{"id":470,"date":"2010-03-17T11:25:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T01:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/?p=470"},"modified":"2010-03-17T11:25:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T01:25:17","slug":"fun-over-features-manifesto-for-agile-game-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/fun-over-features-manifesto-for-agile-game-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Fun Over Features &#8211; Manifesto for Agile Game Development"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/funoverfeatures.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" title=\"Fun Over Features\" src=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/images\/blog\/funoverfeatures.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"164\" height=\"72\" \/><\/a>I spent the first two days of GDC undertaking my Scrum Master Certification.\u00a0 As part of this course we had to add an extra item to the agile manifesto.\u00a0 I came up with the concept of \u201cFun over Features\u201d.\u00a0 Focus on finding fun within your game rather than just adding features in the hopes \u201cfun\u201d will emerge out of the features in the future.<\/p>\n<p>The existing list of items in the agile manifesto are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Individuals and interactions<\/strong> over processes and tools<\/li>\n<li><strong>Working software<\/strong> over comprehensive documentation<\/li>\n<li><strong>Customer collaboration<\/strong> over contract negotiation<\/li>\n<li><strong>Responding to change<\/strong> over following a plan<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And below is my item:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Fun<\/strong> over features<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What does it mean?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Basically, it means finding the fun first.\u00a0 The fewer features you can add to your game to get the required amount of fun the better.\u00a0 Focus on the core gameplay that gamers will derive the most fun from, rather than adding outlandish features that make your game stand out.\u00a0 Don\u2019t just add features for the sake of having them.<\/p>\n<p>Some examples of games that have a low or high amount of fun and features include:<\/p>\n<p>Low fun, low features \u2013 Cheap failure (e.g. many unknown flash games)<\/p>\n<p>Low fun, high features \u2013 Big budget flop (e.g. Spore)<\/p>\n<p>High fun, high features \u2013 Big budget success (e.g. Mass Effect)<\/p>\n<p>High fun, low features \u2013 Low budget success (e.g. Canabalt)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relationship between features and fun<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Features and fun are tightly related.\u00a0 You can\u2019t have fun without a feature.\u00a0 Fun is derived from experiencing a feature.\u00a0 However you can have a feature without it being fun.\u00a0 This is the whole reason we need to focus on the fun rather than just the feature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fun Amount vs Feature Size<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s better, adding a small feature that isn\u2019t too fun, or adding a large feature that is extremely fun?\u00a0 On the face of it, the former seems better.\u00a0 It\u2019s not absolutely certain that a feature will reach a certain level of fun.\u00a0 However it is certain that a large feature will take a lot of resources and a long time.\u00a0 Completing the smaller fun features first seems like a logical extension of iterative development \u2013 ascending iterative development.\u00a0 Add features an iteration at a time starting with the smallest features first.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve previously spoken about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/feature-benefit-to-cost-ratio\/\">cost to benefit ratio<\/a>.\u00a0 My suggestion for which features to add is an extension of this concept.\u00a0 Look at the Feature size to fun ratio.\u00a0 Unfortunately this can be quite difficult to quantify, however you can do some simple calculations:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Rate your feature on \u201cfun\u201d      from 1 to 10 \u2013 how much fun players will derive from it<\/li>\n<li>Rate your feature on      \u201csize\u201d from 1 to 10 \u2013 how large the feature will be to implement<\/li>\n<li>Divide fun by size for      each feature &#8211; fun \/ size<\/li>\n<li>Order the features from      largest to small (descending)<\/li>\n<li>Work from the top down<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The obvious caveat to this is if you have core features that must be added to your game.\u00a0 However if they are quite low on the list I\u2019d question the motives for why this is such a core part of your game if it isn\u2019t fun enough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s a little investigation into a simple concept I came up with on the fly.\u00a0 I highly recommend Clinton Keith\u2019s Scrum course which lead to this idea.\u00a0 I also highly recommend GDC to anyone thinking of going next year.\u00a0 I learnt more than I could ever have imagined and made countless critical contacts.<\/p>\n<p>What do you think of this idea?\u00a0 If you could add an item to the agile manifesto what would it be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spent the first two days of GDC undertaking my Scrum Master Certification.\u00a0 As part of this course we had to add an extra item to the agile manifesto.\u00a0 I came up with the concept of \u201cFun over Features\u201d.\u00a0 Focus on finding fun within your game rather than just adding features in the hopes \u201cfun\u201d <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/fun-over-features-manifesto-for-agile-game-development\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33],"tags":[31,112],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-development","tag-game-designer","tag-game-development"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgEc5-7A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doolwind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}