Diminutive Diatribes: Balance in a Developer’s Teams

            Let's talk about my favorite video game developer ever.  Vanillaware.  Vanillaware...is not necessarily the best off developer in the gaming world.  They have an incredibly unique art style and all of their games use beautiful hand drawn sprites.  Their gameplay also tends to be very solid.  However, not only are they a small developer, they are also...very unbalanced.  George Kamitani himself mentioned that the company consists largely of artists working together and that it was a great experience for him, as an artist and the director of most Vanillaware games, to work with them.  However, do you know what Vanillaware doesn't have a lot of?  Composers.  Sound designers.  Programmers.  Marketers.  The company is a repository of artistic talent...but of little else.  And this is a major problem, no matter how competent the developer.

A company of artists.  Great for visual flair, lacking in many other areas.

            Balance in a development team is remarkably important, both for indie developers and for professional developers.  When I say balance, I refer to two things.  The first is that you have a team with enough materials to finish a game on their own.  Even if the music is sub par or the art suffers, you have enough skill amongst your team that you can finish the game.  This is a balanced development staff, where they can do everything that is necessary for a game.  There are those who can program, compose, do sound design, do art, story boards, etc.  The second way of looking at balance in a developer's teams is recognizing their own weakness.  While I have given Vanillaware crap for their lack of sound design, that is the reason they outsource.  And outsourcing is not necessarily bad.  If you have a balanced team, but your balance leans more towards art rather than music or game design, then outsourcing can help bring your game itself back into balance.  The team plays to its strengths and the outsourced party helps to complement those strengths.  The important thing to recognize, however, is that these two ideas of balance do not exist in a vacuum.  Balance as I have laid it out means basically having the ability to finish a game and making the best game possible with the given materials.

Despite the fantastic art, Vanillaware frequently needs to outsource or receive assistance to finish their games.  This...is not a good thing.

            However, why is this idea of balance so important?  Well, Darwin stated that overspecialization leads to extinction.  Conversely, in game design, it's a good idea to know your strengths and play to it.  I love Vanillaware's art style, story, and often their gameplay.  Know what else I love?  The music of every Vanillaware game.  The music is done by an independent company, Basiscape.  This...isn't necessarily a big deal, due to the fact that many companies will outsource what they cannot do themselves.  However, let me ask a question.  What happens if Basiscape is bought out, goes out of business, or simply refuses to work with Vanillaware anymore?  Can they compose music on their own to match their games?  In the release of Dragon's Crown, they needed Atlus's help to finish the programming aspect of it and help with translation.  Could they have done it without Atlus there to back them up?  For the translation of their game Muramasa: The Demon Blade, Vanillaware needed the help of Ignition entertainment.  Do you see what I'm getting at?  In game design, overspecialization is desired to a large degree because it allows a company to be different from the crowd...the sad tragedy, however, is that the company may not be able to deliver a finished product specifically because it is different from the crowd.

This company goes out of business or refuses to work with them and Vanillaware has no options for music.  Basiscape has done the music for almost 100% of Vanillaware's games.

            Vanillaware creates amazing games, however the stars have to be in perfect alignment for them to see the light of day.  They rely heavily on other companies for their sound design, assistance with programming, and for translation so that their games can reach any region outside of Japan.  If any of these elements are missing, it is unlikely a game will be finished, or at least that it will manage a world wide release.  Vanillaware is probably the most prominent example, but this is also pretty true of indie games as well as other major developers.  Mistwalker leans heavily on Smile Please for support with music.  Tri-Scape worked with Square-Enix for a while with games like Star Ocean and the Valkyrie Profile Series.  Gearbox outsourced Aliens: Colonial Marines to several studios, before having to do revisions on their own.  These studios would, and in some cases did, suffer greatly from their over reliance on outsourcing.  It is a tool, but not the only one.  I say that the bare minimum you need in a company is at least one person with the skills to do what you are outsourcing, just in case.

Outsourcing is not necessarily a bad thing.  I'll take music from Nobuo Uematsu's independent composition company over a homegrown developer any day.  However...you can't always count on that, so you need a fallback plan.

