November 2020
Fictioneers Premortem – hive mind gathers to de-risk the launch
For many of us, a looming deadline will cause a few nerves. We asked Fictioneers to share their hopes and fears about going public and this is what they had to say about it:
For organised teams like Fictioneers, a looming release deadline is also a signal that it’s time for the hive mind to gather and plan forward in order to prepare for all possible eventualities. Fictioneers’ called this their pre-mortem.
Alongside a growing sense of excitement and anticipation, primary concerns included product readiness, the potential for bugs, system crashes (there were a few of those too), or long download times, or things simply not working at scale after release, team stress levels and the impact on the team’s resilience if anybody became sick in a situation where everybody’s help was likely to be needed.
Hopes
Roles
Fears
Having some sort of continuity so that we know that we’ll continue beyond the government programme funding period. We have some way of funding ourselves. We have continuity. Maybe it's just more investment, rather than a kind of profit, but getting out there and getting on with the next IP or the next partner.
Developer
I fear we will be compromised because we aren't able to focus on one thing at a time and there's so many things to do, so we are juggling competing requirements and interdependencies. But because of the nature of the product, and nature of the grant, we have to deliver so many of these different mediums or different buckets. If we could only build one thing.
I just hope to make something that people enjoy. I've always wanted to make experiences for people and see how they interact in those spaces. I like fleshing out ideas for solving certain problems and hopefully giving a bit of push for someone else in the future to have a stepping-stone already in place for them to get further ahead.
Developer
I'm worried I'll just be a big jumble of ideas. Mind you, it's still a learning process for everyone involved and no matter what you do, there's going to be some success in the way that you can learn from it. Especially after my last job, I'm now always very concerned about my devs crunching too…
My hopes for the project is that it becomes a sort of global phenomenon. I think it's got the potential to be massive, and it's such an exciting new experience that I don't think it can fail. I just keep telling myself that, but I don't think you can fail with Wallace and Gromit. I just hope it keeps on going and I hope we get other clients and other IPs to make more exciting stuff.
Artist
My fears are that people don’t attend the planned events. Or, what if it doesn't work, like we don't know, it's not set in stone, it might not. And then my fear would be that we don't get to explore more, because I'm really, really enjoying my job at the moment and getting a lot of job satisfaction. So yeah, I wouldn't like this to end.
It needs to be flawless. It needs to be seamless. It needs to just work. You know, I mean, from start to finish from the beginning of the experience to the end of the experience, it just should be a seamless, flowing. Awesome, fantastic experience for everyone involved.
Developer
To me, there's lots of different things that could possibly go wrong. I've seen apps where you try and do something, and it takes 20 seconds to load. If it takes longer than 15 seconds I want to close the app. I'm already bored. I want to put it down. We have to kind of guess ahead, think of every possible outcome scenario and account for it.
Okay, my hope for the project is that it really excites people, not just the story and what we're delivering, but also what we can do with this kind of design. I think if we can really get people engaged and get people who traditionally aren't gamers involved in this kind of idea that they can play and interact with that will be amazing. So hopefully it does well and we're able to, you know, make this experience over and over again.
Designer
I think my fear for the project is pretty simple, which is just the fact that we won't deliver enough of an experience to get people engaged. Obviously, the word scope creep comes into play a lot, and I myself have been responsible for coming up with a really big idea and then personally having to cut it back down again only a week later. So, I hope that we're able to deliver on what we're currently aiming for. And that, you know, it's engaging enough for the user.
My hopes for this are that it will be successful and hit all their targets. I guess it's really nice when you make something, and people appreciate it. That's a really lovely feeling.
Developer
I'm worried that we're going to end up having to crunch to meet the final deadline. But overall, I'm not too worried about it. I'm aware that is a thing that happens in the games industry. Some companies are really bad for it. I hope this won't be. My other worry is that it will come to the day and everyone will connect, and then it won't work, or it won't work in the way that we've hoped, because the technology is very experimental that we're using.
Location based events might break it, people might not be able to connect with their phones. My phone frequently disconnects in the centre of town and if on the day it didn't work, then that would be a problem.
For organised teams like Fictioneers, a looming release deadline is also a signal that it’s time for the hive mind to gather and plan forward in order to prepare for all possible eventualities. Fictioneers’ called this their pre-mortem
Alongside a growing sense of excitement and anticipation, primary concerns included product readiness, the potential for bugs, system crashes (there were a few of those too), or long download times, or things simply not working at scale after release, team stress levels and the impact on the team’s resilience if anybody became sick in a situation where everybody’s help was likely to be needed.
As one of the developers explained
“We tend to identify fears as risks, and then work to mitigate these risks as much as possible. So, one of those risks would be, is there a chance that the user experience in the mobile app would get out of sync with the logic that dictates what happens? That would only happen if there was a potentially a bit of a bug in some logic in one of these various parts or if there were rogue bits of memory or some of the networks went down at the wrong time. How do we make sure that the logic that dictates where, when and why these things happen can recover and get back to a state where it can continue the storyline? So, we don't want to reach those deadlock scenarios, we identify them as a risk and the fear is that this risk will actually come into play. But we can, as I say, mitigate those risks by understanding, okay, what safeguards can we put in place, in the code itself for example, to make sure that if it does happen for whatever reason, and we don't know why, we can still recover. And then, if the risk is deemed great enough. we might even build defences against that risk, and the fear’s been removed, the risk has been mitigated”
Identified solutions included more staggered release, and more quality assurance testing, as well as end to end testing, consolidating the backlog lists, closer monitoring of download rates, a more entertaining loading screen pre-agreed troubleshooting strategies for when bugs do appear, knowledge sharing amongst team to ensure that know-how is in place and ready in case team members become sick, extensive social media monitoring, with ample guidance in place for social support staff, and ample rest and recovery time post-launch.
December 2020
W&G:BFU submitted to the Apple Store for pre-launch review
George Rowe explains the licensing relationship between Aardman Animations Limited and Fictioneers
But there was still one last challenge to achieve! Sign-off from Aardman was never going to be a walk in the park. The world famous animation team is just as protective of our favourite loyal dog Gromit, as they are of our treasured inventor Wallace! After a few tweaks and polishes Wallace & Gromit: Big Fix Up made it to the finish line at last, with smashing contraptions galore.
The final challenge was sign-off from Aardman, who are protective of their favourite loyal dog Gromit, not to mention Wallace! Finally, after a few tweaks and polishes, Big Fix Up made it to the finish line with smashing contraptions galore.
The making of Fictioneers sizzle video.
USW students also had the team’s back. 3 USW Advertising students storyboarded Fictioneers’ sizzle video in the run up to launch.
With everything in place, the countdown to launch begins!
