Developing Dead Space 2, Collaboratively

At the February 2011 chapter event, about 250 developers met at the SAT to hear the story of a successful long-distance relationship. We all know it’s common knowledge that this kind of relationship never works; but Heather Alekson from Visceral Montreal was there to explain us how (with a bit of willingness and good management strategies) it is indeed possible to create a success like Dead Space 2 between so many different teams scattered all over the world.

THE CHANGES AT EA MONTREAL

Heather began by outlining the evolution of EA Montreal since its foundation in 2004. During the early days, the output of the studio was very diverse: from Army of Two for “next-gen” consoles, to Boogie for the Wii and the Nintendo DS, the studio wasn’t shy of trying contrasting genres on very different platforms.

During the last couple of years, there were important organizational and philosophical changes in the core of the studio. They decided to focus on action games only, and to start collaborating with other outposts within EA. It was out of these significant adjustments that Visceral Montreal was born.

The same process happened in other EA studios around the world. By the time Dead Space 2 was in production the Visceral label had teams in Redwood Shores (the main hub), Los Angeles, Melbourne, Shanghai and, of course, Montreal.

THE PRODUCTION OF THE GAME

Dead Space 2 has been an exceptional commercial and critical hit. The sales of the game, after a month of its release, already surpassed the first Dead Space, and it has received a 90 MetaCritic rating. In fact, Heather told us how the question “Is this a 90+ MetaCritic game?” was used during the whole development process to evaluate the daily work, and to see if it met the quality expectations for the game.

The central management of the project was in Redwood Shores, since they are the studio that created the original Dead Space in 2008. Visceral Montreal took care of much of the single-player campaign and the full UI of the game, among other features. Shanghai focused on the environment art and Visceral Australia took care of porting the game to the PC.

There are many ways to create one product over different places: popular methodologies include outsourcing (3rd-party developers working on a very specific task with almost no creative input), and distributed development (whenever one studio creates the single-player campaign, and another the multiplayer mode, for example).

For Dead Space 2, Visceral decided to use a paradigm known as collaborative development. The core idea behind it is to have “one” team, across multiple locations, with a unique shared goal (in this case delivering a creatively and commercially successful game). Among other advantages, collaborative development allows the project to leverage studio-specific expertise, and access to a bigger pool of talent that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

We watched a stunning video from the UI team and their work in Dead Space 2. The use of Inception’s soundtrack for the video was kind of cheesy, it must be said, but the work showcased was truly admirable, with both menus and in-game UI looking outstanding from both visual and functional point of views.

LEARNING TO LET GO

One of the most interesting moments of the talk happened when Heather showed the difference between the original mandate for Visceral Montreal, and the final features that the studio ended up delivering.

The initial scope from January 2010 only included the art for the multiplayer levels and the UI for the game. Twelve months later, the studio had implemented all single-player chapters, four multiplayer arenas, many in-game animation sequences as well as the complete UI for the game.

When asked about this ample difference between early expectations and final output, Heather explained that Redwood Shores initially saw the franchise as their beloved baby; they didn’t want anyone to harm their creation, and therefore they were reluctant of letting it go too much. It took time for them to do so, but after the first good results coming from Montreal, the creative direction understood that this studio had more than enough talent to handle greater responsibilities.

MAKING IT WORK

To make the collaborative process as smooth and productive as possible, the team would need many things: A strong support from the top of the organization, a big initial investment in equipment, experienced talent, and a lot of traveling between locations. According to Heather, at the beginning of the production phase EA flew the complete Montreal team (about 40 people) to California, to share meetings, go for drinks together and, in short, to foster a positive and lasting relationship.

Also, in collaborative development there is no such thing as over-communication: daily sync-up meetings are essential, as well as tools like video conference and instant messaging. And despite all the efforts for a fluent communication, it’s easy to fall into a “us vs. them” mentality, and to pointing at the other side for any mistakes made.

Like any other long-distance endeavor, the development of Dead Space 2 over five different locations was a very difficult process. The beginnings were hard and confusing but, with time, the studios involved were able to adapt and find their place in the relationship. In view of the amazing results that the game has achieved so far, we can only agree with Heather when she declared that the challenge was totally worth it.