Post by leunas on Jan 30, 2007 18:13:54 GMT -5
Ditto with Japanmanship, who is on a roll with awesome Japanese game development-related posts, and this time looks at the issues with organization while working on game development teams in Japan - and comes to some fascinating conclusions.
He very interestingly explains the issues with both Western and Eastern game dev processes from personal experience, noting of Western processes: "The code base to build on isn’t quite as solid as it should have been because the previous project was rushed. But there is something there, at least. Design continues throughout and results in a feature creep, Content and code are constantly effected by design changes and require some overtime to get fixed. QA starts at some point and delivers stacks of bug sheets. The publisher eagerly waits until the game reaches “shippable” level and then immediately ships it."
However, in Japan: "Once the idea for the project is dreamt up everyone shoots off the starting line. Due to the hard-coded nature of most Japanese games there is little or no real reusable code-base so essentially a complete reset is required. Though design has hardly had a chance to get going, content needs to be created unless you are left with half a team bored out of their minds. So the art department shoots off and gets roped back down when the inevitable design changes occur. QA starts late and the bugs brought up by it cause further design changes and masses of overtime for all concerned. Once the game reaches “shippable” level people are too tired and don't care much about getting to “complete” and the game gets stuffed in a box and released." This is smart, and well-analyzed, and I like it a lot.
feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gamesetwatch/~3/82421015/inside_the_japanese_game_devel_1.php