The Scree Underfoot

Disclaimer: I’ve never climbed a real mountain – at least, not a mountain that required more than a half-day gentle hike. But – fair warning! – I like a good extended metaphor.

Like any human endeavor, high-altitude mountaineering has a lot of technical terms that aren’t familiar to the layman. Most of us will never “lead a pitch” or belay a fellow climber, or hammer a piton into a crack in the rock.

But whether we know it or not, we’ve all had experience with scree.

Scree, in both climbing lingo and geology, is a chaotic jumble of loose rocks covering the slope of a mountain – pieces of stone that have broken off and fallen over time, a terrain feature that’s interesting to look at and hazardous to climb.

Mountain climbing and game development don’t seem to have much in common at first, but both endeavors are exhilarating and fulfilling. Both take a lot of effort, organization, and persistence.

And in both pursuits, it’s easy to get overly fixated on the goal.

A Glimpse of the Summit

Successful game development cycles start with a clear vision.

The vision can be focused on the mechanics (“this is a real-time strategy game with a turn-based layer”), the audience (“we’re going to target hardcore gamers and lovers of science fiction”), or sometimes even the fiction (“a narrative experience set in a post-apocalyptic Steampunk world”).

Whatever the core elements of a product, the team has to know where they’re going. Kicking off a game’s production with a poor or incomplete vision is like starting a climb without knowing the route to the top. The team can easily end up scaling the wrong mountain.

On the other hand, with a strong vision, the team will race to the summit. With hard work and a little luck, the game will ship, earning the adoration of players and the acclaim of high Metacritic scores.

But experienced developers know that formulating a clear vision is only the first step in a long, tough journey.

Tumbling Down

After the heady early days of solidifying the vision comes the hard slog of production and development. Along the way, the team can feel like they’ve stumbled off the path entirely – and the next misstep will send them headlong into a crevasse.

Maybe a publishing deal fell through. Maybe a feature took longer to implement than expected. Maybe a key team member departed for greener pastures, throwing the production schedule off-kilter.

Or maybe, as the game gets into playtest, it’s just not fun. All those great game systems that seemed like winners on paper fell flat. The innovative setting the team envisioned feels derivative and dull in execution.

Day-to-day details start to overwhelm the original vision. In their effort to course-correct, the team starts to take shortcuts, apply quick band-aid fixes, or postpone tough decisions.

They start slipping and stumbling, sliding down the scree slope, losing sight of the goal.

Finding the Route Again

In the worst case, a team must face a difficult choice: give up and cancel the game, or push on despite the difficulties.

Whether the team realizes it or not, early vision choices all led to this moment and the seemingly insurmountable slope ahead. Localization was put off until this date, or a feature was redesigned this way, or the entire art style of the game was overhauled that way – all for what seemed like great reasons at the time.

It’s important in these moments for teams to take a breath, look behind them, and see how far they’ve come. Great teams will grow, learn, and get back on the route – or, if it’s too risky to stick to the original plan, identify a different route that still takes them closer to the goal.

Keep Going Up

In starting Scree Games, I hope to do two things: leverage my years of experience to help other studios get past paralyzing moments, and build low-scope independent games with a process that avoids (or at least mitigates) those moments.

Building successful games is about balance. Rely too much on a strong original vision carrying you through, and you’ll miss opportunities along the way to innovate. Focus too heavily on execution methodology or perfect processes, and your team will lose sight of the vision.

Instead, think like a mountaineer. Have a clear plan and goal, but be adaptive and flexible. Understand both the big picture and the day-to-day details.

Make quick decisions, but be organized and thoughtful in the planning.

Be prepared for the unpredictable to happen, and be prepared to pivot and catch yourself before a fall.

Be fearless and biased toward action.

Keep one eye on the summit and the other on the loose stones underfoot.

That’s what Scree Games is about.