We Are The 5%

There is nothing longer than a microwave minute. Give it a try. Watch your food get heated inside one of our modern era devices, and you will taste eternity. Still, some activities do get close. At least as a time warping interpolation that might as well serve the same electrical demons. Finishing a game belongs to that subset of time-stopping enterprises.

Take Vampire Season for example.

Even though we made huge game changes in december 2011, by late January it seemed we were done. All the post-its flying around each of the developer and artists’ computers were starting to fade, and we’re being replaced with hand drawn meme’s. USE ALL THE POST ITS!!!! But every time we sat down to take a look at the game, every time our almost finished product made it into someone’s hands, we found room for improvement. Our design and development philosophy revolves around improving. If it can be improved, then it is improved. It is both a blessing and a trap. Specially in the last 5% of development. It is a well-known fact that any change in software gets more and more costly every step down the development process. Changes in the last 5% are usually very costly and high impact.

Early play testing and careful design might protect you from the pitfalls of having to make changes at the last 5%, but the temptation to improve is always there. And here’s the hard part: You still have to tweak and fine tune the game, or you won’t get that last 5% done. What is a change? What is a tweak? When a game mechanic shifts in favor of balance and playability, are you changing things? Unless you are a game developing giant, time and money will be the constrain that will usually define that answer. For us smaller developers, there is a palpable need to put everything on the table and see if it should get done. The reason of this whole digression is to get to this point: Don’t do it alone. Even if you are the most confident Head of Game Design to ever have graced the earth, sit down and talk with as many people of your team as you can.

I got lucky. I am surrounded by smart people who can detect when something doesn’t work. I knowingly tried to make a change in the game, while the rest of the team tweaked in the 5% stretch. I found an opening in the production pipeline and went for it. But my team saw through the bullshit. They were honest enough to call me out: “That change doesn’t work, stop pursuing it”. I understood, and went back to fine tuning. To finish what was important.

And we keep fine tuning. The game should be out soon. I want you to be able to play it.

See you in a microwave minute.

Jairo Nieto