Game and Software Engineering Practices Individual Presentation, Karim Sacre 04/20/12

Gaming Challenges Development Stages Scrum in Games Electronic Arts Outline Gaming Challenges Development Stages Scrum in Games Electronic Arts Rovio: Angry Birds USC Video Game Program Conclusion 2

Gaming Challenges Every game has a peek then the popularity will drop Technology / Market changes Too many platforms to be satisfied Game has to be fun and NOT buggy Games might run over budget SEQUEL Games: Keep up with technology People expectations go higher Deadline is very strict Highly competitive business 3

Development Stages Concept Pre-Production Production Post-Production 4 Ideas are generated Prototype Green Light Approval Pre-Production Explore what are the fun aspects of the game Create levels Iterative and Incremental stage Production Game Statistics / Development Post-Production Testing Shipment 4

Scrum How does Scrum Help with Game development? “How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time.”– Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month Sprint Burndown Better Productivity and Quality of Game Better Team collaboration Worth the overhead effort NOTE: Realized the delay => Removed 160 hours of low priority features *http://www.agilegamedevelopment.com/Articles/GDC2005/gdc2005_ClintonKeith_final.pdf

Electronic Arts Who is Electronic Arts? 6 *http://lanyrd.com/2011/jax-london-autumn/sgqbp 6

Electronic Arts Shortfall Why is EA stumbling? Did not catch up to the mobile industry Players are looking more for FREE online games “EA to cease development of Battlefield IOS game” Badly developed game / Very Buggy system EA decided to cut its losses by removing the game from the iOS App Store Not enough game testing. EA rushed to publish the game Why is EA called the “Evil Empire” (John D. Carmack)? “The company that crushes the small studios” Maxis (1997), Westwood Studios (1998), Playfish (2009), PopCap Games (2011) 7

Electronic Arts Agile "The stumbling is gone, the execution is there.“ (John Riccitiello, EA CEO) *http://lanyrd.com/2011/jax-london-autumn/sgqbp 8

Electronic Arts Agile EA (UK) Stock market goes up significantly during the month of Feb 2011 till Aug 2011 * http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EA 9

Rovio: Angry Birds Reason for Angry Birds Success: Used older technology (COCO 2D) Focused on making the game FUN and User friendly Released a prototype that was FREE Very cheap (0.99c) => More downloads 300 million downloads so far * http://www.redmondpie.com/angry-birds-is-coming-to-facebook-on-valentines-day Started on 1 platform and expanded to other platforms Used Agile/Scrum development Divided team to smaller sub teams 10

USC Game Development Classes USC Teams: Use Agile method during entire project Divided into groups of 5-8 people Have weekly tasks assigned by the project leader: Google Docs What makes USC number 1 in Video Game Design? Professor Scott Easley  Experienced Professor Michael Zyda  Veteran Full Hands on practice High Success Rate Measured 11

Conclusion Agile and Scrum are the best Practices for Game Development In the case of Big Companies: Divide Team into smaller sub teams and apply Agile and Scrum Software Engineering Practices Help with Game Success The world has shifted to a new Game Environment: Mobile Gaming Takes less development time and has fewer requirements It should be a User friendly game On the go: Can be easily paused Most important aspect of a game is: “SCOPE” (Scott Easley, USC) 12

END THANK YOU