With the game pressed and waiting for January 26th this week has been about reflection and planning. During this time it is customary to sit at an email and spew hate for the things you didn’t like while working on this project, ignoring everything that was great about what you did. Some would call this a ‘post mortem’ – a dissection of how the project faired in terms of production. I call this unproductive bullshit.

Listen, the point of a post-mortem is to have a retrospective look at how the project faired: We are a young industry and we’re still making all this shit up, so it’s important to aggressively criticize the methods taken to make the game. Writing down emails of ‘and then this person did this and I hated it’ accomplish nothing. Sitting in a room with 30 people and having a shouting match about what you hated accomplish nothing. You need to break it down to what worked and what didn’t. But also one more thing that many studios forget: you have to create action items for everything on the list; you need to ensure that every complaint, every kudo has task to fix it or continue it.

But it doesn’t stop there: you need a production or management staff that will use those action items as tasks for the next project. In 2005 for Full Auto, the art team filed me (as Art Lead) emails that were broken down into such categories and combined and filtered them into what ended up being a 55 page document with action items for everything. This was then sent to the managers of the studio, where it sat and wasn’t looked at. Which then created more emails of hate. The Art Team did everything right and all the work and effort that was put into it was put out with the heel of a boot.

BioWare, and more specifically the Mass Effect team’s preferred method, is to gather everyone in a room for half a day and with a Producer at the helm gather the feedback. (I should note here for others in the gaming industry that we have the best producers in the world here. Your preconceived ideas of what a producer is is completely shattered at BioWare). Usually doing this causes chaos and a Kill Cloud of negative energy gathers in the room. People start talking over each other, others become quiet and irritable, even worse is when some people’s comments are negated because someone has a louder voice. But kudos to our production team for finding a way to resolve this. Yesterday our Project Manager Corey Andruko split the giant whiteboard into 4 sections of development: tools, workflow, systems and communication (usually the whipping boy of these meetings) and like a conductor, a stinking and sometimes unworking marker his baton, brought in the the ‘What went rights’ with the ‘What went wrong’. Everyone had a chance to speak and every item was boiled down to the issue at hand, sometimes being combined with other issues into a larger task. Even though we were trapped in that dark meeting room for the entire morning, we all left feeling that someone had listened to our thoughts.
And here’s the thing…every item brought up were things that would make the next project better. There was nothing disastrous brought up and that really showed how well this project went. We were all sitting in that room wanting things to change, or stay the same, to make the next project better.

So now the poor production team has to collate not only our feedback but the feedback of every department and discipline on Mass Effect 2. And this is where we’ll see if our minimal effort and productions hard work goes further and is rolled out as tasks for the next project. Seeing as how this process and a post-mortem of Mass Effect 1 created Mass Effect 2, a game and process we’re all immensely pleased and proud of, I’m optimistic.

But for those of you entering the industry or working at a studio that doesn’t have any or a productive post-mortem process, here’s my advice. It is critical that we do this: we are a young industry with gangly arms trying to get the respect of the adults. If we don’t seriously criticize ourselves and work to fix those issues that arose; if we don’t research how other studios resolved those problems and envelop the successful studios processes we will not only not get that respect we’re asking for, we will never mature as an industry. So gather your people after a project, ask them what went right, ask them what went wrong and take those tasks to heart as to how your next project will work. Don’t make this a shouting match of hate because that will do nothing but piss people off.

This is just Not Right

If you’d rather a less scary Halloween Wallpaper from Mass Effect 2, visit: http://masseffect.bioware.com/media/wallpapers

Long hours can be draining, but over the years I’ve learned a few tricks. Everyone has different methods, but these have always worked for me.

1. Eat dinner at my desk, or eat dinner later. The reason for this is because a break at 6 or 7pm the length of a dinner has a tendancy to make you not want to go back to work.  Keep the break small enough to get dinner and that’s it. Keep your focus on work.
2. Schedule what I’m working on and meet that goal. If you don’t have a list of things you want to accomplish, you’ll either go home feeling guilty for not accomplishing anything or you’ll work aimlessly on many things. Hit your goal, cross it off the list and go the fuck home.
3. Don’t work past 10pm. This number will vary depending on your length of commute. The idea is that I need to go home rested to come to work rested, and that involves detoxing work when I get home with a movie, book, tv show or a game. Of course I broke this rule most of last week.
4. Take a break when I need it, no questions asked. If I work long hours 3 days in a row and feel the soul drain, I take a break from crunching or my productivity goes down. Again broken last week.
5. Music. Loud with a high bpm or intense driving beat. This is more than just me having music wrapped in every aspect of my life, this actually increases your heartrate and if its music you love, helps you enjoy your time at the office during times you really wish you weren’t there. My choices of music really depend on what I’m doing. If I’m concentrating on atmosphere and the feel of the final product, I tend to revolve around the Movie Score genre. If I’m hitting bugs, it’s usually Opeth, Tool, Disturbed, White Zombie. If I have a list of tasks to concentrate on then I’m usually putting on Underworld, BT’s This Binary Universe or Haujobb. Rarely do I work without music on and this is reinforced during crunch, though usually the headphones are off and the speakers are cranked (as my office mates can usually attest to)
6. Pick my time to socialize. Sometimes crunch can be fun: you and your workmates are delierious with lack of sleep, excited because the end is in sight (the project or the deadline) and some of my most memorable moments in the last 12 years has been in the off hours. But sometimes you have to get shit done and if you work with good people they will understand that if you’re upfront. If they aren’t, or you feel you must socialize and you’re not getting what you want/need to get done then come in when nobody is at work. This is usually between midnight and 7am.
7. Caffeine. Be careful. This is where you need to pace yourself accordingly. Or least I do. Coffee is both a stimulant but also a relaxer, for me: the warm mug, the slow sipping, appreciating the fantastic tastes. But I’m also fucking old so coffee late at night keeps me up for hours. So for me, if I’m doing coffee, it’s right after dinner. If I need a last minute jolt I do Red Bull, but that’s usually a few hours before I’m leaving as the crash from a Red Bull is painful and long.
8. Come in early as well. I find I can squeeze a few extra hours in the morning before the rush comes in. 7am gives me a few hours before anyone else is in and I can spend the time prepping for my day or resolving bugs

I can say for certain that the week of Crunch was worth it: I brought some things to the table on my levels and hit some requirements that ensured that key things are in my levels. But for now, the Crunch is over and I can relax a bit.  Until the next deadline looms.

