Stories from the Trenches - Help Shape the Future of Risk Management in Games: Share Your Story
- Liam Wickham
- May 15
- 4 min read
As most of you know because I won't stop going on about it, over the past six months, I have been writing a new book on risk management in game development. It builds on my Udemy course and expands into something much more ambitious: not just a textbook, but a practical, heartfelt guide to helping game teams navigate uncertainty, avoid disasters, and handle the inevitable chaos of creative production.
The book is full of tools, templates, risk pattern libraries and case studies. But what it needs now is your voice.
Also I am prepared to beg - PLEASE PLEASE HELP US MAKE THIS AMAZING!!
I want to feature stories from developers who have lived through those moments when something felt off - when a risk was spotted, ignored, tackled, or misunderstood. Not (necessarily) disasters. Not war stories. Just real, honest insights from the trenches of game dev.
To help make it easy, I have built a set of five simple prompts below. Pick one that resonates! You can reply with just a sentence or two. Your story can be anonymous, or credited if you prefer. I would love to use job title at the time as a minimum. These will be used to bring the book to life and to help future producers, artists, designers, engineers, community managers and so many more better prepare for the real challenges ahead. Fewer nervous breakdowns are good for all of us.
EASY SURVEY LINK!!!
1. Risk Realisation Moments
Was there a moment you realised something might go wrong — even if everyone else was still optimistic?
Example (Technical):
"We had committed to building a seamless open world, but the moment I saw the frame drop with 20 NPCs in the scene, I knew our streaming tech would not survive launch day. I flagged it, but the producer just said ‘we’ll optimise later’."
Example (Production):
"We had eight feature teams but only one producer. I realised no one was tracking interdependencies. Three sprints of mutual blocking later, the roadmap fell apart."
Example (Art):
"Our team was making high-poly assets without any LOD guidelines. We had to redo half the environments once optimisation started."
2. Early Pattern Spotting
Can you share a time you spotted a problem early, even if others did not listen?
Example (Community):
"I saw a spike in negative Reddit sentiment after a monetisation patch. I raised it, but it was ignored. A week later we were review-bombed."
Example (QA):
"I caught scene transition crashes early, but logs were vague and it got deprioritised. In beta, it became the most reported bug."
Example (Narrative):
"Nobody looped in localisation despite complex branching dialogue. We had to rewrite everything three weeks before VO recording."
3. Practical Advice You Live By
What is one piece of advice you now live by when things start to wobble during game dev?
Example (Engineering):
"Always test rollback before you need it. Our patch failed on launch day and we had no fallback."
Example (Production):
"Assume people have not read the brief. Repeat milestones, repeat requirements."
Example (Art):
"Label every version of every file. One texture overwrite cost us a week."
4. Mini Case: How You Handled It
Was there a possible issue or unexpected challenge that did go wrong, but you helped manage or recover from it?
Example (Community):
"A nerf triggered community uproar. We coordinated a transparent dev response video and the mood changed overnight."
Example (Production):
"Scope creep two months before ship. We killed 7 features in a workshop, and it saved the release."
Example (QA):
"A hard-to-repro crash was solved with an overnight soak test. That one fix dropped beta crash reports by 60%."
5. The Quiet Risk No One Sees
What is a type of issue or pitfall that often gets overlooked during development?
Example (Tech):
"No one tested lobby sizes beyond 100 users. With 400, the UI collapsed days before cert."
Example (Production):
"Burnout snuck in. A senior dev ghosted stand-ups for a week. Nobody noticed until they quit."
Example (Audio):
"We left music to the end. The composer was gone. No interactive score made it in."
Would you like to contribute? Send your reply to me. I will be sharing updates about the book’s progress, and all contributors will get a credit (or anonymity) as preferred.
Thank you for helping make this book something special (I hope!): a grounded, collective resource to help game developers navigate the messy, fascinating/terrifying world of making games.
I should add that if you have read this far, you may be one of the few who would love to add more complete case studies or tell longer stories of woe and triumph. If so, please reach out I would love to hear from you. Likewise, I am happy to add your name to the list of volunteers who are reading my book draft.
Warm regards
Liam Wickham
Mentor, Consultant, Trainer
Founder - Game Production Academy
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