear about the scope of your project, and sticking to that scope, or at least being transparent and upfront about deviating from it during the process matters.