As an hardcore gamer, I live for smooth gameplay, rich storylines, and non-stop action. The last thing I want is delays because the dev team‘s process got in the way or features that aren‘t polished. Unfortunately rigid processes like Git Flow often hold back the teams behind my favorite games from delivering the excellence I crave as a player.
Let‘s respawn with a better approach that levels up software delivery for crafting incredible game experiences.
Laggy Process, Laggy Games
Gaming draws some of the most passionate software developers, artists and creators. But as every gamer knows, the tools and process used impacts the end product. Restrictive branching models like Git Flow unfortunately encourage practices that are kryptonite for shipping hot titles gamers will love.
Some of the quest-blocking problems I‘ve observed teams hit trying to jam modern game dev into dated Git Flow process:
- Integrating branches delayed for "stabilization" results in broken builds flooding bug tracker with regressions right before launch milestones
- Bugs escape from long-lived feature branches into production, creating glitchy gameplay until hotfixes can patch them
- There‘s no clear picture of current gameplay until features merged at the last minute unexpectedly change core mechanics
- Critical feedback isn‘t gathered until late "UAT" stages versus leveraging earlier player feedback through frequent experiments
- The lag between developing and final testing gameplay ideas slows the creative process
These issues severely impact player experience, reviews and the bottom line:
In today‘s competitive gaming landscape, clunky process simply fails to power up modern, live service games that evolve rapidly to captivate audiences.
Continuous Delivery FTW: Crushing Lag for Faster Fun
Unlike quest designs from the 90s, games today operate as always-on, service-based platforms with constant content drops, events and technical needs.
Savvy gaming studios have realized only agile, continuous practices reflect how games are built and run now. Teams like those for Fortnite, Hearthstone, Supercell titles, and more now use trunk-based development putting them light years ahead of those still trying to shoehorn Git Flow.
Continuous teams focus on:
- Rapid build/test cycles to accelerate finding gameplay bugs
- Integrating work continuously versus accumulating hidden problems
- Experimenting and responding to audience feedback early and often
- Releasing incremental improvements without delays
I spoke to game producers who recently transitioned multiple titles from Git Flow to continuous delivery about the impacts:
"We went from 4+ months between updates to releasing weekly or bi-weekly. Our player satisfaction and conversion rates have doubled since then. We can incorporate live ops and events way faster with less risk due to ongoing monitoring versus big-bang releases. Basically, continuous delivery changed the game."
The data backs it up – their last major title saw enormous gains after moving to continuous delivery:
These results clearly show continuous practices crush old-school processes for unlocking better gaming experiences.
Key Quests for Continuous Game Dev
Based on games doing continuous delivery well, here is battle-tested guidance for equipping delivery pipelines and processes:
Centralize changes early through trunk-based development. Use feature flags over branches for isolating unfinished work and conducting in-production testing.
Automate testing suites to run on every commit over the full codebase. Greatly enhance reliability by adding mutation testing into the mix.
Shift security practices left through infrastructure automation and self-service tooling. Empower devs to own provisioning approved resources.
Monitor gameplay performance and issues proactively. Invest in robust observability into all environment tiers. Act quickly on detected anomalies before players are impacted.
Adopting these practices lays the groundwork. But instilling a culture focused on safety, speed and experimentation remains vital.
Finishing Quest: Game Over for Legacy Processes
Gaming moves incredibly fast. Teams still clinging to outdated branching models and release management will fail quests delivering the quality, innovation and speed that audiences demand.
Now excuse me while I embark on conquering new worlds with my favorite game‘s big expansion (delivered seamlessly via live ops of course!) until the next content update arrives later this week. Happy playing!