1 Massive Entertainment Petter Sydow 2 Starting facts

1 Massive Entertainment Petter Sydow

2 Starting facts Petter Sydow, Vice President of Product Development Massive Entertainment, Malmö, Sweden World in Conflict is Massive’s third strategy game Released September-07 PC September 07 Xbox 360 version later this year Good Critical Acclaim Gamerankings. com – 89% Metacritic. com – 89% IGN – Best Online Multiplayer Gamespot – Most Innovative Game Strategy Game of the Year – most places

3 Project Outline Green-lit May 05 Focus on Multi Player – with small tutorial campaign Changed Project Manager April 06 Team without Project Manager for 2 months Changed scope of single player campaign August 06 Added immersive story Added in-game cinematics Moved release date from March to September Released September 07 After hitting GM date Team size At start 40 At finish 100

4 Our Method Evolutionary development Internally designed agile method by CEO Martin Walfisz Iterations lasting two weeks Build on Thursday Planning on Friday Feature driven planning Always implement the highest prioritized feature Game playable from day one Whole team tests the game every build day Living workspace Lean organization Rather slim management team Leads preferred to Associate Project Managers Meetings on a daily basis

5 Our Way Everybody is responsible for their part Sub-teams are strong and task owners Organized to create clear ownership Makes staffing easier Flat hierarchy Few titles Very few specialists Personal contacts Let people break the organization chart Take the risk of getting odd things in the game

6 Our Way 2 Directed experience Avoid feature fighters – a hard to solve paradox Lead designer and Art Director close to the team Redoing is fun Always test and evaluate a feature and plan for redoing it Sometimes hard for the team to accept Avoid ordered overtime Responsibility gives people a reason to do what it takes

Planning and Tracking Overall time-line Easy to read Large objectives and releases Common feature list One feature list for the game Focusing on design Some teams have individual detailed lists Individual iteration plans Art is not the same as code Plan for Iterations Create plans which means evaluating and re-doing

8 Massive vs Scrum Waterfall in Agile Clothing Agile is a mind set Content is content Don’t kid your self – 10 levels in 20 weeks means two weeks per level Skip some of the burn-down charts I spend my time with the team – not with excel If it takes two iterations so what? Some things take longer time to do – no biggie Who’s the master? Let people focus on what they are good at

9 Risks with Agile Over polishing content prematurely Plan for several iterations Decide what to do in each one Waterfall counting Feature Fighters Force people to move forward Avoid fancy titles Paradigm change Take it easy – do it one step at a time Be agile about your work method as well

10 Lessons learned Teams still a bit to independent Increase cross-team collaboration Merged art team with map team More power to the people Make task forces stronger – but also demand more Closer to Scrum Done or Working? Improving task approval process More unified planning On a high level Still differences within iteration planning

11 Summary Let people free Plan for iterations Find your own way