Agenda
The Three Phases of Transformation: Scaling Innovation on 'Marvel's Wolverine'
Matthew Strasser (Senior Dialogue Coordinator, Insomniac Games)
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Track:
Audio, Production & Team Leadership
Audience Level:
All
Format:
Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: All
To fulfill the Ultimate Wolverine Fantasy and deliver on the brutal, visceral nature of Wolverine, our Dialogue team needed to evolve the way we worked. As the game demanded more dynamic, visceral, and responsive dialogue, our systems and workflows needed to grow alongside that ambition.
But one of the hardest challenges in game development is continuing to innovate and transform while still maintaining tight schedules and deadlines. How is it possible to do both?
Through years of replacing and evolving dialogue systems on Marvel's Wolverine, we discovered that our biggest transformations consistently moved through three phases: Expansion, Stabilization, and Simplification.
Expansion drives bold new possibilities and exciting future outcomes, stabilization maintains execution and output as complexity grows, and simplification applies 80/20 thinking to scale systems sustainably across projects, reducing burnout and unnecessary late nights.
This talk explores how managing systems across these three phases can help teams prioritize effectively, reduce overwhelm, improve cross-department collaboration, and continuously raise the quality bar while doing more with less. While rooted in dialogue development, this framework applies broadly across audio innovation and game development as a whole.
But one of the hardest challenges in game development is continuing to innovate and transform while still maintaining tight schedules and deadlines. How is it possible to do both?
Through years of replacing and evolving dialogue systems on Marvel's Wolverine, we discovered that our biggest transformations consistently moved through three phases: Expansion, Stabilization, and Simplification.
Expansion drives bold new possibilities and exciting future outcomes, stabilization maintains execution and output as complexity grows, and simplification applies 80/20 thinking to scale systems sustainably across projects, reducing burnout and unnecessary late nights.
This talk explores how managing systems across these three phases can help teams prioritize effectively, reduce overwhelm, improve cross-department collaboration, and continuously raise the quality bar while doing more with less. While rooted in dialogue development, this framework applies broadly across audio innovation and game development as a whole.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn a simple, practical framework for scaling innovation without overwhelming their teams, helping them prioritize effectively, reduce complexity, and continuously raise quality while doing more with less.
Intended Audience
Anyone involved in, or looking to become more involved in, audio systems innovation, raising the quality bar, and achieving more with less.