Endgame Studios utilising Google Wave for development

Company
Endgame Studios

Anyone remember all the hype for Google Wave? While Google had shown off it's many collaborative aspects for social implications (the sharing photos and conversations in real-time with your circle of friends), many developers saw its potential for software development. Unfortunately, we haven't heard much about its use in the game development space, but local Melbourne game developer, Endgame Studios, is definitely making use of the service.

Endgame have placed up a picture of their "wave" which shows off some of the topics of conversation concerning their Nintendo DS game in development, Fractured Soul.

Apart from bringing up the question "Should Nick buy Grant a Mars bar from the service station", are there any developers out there using Google Wave for their game development needs? What purposes does it fill in the game development process, and how are you finding it?

Submitted by Bittman on Wed, 28/07/10 - 4:05 PMPermalink

In our indie-ness (at Moving Target Games) we were using Google Wave for a few months for it's great price tag and some useful collaboration tools.

However we started using it quite some time ago, and it was hard to get past the technical issues wave had in the early days. I've noticed it became much better, but by then we were a bit over the technical issues.

I think Google Wave was useful, in a different way, for meetings since it let those who missed out catch up on what was going on. But really, it felt more like a messy forum than a revolutionary email client as they were trying to make it out to be.

Some things on wave impressed me, but overall it felt halfway between forums and email, yet didn't work as well in either regard.

Submitted by Endgame Studios on Wed, 28/07/10 - 5:31 PMPermalink

Even though this was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek tweet a few weeks ago about Wave, we actually still use Wave for game design discussions. One of the things that is surprisingly useful is the ability to vote (not just about Mars Bars) - which gives an immediate view to everyone of where the dev team stands on an issue. Eg. Is level 14 final? Has everyone signed off on it? If there's a 'no' vote, we can then drill down into the Wave to find out why this person has reservations about the level, and hopefully address them. People can also change their vote, so we can also see people signing off on things as changes are made.

Over the years, I've used email, wikis, issue trackers, and everything in between at the dev studios I've worked with. They all have their pros and cons, but for designing an original game where a lot of things are constantly in flux, I've never found anything that can feed information so directly as Wave.

It also helps us organise our Saturday pizza orders.

Submitted by Brawsome on Wed, 28/07/10 - 8:16 PMPermalink

I used Google Docs for coordinating voice actors on Jolly Rover, I'd love to check out Google wave.

I love these tools, they're the way of the development future and hopefully another step towards employers realising people can work from home and not waste their lives in the soul-destroying commute every day. (Seriously, I have to use Melbournes public transport system)