Then BAM, a deadline looms like Damocles’ knife.

It’s hard to explain to someone not in this or another entertainment-based industry what it’s like doing crunch. In many ways it is the same as any other deadline in any other office: you work until it’s done. But the difference is that in the game industry, while you’re putting in the extra hours, balancing stress with productivity, while you’re feeling beaten down with no end in sight you fight with the fact that you are making games. How can you feel beaten down if you’re making games for a living?

So I’ve been doing what’s called crunching off and on for the last month and it hit stride last week. But crunch at BioWare, and specifically on Mass Effect 2, is a different beast than what I’m used to. It’s been mostly voluntary for not only me but for everyone (meaning I’ve chosen to stay at work to get stuff done as opposed to someone else telling me I have to stay to get stuff done, or staying at work to get stuff done because I have to make an entire sequel in 6 months). But everyone’s work is coming along amazingly. You’re in for a real treat.

Crunch is a very strange beast and one that doesn’t exist solely in the games industry. My wife works for the provincial government here in Alberta and sometimes she’ll have to spend a few hours after work to get things done, or spend a week of long hours (though that is very rare). The film industry has been doing it for a while and I think that the games industry thinks that it is like the film industry. And in some ways that’s not incorrect: a creative industry requires whatever you have to bring to the table to make the product the best product it can be. So sometimes extra time is required to get to that gold standard.

Is Crunch a sign of bad scheduling? Sometimes: I’ve experienced that on 2 of my projects not at BioWare. Poor planning for either the department you are in, or a department that impacts you can cause unwanted long hours. And sometimes, the worst kind of Crunch is when it is dictated by production: you must stay because other members of your time must stay. You begin, in those situations, to not only dislike the project, but those people who are having to stay late, whether or not it is justified.

Sometimes, and I mean this with as straight a face as I can, that it’s done out of love. No shitting. We crunched on Cel Damage because for most of us it was our first game, it was a launch game for the original Xbox, and we wanted it to be the best it could be. There was a bit of ‘OMGOMGOMG we’ve run out of time for this level! Crapcrapcrapcrap!’ going on, but also there were many late hours trying to get the population just right on the Junk Yard level so it’s the most fun; or spending several 17 hour shifts trying to get cartoon trees to look just right. The same can be said about Mass Effect 2: everyone is putting the hours in to make it the absolute best it can be. The difference is that the Mass Effect 2 team is comprised of seasoned veterans and on Cel Damage we really had no idea what the fuck we were doing.

In the next part I’ll talk about some of the ways I get through Crunch.

—edit–

Let’s try some links that actually work, shall we?

—edit—

The final of my 4-part article on ‘What I do’ and ‘How I got here’ is up on Bioware’s blog, though I do have more coming. I’ll mention now that the intent was to have it in 2 pieces, but I ran a little long at the mouth and shot the shit a little too long. For best absorption read 1&2 together, then 3&4, with a Scotch and Soda and cigar in hand.

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p4/

Previous posts:

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p3/

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p2/

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p1/

The posts on BioWare’s Blog  featuring articles written by yours truly continues. This is part three of the 4-part series and in this I discusses what a Level Designer does.  CLICK IT!

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p3/

Previous posts:

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p2/

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/22/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p1/

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/19/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designers-origin-story-p2/

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/18/the-long-road-to-bioware-a-designer%E2%80%99s-origin-story-p1/

Director Casey Hudson and Lead Systems Designer Christina Norman, along with a slew of BioWarians showed Mass Effect 2 to select select press and people behind closed doors at E3.

http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/03/bioware-at-e3-day-1/
http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/03/bioware-at-e3-day-2/
http://blog.bioware.com/2009/06/03/bioware-at-e3-day-3/

As the days go by no doubt there will be write-ups like the first to report on this showing, Nick Breckon of Shacknews. And while I could write lines and lines of prose about how Mass Effect 2 will blow your fucking socks off, and how everyone here is working their ass off  on the project (I’m here at 10pm at night right now), that we want make sure it goes beyond what Mass Effect was and will be a game that you, the fan, will be proud of…it’s easier for me to list links upon links of kudos from everyone in the games industry press that saw our game.

IGN Preview http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/991/991756p1.html

IGN Demo http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/990/990002p1.html

“Working with your teammates, dealing with health, selecting and using powers, and swapping weapons have all seen subtle changes that add together to make a combat system that is a heck of a lot better.”

“From what I saw, there is no reason to believe that this sequel won’t surpass the original in just about every way”

Erik Brudvig

1UP.com

GAMESPOT.com

http://kotaku.com/5279409/

http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2344/Mass-Effect-2/p1/

“This new tech is all neatly wrapped with even more impressive visuals, inching ever closer to photorealism. The dialogue moments are breathtaking enough in Mass Effect 2 to exude some honest human emotion out of its users…”
Dale Nardozzi

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/mass-effect-2/xbox-360/game-features/mass-effect-2-reasons-youll-want-to-play/

“Based on the brief demo at E3, this is easily one of the best games on the show floor.”
Libe Goad