DESIGNERS ON DEATHGARDEN: Bloodharvest play test builds of the game daily, often more than once. Once a week, directors organize a larger play test for the entire team. At the top, leads from each discipline contribute to a quick presentation updating their colleagues on their workload and point out things to keep an eye out for as they play. Then the test begins. Ninety minutes, multiple kills, and several escapes later, directors Matt Jackson and Ash Pannell ask the team to fill out surveys.
“These happen twice a week, and these surveys to make the game better, and feel the pulse of the people on the floor,” Jackson says. “We're all making this game together, and for me, it's been invaluable to hear their comments and to adjust the ship based on those comments.”
Twice-weekly surveys are a new practice for the Deathgarden: Bloodharvest team. The game will re-launch on May 30, 2019, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Developers are encouraged to write down anything that comes to mind. The more feedback, the better. “We do have a vision for the game, so we do have to filter those comments through that, as well as feedback from our community, to stay true to our vision,” Jackson explains. “But anybody who wants to say anything can come to me or any of the designers and say, ‘What about this idea?’ or ‘How about this mechanic? Have you thought of that?’”
Team feedback is combined with polls collected from the game’s community. There’s a lot to sort through. Deathgarden: Bloodharvest is effectively two games in one: the Scavenger side, and the Hunter side. “When we do our play tests, there's a lot of laughter on the Hunter's side, and shrieks on the Scavengers' side,” Jackson continues. “Like, ‘I downed you, and now I'll let you crawl away.’ It's similar to Dead By Daylight in that way. Those are the different kinds of feelings. I like playing both sides, but we often see people picking a side.”
With fewer than two weeks before Deathgarden’s relaunch, schedules have been cleared of all tasks except testing and dialing everything in. “We want to make sure that when this goes out, we're not tripping over stupid little mistakes that could have been fixed,” says Kirk Sandiford, director of animation. “We're looking at what people have given us and continuously trying to better the game that way.”
Ash Pannell has been working with some of the team on a few last-minute audio fixes and implementations, as well as making sure the interface is readable. “The more we can explain and help you understand, the more fun you'll have,” says Pannell, creative director. “For example, we have three currencies in the game. We're currently changing those icons and colors to be even more readable in the last two or three iterations we've done.”
Somewhat recently, three new features made their way into Deathgarden: Bloodharvest, all in the interest of clearly explaining and defining goals. One is that when exits open, all Scavengers are revealed to the Hunter. This was based on community feedback from Hunter players who complained that they had too much trouble sniffing out the final Scavenger after they’d executed the first four. When the exits open, the final moments of a match should become a race: The Hunter speeding toward Scavengers, who in turn are sprinting for the closest escape route.
The change doesn’t only benefit Hunters. “Now the elegant way is that the further away you are, the more time you have to get to the exit. The closer you are to the exit, the faster your reveal,” Pannell says of Scavengers.
New feature number two is a timer that ends any match one minute after exits have opened. Lastly, the music system—one of Pannell’s audio tasks—has been modified so background music echoes on-screen action. “On any normal development, those would be three quite large features toward the end,” he says. “But these were things we really felt we wanted to add to the game, that would make a tangible and obvious difference in what we wanted to do. I think that's one of the advantages of having a team: work through two years, go through the early access, then go through the reboot process.”
One prevailing goal has guided Deathgarden: Bloodharvest from its inception to its final weeks in the womb. “It's been a policy to have the build stable almost every single day,” Pannell says. “It doesn't happen every day, but it's more often than not. Maintaining a healthy, stable build is essential for testing.”
Typically, the final months and weeks—sometimes years—before a game’s release are marked by crunch, copious overtime that sees development teams working six to seven days a week and 12 or more hours per day. Crunch has been a topic of discussion among developers since the industry’s scrappy days in the 1970s and ‘80s. Recently, that conversation has broadened to include mainstream news outlets and consumers in an effort to be more transparent about the conditions some developers face at work.
In the fall of 2018, Rockstar Games had developers working 100-hour weeks for months at a time, several times over the course of the year. Speaking anonymously to reporters, Rockstar employees confirmed that working mentally exhausting and physically breaking schedules were expected of them, getting sucked into and propagating a culture of fear at the world-famous studio.
BioWare, long trusting in a supposed magic that caused its game mechanics and concepts to crystallize in the final year or so before release, crunch on and off for years on games such as Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and Anthem. Ahead of the release of Inquisition in 2014, many developers anonymously confided that they hoped the game failed in order for managers and executives to realize that crunch culture was no way to make a game. Instead, Dragon Age: Inquisition went on to win over a dozen Game of the Year awards and almost as many Role-playing Game of the Year honors from major outlets—a blessing and a curse to those who worked on it.
One might expect the management of Behaviour Interactive, a studio that employees hundreds of employees and juggles multiple projects, to hold their developers’ noses to the proverbial grindstone as well. Then again, symmetry is not Behaviour’s calling card.
At 4:30 on any weekday afternoon, developers begin switching off monitors, packing up bags, and trickling toward the elevators. By 5:00, the open-floor work areas are ghost towns. “I'm usually here until 5:30 or 6:00. By 5:30, there's no one,” says Geneviève Forget, senior product manager on Deathgarden: Bloodharvest.
Behaviour’s developers have built their home away from home within the skeleton of a sweat shop, but they have done their best to exorcise the building’s old spirits. “One of the great things about Behaviour is that there's very little overtime,” explains Matt Jackson. “The schedule has been made in a way without overtime being baked in. Some people do decide to stay a bit later to finish a feature, but it's never forced on them. I feel like that attitude has contributed to a better game, and a better health for our team. Whatever happens next, whether we continue on Deathgarden or some people move on to other teams, people are going to be fresh. It's not been a death march.”
