Cutting features

Our brave leader NOT choosing which features to cut.

One of the hardest parts of producing a game you are passionate about is cutting features. Often players feel that the process is handled like throwing darts at a dartboard or that decisions are made solely based on financial reasons.

While for many companies budget is a huge factor, in the end it comes down to balancing players' expectations and their desire to have the product on time. Some of the most successful companies such as Blizzard are well known for their stance on not releasing a game before they feel it is ready; however internally there is a producer who decides what features he is comfortable pushing into post release.

Inevitably every game experiences feature creep, where lessons learned during development and from player feedback reveal exciting new features that everyone wants to add to the game. It is the job of the producer to decide which of these features to add and which features to push off until after release to allow a game to ever go gold.

For MMO development these decisions are often based on what the producer feels the player progression rate will be. So for example if players will take on average 1 month to attain level 20 in Saga, then it is a wise decision to push off the creation of a level 20 boss encounter till after release in favor of a better chat system that players can benefit from right away.

For Saga we have learned so much and received so much great feedback that the release date had to be pushed back a bit to put in the features we felt were vital and worth the wait; however there are so many more features on the schedule down the road that we can’t wait to begin work on after release.

We thank everyone who has stuck with us, through the difficult testing process and those who are anxiously awaiting each new patch to return. We can assure you that the end result will be well worth the wait.