A collection of stories and interviews about the making of video games. Primarily based on visits and interviews with the companies and developers of the games.
Covers 10 games, including Diablo III, Halo Wars, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Witcher 3. Games made by some of the biggest names in gaming: Blizzard, Bungie, Electronic Arts, Bioware. I’ve played some of the games covered and other games created by those companies. It was interesting to hear some of the backstories.
My takeaway from the book was that video games are a creative endeavour, and creativity is a messy activity. Requires a lot of try and try again, a lot of experimentation, iteration, and tweaking. Impossible to plan or schedule. That’s the 90% that takes 90% of the time.
The creativity thrives best if work can be iterated quickly. But that fast iteration/implementation is prone to be buggy and unstable. Fine during the creative phase, but the bug-swatting, performance tuning, and finishing is a huge challenge. That’s the 10% that takes the other 90% of the time.
The other theme that seems integral to game development is the “crunch” that all teams rely on the get to the finish line. The 80+ hour work weeks to wrestle the game into a releasable state destroy peoples’ health.
I’ve done short crunches, but no more than 2-3 weeks. Can’t imagine doing for months. I found that after a week or two, the long hours become less and less productive. Feels like you do 8 hours of useful work in 16 hours of desk time.
A fun read. Recommended.