Sam Bradley on Game Production, Scope, and Cross-Team Delivery

Understanding the Game Development Process

Sam Bradley has worked across QA, production, project management, and development direction at studios including Electronic Arts, Maxis, Sledgehammer Games, and Cliffhanger Games.

In this interview, we talk about scope, team coordination, QA, external support, and what helps game projects stay under control when production gets complex.

Main Topics

• Game Production
• Production Leadership
• Scope & Planning
• QA & Testing
• Team Management
• Outsourcing
• Production Pipelines
• Delivery Strategy

Interview

Video Game Production: Building a Career Across Every Stage

Question: You’ve worked in games for many years, moving through QA, project management, production, and development direction. How would you describe your path through the industry?

Sam Bradley:

I started in QA as a tester at Sony Playstation and quickly moved to QA Manager for all of Sony 1st Party Games in North America. It was quite a transition and kicked off my love for working in games.

Throughout my career, I always tried to learn something new and focused on building better processes, communication and ensuring health teams. That has led me to a lot of success on some amazing teams.

One of my most impactful was during my time at Sledgehammer for Activision. I reorganized how they approached QA on Call of Duty titles. A typical QA team was around 100+ inhouse QA dev staff who did only blackbox testing.

I built a program of embedded QA, smarter approaches and tools training and built a team of around 35 internal QA testers that was extremely successful. I took that program and shared it with other Call of Duty studios and they adopted some of my programs.

I also was one of the first QA teams to build both an Engineering QA dept but also start a program around automation for the dev and engineering team. Activision recognized my efforts and awarded me an Activisionary award, which they only give to a handful of people each year. Mine was for building new innovation and change for the company.

I went on to become a Development Director initially overseeing just 1-2 dev + QA teams and focusing on improving process and team health. That evolved into them giving me more and managing multiple teams internationally across the US, CAN, UK and AUS from VFX, Lighting, Animation, Rigging, Character, Weapons and some Tech Art + QA.

My last project with EA was on Marvel’s Black Panther and it was one of the most amazing teams I had worked with. Everyone was so passionate to be both beautiful, respectful of the culture and tell an amazing story.

I was in charge of all of their World Art teams (Env Art, Concept, VFX, Lighting, Tech Art). I was very sad to see that project cancelled and the studio closed.

Game Production: How Experience Changes Your Perspective

Question: Looking back at that path, what changed the most in how you think about game production?

Sam Bradley:

Coming from a QA Leadership perspective, you see all the broken parts but also how the pieces slowly come together.

Stepping into a Production role really opened my eyes on all of the planning, negotiations, risk management, project pivots and people management that goes into it.

Also there is rarely one formula to pull it all together. Adaptability and attention to detail are key skills needed.

QA in Game Development: Improving Planning, Risk, and Delivery

Question: Your background includes both QA leadership and development direction. How has QA shaped the way you look at planning, risk, and delivery?

Sam Bradley:

Having a QA background really helped me pay strong attention to the user experience (UX) and getting QA involved early and often in the review and playtest process.

I included embedded QA assets into all of my development team so they had a strong understanding of what was being made and why. They also provided constant feedback to UX and bugs, which enabled the team to have clean work and a clear focus on the results for the player.

I build training programs for QA in those teams for them to learn how content was made. With QA learning and using those dev tools they could more easily find and provide necessary details for the dev. In many cases QA had the ability to fix minor bugs for the dev.

From this I have several QA staff transition into developers (Design, Art, Engineering, Production, Animation, Audio and other fields).

Production Risk Management: The First Warning Signs

Question: When a game project starts to lose control, what are usually the first signs you notice?

Sam Bradley:

I start to see a breakdown in communication typically first. One team goes quiet on providing updates, has excuses but no plan to address their issues, and frustrations start to boil.

I would have regular stand ups and team project/feature updates weekly to constantly check on team health, deliverable tracking status, dependency status.

Some delays and/or issues are tied to the following: no clear vision of what our goals are, too many decision makers, tech debt impacting targets and teams, taking on too much work and not planning appropriately, breakdown in communications/tracking, not managing Change Management effectively.

Scope Creep: Where Teams Underestimate the Work

Question: Where do teams usually underestimate scope: features, approvals, testing, polish, dependencies, or something else?

Sam Bradley:

Mostly around Features and managing Scope Creep. As the devs dig deeper into the work it can sometimes add a lot more work that was planned. I often give a 30% resource and time buffer in early – Alpha to development to account for changes and med/light delays.

