Breaking The Wheel

Data Science

A picture of Dwight Eisenhower, a man who understood the paradox of planning all too well
– Posted Under: Design, Management, Operations, Production, Strategy, Uncategorized Leave a comment

The Paradox of Planning

One of my favorite quotes revolves around planning.  It came from Helmuth Von Moltke, a 19th century German Field Marshall: “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”1. The implication here is simple enough: the plan that makes total sense on paper quickly falls apart when confronting the entropy of reality. And yet planning is essential for getting a team moving in the right direction. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “I have found that plans are useless but planning is everything.” And thus we arrive at what I like to call the paradox of planning: planning is the act of creating something that is simultaneously infinitely valuable and completely worthless.

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A screen grab from one of Justin's GDC17 sessions
– Posted Under: Game Planning With Science!, Management, Marketing, Operations, Production, Soft Skills, Strategy, Video Game Marketing Leave a comment

GDC17 Feedback and Responses

GDC 2017 was my first GDC ever. So, I figured “Why not be an asshole about it?” and signed up to give two presentations. 6’ish months later I found myself at GDC, sweating bullets and shitting bricks. I should also mention that the longest presentation I’d ever given was about 10 minutes, and had signed up for a total of 90 minutes of speaking time. Anyhoo, both presentations went well and nobody died. And then, a month and half’ish later, my compiled speaker feedback arrived. It was largely positive. But, of course, there were a few people (4 in each session, based on the reviews) who took umbrage with ol’ Justy. And some of the negative comments bothered me. Not because people disagreed with me (that’s to be expected, after all) but because I couldn’t respond. But then I realized that not only could I respond (having a blog and[…]

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A picture of scientists who hate muda. Trust me.
– Posted Under: Game Planning With Science!, Management, Operations, Practical Guides, Production Leave a comment

The Muda of Defects, Or: Finding Freedom Through Discipline – Game Planning With Science! Part 13

One of the more interesting characters I’ve encountered in my wanderings through the internet is a man by the name of Jocko Willink. He’s the author of Extreme Ownership and a business consultant. Oh, and an ex-Navy SEAL and a black-belt in jiu-jitsu. So, the man knows a thing or two about getting shit done under arduous circumstances. And his personal mantra is “Discipline equals freedom.” And the more I study operation science and the more I learn about software development, the more I see his point. So, in this post, I’m going to walk you through a multi-step process for testing code and how a little QA discipline can avail a lot of freedom.

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Game Planning With Science Preface Featured Image
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Discovery Versus Process – A Preface to Game Planning With Science!

How can we wrap our heads around the chaos of game development? By understanding that the famous phrase “find the fun” implies something important: discovery. How do you manage the creative process? By acknowledging the latter word of the phrase: process. If you can understand how those terms related – and where they differ – you can appreciate something vital to effective production. That nothing we do in game development is completely devoid of process. And, if you can learn to separate the process from the discovery, then science becomes a weapon against the dark forces of development hell.

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Scheduling Video Games Scientifically featured image
– Posted Under: Art, Design, Game Planning With Science!, Operations, Production, Tips for Indies 1 Comment

Scheduling Video Games Scientifically! – Game Planning With Science! Part 7

This post is a bit of a capstone. It utilizes all of the tools to make video games scientifically that I covered in the Parts 1-6 of “Game Planning With Science”. Make sure you’ve reviewed those weighty tomes before digging in here. In this post, I’m going to walk you through how to utilize capacity charts, story points, user stories, variance, and the central limit theorem to forecast development time lines.

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Game Planning with Science Part 4, Planning Games with the Central Limit Theorem featured image
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Planning Games Using The Central Limit Theorem – Game Planning With Science! Part 4

In Part 4 of “Game Planning With Science”, I’m going to wrap up the statistics primer I started in Part 3. This time, I’ll cover one of the most fascinating aspects of statistics: the Central Limit Theorem. Why does one aspect of statistics deserve its own post? BECAUSE IT’S FRIGGIN’ RAD, THAT’S WHY! Also (and probably more importantly) it allows us to make predictions when planning games, even if we don’t have a lot of data.

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Video Game Statistics featured image of three scientists talking
– Posted Under: Game Planning With Science!, Operations, Production 2 Comments

Video Game Statistics: A Primer – Game Planning With Science! Part 3

In parts 1 and 2 of “Game Planning With Science!” I covered the basics of process management and capacity charts. Now, in Part 3, I’m going to step away from direct operations management to discuss some basic concepts of statistics. Riveting, I know. But also essential if you want to be able to forecast accurately and confidently. There will be some heavy lifting in this post, but hang in there. A better understanding of statistics will change the way you see and treat your own data. It will also make you a more informed consumer of the information the rest of the world vomits at you every day.

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