Deliver faster or die trying

The second week flew by quickly, with all seven days spent entirely doing research in several fields concurrently.
When plagiarizing an existing game, there are a few tasks which are already done for you; you don’t need to rethink the wheel, it’s almost finished.
In our case, I know there will be “Goodies” and “Baddies”. There will be resources produced by the Goodies (in the case of PvZ, the sun produced by sunflowers) that are used to place new allies (plants). The playing field is laid out in a grid, which the Baddies march into.
Although the mechanics are quite simple, humans are programmed complicate things (overengineerng is the most common example of this plague).
The time I didn’t spend on game design was thrown away on finding a purist way to make the game multiplatform. Experience has taught me that multiplatform by technology is not a big deal, you are always constrained by the technology promoters. Personally, I was (and still am still) a Flash Architect.
Adobe has claimed many times that Flash is a multiplatform technology. Unfortunately, this definition is not accurate, and it’s becoming less accurate day by day. Flash is a famous example of how hard it really is to develop technology that is truly multiplatform.
When I say ‘Flash’, I’m usually referring to the Flash platform in general, comprised of the language (ActionScript 3), the virtual machine (Flash Player, AIR), and the tools provided. The last option, tools (which includes ide, authoring, etc.), should also be considered when evaluating a technology as multiplatform; not only the consumer, but also the developers need to be taken into account.
The Flash decline (if we can call it that) as a multiplatform solution started with the buzzing war if HTML5 paladins lead by Steve Jobs as Apple decided not to include Flash Player on their iOS devices. I’m not going to discuss this matter further, as many battles have already been fought upon this topic, of which I’m sure you are already aware.

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So, I decided to clone Plants vs Zombies. In my defense, I quote Picasso, ”Bad artists copy. Good artists steal,” but I’m not here to justify myself.

It all starts with my girlfriend – which is an important note to make, in case someone some day decides to take legal action against me, I want to record to show it was all her fault!

It happens quite often that in order to stop her bothering me while working, I throw the iPad on the table and let her enjoy some “random game” time.

Unfortunately, there is one random game which does not always get picked randomly: Plants vs Zombies. She easily gets addicted to it, despite having finished it several times. Now she asks me to provide her with new games, but seems that the hole left by PvZ is cannot be filled; not by red flying birds, nor by chandeliers that fall on a malformed frog (isn’t it?).

In 4 words: I am f**ed up!

Chaining myself in front of the Popcom/EA head quarters begging for a sequel led to nothing but a waste of time. It’s at this point I get the idea: Do it yourself.

I’ll also spice up the project by throwing in some constraints and presenting it as a social psychology experiment. Let’s call this Socially Driven Game Development (dev note – TDD is old fashioned, right?!)

There are two lessons to be drawn from Notch’s Minecraft hype; First, you must keep feeding and getting feedback from the community around your game, and in case you don’t have one, you must do your best to get people involved and feel they are part of the project. The second lesson is that mining seems to be the only thing people want to do from dawn ’till dusk, but for this project, that lesson can be ignored.

So I decided to clone Plans vs Zombies, and share the progress in a daily, on-line diary, letting people inspire design decisions; from gameplay to graphics, from music to additional content.

In addition I’ll add one or more constraints, such as:
- Limit the time I work on project – No more than two hours per day or ten hours per week (this forces me consider this as a side project)
- Recap the day’s work every week – sharing any progress and development, as well taking in feedback regularly
- End every post with a question – sometimes a Yes/No question, sometimes a poll, and sometimes a so-called “open-question”
In the spirit of the last rule, I give you the project’s first question:
What is lacking from Plants vs Zombies?

Scroll straight down to the comments section and write your ideas. After that, scroll back up here and keep reading my thoughts on the matter (mostly superficial views)
- Not homogeneous across platforms (I found out that iPad version has features that iPhone doesn’t, and vice versa, like Zen Garden)
- Not available on a few platforms – Not a big issue, but I bet the Blackberry and Nokia markets are potentially fertile markets that aren’t explored enough.
- Not a real growing path – Except gaining all the plant types, there’s really no other motivator to keep playing. Suns are not permanent through matches, money is not useful after you bought all the items from the shops.
- Longevity is miserable in less than 5 hours.
- It lacks an “entrepreneurial view” – Come on, I don’t want to be stuck in my backyard all my life. I want to conquer the world with my plant army!

Your turn now, see ya tomorrow

 

I have always considered the summer brake as a good period for self-evaluations more than year-end when too many external factors blind your analytic skill.
Doing this i found very useful writing down the list of what i consider motivating for a developer trying to extract some boolean questions for auto test your motivation level.

As a project manager, or architect you don’t have the privileges to handle all the following factors that usually refer to managers and ceo, but it’s always interesting try to put on others’ shoes to better understand feeling and reasons.

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