Nick Fortugno, Eric Tams - PLANTASIA POSTMORTEM

Nick Fortugno: Screenshots Plantasia post-mortem slides (1.7 MB)

Daniel Bernstein: Screenshots Tradewinds post-mortem slides (969 MB)

Casual Games Postmortem

Moderator: Eric Tams, Senior Game Developer PopCap

Nick Fortugno, Senior Game Designer gameLab

Daniel Bernstein, President and CEO Sandlot Studios

Plantasia (by Nick Fortugno)

After some technical challenges, Nick got right into the thick of the topic.

Plantasia started out as a straight-forward Real-time Strategy resource management game. In addition to the magic and human-like flowers, the team wanted to experiment with some story elements, and so a romantic twist was added. Ten people did work on Plantasia, and about half of them were pulled in for brief art of level creation tasks. The core team was about five (game designer, programmer, two artists, and sound) with everyone else on very part-time status. After all, the game ended up taking 10 month until completion. The major finding was that innovative game-play simply takes time!

Initially, the gamer was supposed to have a variety of tools at his/her disposal. This ended up being too complex. By offering only one pre-determined “action” when hovering over a flower, the gamer lost choices but gained simplicity.

Another factor that consumed plenty of conceptual and development time was the creation of the economic system. Even for a basic prototype, the eco-system needed to be close to completion, to simply make sense.

Due to the various states of the 35 different plants, the game was becoming very art-heavy. That meant more time and more money. This didn’t come as a surprise, but the team needed to consciously take the decision whether to add more state and more flowers or work on polishing what they had.

The most structure playground is a grid. This is the basis Plantasia is played on. On one hand, the grid offers structure, on the other hand you want to avoid a GBA-look that would turn off current casual gamers. Generating the right feel to it, took several revisions, which took time and cost money. At the end, however, the team agrees on one important factor: polish, polish, polish. Only then can a game really shine and succeed.

As for the story, one of the team’s biggest questions was “How much is too much?” After all, the gamer is supposed to “play” the game, not read it. At the same time, gamers need to be pulled through the game, through the creative story elements. So, gameLab decided to apply a “scanning approach”. All texts components were edited in such a way that the gamer could catch key words and phrases by merely scanning the text, without needing to read it in detail. This proved to nicely balance both needs mentioned above.

For the longest time, game developers have been struggling with the infamous 10MB barrier. According to Nick, the developer’s biggest enemies on that quest are the art assets (surprise J). His suggestion is to keep a very attentive eye on compression routines and the amount of varied art assets you really need to make your game fun. Sometimes, perfect is the enemy of good.

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

Complexity Balance:

Due to intense testing, gameLab managed to reach a good complexity balance. Thus, the gamer enjoys plenty of freedom without being overwhelmed. Everybody in the team was helpful in figuring out what the right balance should feel like. The earlier you detect excess in any direction, the better you can correct it. Consumer feedback (and yes your grandma can be a tester) is crucial in that stage

Time for Innovation:

Creating an innovative game play mechanic requires time. Time for creation, time for testing, time for killing the idea and re-creating it over and over again. This is the moment were the developer and the publisher need to be in sync about their expectations in terms of costs and timelines. Make sure you are on the same page, early on.

Core Vision:

Once defined, the core elements for the creative vision of the game stayed throughout the game development process. Flowers, Magic, and Romance are the main building blocks of Plantasia. All other components exist in accordance with those three elements, not the other way around.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Clear Communication:

As with all innovations, “new” creates fear. And fear can only be eliminated or at least reduced through clear communication. Once team members get too nervous about the project, focus gets lost and time gets wasted. Once a “plan” was in place that could be shared with all stake holders, gameLab was able to diminish the incumbent fear factor substantially.

Strict Criticism:

Once a team member detects something bothering, no matter how small it is, it really needs to be addressed, right away. Nick’s example revolved around a snail that seemed to interact with the game’s background in a funny way. It’s been bothering several team members right from the beginning, but nobody gave it enough importance to address it then. One day, however, various months into production, during a staff meeting, somebody actually did point out that weird snail behavior. And promptly, everybody raised their hands and confirmed that it’s been bothering them too. Obviously, nobody felt responsible for that “little bug”, even though actually everybody should have. Bring bugs to the table, right away, as soon as you detect them. They’ll hunt you down later and will cost more time and money to be fixed. No doubt!