Testing is also something that a lot of planners leave out of their projections, they go from each sprint/release back to back and dont give QA a window to find bugs and then leave room for their team to fix those bugs. Its can lead to bottlenecks and a lot of bug debt towards the end of the project.

Locking down design to find the fun often can have delays. Understanding the Engineering and tech debt can slow down a project if not properly understood and scoped.

Game Development Planning: Why Great Plans Don't Always Work

Question: Have you seen cases where a production plan looked fine on paper, but became much harder once real work started? What usually creates that gap?

Sam Bradley:

This happens 98% of the time in game dev planning in the early stages. What may seem straight forward, almost always has hidden complications, whether it be with resources, complexity, dependency and time.

Usually it can be tied to either tech debt, like engine and tools needed to do the work, or its tied to locking down the creative side as it can be really hard to timebox a design team to ‘find the fun’ and the Art team to have the vision and clear direction.

Working very closely on the Art side with Art and Creative Directors can often have weeks of reviews and iterations where production may have only planned for a portion of that time.

Game Development Workflow: Where Information Gets Lost

Question: With art, design, engineering, QA, and production moving at the same time, where does information usually get lost?

Sam Bradley:

Information can typically get lost when teams are not providing or tracking the progress and health of their current work. Teams can not have detailed updates or missing information. Also not having clear short and mid term goals everyone if aligned and working towards.

This is where a good Producer needs to have eyes on it all and tracking progress in detail in a shared system that all stakeholders can have visibility. Having dashboards on tools like JIRA helps with organizing it.

Also for QA, its very important for dev to let QA know when work or a feature is ready to be tested. All too often dev will close a task but not let QA know and then QA gets surprised with a new or broken feature they were not prepared for.

This is why having embedded QA in those groups helps with communication and visibility on what the dev team is working on.

Game Production Pipeline: Reducing Friction Between Teams

Question: What usually creates the most friction between departments during production?

Sam Bradley:

A few things can create tension amongst teams – direct dependencies, where teams or work can be blocked downstream and create frustrations and priority changes in work schedules.

Poor communication, when teams don’t have visibility into what other groups are working on, we can see redundancy, unnecessary work, direct conflicts in deliverables and priorities.

When teams sign up for work and not inform or consider teams that work that also is part of that content and not planned for across the board.

Late changes made by one group can create animosity with other teams that had created or planned content for the original work and now have to pivot and/or delete work.

Feature Prioritization: Deciding What Stays and What Goes

Question: How do you decide when a feature needs more time, when it should be simplified, and when it should be cut?

Sam Bradley:

Typically most work up to Pre-Alpha have some room for changes and wish lists and the teams can usually adjust to try new things or dig deeper into more complex work.

As the project nears Alpha, where all core features and functions need to work (can have some placeholders), the game needs to lock down drive towards firming up content and planning for polish. The stakeholders and Production leadership set key milestone/Release reviews to check on the Project Health, Completion Trajectory, Budget, Bug Count, etc. In these reviews we try to determine what features may need to be reduced and/or removed.

From Call of Duty, early on there are lots of amazing ideas and early development of new features. As the project nears its release date, many of those are cut, reduced or moved to future DLC planning, due to time, resources, play testing user experience and budget.

Always go back to looking at what the core experience you want for the player, sometimes features and ideas are cool, but may deviate from your overall experience.

Work out a priority sheet and label those experiences and that will help you see where they fall on if you need to keep them or can cut/reduce. We do this a lot with games and it is a great way to break it down.

Building Strong Production Habits Early

Question: For smaller teams or indie studios, what production habits are worth building early?

Sam Bradley:

I would say to get some key goals and outline a timeline and strategy to deliver. Understand how games work in phases and it doesn’t need to be polished or perfect early. Focus on what is the fun hook for the player experience and how do you prototype it to meet your goals.

Having a rigid Production process for tickets, etc. isnt necessary especially when you are in pre-production. That should firm up as the teams start to line up and start building out their goals and backlog of work.

Make it a habit of building good communication and visibility of what each other is working on. A good producer can help you build those channels and processes.

Setting stand ups for regular updates, sending out weekly status updates, having weekly/bi weekly progress sharing updates. Those are all great ways for communication, engagement and visibility. Without those teams can feel isolated and siloed which creates problems down the road.

Game Development Outsourcing: Working Effectively with External Teams4

Question: What makes external partners, freelancers, or support teams easier to work with from a production point of view?

