Building Your Plane While FlyingProduction @ Bungie

Allen Murray

What is the point of this talk?• To show how we were able to

evolve mature production practices in the middle of a very successful, creative and sometimes chaotic environment while maintaining the culture of the studio.

Production History

• Halo 1 and Halo 2 were created with minimal Production staff

• The role of Producer on Halo 1 and 2 was very different than it is today

• On Halo 1 and 2, project management was sometimes handled by discipline leads

Why Invest In Production?

• Halo 2 experience…• Extremely long crunch– 12-14 hour days, 7 days

a week for over 8 months

• Personal sacrifice and pain

• The team was looking for a new solution

How did we do this? (Agenda)• By focusing on Quality First

• By focusing on People First

• By being extremely Adaptable

QUALITY FIRST

Quality First

• Flexible approach to scheduling

• Non-negotiable Polish

• “Planned Crunch”

Flexible Approach to Scheduling

• We will rip apart the schedule *late* to:

• Accommodate ideas that make the game better

• Rigorously rework a feature if there is concern the quality isn’t high enough

Example: FORGE

Example: FORGE

• First version of Forge did not come online until 6 months prior to ship

• The idea was intriguing enough that we were willing to risk other features to achieve it

Quality First: Other Modifiers

• How will this decision for quality affect:–Morale– Employee development– Schedules & Budgets– The people who play the game

• Example: Saved Films– Nearly cut if not for the passion of the

designers and engineers who worked on it

Non-negotiable Polish

• It is a non-moving component of the schedule

• Approximately 2-4 weeks per person

• It is not a contingency plan

• It is all iteration time• No new content!

Planned Crunch

• Crunch is a tool that can unite or divide the team

• How you communicate a crunch is vital to its success– Communicated in advance– Scope defined and understood– Definitive end

Negative Crunch

• Crunch is bad when:• It is prolonged• No goal• No visible evidence of progress

• Bad Crunch = Producer’s fault

Positive Crunch

• Crunch is positive when:• It is used sparingly to focus work

effort• Is preplanned and has an end that is

understood

• Good crunch = Team Achievement

PEOPLE FIRST

Bungie is Our People

Supporting Role

• As Producers at Bungie, our focus is on creating the conditions in which the team can do their best work

• Also, Producers at Bungie don’t design

Supporting Context

• There is natural tension in the creative process

• Production assists with this conflict resolution

• As we evolved our processes in Halo 3, it became apparent there was little accountability for cross-discipline issues

Supporting Methodology

• Listen First

• Gather the data

• Make the data honest and the process transparent

• Present recommendations

Soft Skills

Soft Skills are as important as Hard Skills

Understanding context is key

Most people can be taught the Hard Skills of project management. It’s the innate ability to act smartly, not the rules you follow that is hard to teach

ADAPTABILITY

Adaptive Project Management

• Putting Quality and People First means:

• We invest in processes adapted to the people

• We adapt to unfolding views of the game experience

• We bring clarity with a range of different methodologies

Start with a Framework

• Concept Phase: What is the game? Inspiring others

• Preproduction: Prove the concepts, find the fun• Production: Building the game, iteration,

iteration• Polish: This dial goes to 11• Release: Get it shipped• Sustain Planning:

