Hey, how are you doing?

My name is Jen Davalos And I'm the game designer for MARRED.

I’m incredibly happy to report that MARRED has finished development. I couldn’t be more proud of my team and the work they’ve put in. Working as a lead designer was an incredibly difficult experience but so incredibly rewarding. So for the last time, let’s go through what went right and wrong with the shooting, looting, and scooting. 

What Went Right

I found the art Direction was very consistent and kept a tonal theme throughout the game.  I found the art direction that we went with from there was very consistent and unique to the game. By being specific with my designs, the modeling team was able to follow the themes and the moods of the levels.

By setting up the main idea for the use of modular modeling, the level designers were able to get to work on making annotated maps knowing their limitations. There were plenty of downsides of this as well, but I was still pretty good. 

What Went Wrong

Game Design Document

Because of the position my team and I were in since the beginning of the project. I was thrust into making production models rather than spending more time designing the game. I very much enjoy 

Because of this, The nearly complete GDD got left in the dust. There are areas and sections that are highlighted saying “finish” or “fix”

The Game Design Document is supposed to represent a document that is so complete that if I happen to fall dead tomorrow, My team will be able to complete the game to the exact specification in my absence.

Level Design- modular modeling

As good of an idea as it was to use modular modeling to quickly build levels, he quickly got in the way of adapting the levels and making them feel unique. The amount of time spent fixing the levels quickly outpaced the amount of time it took to make a level.

Level Design- Actual levels

Pretty early on, we discovered that the level designers were outpacing the environment modelers. Here we were faced with an impasse to either move the level designers onto other tasks, or give them more levels. I made the mistake of including more levels that were initially cut out of the GDD. 

Simply put, my own hubris blinded me. I wanted to include more content because I wanted the playtime of the game to be longer. 

Going against everything I’ve been told. I decided to go with quantity of levels over quality of levels. I now realize that I was too close to the game at the time, meaning that I found the game more fun that it actually was. 

Scope

Scope is a big part of game development. Everyone always mentions the scope of the game when in the designing and the production phase, and it’s always for good reason. We had a pretty good idea of the scope of the game, and what we could do to avoid reducing scope. 

What I did not take into account was the skills of the team. ALthough the team is great at what they do, there are certain things that nobody had the proper knowledge in. Because of what the team could and couldn’t do, we had to quickly reduce parts of the scope in the final days of the project. I originally built the GDD to be scalable, where things could be added or cut out on a whim. I learned that I should’ve scaled the scope and the GDD back further in the beginning than I did so that we can steadily add things instead of trading things to add and take away.

What can be improved for next time

Now that I understand the amount of time it takes to make a complete GDD; I would take about double that amount of time for pre-production on the next project. Specifically with the specifics. By getting into the nitty gritty of the details I would be able to have less initial questions and less questions that there were no answers to. 

This happened a lot when it came to specific damage values and in game economies. I didn’t have the specifics ironed out, so I wasn’t able to give concrete or well informed decisions on some of the aspects of the game. 

By having a full team of 3D modelers, I would be able to spend more time doing design work instead of trying to be a one-woman band of modeling, texturing, animation, level design, and music composition. Simply put, it's too much for one person.  

What I’d do again

To start, I’d choose the same team. Everyone worked so well together that I know that we can make a great game, no matter what it is. 

With that, I’d create a similar tactic of using design pillars like I did with the Shooting, Looting, Scooting. By having these central tenets, we can design the rest of the game around it and have a base of core functionality.

Thanks for sticking with us. It’s been great. I’ll catch you on the next project. 

-Jennifer Davalos