Yes, I know that GDC has been over for a couple of days, but I spent the weekend blissfully pretending that game development is a figment of my imagination. So sue me. 😉
Anyway, on Friday I attended a lecture entitled: “Creating Stubbs the Zombie with the Wideload Model”. Stubbs the Zombie is a moderately successful, humorous FPS. Wideload is the developer; the “Wideload model” is basically using a very small core team to manage many independent contractors. You may have read about this in Game Developer Magazine. For those who didn’t:
Wideload had a core production team of about ten people. Despite professing to some rather astonishing mistakes (for example, not hiring a single producer), Wideload managed to get Stubbs out the door just a few months behind schedule. The model, which they plan to stick with in the future, had the following benefits:
- Maintaining a very small core team made it possible to turn down undesirable contracts that most other developers would ultimately be forced to accept.
- Contractors were paid a fixed price for assets, not an hourly rate, so project delays were less of a problem than normal. [Sounds great — but delays can negatively impact marketing campaigns, not just development budgets. I’d like to know how Wideload dealt with that.]
There were a fairly large number of bumps in the road, many of which (but not all) can be rectified in future projects:
- Stubbs was based on a proprietary (and undocumented) engine, which made life much more difficult than it needed to be for contractors. Next time: go with a popular engine.
- Wideload didn’t create a variety of reference assets before selecting contractors, which meant that contractors weren’t sure what was expected of them. Unsurprisingly, some contractors proved unprepared to meet Wideload’s standards.
- Potential contractors weren’t tested thoroughly enough prior to signup … again, resulting in sub-standard work.
- Wideload did not attempt to ascertain whether contractors were well-managed and well-funded enough to remain solvent throughout the life of the project. Due-diligence.
- Development was afflicted by longer-than-normal feedback delays [probably inevitable with so many different parties working independently of one another].
- As noted earlier, not nearly enough dedicated production talent within the core team.
- Contractors were expected to “crunch” when under pressure, the way full-time employees do. No such luck.
- Assets required substantially more post-production polish than normal. [Multi-project relationships and better processes may reduce this problem over time, but it is unlikely to ever disappear.]
