[arg_discuss] How long is your dev cycle?

[Colin Gehrig]

Michael Monello wrote:
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 11:37 PM
To: Discussion list of the IGDA ARG SIG
Subject: Re: [arg_discuss] How long is your dev cycle?

On Dec 21, 2005, at 8:32 AM, Andrea Phillips wrote:
>>
>> It would be especially interesting to hear from grassroots teams  
>> who are presumably working with a different set of time constraints.

>I agree -- would love to hear from the grassroots teams on the list!

>Whoever said it was a function of goals, size of team, and money was  
>right. With proper funding you can build a team to launch a massively  
>scaled ARG (say one that touches multiple media points) in as little  
>as two months, but it isn't easy and it is much more about management  
>than hands on creation.
-------------------------------------
Orbital colony which had a two year dev had no time constraints. Mainly
because it's just a 'lets do it' type game. And I think you can see the
result was that the project just keep going and going before launch. In
addition to that there was little project management, or any goals to
meet for that matter. So it's was certainly different to any commercial
effort.

As far as dev cycles go, I don't see ARGs being different from any other
engineering-type project. An adage that springs to mind is:
	"good, fast, or cheap, pick two"
applying that a little more directly to ARGs:
	"good quality game, short development time, or low production
cost, pick two"

Of course you can still run into the baby problem:
	"if it take one women nine months to make a baby, can I give you
nine women and get a baby in one month?"

Some things just take time. I think that it's particularly relevant to
story. It's hard to parallel process a story, it just won't come
together 'right'. For Orbital Colony a large amount of time was spent
wrangling with the story, during that time nothing else could be done.

Once actual content is being created it's easy to divide and conquer.

-colin