Fergusson demoing Gears 4 at the E3 2016 Microsoft press conference rehearsal Image: Casey Rodgers
Fergusson and the triage team reviewing a bug. Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
The triage meetings serve two purposes. The first is to come up with a strategy on how to fix a particular bug. With the heads of The Coalition's multiplayer, single player, production, and technology divisions, plus other critical staff in the room, the team can move quickly to identify what is causing a particular bug and come up with a theory on how to address it."If you want to ship the highest quality product you can, that means making smart decisions, not arbitrary ones."
In one triage meeting, the team watched a video of a tester helplessly stuck behind a locked door. The door was designed to lock behind players as they entered a new area, but after dying in that area, the tester respawned behind the door, which remained in a locked state. The player was trapped.Read more: A Bug's Life
Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
The AAA game development cycle can be broken down into four phases. There's the concept phase, where the studio comes up with the idea for the game. There's the pre-production phase, where it creates the prototype and basic art that proves that idea is worth pursuing. At this stage, the publisher (Microsoft, in this case) decides if it wants to take the game into the full production phase, when the bulk of the work of creating it takes place. Last, there's the finaling phase, where the team squashes the last bugs and gets the game in shape for retail.Most aspiring game developers want to get involved with those concept and pre-production phases, where they get to be creative and come up with ideas. People who actually pursue a career in game development will either learn to appreciate the production phase or burn out, because that's where the bulk of the work takes place. But few people relish the finalizing phase. It's stressful, tedious, and an exhausting way to finish an exhausting few years of development.This is where Fergusson excels, and why he has a reputation of being "a closer."Every room at The Coalition has some kind of bug count up on the wall, often with detailed charts that show the number of bugs declining from hundreds to double digits over the course of months, and the number of days left until the team has to submit the game to cert."If you play the game like an asshole there's not much we can do."
McNiven at his desk, sneaking a view at an Overwatch match while he works. Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
That type of crunch, Fergusson said, was the result of a situation The Coalition has been actively trying to avoid by being realistic about the scope of the project from the beginning. That means cutting features and ideas early and often. Based on what I've played of Gears 4, one criticism I suspect game reviewers will raise is that it doesn't do enough new things. It's mostly more of the formula players are familiar with, but on new, modern technology. As Fergusson and other senior staff explained it, building a Gears game from scratch with completely new tools, on a completely new platform, was a challenge that didn't leave them much time to revolutionize that formula.Even with a pragmatist like Fergusson steering the ship, finaling a game and getting a bug count down from 1,000 to zero is an uncertain process. At this point, The Coalition has been testing the game around the clock for months, and it's still finding bugs it's never seen before. What do you do about that?"I had a moment where I asked how many of [The Coalition] had not shipped a AAA game before; at least a third of the group raised their hands," Fergusson said. "Either they're young or they're coming from the movie industry or mobile or whatever, and I explained, summer is coming. It's going to be a push because here is where we are and here's where we need to get and there's only a certain amount of time. There's no way to finesse it. You just start working hard. I want you to be prepared for that."Read more: AAA Game Development: A Glossary
Audio director John Morgan in his soundproof room. Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
Lead campaign producer Zoë Curnoe with the "get shit done" award. Curnoe won it for getting the Gears 4 E3 2016 demo ready in time. Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
In fact, the reason Gears 4 is with Microsoft and not its original creators, Epic Games, is that the latter didn't have deep enough pockets to make it. A company like Microsoft can bet $50-200 million on a game, lose it all, and survive the hit. A smaller company like Epic might not, so it sold the rights and let Microsoft take the risk. Even for Microsoft, Gears 4 is a hedge compared to the completely new shooter The Coalition was working on and shelved in favor of Gears 4. Microsoft has hard data on how many people bought the previous games and how many of them are still playing them online, which makes it easier to project how many copies Gears 4 can sell. That was not the case with the new, unproven game idea The Coalition worked on originally."The analogy I use is that making AAA games is like the Formula 1 of computer science."
Image: Jackie Dives/Motherboard
Fergusson said that the studio will lose three days of work the day after release because the entire office will just read reviews, and keep an eye on Reddit and NeoGAF, the influential discussion board frequented by developers, journalists, and players. The immediate reactions also raise the bar for AAA games even higher."The reality of software development is you never finish a game."
The Coalition celebrating Gears 4 having gone gold. To the right of Fergusson is head of Xbox Phil Spencer, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Windows and Devices head Terry Myerson, and corporate VP of the division Yusuf Mehdi. Gears 4 cuts a line through almost every part of Microsoft's business. Though he is not pictured, I was told that even Microsoft co-founder and board member Bill Gates was there to celebrate. Image: Microsoft.