– DLC, Expansions, Bungie.Net, Community outreach

Constantly Shifting Responsibilities

• As the project cycle shifts, so do our responsibilities

• We need to be able to jump in and work with any team

• We rely on our fellow Producers for context

A Pragmatic Approach

• Each team is approached differently

• Each person on the team is approached differently

• Producers adapt methods for the appropriate audience

Mission Design

Environment Art vs. Mission Design

Mass Out Architecting Finishing Polish

Environment Art

Paper Design

PrototypeRevie

wPrototype

Review

IterationIteration Iteration Iteration Iteration Iteration

Review

3D Art

Concept Art vs. 3D Art

Concept Art

Polish 1

Graybox 2 Hi Res 2

Concept 2

Concept 1

Detail 1 Detail 2Other Img

Hi Res 1Graybox 1

…Other Img

Engineering

Systems Design vs. Engineering

Systems Design

Tasks for 1

Design Doc 1

Design Doc 2

Tasks for 2

Prototype 1

Tasks for 1

Prototype 2

Tasks for 2

Walkup

Bug Fixing

Prototype 1

Specific Tasks

Combining the Approaches

Mass Out Architecting Finishing Polish

Environment Art

Iteration

Mission DesignIteration Iteration Iteration Iteration Iteration

Concept ArtConcept generation Concept generation

3D ArtObject Object Object Object Object Object Object Object Polish

Systems DesignIteration Iteration Iteration Testing / Iteration

EngineeringFeature

WorkFeature

WorkFeature

WorkBug fixing Polish

Feature Work

First Playable Milestone

Meaningful Milestones

• Milestones are feature driven, not date driven

• Milestones have a definition that is understood by the team doing the work

Everyone Has a Schedule

• We believe that all creative tasks can be quantified.

• Make this viewable to everyone on the team– Increases communication– Gives visibility– Increases accuracy– Increases accountability– Increases efficiency

Flexible Scheduling Technologies

• To be useful, the system must have:

• Multiple inputs

• Unified data source

• Single, target output and reporting

Current Underlying Tech

• MS Project to HTML output• All tasks are eventually put into MS

Project• System converts Project files into

HTMLPaper

Excel

MSProje

ct

DataScrip

tWeb

Page

MSProje

ct

Evolving Tech

• Future integration with our art and environment pipeline tools

• The core philosophy remains the same:– Put information in front of the

people– They are responsible for saying

when it is wrong and informing changes

Production Coverage (H3 preproduction)

3D Art

Campaign Env Art

MP Env Art

Mission Design

MP Design

Engineering

Animation

Audio

Effects

UI

Cinematics

Concept Art

Producers: 3

Team Size:

75

Production

Production Coverage(H3 Mid Production)

3D Art

Campaign Env Art

MP Env Art

Mission Design

MP Design

Engineering

Animation

Audio

Effects

UI

Cinematics

Concept Art

Producers: 6

Team Size:

110

Production

Production Coverage (H3 End Production to Today)

3D Art

Campaign Env Art

MP Env Art

Mission Design

MP Design

Engineering

Animation

Audio

Effects

UI

Cinematics

Concept Art

Production

Producers: 11 + TBH

Team Size:

150+

CASE STUDY: HALO 3 ENVIRONMENT ART

Campaign Environment Art

• Listen First…• Some artists felt the schedule was ‘off’

– “I know I cannot make all of this in 9 months!”

• Some artists and designers felt they could just crunch through it– “We shipped Halo 2 – we can do anything!”

New Approach to Mission Audits

• A systematic walkthrough and evaluation of the art and design in each level

• All tasks are quantified and scheduled

• This information was used by Creative Leadership and Production to make decisions

After the Mission Audits

• We were overbooked

• Traditional levers to pull:– Add time?– Add staff?– Reduce scope?

What Was Cut?

Entire Campaign Mission: Guardian Forest

Additional Mission Adjustments

• 2 Smaller missions merged into Cortana

• Large sections of Tsavo Highway were removed

• Small section added to Citadel to account for the loss of Guardian Forest

Sandbox cuts

New Character & Weapon: Guardians

Lessons Learned

• Production added value by – Listening– Gathering data and applying rigor to the

audit process– Presenting recommendations– And working with the team to make final

decisions

Lessons Learned, cont.

• Cuts were made – but it was a positive result because:– Decisions were made much earlier when

compared to Halo 1 and 2– It gave us a realistic schedule that everyone

believed in– Provided constraints that allowed us to focus

the creative effort– Began an empirical process of project

transparency that is now a part of our Studio culture

RECAP

Core Production Philosophy

• As a team, our focus is on creating the conditions in which designers, artists, animators and engineers can do their best work

• How we achieve that is as varied as the people themselves

7 Principles of Production

1. We ensure that Bungie remains a creatively led studio but supporting the creative team

2. We put quality and people first3. We make ourselves as flexible and adaptable as

possible4. We pride ourselves on applying any methodology

as appropriate5. The schedule is a means to an end, not the end

itself6. We empower and enable the team to take

ownership of their schedule and their work7. We still set dates and ship on time

Questions?

These slides will be available online:http://www.bungie.net/publications/

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