[arg_discuss] How long is your dev cycle?

[Adam Martin]

Adrian Hon wrote:

> On 21 Dec 2005, at 15:47, Jennifer Nicole Chiment wrote:
> 
>> But what do people think?  Is there a bare minimum people would be  
>> willing
>> to run with (6 weeks?!?)?  And is there a point of developmental
>> diminishing returns (personally I think yes)?  Can the pre-launch
>> development “take over” a game, making responsiveness to players
>> subordinate to the game timeline set out in development?
> 
> 
> I feel that with dev times, as usual, it's horses for courses. The  
> amount of time required to develop an ARG depends on what you want it  

And also: how much of your dev are you going to do offline (before the 
game starts) and how much online (during the game)? I've worked with 
people who thrive on every piece of work they do being last-minute, 
Just-In-Time, and they'd do so much better at running an ARG with less 
up-front work, thinking on their feet, and need a lot less 
pre-production time.

You mention traditional games dev - which has to contend with the fact 
that the game *must* be complete at the moment of shipping (launch).

> It's not  really efficient 
> planning in detail any further than that because we  just end up having 
> to change things due to having better ideas or  circumstances change. So 
> the development never stops :)

To what extent does state-of-the-art ARG development simply take 
advantage of a very handy feature (not having to be completely developer 
by launch-day) it has available, rather than actually *require* the 
flexibility granted by doing things JIT?

Adam