Hacking your own game...

We just had our second Hackathon for SWC, and it turned out some great stuff. VentureBeat wrote a nice article about it here.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/22/star-wars-commander-hackathon/

The concept is that you take a break from regular development and work on features and ideas not currently on the road map. Not limited to just in game features, they can also be anything from tools to analytics or anything that you feel would be beneficial or simply just kinda cool. The nice thing about a property like SW is that there is all the existing fiction to draw inspiration from.

Last year I worked on a Rancor battle mini game. This I did two, an fx/prototyping stage sandbox for quick iteration, and Ambient Life events to liven up the stage and add some fun to the environment.

It is really a lot fun and a great way to blow of steam, and do some outside the box exploration. Some of our bigger features in the game were results from the hackathon.

 

I like this, it's a fun thing for a bigger studio. For small indies though, I suspect that's just a daily process

 

Oh wow, looks like Disney is going ham on this one! They have even removed a few of their own titles to concentrate on Star Wars Commander! I'm just struck speechless..

 

This.

I occasionally have "days off" working on random features or sometimes other games. In my opinion there's nothing worse than limiting your creativity.

 

Except of course, failing to ship due to constant pivots and and/or losing the focus of a game.

Back in my indie days with small studios/team and places like GG, we embraced the "ship when ready" and fluid development. On rare occasions it worked out in the end. Usually it generated a lot of chaos during development as people would be constantly championing their ideas, or exploring mid-cycle. Sometimes it would get pretty far off track. And certainly the opposite could be true with larger studios/teams have sterile or uninspired products as we trudged to the finish line, only to find it was too late to fix things.

The hackathon concept was brought to our team with our EP who had success with it at his previous studio, and it was planned very early in the game's development cycle. The advantage there was that we knew early on that there would be a forum for any of our ideas, and chance to explore them and be voted on by the whole team. This meant that we didn't have to pitch/justify/argue our ideas just to be considered. It also allowed us to relax and focus building the core game. We had our first playable well before the first hackathon, allowing us to really feel the game and address actual vs. perceived needs. It also allowed folks at every level regardless of their role to contribute and be heard equally even if they didn't have the tech or art ability to realize their idea. Additionally it was just a lot of fun breaking into small teams to and all hanging out hacking the game. (the events also are planned after large releases, so great tension relief).

Having been on both sides and the challenges represented by both, using hackathons is great way of balancing/maintaining a solid dev schedule and having an effective (and fun) way to surface broad creative strokes. This is the first game I have worked on using them, but they have been becoming increasingly popular in the last couple of years with studios, and I can see why.

Sure, not a fit for every team, and team dynamics vary radically. Some may be able to balance exploration and still ship a solid game, some may be doomed to fail regardless. It could also be a concept that might be beneficial, and one I am really stoked about personally and has been of huge value to us and our game. Just thought I'd share something that was fun and effective. Results may vary.

 

Working on random features is not hacking the game. That name is way off...

 

Actually, it also can just mean 'coding', but is generally only recognized in this sense by coders who are active in coding communities. Hence "hackathon" in his title.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon

 

Yeah, I wasn't referring to a company/project limiting your creativity, more on a personal level.

Being a creative person and having ideas you cannot work on doesn't feel right, at least to me. It's good to try out new ideas and such from time to time, as we all know games can take a long time & once those features etc are set sometimes there's no room for experimentation & having the odd 'day off' helps me keep sane.

 

Indeed. Expressing/experimenting is critical not only for sanity but for growth and general happiness. You are right on the money. Not only do games take a lot of time, but so much of the time is execution and not creative. Its the double-edged sword of game dev.

Personally, for me, my biggest challenge has alway been that my creativity and desire to explore has much more control over my actions than is practical. The "days off" for me are the easy part... the "days on" are trickier. I can attribute a good chunk of my success to diligent project managers and noise canceling headphones.

 

Indeed. Hackathons really gained popularity recently from the development community here in the valley. It spread to some game companies, and with all the cross-pollination, we gave it shot. There was even a company downstairs in our building that did one around an electric car product they had. It was pretty funny, as the result was in the parking lot for several days. I believe it was themed around recycling other products to be used on a car. The car was crazy, it had street lights for headlights, recliner in the driver seat area, and a ton of other wackyness.