Postmortems from Game Developer: Insights from the Developers of Unreal Tournament, Black and White, Age of Empires, and Other Top-Selling Games

by Austin Grossman

Explains how to manage projects in game production by examining the development process of actual games, covering startups, sequels, innovation, building on a license, and online gaming.

Genres: Game Design, Programming, Games, Gaming

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Austin Grossman graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a plan to write the great American novel; instead he became a video game designer at Looking Glass Studios.

He has since contributed as a writer and designer to a number of critically acclaimed video games, such as ULTIMA UNDERWORLD II, SYSTEM SHOCK, DEUS EX, and TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND, and has taught and lectured on narrative in video games. He is currently a freelance game design consultant,

He is also a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he specializes in Romantic and Victorian literature.

SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE is his debut novel. (from the author's website)"

Reviews

[Adam Calhoun · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. Game Development is primarily project management, not artistic endeavor
2. Scope creep and bad planning kills projects. You see this in the first section: basically every first-time game developer was like, "yeah this took way longer than we expected because we didn't plan properly"
3. Test your game early and often
4. Direct3D sucked (this was definitely true)
5. Make sure your team is cohesive - the programmers, designers, and artists must all have a coherent vision of what they are making