Game Development In a Post-Agile World 149
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the slowly-but-surly dept.
from the slowly-but-surly dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Many games developers have been pursuing agile development, and we are now beginning to witness the debris and chaos it has caused. While there have been some successes, there have also been many casualties. As the industry at large is moving away from the phantasmagoria of Agile, Gwaredd Mountain, Technical Director at Climax Studios, looks at Post-Agile and what this might mean for the games industry."
"Agile" was just a PHB buzzword. (Score:5, Funny)
[For fun: Read it, as if Ricky Gervais were saying it.* ;]
You know when your boss caught on to a new buzzsomething, storms into your room, and wants to play thought-experiments with him on what to change? Restructure the whole company? Because, oh god, it’s so great. He just loves it. With glowing eyes..., like a child. And you hate to tell him, that everything he just told you, and everything you have “planned” in the last 3 hours (of “water-cooler talk”, mind you) ...is a steaming pile of bollocks. ;)
“Agile” is such a thing.
You know he loves it. But he’s got no fuckin’ clue what he’s talking about.
“Yeah boss. Mmm-hmm. Great idea. Love it.... Say, you did hear that at the golf court, didn’t you?”
The thing is... everybody... and I mean every real software developer and project manager... knew that it could. not. work. ...you little fucker?”
We were just sitting there, thinking to ourselves: “You have finally found something that’s even more unrealistic than the “plan everything, then GO!” waterfall model, haven’t you,
Did you know that the spiral model... was invented over twenty years ago? Yeah. That’s how long you and I were sitting there, in our stinky cubicles... printing out everything remotely resembling fliers, and... casually placing them near your boss’s room, so he miight pick one up, and you would not have to beat him with that fuckin cluestick in your most beautiful algorithmic fashion, until he looks like a real flame-grilled burger king burger!
(Thankfully, not all of the industry is that bad. Most game development studios, from what I have heard, are actually implementing the spiral model in a very successful way. As am I. But it didn’t help you much when you were working at EA now did it? ;) ;)
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* Please, if you want to rip me apart for not getting British English right, write me a e-mail in my native language and regional dialect... south-western Luxemburgish. You know, the one with the “fro”, not the “fra”.
Staring blankly (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I am a game developer. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I usually test before I implement. Far fewer failures that way. Just a single "file not found."