Games from Within

High Moon Studios is an unusual company in the games industry. We're applying agile methodologies for all of our development. My team in particular is using both Scrum (an agile management methodology) and Extreme Programming (an agile engineering methodology). And yes, that means we're doing pair programming, test-driven development, and all the other often controversial practices. I expect that in a few years, these practices will be a lot more common than they are today. [more]

Pair programming really needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Just a few years ago, I loved my single office and I was completely against the idea of spending all my time programming with somebody else sitting at the same computer. Today I advocated using pair programming at work and I gladly gave up my office to work in a pair-programming lab alongside the whole team. Funny how things change. [more]

Exactly a year ago today, I put up the first article on Games from Within. It was a review of Tom DeMarco's book Slack. I thought it would make for a nice, symmetrical bookend to wrap the year up with a review for another book by DeMarco: Waltzing with Bears. As the subtitle indicates, Waltzing with Bears deals with managing risk in software development projects. Managing risk, not reducing risk, or removing risk. Do you think that low risk or even no risk is a good thing? Think again. [more]

"Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week." Pony Express advertisement, 1860. That would be a funny anachronism if it weren't still so true. In this second part I argue that long hours in game development are not only something that could be avoided, but that they're actually detrimental to the project. [more]

It should be abundantly clear from past articles I've written (and from my rants if you know me in person) that I feel very strongly about quality of life issues in the games industry. It pains me to see rampant overtime be commonplace, and the truly ironic part is, I'm convinced it doesn't help the final game any. As a matter of fact, it probably makes people be less productive and makes the game suffer for it. Ah, but they crunched some impressive hours. They have something they can feel proud of. [more]

No plan survives first contact with the enemy. In game development, detailed milestones, complex schedules, and careful planning often go out the window as soon as the project starts. Agile development provides a set of techniques to steer the project in the right direction and embrace change. [more]

Yeee-haaa! Get your compiler and debugger ready and saddle up, pardner. We got some codin' to do. There's no denying it: The games industry is full of cowboy coders. Sure, other industries have their share as well, but something about game development seems to attract them like flies to honey. [more]

When starting a project, it is always a good idea to reflect very critically on your past projects. Think about what went right, and especially what could have been done better, and come up with a plan of attack for the new project. To adapt the popular saying, companies that do not conduct some form of postmortem are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. [more]

The sun is shining, the air is warm, leaves are finally coming out. Spring is here. Time to put on my rose-colored glasses and do some armchair quarterbacking. I often find myself saying "If I owned a game company I would make sure to do such and such," so here we go. [more]

Here's a book I wish every manager would read, especially the managers in charge of my project (pure self-interest in my part, I admit it). It's short, focused, to the point, and it drives home a very powerful message: By being constantly busy working you're probably hurting your project and your company. [more]