LF07 Production Track

The Production Track will focus on the nuts and bolts of game production, such as scheduling techniques, post-mortems, and project pipelines.

Sessions

Session Descriptions

How Not To Schedule A Project

- Jamie Fristrom – Technical Director, Torpex Games

Take Aways from this session:

  • Discover what I’ve learned, after over a decade of working in the industry, is the fundamental problem with scheduling game development
  • Learn about various scheduling methods I’ve tried and the failings of each one
  • Get a set of band-aids and workarounds to help cope with the harsh reality of game development.

Agile Implementation

- Trent Oster – Project Director, BioWare Corp.

Take Aways from this session:

  • A better understanding of Scrum
  • A practical method of applying Scrum to game development
  • Techniques for technical oversight in Agile development
  • An understanding of the possible problems with Scrum in a game development environment
  • Methods for successful Scrum deployment in a game development environment

Something from Nothing

- Tim Longo – Creative Director/Senior Designer, Crystal Dynamics

Pre-concepting during Pre-production and how to ensure your ideas and designs are ready for a full team.Tim will share refined and experience driven applied techniques for taking early design ideas from blank mind and paper into coherent and useful goal-driven specs and demonstrable results. These systematized processes will help you put your early Pre-production ideas into an appropriate state in order to more effectively begin production.

Take Aways from this session:

  • Techniques for making raw unfocused ideas into useful and applicable design goals
  • Brainstorming, narrowing and culling methods
  • Pre-visualization components and methods with a common language for teams
  • Suggested balances between documentation and demonstrable results

This presentation will not focus on aspects of prototyping specifically. No real technical areas will be covered in this talk.

Working with Publishers as a Developer Producer

- Chris Natsuume – Creative Director, Boomzap

Take Aways from this session:

  • Every day is strategy day
  • Start with your BATNA
  • The Secret Triangle of Contracts
  • Know WHO pays for WHAT and WHEN
  • Games dont cost money, they cost time
  • Contracts are limited by enforceability
  • You have a partner, like it or not
  • Help your producer help you

Local Anesthetic: Painless Game Localization

- Heather Maxwell Chandler – Executive Producer, Media Sunshine

When you think about it, it’s strange that you pay someone to root around in your mouth and occasionally stick a drill in there. But you go to the dentist because you have to — simple preventative measures that save you from potential serious problems later on. The same goes for the localization process: as team sizes get larger, and games become more complex, it’s crucial that you plan for localization throughout the process, Again, simple preventative measures and planning can take the “pain” of localizations away. Of course, you can always wait until after beta, but that’s a lot like waiting for your first root canal before you start brushing your teeth. This lecture provides an overview on how to produce localized games from start to finish, including key localization tasks to tackle during pre-production, production, and testing. Techniques will be discussed for effectively planning and executing a localization, working effectively with translators and localization vendors, and creating localization-friendly code.

Cross Discipline Team Collaboration

- Clinton Keith – CTO, High Moon Studios

There is a shift in the industry to create cross-functional teams that produce iterations of a game every few weeks. This requires more collaboration and less isolation across multiple disciplines. How do we build this? How does a small group of people behave like “game developers” and not like “programmers”, “3D artists”, “designers”, etc that just do their part and pass it off down the line? How do we shift from the “it’s not my job” attitude to true collaboration on making a great game? The presentation will cover specific experiences and solutions applied at High Moon studios using agile methods such as Scrum, XP and Lean Product Development.

Dilemmas of the Publisher’s External Producer

- Bill Dugan – President, Torpex Games

An “external producer” works at a game publisher, producing games developed by independent game studios or, sometimes, by studios owned by the publisher, where he’s the inhouse check on the “external” studio. The poor guy. He may have some job security for a while, but after about four milestones, he is usually despised by the developer, by his boss, or both. If you’re a developer, find out how this inhuman monster’s fatal weaknesses can be located and exploited, so you can have your way with the hapless publisher. If you’re an external producer at a publisher, find out how to lay bare the lies of your deceitful developer, who by the way is trying to locate and exploit your fatal weaknesses.

Leveraging Outsourcing to Enhance Development

- Aaron Pulkka – Senior Director, Outsourcing, Vivendi Games

Done right, outsourcing can be used to increase efficiency, improve quality and reduce costs – enabling your core team to focus on design, innovation, and setting the bar. During this session we will cover a variety of outsourcing types, with an emphasis on art production. We will address the preparation process, how to select the right partner for your project, and best practices guidelines. Based on my decade worth of outsourcing experience, from both the client and vendor perspectives, I will also discuss common production pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Panel – Production Potpourri

- Moderator: Mike Capps – President, Epic Games
- Heather Maxwell Chandler – Executive Producer, Media Sunshine
- Jamie Fristrom – Technical Director, Torpex Games
- Tim Longo – Creative Director/Senior Designer, Crystal Dynamics
- Trent Oster – Project Director, BioWare Corp.

This panel will discuss production techniques for mitigating risks, scheduling, and other tangible ways to keep a project on track.

© 2011 International Game Developers Association