Kirk Sandiford is several years into his second run at Behaviour. Before he left the first time to pursue other goals, his managers made it clear that he was welcome back anytime. Sure enough, when he caught wind of new projects and expressed interest in a return, they reinstated him. “I'm a father of two, and I can say that they want for nothing as far as dad's home to cook dinner; I'm there for them and am able to do stuff with them,” Sandiford says.
Obviously, adds Mathieu Côté, game director and Behaviour’s head of partnerships, employees put in the extra work when it’s necessary. But only then. “If you have six months to do a game, or nine months, maybe people put in a few extra hours the last week, but not everybody.”
Pannell and other directors understand the siren’s call of crunch. Making games is a dream job. Developers make games because it’s a creative calling—an intrinsic part of their DNA. Sometimes, that passion burns too brightly. They push themselves to work hard because they want to make great experiences.
“You don't want to stop,” says Pannell. “You need to keep going, but you also need to be managed a bit. It's the culture that you want to change, and keep the hard work for when you want to do it. No one's asking for it all the time, but if you work one extra hour a day, that [adds up to] a lot of extra hours. I find that when you do that, either you work late and come in later [the next day], or you say, ‘Well, I'm going to be here for 12 hours today, so I'm going to mess around and watch Game of Thrones’ for a couple of hours, instead of relaxing for 20 minutes. I mean, everyone needs to keep up with Game of Thrones, obviously,” he adds, laughing. “But it's a healthy attempt to make things better. The producers are not allowed to instate overtime.”
“I think [culture] starts from the top,” adds Côté. “There's no other choice: That has to start from the top.”
“It’s not like overtime doesn’t happen, it’s just quite hard to access and get approval,” Pannell says. “Also, they made a shift where they reward overtime with extra time off: The more you have to work, the more time you get off. That de-incentivized producers to do it, because they wouldn’t have the staff to complete projects afterwards.”
“Whether it's me or the other executives here, all the senior VPs--they truly believe that people should be happy working here,” Côté continues. “I used to say this a lot, and I haven't said it in a while, but I think it's still true: If we're not having fun making the game, it's going to be very hard to make sure that people are having fun playing.”
BEHAVIOUR'S DEVELOPERS ARE ready for Deathgarden’s second coming on May 30. They want to make sure players new and veteran are ready, too. In celebration of the game’s overhaul, everyone will be able to play for free over the first weekend. After the trial period ends, Deathgarden: Bloodharvest will run less than $10USD during its first week of availability, and stay at $15USD following.
Moreover, every purchase of Deathgarden: Bloodharvest during the promotion will come with a freebie. “For the first week, everybody who buys the game will get a second copy for a friend. We really believe that if people try it, they'll like it, so we want to get the game into as many hands as possible,” says Forget.
“I think there's quite a bit of value there,” Jackson says of the retooled shooter. “We have eight characters, and they each have an average of a 30-hour progression. The Hunters have a bit longer progression because they have an extra weapon, and if some players are very good they might be able to do it in 25 hours, while some may take 50 hours. So there's quite a bit of content there if you think about 30 hours times eight characters.”
Deathgarden’s directors have a road map for the game’s future after that critical first week. This time, it’s malleable. “We're in a position where we want to be able to react to things. We're just not sure what the community will want first,” Pannell says.
“We plan on doing frequent updates,” says Forget, who explains that those updates could include content ranging from new procedurally generated map layouts, to cosmetics, to quality-of-life touch-ups. “Our post-launch strategy, while we don't want to commit to [a schedule] just yet, is really more to roll out smaller patches that are more frequent, rather than big seasons with a ton of content. We want to take a more early access type of approach, with the community getting frequent features and improvements.”
“We've developed a core group of external players, and are getting validation on what we're doing by asking their opinion and making hard decisions about the direction in which we want to play the game,” Pannell continues. “And also by listening to make sure we address in-game issues from new players, but also with old players, because we want people to come back and take another crack at it.”
As the final weeks of development dwindled to the final hours, Deathgarden’s developers discussed what they’re most looking forward to seeing and hearing from the community in response to their revision. “I'm just excited to see people try the game, try the progression system, and discover the depth of the game,” Forget says. “At the beginning, I think it will be simpler. People will just do the basics: try to escape, try to kill. But once you discover more mechanics, such as downing Scavengers to get a multiplier going, that's where the mind games start. I'm excited to see mind games where you're not really sure, ‘How far can I really push my luck?’ The whole risk-and-reward [gameplay] is higher, but that's where the game really shines.”
Behaviour’s team is thrilled they were able to give Deathgarden a second chance, and they hope their players will be, too. “I don't want to make a game for me. Even if it's personal, it's for the fans,” says Jackson. “We don't know what's going to happen. We are very confident in our offering. It's always about the community and what the fans think. If we feel that the product is strong enough and has potential to grow, we'll continue to support it. But if it's not something desirable to fans, we'll have to take a step back and look at what the project is at that moment. The game we made is what we love, and hopefully in the future maybe we'll add some of those features back in based on community feedback. We'll see.”
“The hope is now that we've given them a lot of what they asked for in those initial surveys, that they will come back and stay with us for a longer period of time,” Pannell says. “It's up to us how long they stay. If they enjoy the game now, if they enjoy the compulsion loops and progression that we've put in the game, the hope is that they will stick around, get hooked, and not leave. That's making games. That's what we want to do.”