BRIEF GAME DEMO:

Nick went on to launch the game and show us the real deal. In deed, the game looks very polished and art-intensive.

Some elements were pointed out during the in-game presentation:

- everything you complete gives you points

- The basic goal of the game is to reconstruct some enchanted ruins. However that only represents about 80% of the full potential

- The Expert Level achievement is reached by completing 100% of all elements.

- Having two “degrees” of completion provides for great re-playability, while novice gamers still enjoy the satisfaction of being accomplished.

Daniel Bernstein (CEO Sandlot Games) takes over the speaker’s corner, while Nick Fortugno enjoys a round of great applause for his insightful presentation about the making of Plantasia.

Tradewinds Legends by Daniel Bernstein

Based on Tradewinds’ original success, Sandlot Games developed Tradewinds 2, the predecessor to Tradewinds Legends. TW2 had tasks that were a new game play element added to the existing trading game dynamic of Tradewinds. Gamers had to read plenty of text in order to know what they were supposed to do. However, successful focus testing proved that gamers were interested in the story mode, including its text-heavy description. With that knowledge, Sandlot went on to even further emphasize story elements in Tradewinds Legends.

Daniel shared some screenshots with us (unfortunately, some tech problems prevented the game from running properly with the connected LCD projector).

Basically, all background elements are dynamic, which provides a very emerging visual experience to the gamer. The game allows for personalized character creation, including the customization of character portrait and name. And in contrast to TW2, Legends permits the creation of a fleet, which naturally offers more options than maneuvering only a single vessel.

WHAT WENT RIGHT:

Sheer volume of assets:

Tradewinds Legends features about 1,000 pieces of art and 1 Megabyte of text. Every single character features a set of completely different tasks, which provides for great re-playability of TWL, considering nothing really repeats.

Stable engine:

As the team was working on the TWL, one heavy weight decision they needed to take was regarding the game engine. Daniel’s suggestion: “DO NOT RE-WRITE YOUR ENGINE!!!” By sticking to the core elements of the engine, Tradewinds Legends was able to improve upon the good elements of TW2, without adding any complexity in the developing process.

Stable team:

An additional factor that played well into the successful development process of TWL was the fact that most of the team from the original Tradewinds worked on TWL as well. This reduces the need for expensive learning curves, individually but also as a team. Stable teams work like a well-oiled machine, or say “engine”.

WHAT WENT WRONG

Art outsourcing:

With the newly found need for a huge amount of art assets, it seemed reasonable to outsource that part of the development work. The art was beautiful and added a tremendous amount of value to the game. Sometimes the outsourcing studio delivered art in a wrong format. To correct this mistake, the in-house team needed to micromanage this process. The outsourcing team needed better oversight from Sandlot and ultimately full-time team members are more invested in the project than development contractors.

One AAA vs. many B titles

While planning ahead, Sandlot started working on various game projects in parallel. With the increased need of attention for Tradewinds Legends, the team took the decision to rather focus on one AAA title than to incur the risk of having a few mediocre B titles. In the end, an AAA title will garner so much more attention in the market and make so much more money than several B titles that it completely justifies this level of focus and dedication.

Uncontrolled Story Element

Considering the complexity of the story line, Sandlot opted to bring in a professional writer. That was the good part. The bad one was that nobody within the team felt responsible for that person, necessarily. All of a sudden, that great story popped up, but it didn’t really fit into any of the processes. Who should QA it? Who approves it? Plenty of questions came up that needed to be answered in order for Sandlot to get their money’s worth from a great, professionally written story line.

Eric Tams took over and initiated a very fruitful QA phase (abridged version)

Q: Please describe the single best thing about your Plantasia experience.

Nick: The results of the Beta tests. As gameLab kept on testing continuously throughout the whole development process, the final Beta tester results simply came in to confirm the results and changes originated from the ongoing testing.

Q: Please describe the single worst thing about your Plantasia experience.

