How Tiny Tina's Wonderlands' development embraced interdisciplinary cooperation

gamedeveloper.com:

Gearbox’s Borderlands franchise (and other games of its ilk) emphasize cooperation among different skill sets, and that fittingly applies to how the franchise is made. During GDC 2023, creative director Matt Cox and senior producer Kayla Belmore talked about ensuring cooperation between the two key parts of game development: design and production.

Much like how they were open about the importance of mental health, Belmore and Cox’s session talked about the importance of collaboration between their respective departments. As Cox noted, the studio’s 2022 game Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands benefited from the two of them having already come to an agreement on “the intersection of scope and quality.” Because a game’s quality (and sales) depend on both groups working together, an active effort was made to have that cooperation reflect on the team. Belmore added that doing so helped them avoid toxicity that’s undermined several games and studios across the industry at large.

Cox brought up three pillars of development during Tiny Tina: scope-minded creative direction, quality-minded production, and whole health advocacy. For the first two pillars, he talked about the importance of making achievable design goals from the start of the project. “The goal is not to have no scope [creep],” he said. “The more you can prepare and buffer that from the beginning to the best of your ability, the better [the game’s] development is going to be.” Further, he stressed that transparency with team leads at all times was critical, along with reporting issues early on.

“We want all the teams to be very aware of the challenges every moment of every milestone. [...] Every choice affects more than just you in your seat, and that’s an okay thing to teach