The Art of Scoping

Scoping can be an ugly word in the game industry. When someone says, "scope it back" to a creative person, it can be taken as, "I know you want to make the Mona Lisa of game design, but you need to tone it down and make it more like the five dollar Target knock-off, thanks." However, knowing how to scope well can turn your piece of content from a mediocre work to a work of brilliance, and it is not a task you should rely on your producer or lead to do. Here are some things that I've learned about how to scope properly.

The first part of scoping is to prepare for it early. In a pitch meeting a few years ago on City of Heroes, I was asked by Matt Miller what part of my content could be cut due to time constrains. The question baffled me, as I had written an air-tight story in which everything absolutely had to happen, and if time didn't permit, well then I would make it permit. I'd put in the hours to make sure this work for brilliance happened. It's important to note that at this time I was single, and hadn't learned the lesson that another designer, Joe Morrissey, taught me, which was, "Learn how to get everything done during work hours"

"Yes, we can do it in 5 days. Of course, that's working for 24 hours a day for 5 days."

The guys over at Extra Credits have a phrase for scope, which they called the "minimal viable product", but I think that word sends shivers down the spine of designers who think that means you've done "just enough" to ship. Nobody ever wants to just do enough to get by. I prefer to think of it as, how much time do you want the player to spend playing your content? Also, let's include the idea they're having fun during this and that I'm not just wasting their time.

Pictured above, player's time that bad games have wasted. Sorry for the graphic image.

I'll give an example from a design I've made. I wanted the content to be about thirty to forty minutes long. The content was split into 5 sections: prologue, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, epilogue. Act 2 was where the meat of the content was going to take place, where I would do the most complicated scripting/design work and where environment art would have to make the most new assets. Act 2 was going to be about 15 minutes out of the 40 minute game play. Everything aside from Act 2 would be about 5 minutes of game play.

As an side, some people may disagree with me, but I think it's important to aim for a set time you want players to be playing your content. It's really easy to just do what you think is cool in five different places, and then end up with things being wildly different flow-wise. Your first act is 30 minutes, your main act is 5, and your epilogue is 25 minutes. Knowing how much time each section is supposed to take helps you adjust your design early when those times aren't correct.

These remaining acts were meant to be visually appealing by re-using assets in a new manner and by doing scripting/design tricks to make it feel great. All of these methods were safe, proven, and easy to implement. The bulk of my risks were going to be put into Act 2. The risks were that environment art wouldn't have the time to support everything design wanted to do, and that the new design attempt would end up failing and not being fun or being too hard to support 15 minutes of it.

My plan was that anything cut in Act 2 would have its time dispersed into the previous acts. If something failed in Act 2 and it turned out we could only do 10 minutes of content, I could easily add a fun encounter or contact dialog in Act 1 or Act 3 to make up for the content. I had also written the outline of the story so that this could be done without the story suffering for it. It's important to note this added content was planned to not be just "filler", but to actually be interesting.

In the end, the design I mentioned above worked pretty well. I had actually put too much into Act 2 and its initial game play was something around 20-25 minutes. I cut a few things very early on, which at the time, I felt we probably could support. However, when everything was said and done, the entire piece of content flowed way better with those cuts and allowed us to really focus. The important thing about the project was that neither myself nor the environment artist working with me had to crunch at all, and we never felt pressured because we both knew that we had plenty of options if something had to be cut.

They call me The Cutter. ... this was the first thing that appeared on google when I searched "the cutter". Sorry.

This is the importance of scope. Scoping is not about avoiding taking risks or doing ambitious things, it's about doing all those things in a smart way. You just need to view it in a more strategic sense, because players aren't going to see what you wanted to do, they're going to see what you actually did.

I scoffed at the ideas that Matt Miller and Joe Morrissey told me about scope and work. Now, as a married man with a kid, I can see the importance of it. Planning scope in your projects gives you and your team confidence in your plans. If producers and leads know that you are a person who gets things done in the 8:30 - 5:30 work day, then they'll have that much more confidence when you give them time estimates for things. If you say, "it'll take me 5 days", they know you mean it's without crunch and with back up plans made to ensure that will happen.

Knowing that people can take you at your word for planning is a much better feeling than the pat on the back you get for "sticking it out" to crunch through something, trust me.

And not crunching means I get to see this little guy every day. Not pictured: him pooping.