2. Get Your Iterative Game Development Right
How to get your iterative game development right and build better games.
The most important part in games production, on a quest to build a successful game, is getting iterative development right — yet, most don't get it right or don't even know how to approach it right.
This article focuses on the ‘core’ of iterative development, with an intention to (potentially) help to set some of you better on track for creating, and shipping, better performing games — from both the players’ point of view (PoV) as well as from the commercial PoV.
Note: This article excludes process coverage, for now, which I might tackle in later articles about games production and topics related to iterative development. Further exclusions are mentioned in the article itself, as the case applies. Furthermore, understanding this article requires some level of understanding (theoretical and/or practical) of game development processes for direct applications. If there is no such understanding, it is advise-able to use the contents of this article for learning advancement during a time when one is studying the required basics. Let’s begin!
How You Can Achieve More? Set Your Mindset Right.
When some approach games production or project management through regular agile, lean, etc. methodologies, the biggest trap they fall usually is just following up processes and frameworks — and believing things will work out for your game by doing that. I mean, it's fine, but as an outcome you most likely will end up shipping less greatness and mediocre games, if you just go by the process (whatever it is, e.g., without limitation, SCRUM, Kanban, Waterfall, and so on). Most likely, this will be also very expensive way for making a game.
Over the years, despite whatever the process or method is being used, I’ve come into the conclusion, that the biggest truth is in the 'iterative' approach itself, with emphasis on the word iteration; and, specifically, in terms of iterative development / approach, the truth is not really in processes or frameworks — it's mainly in on your mindset, your team’s mindset, mindsets of your disciplines’ / teams’ leads as well as on the mindsets of the stakeholders (internal and/or external) and managers involved in the project / product.
Mindset is the key to be cracked right in the first place, if you (/your team(s)) really want to excel on iterative development and be on a quest for building better games.
What this means in practice?
I think it’s quite simple thing: you need to understand what iterations in the iterative development actually are for, what are their goals on a greater quest for building a successful product (with the product’s product layers, pillars, goals, vision, etc. being right in place; which all are topics of their own to be potentially covered in the future), how you approach iterations, and how you really tune-up your mind for iterations — where iterations are focusing on product-improving increments to your product, with each having specific goals for each cycle.
Set Right Mantra for the Mindset
For setting everyone’s mindset right, it’s not an easy route (it requires, to my experience, a lot of change management, coaching, and time) — but, setting up a mantra that guides you, you can talk about, and get everyone’s buy-in for, will help a ton.
This mantra should be, in most cases, build around on what makes a game fun — and, over time, commercially successful. Though, when ‘commercially successful’ gets mentioned here, I’m not saying it cannot be an element of fun or come with a simplicity; as most often even a simple word like ‘fun’ can lead to commercial success (it’s not always just about business-business!).
My mantra, which I’m happy to lend for everyone (willing to use it), for game development (/iterative development) always goes in following way:
Finding the fun,
Building and iterating on top of the fun, and
Making game-making fun.
This is where I’m nowadays focusing my own and/or my team’s (/teams’) efforts on a quest on building commercially successful (/better) game(s) — with the mantra (and iterative approach tied to it) guiding the mindset as well as product-improving increments right.
In terms of tackling things the right way, my mantra focuses basically on building a fun game, which would be achieving solid marketability, engagement, and monetization KPIs over time — throughout iterations focusing on fun / impact; specifically around what adds most fun / impact to the game per iteration. To step one step deeper, what I’m after is that when the built experience is fun, it correlates with your audience (from marketability PoV, it helps with e.g., attractiveness, resulting potentially to lower / decent CPIs — on top of which, from engagement PoV a fun core, solid core loop and a core-complementing meta game extends engagement and retention metrics over time) and can be monetized and scaled.
Additionally, when fun, audience-/market-fit is achieved (and for some, not forgetting the business-side of this, when the monetization is well in place), usually one or more of these achieved elements makes the game-making fun for everyone involved in the process, which helps with getting (iterative) mindset over game development right from the early stages to late stages (e.g., Live Ops).
It indeed, and definitely in most cases, motivates everyone involved best way, if you’re building something that is fun and (potentially) over time successful. Anything else is not on par if you really think it through — and, specifically, if you cannot achieve any of these effects, it is a sign something isn’t right probably for what you’re building or how you’re building it. Of course, I can understand that from certain cultural PoV, people are just paid to get the job done, which is fine — but there are definitely always better ways for boosting things and production cultures up.
Product-Improving Increments
Where the mindset is set right (and your mantra driving it), iterative development is all about what makes a game fun and/or is the core of it — over which you’ll get your product-improving increments right in your ‘process’ (whatever the process also is about or following). Most likely, when you get this right, you will also save a lot of cash — as it guides you in very lean way focusing on what really matters; and finding it, or killing / pivoting it early on vs. realizing this when all cash gone.
In terms of fun and a core of a game, I’m not going to open that topic here (it’s also quite big of a topic to cover in this article and would need an article of its own — well, I believe there are complete books about just the concept of fun), as it’s something everyone needs to discover themselves in the process, with using their own judgement, know-how, experience, creativity, data-informed practices, data-driven practices, and related means in a way what’s best for them to discover fun and the core of a game they’re developing. There are many product cultures for approaching this.
