Making games with large scopes can be challenging and rewarding, but also stressful and risky. How can you manage your deadlines and avoid scope creep, crunch, and burnout? Here are some strategies to help you plan, prioritize, and execute your game development projects.
Before you start working on your game, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success. You also need to define your scope, which is the set of features, content, and quality standards that you aim to deliver. A good way to define your scope is to use a tool like a game design document, a pitch deck, or a prototype. These tools can help you communicate your vision and scope to your team, your stakeholders, and your audience.
To manage deadlines for games with large scopes in game development, break down the project into smaller tasks, prioritize essential features, adopt agile methodologies, set realistic milestones with buffer time, maintain open communication, conduct risk management, utilize prototyping and iteration, allocate resources efficiently, prioritize quality assurance, maintain comprehensive documentation, and plan for post-launch support while focusing on the initial release.
Roadmapping out your milestones is one of those simple practices that a lot of juniors don't do that will make or break your timeline. I speak to so many juniors and it is SO common for a 6 month project to turn into a 3 year one etc etc. You must not only establish what time you are willing to invest and by what date the major accomplishments will be done, but you must also relentless protect this timeline. Treat release date pushbacks as a big deal (a big bad deal) because they are. Instead triage mercilessly. Cut features and levels and scope. Reduce your game to just it's best, most golden bare essentials. And I bet the game will be better for it. Plus, like. It'll release on time.
Create concept art and mood boards to visually communicate the game's vision and scope. These tools can effectively convey the aesthetic, theme, and emotional tone you aim for, making the abstract aspects of your vision more tangible and understandable for your team and stakeholders. They can also serve as a constant reference point for maintaining artistic consistency throughout the development process.
Well, there are so many, but the top 2 I always keep in mind are: 1- Break the Project into Milestones: Divide the game development process into manageable milestones or phases. Each milestone should have specific goals and deadlines. This approach makes the project more digestible and allows you to track progress effectively. 2- Set Realistic Deadlines: Avoid setting overly optimistic deadlines that are bound to be missed. Instead, set deadlines that are achievable based on your team's capacity, resources, and the complexity of the project.
Today we have team management methodologies such as Scrum and Agile using tools such as Trello, ClickUp, or even Jira, and if you have a Scrum Master or even a competent Producer, the project will certainly evolve competently and healthily.
Once you have your vision and scope, you need to break down your game development into manageable tasks and milestones. Tasks are the specific actions that you need to perform to complete your game, such as coding, art, sound, testing, etc. Milestones are the checkpoints that mark the progress and completion of your game, such as alpha, beta, launch, etc. A good way to break down your tasks and milestones is to use a tool like a Gantt chart, a Kanban board, or a Scrum framework. These tools can help you organize, track, and visualize your tasks and milestones.
Organize the development process into weekly sprints, where each week is dedicated to completing a set of predefined tasks. This approach, borrowed from Agile methodologies, helps in maintaining a steady pace of progress, allows for regular assessment and adjustments, and keeps the team focused on immediate priorities. It also facilitates more frequent checkpoints and feedback loops, ensuring that the project stays aligned with its milestones.
Break your big scope into multiple smaller scopes. Aim for completing the full loop of one feature in each short sprint. This helps you build a library of content that can be reused, so the whole project isn't a wash if the overarching goal isn't met.
Breaking down tasks into smaller milestones is the best thing to do it allows one to reduce a huge task into many smaller tasks making the task look much easier. Breaking down is also good to understand the finer details of a task so that you do not miss a sub task of the given milestone
After defining your game's vision and scope, intricately dissect the development into specialized tasks and significant milestones. Tasks range from intricate coding to nuanced playtesting. Milestones, like alpha and beta releases, signify key development phases. Employ tools like a Gantt chart for detailed time mapping or a Kanban board for workflow clarity, enhancing your strategic approach to these elements. This method ensures a systematic and intellectual progression to your game’s culmination.
Fragmentar o projeto em tarefas menores e marcos permite gerenciar melhor o progresso e identificar antecipadamente possíveis atrasos. Essa abordagem facilita o monitoramento do progresso e ajuda a equipe a se manter no caminho certo, garantindo que cada etapa seja concluída a tempo.
After you have your tasks and milestones, you need to estimate how much time and resources you will need to complete them. Time is the duration that you expect to spend on each task and milestone. Resources are the people, tools, equipment, and budget that you have available for your game development. A good way to estimate your time and resources is to use a tool like a time tracker, a resource planner, or a budget calculator. These tools can help you measure, allocate, and optimize your time and resources.
Use historical data from past projects as a benchmark for estimating time and resources. Analyze how similar tasks were handled in previous games you've developed or refer to industry standards for similar game development projects.
Upon delineating tasks and milestones, one must engage in the perspicacious calibration of temporal expenditures and resource allocation, encompassing not only the chronological investment requisite for each segmented endeavor but also the amalgamated assemblage of human capital, instrumentalities, apparatuses, and fiscal reservoirs, wherein the utilization of analytical contrivances such as a time tracker, resource planner, or budget calculator emerges as quintessential for the meticulous quantification, judicious distribution, and efficacious optimization of these pivotal elements in the labyrinthine tapestry of game development.
In my experience working with Voodoo (as an external studio), the best thing is to start with the basic core gameplay mechanics. Once the core is done, you can start polishing it and adding the other features. In addition, it is important to set some personal deadlines. As a result, you'll be able to keep a good track of your progress. It may be difficult and you may sometimes modify them but this does not mean they won't help.
Uma estimativa realista de tempo e recursos é fundamental para o sucesso do projeto. Isso envolve analisar as tarefas necessárias, avaliar a disponibilidade de recursos e prever possíveis desafios. Uma boa estimativa ajuda a evitar atrasos e a gerenciar as expectativas.
