Games may be great fun to play, but developing them is no fun.
There is a dark side to the gaming industry. Developers labour in the dungeons of major gaming corporations like the subterranean Morlocks in the sci-fi classic The Time Machine, working absurd overtime and enduring bad conditions to produce games for the Eloi-customers frolicking outside. On the whole, everything's pretty broken, industry-wide.
Jason Della Rocca>Text
"On the whole, everything's pretty broken, industry-wide," says Jason Della Rocca, an ex-Montréaler who serves as the executive director of the San Francisco-based International Gaming Developers Association (IGDA), a professional association that is lobbying for improvements in working conditions. The IGDA is working to develop a set of gaming software development best practices based on mainstream IT methodologies to introduce order to chaos.
The IGDA released a white paper over a year ago documenting the problems in the industry. "We heard the day the report came out, industry productivity went down dramatically," says Della Rocca. "Everyone was stopping to download and read the report. It was something like the Communist Manifesto for gamers."
The industry has grown organically over the past 15 years, says Della Rocca. Lack of project management expertise is a central issue, as this has a direct impact on working conditions. "Usually, it's the programmer who's hung around the longest who falls into a lead role."
He says this situation was somewhat acceptable in the early Wild West days when games were developed by small teams of people tapping one another on the shoulder. But today, projects may have budgets of over $20 million and a headcount of over 200 people, in addition to external contractors and specialists.
"The guy who's hung around the longest shouldn't be entrusted with that level of responsibility," he says. "If you have someone with zero people management, scheduling and product life cycle development skills in charge, you're in perma-crunch mode all the time. There's no way to deal with the volume of work. People throw up their hands, bring in their sleeping bags and work double shifts."
Other loosey-goosey industry practices feed into the problem.
Gaming is a volatile and fiercely competitive field, and publishers who fund projects often demand changes mid-stream in response to market shifts. But simple things like change requests are virtually non-existent in the industry, says Della Rocca. Contracts typically have vague wording that allow publishers to make changes at will. "We're trying to formalize contracts with a defined change request process. So if the publishers want changes, they need to document them and allow an assessment of their impact on the project, and take responsibility for adjusting the schedule or making payment."
Many players within the industry are resisting the call for order. Senior executives at many major gaming corporations built their empires over the years on the old organic ways. "Now we have to go to the old school guys and say, listen, we need proper methodologies, processes and training. To some extent, they're closed to that – they can't fathom the ways they used to succeed aren't working anymore," says Della Rocca. There are also complaints that the imposition of order may stifle creative juices. "People say, we're not building a database here, we're trying to build something that's fun. How do you schedule fun?"
The churn rate within the industry is massive. Based on a recent survey conducted by the IGDA, the average developer's career length is about five years. Almost 50 per cent of the developers polled said their limit would be 10 years before leaving the industry. The large pool of eager kids dying to get in makes gaming workers exploitable and expendable. "They burn them up, because there are 100 other kids in line to take their place," says Della Rocca.
He rues management's lack of vision. "The talent goes out the door after 2-3 projects, and the same mistakes get made over and over. How do you advance the art form if no gets to the graybeard stage? Imagine if Hollywood directors like Spielberg or Scorcese burnt out after a couple of movies."
The IGDA recently started up a workgroup to develop gaming-specific best practices. Geneviève Lord, a producer at Montreal-based Artificial Mind and Movement (A2M), is involved in the initiative. Lord, who developed her career in mainstream IT shops at Exxon, Continental Bank and CN, believes 2006 will be the breakthrough year for change within the industry. "There have been some real horror stories. Some big players have lost a lot of time and money, and they want to do something about it. Also, due to the complexity of next-generation consoles, we really need best practices or it will get worse."
Having worked on both sides of the fence, Lord explains the fundamental difference between mainstream IT and gaming software development. "What makes a game fun is not clear-cut. In mainstream IT, a system either works or it doesn't. A game may work perfectly, but it's not fun. So it's all unpredictable."
Problems within the industry need to approached from different angles, says Della Rocca. The IGDA is looking at adapting the capability maturity model (CMM) developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) to improve software development processes, and Agile programming to equip developers with the techniques needed to handle changes in scope or additions of new features quickly.
Longer-term, the IGDA will likely look into developing a certification process, based on elements taken from CMM or the Project Management Institute's (PMI) project management methodology and adapting those for the gaming industry.
Change is also coming from the other direction, as universities are starting to offer formal gaming programs to computer science students. Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. recently started offering a master's degree in gaming that equips mainstream IT grads for careers in gaming.
"Publishers are increasingly expecting to see proper project management plans and software development processes in place, and gaming companies need people with these skills," says Glyn Heatley, divisional director of computer games technology at Algoma University. "All our grads are being snapped up."
Some progressive gaming companies are already adopting best practices, says Lord. Agile programming techniques are used at A2M to reduce the scope of project tasks, and Lord is a seasoned IT project manager. "When companies start putting best practices in place, you really seem results immediately in both the quality of the games and lives of workers," she says.