GCG Feature: Student Postmortem: FIEA's Master Plan

Thirty-four students from Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy at the University of Central Florida built the game Master Plan. That team size is unheard of in academic programs, and yet the experience, which included a merger, gave the students a healthy dose of real-world conditions. They've documented their chaotic experience in a new postmortem feature article, available now on Gamasutra's sister web site GameCareerGuide.com. In this excerpt, Dan Bracewell, one of the game's producers, tells how the team size came to be so large: "While some game education programs have students create games in teams of two or three, or 10 or 12 if the program is large, we just completed a seven-month game with 34 people. That's the size of some professional game companies. About three days before the next semester (what we call the production semester), I got a phone call from [Professor Rick] Hall. I was in the middle of packing for a nice quiet weekend at my in-laws' house. I could hear his malicious chuckle in the receiver. "You ready for a curve ball?" he said. Actually, I wanted to hang up and pretend I lost the call, but a good producer doesn't show fear. "Sure," I said. He said: "We're cancelling the Hilbalien game and putting everyone on Master Plan."" You can now read the complete article on the subject over at GameCareerGuide.com, including inside on exactly what went right and what went wrong while developing the student game.