Nick: Originally, Plantasia was supposed to have two game modes. The additional Zen mode offered the possibility to plant flowers and let them grow, just like that. This mode was tested and bombed completely with our gamers. So, we killed it. It hurt, but we were happy to have done the testing early on. This just shows that we do not totally understand what casual gamers want.

Nick added that it really takes a polished version of the game, even if it’s only one level or simple art work, for the gamer to provide adequate focus test feedback. Focus testers can’t be expected to imagine what the game could be. If it looks crappy, because it’s only a prototype, they’d believe it’s the real deal.

An additional referred to a generic trend in the industry. Game projects are simply becoming so much bigger and therefore the teams are growing proportionally. There’s nothing an individual studio can do against it. It’s simply the trend and competition forces us to follow.

Daniel added that casual game developers need to protect their franchises. Once you have a winner, it’s worth money. Protect it legally, but also by producing new great games based on the franchise’s theme. Currently, casual games are not about flashy art, but about great game play.

Nick supported this view outlining some additional trends. Games in the casual games space are growing in size. 10 MB is not a hard-stop any more, just like about 2 years ago. Furthermore, narrative elements are becoming a major focus in casual games design. Also, cloning can be an interesting and profitable approach, but clones really need to add features to the game they are copying. Finally, Nick reiterates that throwing stuff out of your game design in early stages might hurt, but it still hurts less than in Beta. The best way to do that properly is through prototyping and frequent and constant testing.

Q: Should casual games try to attract new gamers of should we concentrate on the “known” gamers

Daniel: For Sandlot, casual gamers are defined as not male and not 19-24 years of age.

Nick: If 60% of our gamers are women, developers might tend to want to create games for women. However, forecasts and reality differ greatly.

Dan: That’s why we should not make any assumptions but rather test, A LOT!

Eric thanked the panelists and a satisfied crowd cheered as the panel was wrapped up.

Delivered at Casual Connect Amsterdam, Winter 2006

DOWNLOAD

Eric Tams (email)

After graduating with a BS in Computer Science, Eric began his career at Gas Powered Games as a software engineer responsible for gameplay, special effects and level design support on the Dungeon Siege franchise, a role playing game designed for mass market appeal. Eric contributed to the titles Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege Legends of Arana, and Dungeon Siege II while at GPG.Eric started making casual games as the engineer for Inspector Parker. After Inspector Parker launched, he went on to become one of the original members of Oberon Media’s Seattle development studio. While at Oberon Media, Eric completed BeTrapped!, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, online multiplayer games, and a set of online games for the MSN gaming zone. Most recently, Eric worked as a lead on the project to rewrite the Microsoft Windows in-box games. Eric was responsible for animation, design, special effects, and engineering work for the new versions of Hearts, Free cell, Solitaire, Spider solitaire, Minesweeper, Shanghai, and Chess. These new games will ship pre-installed with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.Currently Eric is working on a new and exciting project at PopCap Games. In his spare time, Eric is committed to helping indie game developers and is involved in the core game development community in the Seattle, WA area.

Nick Fortugno (email)

Nick Fortugno is the senior game designer at gameLab, where he has been a designer, writer and project manager on dozens of digital and nondigital games. Most recently he was lead designer on the downloadable hit Diner Dash. As a member of the Playground design team, Fortugno was a co-creator of the Big Urban Game, a large-scale, city-wide game for the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, played by thousands of residents in fall 2003.

Fortugno also teaches game design and interactive narrative design at Parsons School of Design in New York City.

Daniel Bernstein (email)

Daniel Bernstein founded Sandlot Games and has served as President & CEO since its inception in 2002. Sandlot Games is the world’s premier publisher and developer of casual and family-friendly games across a variety of platforms. Daniel is a veteran of the gaming industry and has over ten years of content strategy, game development, publishing and production-related experience having successfully launched over 20 game titles with Kesmai Studios, Monolith Productions and WildTangent. Prior to starting Sandlot Games, Daniel held the position of Director of Product Strategy at WildTangent, where he devised and executed a successful online fee-based games business. An accomplished composer, Daniel also writes music for most of the games developed and published by Sandlot Games. Daniel holds a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Music Composition from the University of Virginia.

