[Update #46: How (Proto-)Typical]

 

That's weird, I've heard a few developers rail against the vertical slice, most notably Ron Gilbert on his Grumpy Gamer blog. It certainly resonated with me as being a clumsy and inefficient concept when applied to a game. I'm curious to hear the counterargument, I suppose it can get everyone on the same page while exposing issues early on but it still strikes me as a weird idea.

 

 http://grumpygamer.com/6843121

 

I think Gilbert is profoundly wrong.  The key point of the vertical slice is that it tests all your real-time gameplay systems together.  It gives you a sense of the player's moment-to-moment experience during a portion of the game.  That requires you to prove that all your graphics, audio, gameplay, and possibly networking systems are mostly functional and integrated properly.  That, in turn, is invaluable knowledge.

 

You always want to have a running version of your game.  The vertical slice is just the first relatively complete portion you get running.  Gilbert's spatial metaphor is all wrong -- from a gamer's standpoint, playing the vertical slice is like seeing a significant portion of the whole experience of the game.  It's more like seeing just the Mona Lisa's face, or something.  The only way this wouldn't be true is if your game consists of many tiny minigames, but even then a vertical slice (a couple of the minigames) is relevant.

 

This is exactly how we look at it. The vertical slice to us is just a way to take a big project and break it down into a small chunk for the team to focus on first. We generally have two questions that we ask: "Are we demonstrating the experience we want for this game" and "Do we have everything we need to produce final assets"? Before we get into Production, it's important to us to make sure we feel the design and tech have those solid foundations. We don't want to start ramping up more employees onto the project if we're not ready. We can end up spending time during Production redoing stuff (AKA "wasting money and time") which either reduces the length of the game, and/or affects its overall quality.

 

The name "vertical slice" does conjure a weird mental visual. That article's image implies this long thin slice, but I feel that is misleading, at least on how we think of it. I agree with RepoMan: If we were to visualize our vertical slice using the Mona Lisa example, it's going to be a rectangle containing her face. We're going to shoot for something small (but meaningful) and see what works and what doesn't so we have information on what to do before we try to paint the whole thing.

 

...and completely agreed on always having running versions of our games. On all of our games, we do a daily build process and the results of it are vetted by testers, and anything that is going to cause team members issues is fixed ASAP into a build update. It's more in depth than that, but that's the gist of it.

[An Awesome Surprise]

Sooo, a strange box shows up at your door from an unknown sender. Did you draw straws to see who would open it or simply declare Happy Hour, kickback, and wait for MCA to volunteer?  Or maybe you took the expedient route and told Rob there was a bottle of The Balvenie Fifty inside?

 

Seriously, though, you are all appreciated and deserve the respect you were afforded.

Heh, I hid behind a wall - Feargus opened it up.

[An Awesome Surprise]

We had a box come in today from "A. Backer" out in Pennsylvania. Opening it revealed this in a beautiful box:

 

 

This is now proudly displayed on our front desk. To A. Backer (and to all of you)... THANKS from everyone here!!!

 

Darren

[The Obsidian Order of Eternity wants YOU! part 3]

Hi there! I've joined the Obsidian Order, with special thanks to Pierre and SD from the Kickstarter Comments. They both sponsored $4 ea for me to join, because I am unable to back the project (fraud concerns and all that apparently!) sooo, first off thank you to them, and I am:

 

Dread Lord Grandmaster Chef of the Obsidian Order

 

(I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but if you played Ultima Online back in the day, it'll ring a bell. )

 

-Darren

[Funny Pictures Thread]

 

HOLY CRAP, that's funny. I practically fell out of my chair. Nice one, Pop.

[Halloween Obsidian Style!]

Woohoo! Iron Maiden wins this thread! ...or who ever was the Iron Maiden shirt.

 

yay, I win

[Obsidian Entertainment and Future D&D/Forgotten Realms Games]

I'm speaking for myself here, but I really love working on D&D games - even after working on a bunch of multi-year D&D projects (IWD1 [plus IWD1: HoW and IWD1:Trials,] IWD2, BGDA, BGDA2, NWN2.) D&D is near and dear to many of us at Obsidian, and if the planets are in alignment, D&D games are always something we get very excited about working on, and our "master plan" definitely doesn't rule out doing more of them.

 

Of course there's an appeal to work on new, original, and different games too; fortunately we have multiple dev teams at Obsidian, and if Atari's interested in new D&D games and we have people available and can keep food on the table for our devs, we'll try to figure out how to do it.

 

4th Edition looks pretty frickin' cool too....