Massive Entertainment

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Massive Entertainment

• Petter Sydow

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Starting facts
Petter Sydow, Vice President of Product
Development Massive Entertainment, Malmö,
Sweden World in Conflict World in Conflict is
Massives third strategy game Released
September-07 PC September 07 Xbox 360 version
later this year Good Critical Acclaim Gameranking
s.com 89 Metacritic.com 89 IGN Best
Online Multiplayer Game Gamespot Most
Innovative Game Strategy Game of the Year most
places
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Project Outline
Green-lit May 05 Focus on Multi Player with
small tutorial campaign Changed Project Manager
April 06 Team without Project Manager for 2
months Changed scope of single player campaign
August 06 Added immersive story Added in-game
cinematics Moved release date from March to
September Released September 07 After hitting GM
date Team size At start 40 At finish 100
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Our Method
Evolutionary development Internally designed
agile method by CEO Martin Walfisz Iterations
lasting two weeks Build on Thursday Planning on
Friday Feature driven planning Always implement
the highest prioritized feature Game playable
from day one Whole team tests the game every
build day Living workspace Lean
organization Rather slim management team Leads
preferred to Associate Project Managers Meetings
on a daily basis
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Our Way
Everybody is responsible for their part Sub-teams
are strong and task owners Organized to create
clear ownership Makes staffing easier Flat
hierarchy Few titles Very few specialists Persona
l contacts Let people break the organization
chart Take the risk of getting odd things in the
game
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Our Way 2

• Directed experience
• Avoid feature fighters a hard to solve paradox
• Lead designer and Art Director close to the team
• Redoing is fun
• Always test and evaluate a feature and plan for
  redoing it
• Sometimes hard for the team to accept
• Avoid ordered overtime
• Responsibility gives people a reason to do what
  it takes

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Planning and Tracking
Overall time-line Easy to read Large objectives
and releases Common feature list One feature
list for the game Focusing on design Some teams
have individual detailed lists Individual
iteration plans Art is not the same as code Plan
for Iterations Create plans which means
evaluating and re-doing
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Massive vs Scrum
Waterfall in Agile Clothing Agile is a mind
set Content is content Dont kid your self 10
levels in 20 weeks means two weeks per
level Skip some of the burn-down charts I spend
my time with the team not with excel If it
takes two iterations so what? Some things take
longer time to do no biggie Whos the
master? Let people focus on what they are good
at
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Risks with Agile
Over polishing content prematurely Plan for
several iterations Decide what to do in each
one Waterfall counting Feature Fighters Force
people to move forward Avoid fancy
titles Paradigm change Take it easy do it one
step at a time Be agile about your work method as
well
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Lessons learned
Teams still a bit to independent Increase
cross-team collaboration Merged art team with map
team More power to the people Make task forces
stronger but also demand more Closer to
Scrum Done or Working? Improving task approval
process More unified planning On a high
level Still differences within iteration
planning
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Summary
Let people free Plan for iterations Find your
own way