HOME \| LECTURES & ARTICLES \| REFLECTION & POSTMORTEMS \| PLANTASIA POSTMORTEM Plantasia post-mortem slides (1.7 MB) Tradewinds post-mortem slides (969 MB) Casual Games Postmortem Moderator: Eric Tams, Senior Game Developer PopCap Nick Fortugno, Senior Game Designer gameLab Daniel Bernstein, President and CEO Sandlot Studios Plantasia (by Nick Fortugno) After some technical challenges, Nick got right into the thick of the topic. Plantasia started out as a straight-forward Real-time Strategy resource management game. In addition to the magic and human-like flowers, the team wanted to experiment with some story elements, and so a romantic twist was added. Ten people did work on Plantasia, and about half of them were pulled in for brief art of level creation tasks. The core team was about five (game designer, programmer, two artists, and sound) with everyone else on very part-time status. After all, the game ended up taking 10 month until completion. The major finding was that innovative game-play simply takes time! Initially, the gamer was supposed to have a variety of tools at his/her disposal. This ended up being too complex. By offering only one pre-determined “action” when hovering over a flower, the gamer lost choices but gained simplicity. Another factor that consumed plenty of conceptual and development time was the creation of the economic system. Even for a basic prototype, the eco-system needed to be close to completion, to simply make sense. Due to the various states of the 35 different plants, the game was becoming very art-heavy. That meant more time and more money. This didn’t come as a surprise, but the team needed to consciously take the decision whether to add more state and more flowers or work on polishing what they had. The most structure playground is a grid. This is the basis Plantasia is played on. On one hand, the grid offers structure, on the other hand you want to avoid a GBA-look that would turn off current casual gamers. Generating the right feel to it, took several revisions, which took time and cost money. At the end, however, the team agrees on one important factor: polish, polish, polish. Only then can a game really shine and succeed. As for the story, one of the team’s biggest questions was “How much is too much?” After all, the gamer is supposed to “play” the game, not read it. At the same time, gamers need to be pulled through the game, through the creative story elements. So, gameLab decided to apply a “scanning approach”. All texts components were edited in such a way that the gamer could catch key words and phrases by merely scanning the text, without needing to read it in detail. This proved to nicely balance both needs mentioned above. For the longest time, game developers have been struggling with the infamous 10MB barrier. According to Nick, the developer’s biggest enemies on that quest are the art assets (surprise J). His suggestion is to keep a very attentive eye on compression routines and the amount of varied art assets you really need to make your game fun. Sometimes, perfect is the enemy of good. WHAT WENT RIGHT? Complexity Balance: Due to intense testing, gameLab managed to reach a good complexity balance. Thus, the gamer enjoys plenty of freedom without being overwhelmed. Everybody in the team was helpful in figuring out what the right balance should feel like. The earlier you detect excess in any direction, the better you can correct it. Consumer feedback (and yes your grandma can be a tester) is crucial in that stage Time for Innovation: Creating an innovative game play mechanic requires time. Time for creation, time for testing, time for killing the idea and re-creating it over and over again. This is the moment were the developer and the publisher need to be in sync about their expectations in terms of costs and timelines. Make sure you are on the same page, early on. Core Vision: Once defined, the core elements for the creative vision of the game stayed throughout the game development process. Flowers, Magic, and Romance are the main building blocks of Plantasia. All other components exist in accordance with those three elements, not the other way around. WHAT WENT WRONG? Clear Communication: As with all innovations, “new” creates fear. And fear can only be eliminated or at least reduced through clear communication. Once team members get too nervous about the project, focus gets lost and time gets wasted. Once a “plan” was in place that could be shared with all stake holders, gameLab was able to diminish the incumbent fear factor substantially. Strict Criticism: Once a team member detects something bothering, no matter how small it is, it really needs to be addressed, right away. Nick’s example revolved around a snail that seemed to interact with the game’s background in a funny way. It’s been bothering several team members right from the beginning, but nobody gave it enough importance to address it then. One day, however, various months into production, during a staff meeting, somebody actually did point out that weird snail behavior. And promptly, everybody raised their hands and confirmed that it’s been bothering them too. Obviously, nobody felt