Based on your time and resource estimates, you need to set realistic and flexible deadlines for your tasks and milestones. Realistic deadlines are the ones that are achievable and reasonable, based on your past experience, current situation, and future expectations. Flexible deadlines are the ones that are adaptable and adjustable, based on your feedback, changes, and contingencies. A good way to set realistic and flexible deadlines is to use a tool like a calendar, a schedule, or a roadmap. These tools can help you plan, communicate, and update your deadlines.
Work to figure out your way of using tools around this. I have a spreadsheet that I have adapted and built over the last 5 years. I can plug in average points per week of my team disciplines and then use open points to start projecting dates and time needed for completing work. This is never going to be 100% correct though. This is always a tool for you to use. You still need to have context around what is being done and use all the tools you have to help make decisions.
A lot of the worst scope underestimations are just due to people being optimistic. I get it, because I fall into this trap all the time too. When somebody asks you how long something will take, our typical response is "A little shorter than I think it will be" because we want to impress and placate. But the problem here is you are setting yourself up for failure, because almost inevitably it will take longer, and so you won't hit your deadlines and then you'll erode the trust of your team. Instead use the 4x rule. If you think it'll take you 1 month, say it'll take you 4. You may have a little pushback at first, but when you knock it out in 2 months you'll suddenly look like a champion instead of a junior.
This is very necessary in a project as this helps the developer/s to focus on the project without always worrying about meeting the deadline and instead of ignoring major and minor bugs the developer puts efforts to solve those instead of pushing it to the Future due to the flexible deadlines
In the wake of estimating time and resources, it's imperative to establish deadlines for tasks and milestones that are not only realistic—achievable and sensible, considering past experiences and current circumstances—but also flexible, capable of adaptation in the face of feedback, alterations, and unforeseen eventualities; employing tools like a calendar, schedule, or roadmap facilitates the strategic planning, effective communication, and necessary updating of these deadlines, ensuring they remain both feasible and malleable in the dynamic milieu of game development.
Prazos realistas levam em conta as complexidades do projeto e a capacidade da equipe. é importante ser flexível e ajustar prazos quando necessário, especialmente em projetos de grande escopo, onde imprevistos s?o comuns.
As you work on your game development, you need to prioritize and delegate your work according to your deadlines. Prioritizing your work means choosing the most important and urgent tasks and milestones that will deliver the most value and impact for your game. Delegating your work means assigning the tasks and milestones that you cannot or should not do yourself to other team members or collaborators who have the skills, availability, and motivation to do them. A good way to prioritize and delegate your work is to use a tool like a matrix, a list, or a dashboard. These tools can help you sort, rank, and assign your work.
Sometimes our passion leads us to want to do more tasks than humanly possible. Making the analogy with a soccer team: we cannot be the goalkeeper, defend, attack and score the goal alone. We need to make an adequate distribution of tasks, not only to reduce development time, but also to take advantage of the particular talents of each team member.
In the odyssey of game development, it's crucial to prioritize and delegate tasks in alignment with set deadlines; this involves discerning and focusing on those tasks and milestones that are both paramount and exigent, contributing maximal value and impact to the game, while concurrently apportioning other components of the project to team members or collaborators equipped with the requisite expertise, availability, and enthusiasm, through the aid of organizational tools such as matrices, lists, or dashboards, which assist in categorizing, hierarchizing, and allocating the multifarious facets of the developmental process.
As you complete your tasks and milestones, you need to review and revise your deadlines according to your results and feedback. Reviewing your deadlines means evaluating the quality and quantity of your work and comparing them to your vision and scope. Revising your deadlines means adjusting the duration and order of your remaining tasks and milestones and communicating the changes to your team, your stakeholders, and your audience. A good way to review and revise your deadlines is to use a tool like a report, a survey, or a demo. These tools can help you collect, analyze, and present your data and feedback.
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If you have a deadline and an imposed budget, refrain from cramming every feature into the given timeline. Instead, design the game to be modular and easy to adapt to changing scope, and then adjust the scope as needed. This requires careful coordination with the gamedev team and stakeholders to identify what the real priorities are for demo. Reduce the amount of work that needs to fit through the pipeline. Learn how to trim your big game dreams down to a lean MVP. Watch your burn down charts and your month-over-month progress chart, and make sure you’re not giving your team more work than they can get done without cutting corners. Delivering demos over deadlines will lead to a more productive gamedev team that will never ship late again.
Reavaliar regularmente os prazos é essencial para garantir que o projeto permane?a no caminho certo. Isso permite ajustar o planejamento conforme necessário e abordar problemas antes que se tornem críticos.
I always see so many people talking about padding dates and using time estimates in the first place. Stop that. We are horrible at estimating time. Switch to pointing complexity. Then start using real velocity to project the dates you give. Use an average over a period of time to level it out. You still need to use your best judgment on padding but this will get you closer to the truth than your "2 week" estimate. You also need to remember the dates that you give during a 0 groom will not be right. You will need to continously adjust as you learn more about the work.
There's a famous quote from the legendary Miyamoto that goes like this: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." But the problem is, not all of us have that Nintendo money. Focus on making the core aspects of your game wonderful. Get them done, get them shipped. And then if you have extra time (which you frankly probably won't), you can think about adding extra layers to your proverbial gamey onion.
I'm pretty good at figuring out how long things will take, but it took over 10 years and it's just by gut feeling. To get good at this just takes experience. I don't like complex systems for planning. I just have a list of stuff to do and once a day I check if it makes sense. That's it. I do this inside big companies and personal projects.