Positives:
+ Warner Brothers allowed the developer quite a bit of creative freedom with the intellectual property. Their only stipulation was that the core fundamentals of the IP be adhered to.
+ Discussed how particular obstacles were overcome for a small team of developers.
+ The animators produced high quality work under an extremely tight schedule and were able to capture the essence of the IP beautifully.
+ The pairing of level designers to artists lead to inspired scenery that not only looked good but added to the immersion of the game.
+ The developer was able to implement two new systems while creating the game: a physics system and a sound engine. Both were successes.
Negatives:
- Issues arose in trying to balance time, quality, and cost.
- They used the “we’re new to the genre” excuse quite a bit more than was merited. It was clear after the second, perhaps third mention that they hadn’t done this before and were treading in unfamiliar territory.
- Inefficient use of pre-production time. Proper planning was not done and this cost the team time and effort.
- Once the game was headed into production they realized they needed to accomplish too much in too little time. They attempted to redesign and meet the original deadline but they’d underestimated the amount of work necessary to create the game they’d promised Warner Brothers.
Thoughts:
~ The developer had never created the type of game Warner Brothers requested for Scooby-Doo! First Frights before. This presented them with new challenges at every turn. They faced these challenges head on, learned from them, and now consider the lessons tools ready for use in future projects.
~ The importance of pre-production is stressed in this post-mortem. It’s vital that all areas of a game are planned down to the very last detail during pre-production so that the team can get an idea of the scope of the project. While flexibility with scope is important, it’s also important to put things into perspective so that you don’t bite off more than you can chew right at the start.
~ Poor gameplay design coupled with technology that provided limited flexibility in gameplay led to wasted spaces that existed in the game only as filler. These areas could have been better utilized with different technology to power the game and wouldn’t have wasted the artists and level designers efforts.
~ Limited time and resources led to huge holes in gameplay and continuity that couldn’t easily be closed. This left the player confused as to why their character was suddenly somewhere completely different than where they’d last seen them and doing something they had no reason to do.
Would Like:
* Less use of the “we’re new and had no idea what to expect” excuse. It would have been more beneficial if the author had reached beyond that excuse and examined the reasons behind why they felt it was a viable excuse to begin with.
* Less clunky game design that utilizes all aspects of game development to the best of each area’s abilities.
* Specific areas should have had a “Team Lead” to help manage communication between areas, time, and resources more efficiently.
* Fewer cinematics and more varied gameplay. Cinematics are great but when more effort has been put into them than gameplay the audience suffers. They bought a game, not a movie.
Credit where credit is due:
Goodfellow, Nicole. (2010, January 13). Postmortem: torus games' scooby-doo! first frights. Retrieved from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4242/postmortem_torus_games_.php
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