Co-Development: More Than Just Outsourcing Rajesh Rao Founder & CEO Dhruva Interactive

About Dhruva 2 India’s leading games services company with 15 year pedigree, delivered on 35+ AAA games

3 What is Co-Development? Collaborative development of a game by Client and Partner from concept to delivery A ‘Virtual Team’ where the Partner compliments and/or supplements the capabilities of the Client –Compliments: e.g. a creative design agency with no development team –Supplements: e.g. a 3 man dev team wanting to accelerate the development cycle for better time-to- market Ownership of IP, Vision and marketing/launch (typically) vests with Client

Selection a Co-Dev Partner Selecting your partner: –What is it that you need from a dev partner? –Understanding their strengths/weaknesses –Team profiles –Review of past work –Tests/pilot project ( could even be some pre- production work) 4

Setting up for Co-Development Checklist: Project management –Change management Communication Plan –Touchpoints, Roles/Responsibilities –Project Tracking –Collaboration Tools 5

Setting up for Co-Development Project management: –project schedule, milestones, deliverables, change management, Tracking –Roles/Responsibility –Acceptance/Signoff process Change management: –importance of the change –its impact on the modules already developed –impact on schedule and budget –Feasibility –value\cost analysis 6

Setting up for Co-Development Communication Plan: –Scrum works best –process should clearly define on the important information that has to be shared between teams and also the frequency at which this information has to be updated –Identifying key people, establishing Points of Contact –Status Updates: e.g Gantt charts –Project mgmt tools: e.g. Basecamp, Jira 7

Critical Success Factor: Pre-Production Clarity: Vision, scope, target audience of the game Identify early and clearly communicate to your Partner what’s still ‘fuzzy’ Thorough and clear Creative and Artistic communication – need to elaborate with plenty of examples so that there’s no misunderstanding Share as much info as possible: –What existing games out there are you looking as benchmarks (for game play mechanic, visual look/feel, overall user experience) –What are your inspirations? Risk Analysis: internal and external 8

Co–Dev Best practices Flexibility: Co-development should be flexible and should encourage the expression of different points of view, while never losing sight of the goals that Client and Partner have originally identified as their shared objective. Don't be a control freak : Encourage self organized teams Creativity is heavily dependent on the freedom a team has to come up with ideas 9

Co–Dev Best practices Provide frequent feedback, don’t wait till the end Always avoid blame game : everyone’s on the same side! Do your best to avoid crunch time. This has a very bad impact on creativity Look at building relationships not hierarchy 10

Some examples of Co-Developed Games 11 Game / Title Year / Client PlatformDescription 2005 I-Play Mobile: Java and Brew Was rated among the best tennis games on the mobile GameSpot Review: 7.9 / I-Play Mobile: Java and Brew GameSpot Review: 7.3 / GameTantra PC A Match 3 style PC casual game developed for GameTantra GameZebo rating 4/ GameTantra / Curious Sense PC A Hidden Object game, developed to promote the rock band REO Speedwagon. Featured in the New York Times and Tonight Show 2011 Gametantra iPhone, iPad Published by GameTantra and distributed by Capcom Mobile. Reached #43 on USA paid game charts.

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