

The Cabal: Valve’s Design Process For Creating Half-Life [1999] - CrazedGeek
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3408/the_cabal_valves_design_process_.php?print=1

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jacques_chester
An oldie but a goodie.

To me the most important steps were:

1\. Creating the demo level with the explicit goal of making it as fun as
possible, then deriving a design theory; and

2\. Playtesting, playtesting, playtesting, playtesting and then doing some
more playtesting.

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InclinedPlane
0\. Finding the sweet spot in balancing quality of experience and ship-date.

A lot of game developers are so scared of shipping late that they put out crap
as soon as its even remotely stable. They spend most of their effort on the
ship-cycle treadmill rather than making the ship-cycle subservient to their
desire to make excellent games. The same goes for many other creative
endeavors such as software, books, movies. It takes serious guts to take a
look at something that is nearly ready to be put in a box and sold to
customers, and that has a realistic and high chance of turning a profit, and
to say "no, it's not good enough". Even more so when you don't have a clear
plan how to "fix" it.

On the other hand, it's easy to give in to the temptations of perfectionism
and put off shipping indefinitely. Valve has managed to strike a balance,
actually managing to ship games people love even after significant rework and
even after significant time-lags (Team Fortress 2 spent almost a decade in
development).

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jacques_chester
Valve had the luxury of having enough cash-in-hand to scrap work in progress
and start over. It was self-funded from the start. Most publishers wouldn't
let you do that.

So this is one case where the development method is part of the story -- the
business story impinges too.

