


Session Name: Developing Imperfect Software: How to Prepare for Development Pipeline Failure
Speaker(s): Ronald Pieket
Company Name(s): Insomniac Games
Track / Format: Production

Computer game software development, more than any other kind of software development, relies heavily on the usage of software that is itself in development. Software that is in development is inherently unstable. Often the entire content creation team depends on this imperfect software for their daily workflow. And when it fails, people cannot do their work. The larger the team, the greater the impact on productivity.

Much effort goes into preventing software failure, especially if a large team relies on it. But we must understand that failure is a natural part of software development.

Therefore we cannot rely on prevention alone. We must have a strategy to manage software failure. This session will discuss what happens once a failure has occurred, how can we make sure that everyone can keep working? How can we make our development software "fail well"?

GDC 2012

Ronald Pieket

Insomniac Games

free content