            If a company's support or outsourcing goes belly up, without any way to finish the game, the project may be abandoned and the studio closed.  However, indie developers tend to show that where there's a will, there's a way, some sitting on games for years until they can actually get the skills they personally need to finish them or finding those who can help.  If a development team has balance, namely that if they don't lean too heavily in one direction towards art, design, story, or music, but have at least one or two people in every area, they may eventually be able to finish a game.  If support does fall through, then the developer can work on their own to finish their game.  Perhaps the most balanced teams are those that rely on only one or two developers.  Aquaria only had two developers.  Derek Yu focused on art design and story while Alec Holowkwa focused on programming language and musical composition/sound design.  If either left, the game would have probably fallen through, however because of the closeness of their work and the size of their team, it would be feasible for one programmer to finish the work of the other.  Dean Dodrill is another good example, who built Dust: An Elysian Tail on his own for several years.  He was the only programmer, so he had to do all the work.  There was no way a departing team member or outsourcing would ruin his game since it hinged solely on him.  For bigger development teams, it's best to have at least one or two specialists who can do one thing really well, like music or programming, that have overlapping skills so if outsourcing is needed, they can still do work.  And if the outsourcing falls through, the company has a fall back plan.

Ironically, the developers with the most balance in their teams are the one man development companies.  Dean Dodrill built Dust: An Elysian Tail from scratch, all by himself.  No risk of failure if outsourcing or support fell through.

            The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that just because you have a balanced development team does not mean you should absolutely not outsource.  Remember, the other half of balance in game development is recognizing fallacies in your own team and working to correct them.  This often means that if you have a weak sound design team or no time to build cinematics, then you should outsource them so that the product looks good all around.  Outsourcing is a tool that game developers recognize has its uses.  Legend of Iya, for example, is built entirely by Darkfalz, a pixel artist who also works with game design and very amateur music.  He recognized his weakness in sound design and decided to outsource to someone who could give his game a more fitting soundtrack.  That's alright.  That's clever/important to recognize.  If this outsourcing falls through, he can still finish his game with the skills he possesses, however balance dictates that if music is not his strong suit, then perhaps it is wiser to outsource.  I say, it is important to use it when appropriate, but not be completely reliant on it.  Have a fallback plan, by having balance within your development team.

Legend of Iya is not at its strongest musically, so the creator is outsourcing for music.  But he himself CAN make some music for the game, just in case.  Balance is about making the game as good as possible...but also having a fallback plan

            So, to reiterate, balance in a developer's team can mean two things.  It means having enough team members with the skills necessary to finish a game all on their own.  However, since people often specialize rather than having general knowledge in all aspects of game design, they will more often than not play to their strengths, leaving one area of a game weaker than the others.  In this case, you want to bring balance to the game itself through outsourcing to people who specialize in what you lack.

            Whatever you do, don't go into game development completely reliant on the promises or the work of someone else, because things happen.  Contracts are breached, disasters happen, word comes down from corporate HQ, and sometimes outsourcing just falls through.  If you don't have a balanced team, your game may never see the light of day unless you shop around for another skilled group of people to help you.  This can lead to delays, wasted time and money, and eventual cancellation.  Balance goes both ways.  While you want to deliver the best product you can, you should not be so overspecialized that you cannot finish said project on your own, at least in my opinion.  It's fine to have specialized team members or even for a development company itself to specialize in certain things, but always try and remember to have a fallback.  Have balance in your team so that if you are backed into a corner and left without outside support, you can still deliver a game to us.

I just want to encourage developers to have balance.  More games means more options which means gamers have more choices for enjoyment.

            No matter how bad a game, I believe that it is better for something to be released rather than just outright cancelled.  Even terrible games have some merit in that they can be enjoyably flawed or they highlight the strength of other games.  So, even if you can't deliver a master piece, have the tools necessary to release a game at all.

Kid you not, this glitchy monstrosity of a game got released.  And yet Mega Man Legends 3 was cancelled...depressing.  At least be able to give us a game, developers.  No matter how terrible, I think it's better to have them then to not...even if it's just so we can point and laugh.

            I'd also like to take a moment and ponder the irony of my previous statements.  Many of us hate games like Big Rigs Over the Road Racing or Ride to Hell because they are egregious examples of a failure of fundamental game design.  However, they were at least released.  And even if they are terrible to play, they can be used as examples to help other developers learn.  So I stand by my statements.  I doubt these teams had proper balance, but they still managed to finish these products.  The gaming world, even if it is just due to the lack of something to mock, laugh at, or learn from, would be poorer if these had just been cancelled and quietly swept under the rug.