Batman: Arkham Asylum developer Rocksteady says their critically lauded, two million unit selling game benefited from a focused feature set. Talking to Kris Graft at Gamasutra, Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill says the team prioritized features by keeping game design centered on what Batman can do. That meant features that would require design and development efforts outside of the core game concept were out. That included flying and driving, which the developers discussed but ultimately decided effort spent there would compromise quality elsewhere.
Hill calls the common developer mistake of overshooting as understandable, given that a quantifiable benchmark such as number of features is an easier sell than tightly designed, refined game play.
Read more at Gamasutra {link no longer active}.