To jump further, once your fun and core is 100% clear, you would need, with your mindset (and mantra), approach building that (fun and core) in the first place and iterating on top of it to make it right (or end up killing it / your product, if you don't crack these things right — which will save you a lot of money and time) — meaning making and improving a good game one, or more, items at a time. When you find your fun and build your game over it, your product-improving increments through iterative development get defined, build, reviewed, and iterated (as well as re-iterated / pivoted / killed) the right way in the ‘process’ (despite what you’re following for your iterative development). Basically you need to follow the path of fun / impact through every increment / iteration and measure if you met, or not, your goal on each cycle — and go further from there as it is best for your product and then-current state of development.
Note: In terms of where your mindset needs to be, when iterative development is in motion, it might be even possible that you'll even discover what's fun and core of your game after several iterations (to my understanding this is how it goes sometimes in AAA game development); so you need to be patient (and wise enough to call it a day if you don’t find it — as well as be wise enough to approach things in lean way vs. spend upfront on things that won’t move a needle for you before your core is solidly in place). Some iterations also might ‘just need to be killed’, when you’re steering your product towards audience-/market-fit over time — and it’s definitely normal. These things are part of the ‘process’. Furthermore, it’s good to try to make sure, in a proper way (and know when to stop as the case applies), that what you’re building is not thrown away too fast, even when there are processes in place that are ‘scientific’ and/or leaning to marketability-first approach (these can be in place in a manner that good core gameplays could be thrown in trash too fast; which should be known and managed properly).
So, to repeat and shoot forward, once your fun and core has been found and validated, this is really a point where you build other layers on top of it incrementally — from core gameplay to core loop to meta game, and further — while executing iterations (/additions) for product-improving increments, whilst retaining your fun and core. This is also where your budget (and potentially P&L, as you get there) will thank you, in terms of how it is used the right way.
Over time, when you crack ‘this’ right and keep what works and correlates with market / audience in an efficient way for your product, you get your marketability, engagement, monetization and scalability right; OR you end up noticing quickly, when you really pay attention to your increments’ improvements (or failures / wrong choices, as they happen) as well as any set KPIs, that you might not have something that just doesn’t work. Based on your product’s development or live stage, complementary methods should be used for checking healthiness, e.g., without limitation, business modeling (a topic I’ve discussed here: https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/6-why-business-modeling-your-f2p).
Furthermore, on top of Business Modeling, Benchmarking has its place within Iterative Development — more about Benchmarking here (https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/7-early-stage-benchmarking):
It is good to be mentioned here that chances on finding successful product that works from marketability to engagement to monetization and scalability are not high, which is natural for the industry — but, over time, if you iterate properly with right mindset (and mantra driving that mindset) and right product-improving increments, your (theoretical) chances on success will increase, if you also iterate your know-how and mindset over time in a compounding way — and understand when, to actually, kill your darlings.
Further Thoughts
When you build and iterate the right way (with most often like-minded mindsets around you — referring to your team), ultimately this is what makes you achieve better products; throughout which game-making becomes fun.
As a side effect, when you get ‘things’ right, you get to experience most often something magical with the team (or teams) you’re involved in (/working with); as when they approach and get this right the right way, you’re seeing team dynamics and performance rising exponentially over time, which compounds towards a potential success for your game(s) you’re building.
It’s definitely a dream thing for many to be working over a fun product with a great team — where there is greatness in both on the product and the team; resulting in (commercial) success. This is what my article here guides for you to go towards to.
Of course, what I’m writing and sharing above doesn't guarantee success — but, I believe, this will make you develop better games and teams over time when things compound together; especially when you can combine e.g., without limitation, proper leadership, product, market research, competitive intelligence, business, marketability, go-to-market, and commercialization practices on top.
Conclusions
To summarize the article — iterative development can be get right by:
Setting your mindset (and mantra) right for iterative development.
Find the fun / core.
Build and iterate on top of the fun / core.
Make game-making fun in the ‘process’.
Potentially, over time, achieve solid business (when things compound).
Everyone telling something else, that doesn’t touch this level of maturity around iterations, like going just with the processes and frameworks — they lack of seniority and understanding what it really means on building greatness (of course, I'm happy to be challenged on this, and understand different cultures on this).
Furthermore, anything in this article is not 'straight-forward'. Everything requires lots of trust, flexibility, etc. at all ends — incl. management, stakeholders, etc. layers (this is a topic I’ve focused on here: https://gamesalchemy.substack.com/p/3-stakeholder-and-executive-expectations) being managed and handled properly.
The more complex managing ‘it all right’ it becomes, the bigger the company or e.g., corporation is where you are. This is where some folks, who have mastered this act to some extend, or tackle the craft differently with same effectiveness, shine; whilst others tend to still make mistakes in managing stakeholders / management layers so that as an outcome you risk your product and are on a quest for shipping less quality.
It all isn’t definitely easy, but it's doable if you also focus on properly managing all these relationships and coach everyone (yes — even your stakeholders and management as the case applies) on what I’ve covered here. Good luck, and stay strong!