Sam Bradley:

It can be a mixed bag. Preferably I like working with internal teams, it just helps with expectations and communication. But, I also often worked with and at times managed outsource and partner teams.

With those, it is nice if you hire a team to do something like Art, where they are a trained team to jump right into a project when you need them. Its also nice as you don’t have to hire, onboard and try and carry them past a time when they may no longer be useful or cost effective.

So when working with those teams, you can get established, experienced workers and you can set parameters of when you need them at the right time of the project.

Most Partners and Outsource teams also have some production element on their side, so it helps with keepin

Preparing Your Studio for External Collaboration

Question: What should a studio prepare before bringing in external help, so that support actually reduces pressure instead of creating more coordination work?

Sam Bradley:

The first thing you will need is good IT and access and content control protocols for outsource support. This is typically where their onboarding gets delayed as complications arise and security and access protocols possibly aren’t in place. So do that part first.

Once you have that worked out and the teams are ready to onboard, have well documented onboarding and tools use documentation somewhere so they transition easily. Have clear goals of what you want them to deliver, so have mood boards, concept work, example work they can use as a reference, reference material, etc.

It took typically 1-2 weeks for teams to onboard and start delivering content (that is after the IT work was all figured out). Expect more time in reviewing content and iteration, its just part of the process vs an in house team member. The good part is that outsource teams can more easily ramp up and down as needed vs hiring directly.

Often if we used an outsource partner, we made them do some sample tests to ensure they met both the standards and quality of work expected. Some groups are better than others. Its important you do this to make sure you get what you pay for.

Game Project Management: Avoiding Endless Feedback Loops

Question: How can teams avoid endless feedback loops when several people need to approve the same work?

Sam Bradley:

I would look at keeping that number small to the decision makers. I always recommend early and often, but you need to find a way to narrow that process.

For example with Art and Design, I would have the teams present their work within the team to the Lead, the Lead would then provide feedback and guidance. Once that is done, I would have a weekly or bi-weekly review with the Creative or Art Director to get feedback and make minor adjustments.

From there I would have a monthly or bi-weekly review with the stakeholders, Art/Creative Director and Lead and share the work for approval. If there were change requests, I would take that back and review with the Lead.

I may request we only do 2-3 at max reviews before we consider it done and move on. Hopefully you knock it down to 1-2 reviews at a senior level. Definitely reduce the change requests to only the Creative/Art Director.

Make a clear chart of who are the decision makers for each dev team and overall project core elements. Without that agreed upon list, you are definitely going to see infighting and problems with change management.

Lessons Small Studios Learn Too Late

Question: Looking back across large teams, live production, and franchise work, what production lesson do you think smaller studios often learn too late?

Sam Bradley:

Some of the hard lessons I have learned that are important to work on as early as possible: Have clear goals, understand your genre and audience, know which platform you want to release on and why and what are the challenges with them (Mobile, PC, Console), make sure you find the core game loop and experience through prototyping before you get too far into any part of the game.

Dont focus on flashy and pretty work until you can do an internal barebones demo of the mechanics of your game and it feels good.

Make a plan to target a date in the future where you think you will finish the game – then walk it backwards and make your planning schedule from there – many teams don’t plan properly that way and get themselves in trouble with investors/budget and scope.

Have a solid plan for testing both throughout the process and the polish phase of a game – you only get one first impression and if you blow it due to bugs, performance or use experience, its very hard to get that back and recover. So give yourself the right amount of time.

Finishing a Game Without Losing Control of Scope

Question: If you could give one piece of advice to a small team trying to finish a game without losing control of scope, what would it be?

Sam Bradley:

Stay focused on what your target goal is. If you have some scope creep, make it timeboxed and manageable. Once you are Post Alpha and driving towards Beta, minimize any significant change or pivots. Have clear decision makers and know when you can call it finished. Give yourself plenty of time for QA and bug fixes. In this current market there is always an option to add more content later.

Have a clear plan that breaks down what each team has in their backlog and planned work for their sprints/milestones. Track that progress to make sure its sustainable all the way to ship.

Some of the best games have simple core game loops that engages the player and keeps them coming back. Trying to over complicate or do multiple mechanics often confuses the player and can reduce the experience.

Think about some of your favorite games and more often than not they do just a few things really well. I have also seen game teams chase the most current trends in what HOT right now, try and avoid that if possible. Its OK to use cool and fun mechanics but make them your own (visual, story telling, etc.)

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