responsible for that “little bug”, even though actually everybody should have. Bring bugs to the table, right away, as soon as you detect them. They’ll hunt you down later and will cost more time and money to be fixed. No doubt! BRIEF GAME DEMO: Nick went on to launch the game and show us the real deal. In deed, the game looks very polished and art-intensive. Some elements were pointed out during the in-game presentation: - everything you complete gives you points - The basic goal of the game is to reconstruct some enchanted ruins. However that only represents about 80% of the full potential - The Expert Level achievement is reached by completing 100% of all elements. - Having two “degrees” of completion provides for great re-playability, while novice gamers still enjoy the satisfaction of being accomplished. Daniel Bernstein (CEO Sandlot Games) takes over the speaker’s corner, while Nick Fortugno enjoys a round of great applause for his insightful presentation about the making of Plantasia. Tradewinds Legends by Daniel Bernstein Based on Tradewinds’ original success, Sandlot Games developed Tradewinds 2, the predecessor to Tradewinds Legends. TW2 had tasks that were a new game play element added to the existing trading game dynamic of Tradewinds. Gamers had to read plenty of text in order to know what they were supposed to do. However, successful focus testing proved that gamers were interested in the story mode, including its text-heavy description. With that knowledge, Sandlot went on to even further emphasize story elements in Tradewinds Legends. Daniel shared some screenshots with us (unfortunately, some tech problems prevented the game from running properly with the connected LCD projector). Basically, all background elements are dynamic, which provides a very emerging visual experience to the gamer. The game allows for personalized character creation, including the customization of character portrait and name. And in contrast to TW2, Legends permits the creation of a fleet, which naturally offers more options than maneuvering only a single vessel. WHAT WENT RIGHT: Sheer volume of assets: Tradewinds Legends features about 1,000 pieces of art and 1 Megabyte of text. Every single character features a set of completely different tasks, which provides for great re-playability of TWL, considering nothing really repeats. Stable engine: As the team was working on the TWL, one heavy weight decision they needed to take was regarding the game engine. Daniel’s suggestion: “DO NOT RE-WRITE YOUR ENGINE!!!” By sticking to the core elements of the engine, Tradewinds Legends was able to improve upon the good elements of TW2, without adding any complexity in the developing process. Stable team: An additional factor that played well into the successful development process of TWL was the fact that most of the team from the original Tradewinds worked on TWL as well. This reduces the need for expensive learning curves, individually but also as a team. Stable teams work like a well-oiled machine, or say “engine”. WHAT WENT WRONG Art outsourcing: With the newly found need for a huge amount of art assets, it seemed reasonable to outsource that part of the development work. The art was beautiful and added a tremendous amount of value to the game. Sometimes the outsourcing studio delivered art in a wrong format. To correct this mistake, the in-house team needed to micromanage this process. The outsourcing team needed better oversight from Sandlot and ultimately full-time team members are more invested in the project than development contractors. One AAA vs. many B titles While planning ahead, Sandlot started working on various game projects in parallel. With the increased need of attention for Tradewinds Legends, the team took the decision to rather focus on one AAA title than to incur the risk of having a few mediocre B titles. In the end, an AAA title will garner so much more attention in the market and make so much more money than several B titles that it completely justifies this level of focus and dedication. Uncontrolled Story Element Considering the complexity of the story line, Sandlot opted to bring in a professional writer. That was the good part. The bad one was that nobody within the team felt responsible for that person, necessarily. All of a sudden, that great story popped up, but it didn’t really fit into any of the processes. Who should QA it? Who approves it? Plenty of questions came up that needed to be answered in order for Sandlot to get their money’s worth from a great, professionally written story line. Eric Tams took over and initiated a very fruitful QA phase (abridged version) Q: Please describe the single best thing about your Plantasia experience. Nick: The results of the Beta tests. As gameLab kept on testing continuously throughout the whole development process, the final Beta tester results simply came in to confirm the results and changes originated from the ongoing testing. Q: Please describe the single worst thing about your Plantasia experience. Nick: Originally, Plantasia was supposed to have two game modes. The additional Zen mode offered the possibility to plant flowers and let them