We're literally a few days from getting our release candidate ready and pushing the build into the certification process for both PS3 and 360. Many of us on the team have been pulling some long hours since September of last year, and we're ready to wrap it up. Even though we're still dealing with numerous last-minute issues, we find ourselves starting to reflect on how we got to where we are today on the project: what went well, what went poorly, and what we promise ourselves that we won't do to ourselves -- yet again.
One such issue that we dealt with, as any team has dealt with, is called "feature creep." This is that feature or set of features that come up during development that just sounds so cool that we can't imagine shipping without it. Feature creep can also be the ultimate schedule killer -- a gallon of gas poured on an already raging fire out of control -- but it can also be that emergent feature that cements a product's success and even the excitement the team needs to keep together for that final push to get the game out the door.
We had such a feature creep with the "Bloodshot Fight Clubs" in Condemned 2: Bloodshot. Our game designer created a demo "fight club" for Sega PR purposes so they could load up enemies and weapons from a list for demoing purposes last June. It worked out really well. Both the game designer and Sega got very excited about the Fight Club concept. It was messaged as "using a section of the current levels allowing a player to grab an enemy or two and some weapons and allowing players to practice."
Seemed simple enough... but it then quickly grew in June and July to not only a Practice Arena but to also include five different environments with five unique challenges, and a slew of unique UI work that was needed to pull it off. It all seemed simple and straightforward enough that the payoff was worth the risk -- plus, people were really enjoying them. I always kept the Fight Clubs on the CUT list in case we ran into issues with the schedule -- just in case.