Preliminary Research and Why Your Game Will Fail

In my game development career, there have been so many failures. Some happened quickly: failing to raise capital, not finding the right technology to create the game I wanted. But the real losses mostly came from not realizing the inevitability of collapse.

Many projects never leave the drawing board because game designers think they can foresee failure. They have been there before, can live in the future, and by muscle memory see the roads leading to failure.

Games are very different from other media. People must keep up with the times or face failure. In the podcast Invest Like The Best, essayist Matthew Ball said that "if we talk about why Hollywood misunderstands gaming today, it's because most executives at [Hollywood] companies were introduced to games in the PlayStation 2 era. They remember their 14-year-old children playing as Lara Croft — a too-pixelated woman shooting people. And how much [games] have evolved over the past 15 years. It's hard to express in one line, but it's unlike any other category."

To keep up with the times, people need to work together. As Christian Segerstråle said: "Gaming is an alchemy of art, design, technology, culture, and business knowledge. It is necessary for more and more people to share their perspectives, discuss, [give] feedback, and find that intersection of product and understanding where all these things combine."

To stay ahead and launch a game in six or twelve months that is fresh and relevant to players, you need more than just a glimpse into the future. Innovation involves mixing and matching gameplay, building the core gameplay correctly, and understanding the audience.

Decision Making

Once a concept looks compelling, decisions must be made. I've already talked about the magic pairs in gaming. This pair consists of two highly skilled game developers who lead the work. They come up with the shape, outline, and final draft of the game. They constantly work together, reviewing and iterating the concept. They are the carriers of the vision and make the decisions.

But how do they make the right decisions? Working on a project that could fail involves huge losses. In gaming, development costs and the time allocated for development have increased significantly. Projects last from six to twelve months and cost millions of dollars.

The pair cannot oversee everything. I have noticed that one reason for failures is that too many people in game teams are unwilling to voice their doubts during the important planning phase. If you make it possible for dissenters—those who know the project and are concerned about its weaknesses—to speak up, you increase the project's chances of success.

Preliminary Research

A powerful solution gaining popularity in game development is the premortem. This solution allows you to think through all possible project failure scenarios in advance. A study conducted in 1989 by Deborah J. Mitchell of the Wharton School, Jay Russo of Cornell University, and Nancy Pennington of the University of Colorado showed that prospective hindsight—imagining that an event has already occurred—increases the ability to correctly identify causes of future outcomes by 30%.

Premortem is the opposite of autopsy, but in many ways similar. An autopsy in a medical setting allows medical professionals and family members to learn what caused the patient's death. Everyone benefits, except, of course, the patient. A premortem should occur at the beginning of a game project to improve it and have the most significant impact.

To conduct a premortem, here is what you need to do.

• Organize a meeting for your game team. During the premortem, team members assume that the project they are planning has just failed—as often happens—and then generate plausible reasons for its demise. Those with doubts can freely speak up at the very beginning so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied.
• Define the goals of the meeting. The task of team members is to come up with plausible reasons for project failure. The leader starts the exercise by telling everyone that the project has suffered a major failure. Over the next few minutes, those present in the room independently write down all the reasons for failure they can think of.
• Next, the leader asks each team member to read one reason from their list; each person states their reason until all are recorded. After the session ends, the project leader reviews the list, looking for ways to strengthen the plan.
• Bring in outsiders. Often the team is too immersed in the project and fails to notice issues identified by external people who are not as heavily invested in the project.
• Give autonomy to team leaders. All failure scenarios should be openly discussed, and comments listened to by all participants. But as the project progresses, team leaders must be given the opportunity to work on the raised issues without pressure. Premortems should be repeated at early stages of the project so that open questions can be voiced and potential failure scenarios are not "swept under the rug."

Pixar's Braintrust

Pixar has an excellent analog of the premortem—the Braintrust.

The 3D animation studio Pixar started holding so-called "Braintrust" meetings in the 1990s to preempt problems related to their production. It was similar to a premortem, where you gather twenty people in a meeting room and listen to the director, producer, and other production team members explain the status and plot of the film.

Why is the Braintrust useful? Again, now for the product owner. As the company grows, the schedule (i.e., the need for the product) determines output, rather than the strength of ideas at the forefront.

One important aspect is developing complete candor in the team: "In a one-on-one setting, we are usually open. But when we are in a group, our animal instincts kick in, and fear takes over. We want to achieve a reasonable opinion that pleases everyone and not be a rebel in the room."

As Catmull confirmed, "you are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged. Candor cannot be more important for our creative process. Why? Because early on, all our films suck. That's a harsh assessment, I know, but I chose that phrasing because softer words cannot convey how bad the first versions are."

Start with game designers and product specialists, then carefully expand. From a tight, well-organized group working on one film, the "Braintrust" grew into a larger, more powerful group. Over the years, it included a wide variety of people—directors, writers, story supervisors—the only requirement being that they demonstrate storytelling ability.