Small Team Dynamics in Fury Void

Something to discuss this week is the intimate look into small-team dynamics that Team Fury must face.  No student team could ever be contrived to have the hundreds of souls that work on typical AAA games; heck, breakthrough games have been made on the skills of a single coder!  But in terms of big and small, there are vastly different ways that those team sizes effect game creation.

Fury Void is being worked on, by all accounts, what could be considered a small team.  A 4 man team of part-time game creators leads to many interesting group outcomes; some are good, others could be better.  So, let’s start with areas of improvement.

In the past semester, getting Fury Void worked on (in terms of man-hours) has been a trying affair.  Every person is resigned to work 8 hours a week, with those hours being more or (likely) less during any given week.  However, despite being such a small group, it is my feeling that more quality hours of work have been put into the game past that of other project teams.

That leads me to address the cost of laziness.  I make no exception for myself, and I leave none to the rest of the Fury Void team.  Having a lax day happens; there’s no getting around it.  But, when such an easy-going day arises, harsh impacts are felt on Fury Void’s development.

Even if it isn’t a fact of lethargy, being such a small team, any sickness, travel, or unforeseen situation is murderous to the release schedule.  Entire weeks of work are pushed back in the release window due to events coming-up that ruin work-times.  Though some accommodations and rescheduling is done, it can’t keep up with unforeseen circumstances.  Not even close.

Speaking of schedules, accurate time estimates are the ‘Holy Grails’ of game development.  Fury Void is hampered often enough by either a bug or feature that defies the skills of the 3 programmers on the team (and every forum post on the net).  These issues frequently lead to complete a reimagining of what is to come for Team Fury to develop.

The last ‘negative’ comes more from the structure of the academic course, but the consequences are extreme for the team itself.  This namely deals with the ability to ‘hire’ and ‘fire’ assets for the team.  Therefore, if additional work is needed to be brought in, the course makes it difficult to recruit new developers.  If a person needs to be let go, either from their skills not being needed any longer or that they have become a detriment to the team, they must remain on.  This, more than anything else, has been the largest hamper on both Team Fury and groups that I’ve worked in previously.

But now, some good things of having a small team!  With only a few individuals, getting meeting and work times together is a breeze.    Only 4 schedules are needed to be worked around; in contrast to 10- or 12-person teams that rarely see a true stability to their schedule.

With the regard to being easily brought together to meet, it is very easy to get to know a small team.  As a project lead, I’ve come to know the strengths, weaknesses, mannerisms, and work-ethics Team Fury provides; every person working on Fury Void knows what everyone else is able/looking to do.

Furthermore, if someone has an idea to add to Fury Void’s development process, pitching that idea to 3 others at one time versus a half-dozen others at various meetings is a whole lot easier.  This fact engenders a lot more investment on the part of the team into the project.  Every feature worked on has been developed, in part, by every person in the group.

Finally, having such a short-coming of personnel for Fury Void has helped reign-in scope very early.  Fury Void was originally pitched with a ‘doable limit’ in mind, but only 4 people working on it was never considered.  Therefore, with our numbers as justification, scope has always been taken into account before anything is carried out in Team Fury.  That has and will serve Team Fury very well throughout the coming months.

Small teams have some nasty, terrible qualities, but they also have some great advantages to larger groups.  In this experiment of numbers going against time, Fury Void will likely be better because of having such a low unit cap.  Team Fury is full of surprises, where I’m sure to learn a lot in how to make games.

Welcome to Fury Void

Greetings, soon-to-be galactic saviors!  I write here to introduce you to Fury Void, a student-project game of top-down, space shooting conquest.  Pitch time:

Fury Void is the game of salvation and fire.  This top-down shooter of planet blasting pits you, the survivor of a galactic meltdown far-far away, against the overpopulated denizens of the galaxy set to self-destruct the same way.  Destroy planets, suns, and civilizations to save this galaxy from a similarly dire fate!

Whew – Now a little back-story to the project.  Fury Void started last year as a hastily contrived pitch to become a game sponsored by the game’s projects course of my Game Design major.  The point I built the game off of was to have a title that could, that would, be completed in a year’s time of part-time work by game design students.  I have seen too many student projects fail due to scope/design considerations to want a game of mine to suffer the same fate.  Team Fury was created with this purpose in mind.

So that leads us to Fury Void.  Halfway through the development timeframe, all but 1 or 2 features have been added.  The game has hit alpha (check it out!), with bells-and-whistles being added daily.  The Facebook page is updated weekly.  In comparison, only one other team (Arcana– good stuff!) has made the same scale of progress, so  Team Fury – as I am biased to say – has been doing quite well.

Expect more info coming from Fury Void in the coming weeks and months as the life of this game comes to fruition.  Like and follow on Facebook for regular updates, including new pictures, videos, and alpha links.

In the comments, do let me know what you think of this, or if you have had experience with Fury Void already, I’d love to hear from you, too!  Take care, and happy holidays!

Commander of the War

War Commander

• + Being browser-based allows for access anywhere.
• + Millions of players keep an otherwise bleak landscape interesting.
• + The most dangerous foes are other humans.
• + Excellent point system for immediate player satisfaction. // link to Dave Mark
• - Being browser-based allows for access anywhere, any time.
• A fix: Um... as a player, have self-control?
• - Inconsiderate times for production and collection come during odd hours.
• A fix: Include a standard time during the day for collection or implement standard increments of time for the building/unit timers.
• - Ads are like bad dinner guests; always there, and have a hard time going away.
• A fix: Follow the free-to-play model, relying on micro-transactions for revenue.
• - Unbalanced roster of troop types; some are utterly worthless.
• A fix: Create a rock-paper-scissors style of unit balancing to better play to unit strengths.
• - Lack of any apparent in-game narrative to motivate the conflict.
• A fix: Put up some flavor-text or brainstormed reasoning for the 'war'; possibly open it up to the community to have input on developing a story.

I first heard about War Commander from the KIXEYE info booth at the Game Developers Conference Online in Austin, Texas.  The battles looked cool, so after the Conference, I checked the Facebook game out.  Dozens of hours later, this is what I think of the game.

War Commander is dangerous; being browser-based, I can play it anywhere.  Whether there is time to kill, or important work needs to get done, the game is always present.  The blessing is a game that requires only an internet connection; the curse lies in the self-control to prioritize.

It is a good thing that War Commander can be accessed nearly anywhere, since timing my resource collection had to happen at strangely odd times.  Production was like that too – when trying to keep the base building, setting an alarm would help greatly.  Once the morning comes, it’s time to get ready to catch the game back-up to speed.

Now, it’s a fallacy to say that the game is lonely.  +6 million registered players make this game a top-dog of Facebook games, and each one represents an in-game violent foe or temporary friends.  War Commander is very beginner friendly, with senior players acting almost as ‘bosses’.

Speaking of loneliness, I’m never ‘truly’ alone; ads are always companioning my play.  Whether it be a small icon on my home-base screen, the running sidebars on Facebook, or merely logging in, War Commander advertises both itself and others to a very high degree.

Despite it all, I keep coming back.  The resource point system the game uses is highly effective; the reasoning of which is mention in my Dave Mark blog post.

The resources garnered in game are usually quick to be spend on research, upgrades, and repairs.  The reason for this in-game struggle is utterly nonexistent.  I take that back – the conflict lies in there not being enough resources, enough space, to go around.  Sound familiar to the real world?

To be fair, War Commander doesn’t intuitively demonstrate that it is a good game for any excuse but one: it keeps players coming back.  Progression and gathering are what make this game addicting.  Give it a try; I know I will still be a ‘war commander’ anyway.