Game Creation is like Sausage Making (repost)

Hello Everyone,

A few weeks ago I posted the below to the Dev+ forums and it was pointed out to me that it would be good to post it to everyone so here you go:

Since joining the team in July I continue to be amazed by the level of support and interaction we are getting from the community. We are now living in a time in the game industry where the community can directly decide what products they want via crowd funding and community interactions like these forums. We are part of a bold experiment where we operate at a level of transparency that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. Those of you who were around might remember that during the earliest days of Ultima Online we did some of this when we, the development team, ran our own website (and it was filled with Llamas!).

That transparency comes with a price. It means that we will share ideas that may change, or may not work. It means we need to have a trust with each other that it is all right for us to share without being locked into a promise that we might not be able to (or should not) keep. One of my favorite mantras is: "The only constant is change."

The flip side of this is a quote from Otto Von Bismarck: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." In other words the act of creation can appear to be messy and unappealing. I actually believe that act of creation is awesome to behold as long as you keep yourself open to change and you do not lock yourself into any particular idea.

In all these discussions I want us all to respect each other and remember we are all on the same side here. We want a great game at the end of this.

Rock On,
Darkstarr (aka Starr Long)

 

Hear, hear!

 

Indeed. In full agreeance with that Dark.

And aye its pre-built stage so its always expected all will change. But with your quote "The only constant is change.", change is always changingand eventually change becomes the original. So i offer to you "All this has happened before, and all shall happen again... again.."

Think this game is one instance of that theory.

 

That's funny. This post came to mind while reading one of your responses in a different thread. Thanks for putting it out there for all to see.

 

The team was good from the start, but your positive influence since joining is evident Starr. I think you make a great addition to the team, and I can tell from the posts lately that both the game mechanics and the creative juices are flowing in the right direction. It also appears that there is a better connection to the community as well. Thanks to all of you, and especially Lord British who chose wisely within his limited budget.

I don't brown nose you guys so I hope you take this compliment to the heart. I would love to see everything you guys have behind closed doors, but what can be seen so far shows clearly that you guys have something great going on there.

 

Well said!

 

I cannot believe how amazing it has been for me to follow along with all of the dev chats, the forum, PotA, and all of the process in any media and outlet available. It has been an exciting experience. In my line of work, I am used to seeing "sausage being made" and am aware of the attention and patience that is required to finish a project. I hope others can learn to do this with you and SotA as well, especially since this development process is basically a first of its kind (lot's of experience to be had !)

Keep up the fantastic work!

"Put it on the table!"

A new signature line for you DarkStarr:

 

A variation of this from another game/Kickstarter I'm involved with:

"Typically, alpha builds for any game are closed to a small group of testers, friends and family because customers are spared the process of “how the sausage is made.” They just go to the butcher and buy the tasty sausage. Trust me-- NO ONE wants to tour thesausage factory."

 

I never liked, and continue to not like, that analogy. Having done software development for 20+ years, if you are making software, like making sausage, you are bound to fail.

You don't stick everything in a grinder/black box and turn a crank, unless you truly want nothing more than a mish mash of input.

It is a horrible analogy. Game making, which is exactly software/systems engineering, is about design, research, planning, implementation, and testing.

Sausage makers, good ones, probably follow the same process paradigm (as with most products of quality) for the best end product they can make.

I really dislike "simple" analogies because of some perception that people can't understand deeper ideas.

Its not even that deep, here is an acronym used in SW product design:

Propose and idea
Research said idea
Outline (plan) your idea
Generate your idea
Release your product
Analyze the process/customer feedback
Maintain your product

Generally applicable to multiple products, not just software.

There is also a looser one for simple products:

Concept
Outline
Develop
Evaluate
Release

The point is, there is a process, a well defined process. It is neither a mish-mash of parts, nor a hidden grinder that mixes it all together.

 

@joviex
It's not about the process.....it's really referring to creating something from scratch in public view and that it can be messy.....a bit like making sausages.

I think you have looked at it out of context.

 

Sausage making refers to the messiness, in public view? Then it even makes less sense.

It is still a horrible analogy.

You ever seen Github? Bitbucket? Sourceforge?

There are millions of open source projects you can watch, as they develop, that have nothing to do with messy, grinder like processes.

Add to this the fact we dont actually SEE the process as its made. Where are the meetings, minute notes, Q&A sessions, etc etc...

If anything this is the cleanest "sausage" making you have ever seen.

 

Yes and one of the places that software fails is the messiest part of all.

I know every developer whose done this for a while is going to groan:

Requirement! Requirements! Requirements! Did I sound like Balmer? I'm sorry but it is the nastiest thing that goes into the sausage but one of the most vital. That part really is like sausage being made. It is not the grinding and the monotony. It is the fact that some really unsavory things are going to go into it. Sometimes they are so bad you won't want to eat the sausage because you know what is in it (sort of like the people raising such a stink about pay to win making the whole project an immediate failure.)

 

I think we're making "spicy sausage" with lots of hot ingredients. When you've got so many opinions going into this project, our floor is already starting to look like a hotdog plant and we haven't even gotten to the part where we're talking about the code!

 

That is much clearer for the reasoning behind the analogy. But =)

We still are not seeing anything along those lines. Give more ingredients, show the nightmare that is requirement analysis writing, or meetings with engineers and producers, or budgetary concerns, scheduling and adjustments to those, art critical cutoff (good enough!) decisions, etc...

Again, the cleanest making of a messy process ever here.

 

OK, I am willing to bet you worked on some government software! I am up for seeing more but I don't know if other people want to know where the art critical cutoff is. (I would love to be a fly on the wall during those conversations too but when I used to get into them at work, our system engineer's eyes would sort of glaze over.)

 

Well, full disclosure, I work for Nickelodeon, and do and see these processes every working day. Games, film, TV, production software, tracking, scheduling, you name it.

But I am always up for being shown something I have not seen, or seen done, in a new way. So the more I can see from P would be great =)

 

Games go through iterations, that aren't pleasant to look at, full of bugs, unfinished graphics and animations, concepts that turn out to not be fun or good. Those are what he is talking about. It's an evolution and a process during making it that is the difference between watching it through it's unpleasant stages and seeing the completed product the general crowd sees. Things will get changed, ideas scrapped, new ones put in. Things don't work well with other systems so need adapted.

I don't think the games nickelodeon makes are on the same level.

 

Is it possible that game design is different than software development? It's not like they are writing a program to fit a specific purpose. Developing a game like this is like writing a novel and then developing a digital world that best represents it. It's different than software development, and it doesn't take a software developer to know that.

 

No way. You could get months into development and code yourself into corner if you don't plan and design first. That goes for games, too.

 

Not really, they proposed a massive list of features, and even promised many (stretch goals included) Then they have to figure out how to make those all work, and indeed, there is always an issue of finding one system needs re-written for another system because of where they overlap. These guys have a lot of experience and can likely spot those far off, and smaller teams help prevent that. But I know it happens from hearing about issues with systems in EA and Blizzard.