> <i>9. CONCLUSIONS</i><p>><p>> <i>We find that we were able to identify both best practices and pitfalls
in game development using the information present in the postmortems.
Such information on the development of all kinds of software would be
highly useful too. Therefore we urge the research community to
provide a forum where postmortems on general software development can
be presented, and practitioners to report their retrospective thoughts
in a postmortem.</i><p>><p>> <i>Finally, based on our analysis of the data we
collected, we make a few recommendations to game developers. First,
be sure to practice good risk management techniques. This will help
avoid some of the adverse effects of obstacles that you may encounter
during development. Second, prescribe to an iterative development
process, and utilize prototypes as a method of proving features and
concepts before committing them to your design. Third, don't be
overly ambitious in your design. Be reasonable, and take into account
your schedule and budget before adding something to your design.
Building off of that, don't be overly optimistic with your scheduling.
If you make an estimate that initially feels optimistic to you, don't
give that estimate to your stakeholders. Revisit and reassess your
design to form a better estimation.</i>