A day in the life of MMO developer Heatwave Interactive

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has published a fascinating account of a day in the office at massively multiplayer online role-playing game developer Heatwave Interactive. The article covers the operations of a regular day, but there’s a lot of interesting observations about how game developers and designers work.

After Scrum, I spot Phil, the producer, grabbing Jeremy to talk to one of the external contractors about the collision failures in the Estate. They talk quickly, agree on tactics, and are in done in 15 seconds. I grab Phil quickly, and get his story; his job is basically knocking heads together; “Before this I was with KPMG (one of the big four accountants). I was on the beach, having finished my latest project and I heard about these MMOs. I started playing them…” Cue involvement in the first MMO Meridian 59 and EverQuest, then joining Origin as a project manager. How big a change is the world of games from accountancy? “It’s become more structured, but Scrum is still elastic; I can’t imagine implementing CMM level 5 (a military or business organisational structure) here – game developers are not that super-regimented.”