The new TDD

I'm doing something these days that a younger me would have been horrified of. Trailer Driven Development: the feature isn't done until I've made a trailer of it.

I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. One, because I'm working alone most of the time and I can't just call across the office, "Hey, check out the cool thing I just did!" and have my co-workers ooh and ah. (I can have my kids ooh and ah but it's not the same.) So making trailers and e-mailing them to Paul (and often, the world) fills that need. But also because the important thing right now is to sell the vision of the game, and what better way to do that than with trailers? In fact, if I'm coding something that isn't going to make good trailer and help the kickstarter, I'm kind of wasting my time, because the kickstarter might not even succeed.

This isn't so different from what any studio needs to do when they're in the early stages of making a game. Those early stages are often not about selling the game to the end player (who couldn't care less about our trailers, they want the game itself to be delivering the awesome, of course) but selling the game to publishers, biz dev people, bosses, journalists, and others who probably don't have the time or inclination to actually play your game (and put up with some gameplay that might not-be-so-awesome as they get over a learning curve...) and what better way to do that than trailers.

The younger me would have freaked out. He would have said, "Dude, you're a game maker, not a film maker." The younger me (and the older me, for that matter) has seen so many games make teaser trailers - sometimes just for in-house purposes, sometimes not - that are often prerendered in Max or Maya! - that create unreasonable expectations in people only to dash their hopes. (Medal of Honor: Airborne was one of the most egregious.) And it really chafed the younger me's hide when people got all excited over those games. "Doesn't anyone see!? Can't they tell these games are making promises they can't keep!?"

So that's where I'm drawing a line: I'm not making prerendered footage. (I don't actually have the resources to do that, anyway...) It's all in-game footage. And while I may be putting the camera in a place it would not actually be in game, and while there may be bugs and sketchy bits that I'm not revealing - which would be a sin to not take care of in full production - I'm okay with that level of sketchiness right now.

So have a 9-second trailer: this is addressing two pieces of feedback from the weekend. One, from @MaxSzlagor, that I need more landmarks. This is a pretty serious landmark. And another, from @RossCowman, that I need to let people know what the story is. The story is it's the future, and we have gravitic technology, and this is a massive example of that.

What do you think? (You see, if you give feedback, you can get credit! Being good gets you stuff!)

Comments

[sev (@cheryltz)]

Is this technology cheap enough/been around long enough to have genuinely changed the way people use the tops of tall buildings? Or is it mostly athletes and architectural curiosities? (I think I'm more interested in whether/how it'd be communicated in-game than in what the actual answer to the question is.)

[RodeoClown]

Definitely looks like a landmark!
(And looks like Centrepoint tower in Sydney ;))

[Greg]

Yes, you have to do stuff to sell your idea, and that's true in a Kickstarter environment at least as much as in a publisher environment. But I'm sure you've also been on projects where time and resources were spent on producing the sizzle reel, the build to "show progress" to executives rather than actually advance implementation, the demo for a conference, etc., that actual implementation got delayed and confuzzled.

The fact that you're doing it in-engine gives me confidence, but be aware of the risks of going too far down that path.

[Alasdair333]

I like the idea. While writing my game there has been a few times where I've made a video and posted it on my Facebook account for friends to see and then no one replies. That's quite disheartening. :(

I guess if you were to take this approach as a lone dev you might want to surround yourself with people who will give you feedback. Not just the "OH WOW! EXCELLENT!" ego booster friends but the "Yeah cool but X,Y,Z could improve it"