A quick definition for those who don't know. Scope is a term similar to goal, in that a scope is decided before a project is usually undertaken a gives a brief idea of how big a project might be. An example might be "Create a game that is pong and breakout combined". A project with a small scope might just be a short story or a small game with minimal mechanics, like our example whereas a project with a large scope might be a AAA game or huge ass MMO. In general a smaller scope means less budget, time and effort required to finish the project whereas a large scope might mean years of development, huge budgets and a lot of man hours. Revolver is defiantly on the smaller end here being developed solely by myself in my spare time. That said, thanks to the alluring power of feature creep, the scope for Revolver has been expanded which means the game is bigger than it was originally going to be.
Feature creep is a favourite term of mine but it is the arch nemesis to scope. Take Revolvers scope "Create a game where a player only has a revolver with limited ammo to defend themselves from lots of evil beasties". What feature creep does is see this as an opportunity to add, well, features. Revolver was meant to originally be a much simpler game but now it has: lighting systems, effective path-finding, multiple waves, a trait & perk system, multiple enemy types etc. Now all this said, feature creep isn't inherently a bad thing but, like many things in life, too much will quickly fuck up your day. Feature creep can quickly & effectively make your project, what ever it might be, become much too large, take much too long and cost more money depending on what the project might be. There is a silver lining I've found and a technique that actually allows me to a degree at least, control feature creep in games, although a similar system would probably work for most varieties of creative project.
Let's say you're part way through building your game and you have a fantastic idea for a new mechanic. Start with throwing in a very, very basic version of whatever this mechanic is and have it tested over and over again. While getting it tested ask these questions to yourself and sometimes to whoever is testing it:
"Is this particular mechanic enjoyable & why?"
"Does this mechanic benefit other present or to be implemented mechanics?"
"How much longer will it take to implement this new mechanic?"
If the answer is positive to all three questions e.g. yes, yes, not that long, I'd personally say add it. If it's 2/3 I'd probably still say go for it but honestly it isn't probably worth it in that instance. Anything else of course should be ignored. You might be thinking now why these three particular questions? Well the first question asks about how fun the feature will be and in most instances I'd argue a games primary goal should be to be enjoyable. No matter the game type or setting the player should leave the experience feeling that they have learnt something or at the very least had a real good time. The second question brings up the importance of having all parts of a game work soundly together. This may seem obvious but the amount of games I've played with poorly tacked on RPG elements and other terrible features (real money marketplace in Diablo is a common example). Interestingly Revolver actually has tacked on RPG mechanics as they we're not an original feature but because I've been putting in the effort to have them affect a huge variety of things and the progressive difficulty of waves it actually fits in the game pretty well. I think so at least. The last question is simple to understand. If I we're to add this to the game how much longer would it take to finish? Obviously this is much, much more important to people with deadlines but it's still important to note whether working on one feature might take time out of working on another and whether that is a good thing to do.
"Is this particular mechanic enjoyable & why?"
"Does this mechanic benefit other present or to be implemented mechanics?"
"How much longer will it take to implement this new mechanic?"
If the answer is positive to all three questions e.g. yes, yes, not that long, I'd personally say add it. If it's 2/3 I'd probably still say go for it but honestly it isn't probably worth it in that instance. Anything else of course should be ignored. You might be thinking now why these three particular questions? Well the first question asks about how fun the feature will be and in most instances I'd argue a games primary goal should be to be enjoyable. No matter the game type or setting the player should leave the experience feeling that they have learnt something or at the very least had a real good time. The second question brings up the importance of having all parts of a game work soundly together. This may seem obvious but the amount of games I've played with poorly tacked on RPG elements and other terrible features (real money marketplace in Diablo is a common example). Interestingly Revolver actually has tacked on RPG mechanics as they we're not an original feature but because I've been putting in the effort to have them affect a huge variety of things and the progressive difficulty of waves it actually fits in the game pretty well. I think so at least. The last question is simple to understand. If I we're to add this to the game how much longer would it take to finish? Obviously this is much, much more important to people with deadlines but it's still important to note whether working on one feature might take time out of working on another and whether that is a good thing to do.
Anyway to sum all of this up I think it's important when working on pretty much anything really that every so often you take a step back and make sure you aren't making more work for yourself that isn't even going to give decent returns. Make sure to keep a tab of all the ideas you've had though. I've already found that old ideas I haven't been able to use yet can have a comfortable place elsewhere if you take the time to think about how it can be implemented.
For more interesting info about this sort of thing I'd really recommend checking out these folks: youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz They cover pretty much anything about games, how they are made and especially how they can be made well.
-Beau
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