Tradewinds Legends Postmortem

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Tradewinds Legends Postmortem

• Daniel Bernstein
• President / CEO
• Sandlot Games

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About Sandlot Games

• Founded in 2002
• Over 20 casual game titles, 5 in development
• Successful franchises such as Tradewinds, Super
  Granny and Slyder across PC, mobile and handheld

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Tradewinds 1

• Released in 2003
• Four months of development
• Team of 3 (artist, programmer, audio, all full
  time)
• Highly successful Strategy / Adventure game in
  the casual games market

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Tradewinds 2

• Released in April, 2005
• 6 months of development
• Team of 12 (6 full-time, 6 contractors)
• Injected RPG elements into the free-form
  trading/adventuring dynamic of Tradewinds Tasks
• 2-3x the success of the original

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Tradewinds Legends

• Released in December, 2005
• Nominated for AIAS Downloadable Game of the Year
• Team of 20 (10 full time, 10 contractors)
• Expanded combat, expanded RPG elements
• Setting a new standard for production values in a
  casual game

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What went right

• On time HUGE team effort
• Replayable game doubled the content of TW2 (at
  least)
• Better combat system than in TW2
• Iterated on TW2 technology
• Veterans leading game design facilitated
  communication
• Good writing, audio and art

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What went wrong

• New art team took nurturing
• Some contractors flaked
• Project overload
• Documentation of game systems
• QA started later than we planned
• Someone reviewing the work of writers
• Localization? Pricey!

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Lessons learned

• Nurture dedicated teams and minimize contractor
  churn
• Better documentation of systems
• Devise test plan at alpha
• Require less content specifically less written
  content