grow, just like that. This mode was tested and bombed completely with our gamers. So, we killed it. It hurt, but we were happy to have done the testing early on. This just shows that we do not totally understand what casual gamers want. Nick added that it really takes a polished version of the game, even if it’s only one level or simple art work, for the gamer to provide adequate focus test feedback. Focus testers can’t be expected to imagine what the game could be. If it looks crappy, because it’s only a prototype, they’d believe it’s the real deal. An additional referred to a generic trend in the industry. Game projects are simply becoming so much bigger and therefore the teams are growing proportionally. There’s nothing an individual studio can do against it. It’s simply the trend and competition forces us to follow. Daniel added that casual game developers need to protect their franchises. Once you have a winner, it’s worth money. Protect it legally, but also by producing new great games based on the franchise’s theme. Currently, casual games are not about flashy art, but about great game play. Nick supported this view outlining some additional trends. Games in the casual games space are growing in size. 10 MB is not a hard-stop any more, just like about 2 years ago. Furthermore, narrative elements are becoming a major focus in casual games design. Also, cloning can be an interesting and profitable approach, but clones really need to add features to the game they are copying. Finally, Nick reiterates that throwing stuff out of your game design in early stages might hurt, but it still hurts less than in Beta. The best way to do that properly is through prototyping and frequent and constant testing. Q: Should casual games try to attract new gamers of should we concentrate on the “known” gamers Daniel: For Sandlot, casual gamers are defined as not male and not 19-24 years of age. Nick: If 60% of our gamers are women, developers might tend to want to create games for women. However, forecasts and reality differ greatly. Dan: That’s why we should not make any assumptions but rather test, A LOT! Eric thanked the panelists and a satisfied crowd cheered as the panel was wrapped up. Delivered at Casual Connect Amsterdam, Winter 2006 DOWNLOAD Eric Tams (email) After graduating with a BS in Computer Science, Eric began his career at Gas Powered Games as a software engineer responsible for gameplay, special effects and level design support on the Dungeon Siege franchise, a role playing game designed for mass market appeal. Eric contributed to the titles Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege Legends of Arana, and Dungeon Siege II while at GPG.Eric started making casual games as the engineer for Inspector Parker. After Inspector Parker launched, he went on to become one of the original members of Oberon Media’s Seattle development studio. While at Oberon Media, Eric completed BeTrapped!, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, online multiplayer games, and a set of online games for the MSN gaming zone. Most recently, Eric worked as a lead on the project to rewrite the Microsoft Windows in-box games. Eric was responsible for animation, design, special effects, and engineering work for the new versions of Hearts, Free cell, Solitaire, Spider solitaire, Minesweeper, Shanghai, and Chess. These new games will ship pre-installed with the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.Currently Eric is working on a new and exciting project at PopCap Games. In his spare time, Eric is committed to helping indie game developers and is involved in the core game development community in the Seattle, WA area. Nick Fortugno (email) Nick Fortugno is the senior game designer at gameLab, where he has been a designer, writer and project manager on dozens of digital and nondigital games. Most recently he was lead designer on the downloadable hit Diner Dash. As a member of the Playground design team, Fortugno was a co-creator of the Big Urban Game, a large-scale, city-wide game for the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, played by thousands of residents in fall 2003. Fortugno also teaches game design and interactive narrative design at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Daniel Bernstein (email) Daniel Bernstein founded Sandlot Games and has served as President & CEO since its inception in 2002. Sandlot Games is the world’s premier publisher and developer of casual and family-friendly games across a variety of platforms. Daniel is a veteran of the gaming industry and has over ten years of content strategy, game development, publishing and production-related experience having successfully launched over 20 game titles with Kesmai Studios, Monolith Productions and WildTangent. Prior to starting Sandlot Games, Daniel held the position of Director of Product Strategy at WildTangent, where he devised and executed a successful online fee-based games business. An accomplished composer, Daniel also writes music for most of the games developed and published by Sandlot Games. Daniel holds a BS in Computer Science and an MA in Music Composition from the University of Virginia.