Horizontal... Vertical slices of gaming?

[Anathrax]

I've just read this article:

http://www.destructoid.com/timegate-exec-aliens-was-developed-horizontally--244977.phtml

and I went back to Jim Sterling's A-LIE-ns video for the 4th time now. Can someone explain to me what the heck is a Horizontal development, Vertical slice of gaming demo or a Diagonal facepalm means? (Preferably while squeezing in as many math puns as possible.) Is it just a bunch of crap put in for some reason I'm not aware of?

 

[Starnerf]

It kind of says in the article, but since you asked. Developing horizontally usually means working on a lot of things a bit at a time rather than working on one thing until it's finished and then moving onto the next. So in this case it seems like they're saying the studio's focus was being constantly shifted to other areas and features so they couldn't really focus on any one feature in particular to make it good.

 

[Rylot]

Taken from the article:

"Horizontal development means each section was created through back-and-forth development with Gearbox. They were not outsourced to develop a particular part of the game, as several Gearbox employees claim."

Vertical slice of gameplay in this context is having a demo that shows off different aspects of a game taken from different parts of the game to give a more complete picture of the whole game.

Diagonal facepalm is a joke at the other two terms, and how bad the game turned out.

I don't do math puns.

 

[thiosk]

These words have the meanings described above, but they smack of corporate gibberish

Gearbox has permanently altered the concept of implementation. Think user-defined, B2B2C. Think 60/60/24/7/365. Think 24/7. Think holistic. But don't think all three at the same time. Imagine a combination of OWL and J++. It seems impressive, but it's realistic! What does it really mean to embrace "magnetically"? We will empower the term "co-branded, dynamic, dynamic, six-sigma". The metrics for implementation are more well-understood if they are not real-world. Your budget for reinventing should be at least one-tenth of your budget for reinventing. Is it more important for something to be customized or to be end-to-end? Imagine a combination of WAP and Python. If you aggregate wirelessly, you may have to revolutionize nano-globally. Our value-added feature set is unparalleled in the industry, but our extensible CAD and non-complex operation is always considered an amazing achievement.

That's what it means.

 

[LetalisK]

Taken from the article:

"Horizontal development means each section was created through back-and-forth development with Gearbox. They were not outsourced to develop a particular part of the game, as several Gearbox employees claim."

Vertical slice of gameplay in this context is having a demo that shows off different aspects of a game taken from different parts of the game to give a more complete picture of the whole game.

Diagonal facepalm is a joke at the other two terms, and how bad the game turned out.

I don't do math puns.

I'm confused, then. The definition for a vertical slice of gameplay you give seems better suited to a horizontal slice of gameplay. That would imply a little bit of everything, as opposed to vertical slice which would imply, for example, a single sequence as we saw in the aLIEns demo.

 

[Rylot]

Taken from the article:

"Horizontal development means each section was created through back-and-forth development with Gearbox. They were not outsourced to develop a particular part of the game, as several Gearbox employees claim."

Vertical slice of gameplay in this context is having a demo that shows off different aspects of a game taken from different parts of the game to give a more complete picture of the whole game.

Diagonal facepalm is a joke at the other two terms, and how bad the game turned out.

I don't do math puns.

I'm confused, then. The definition for a vertical slice of gameplay you give seems better suited to a horizontal slice of gameplay. That would imply a little bit of everything, as opposed to vertical slice which would imply, for example, a single sequence as we saw in the aLIEns demo.

I guess it depends on how the game is laying. Joking aside when I think of horizontal I think flat; like just a chunk all from the same part of the game. IDK, guess these terms conjured up different imagery for me. As thiosk points out these terms are pretty empty.

(I think vertical might be associated with going through time because English is read top to bottom left to right so a horizontal chunk is all at the same time but vertically it's progressing through the story. Maybe that' just me.)

 

[ThriKreen]

Usually in my experience, a vertical slice means you have a cut of the game where each feature is represented, as opposed to a horizontal slice where you might only get one feature. Think of it like a cake, if you wanted to be able to taste everything in it, you'd want to cut it into slices vertically. Or a chart where the Y-axis is gameplay features, and the X-axis is something else, like where in the game that feature is used. It's an arbitrary designation, but used often enough that devs know what it means.

However, I'm not sure what they mean by horizontally though, as I've never experienced that term being used. Off the top of my head, it should perhaps imply that they either worked on one feature at a time, then merged it in at the end, or everybody worked on everything a little bit at a time, all at the same time. But I don't think that's what the guy was suggesting, so I can't really say.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

I did some looking up after seeing the ACM controversy as well. From my understanding, it's basically as ThriKreen put it - a Horizontal slice would be all about showing off one particular feature thoroughly, whereas a Vertical Slice would be showing off a bit of everything. This chart is where I got my definition from:

 

[Anathrax]

Oh, I see. Thanks for the chart, really cleared up everything. Still, if that demo or footage was a vertical slice, not much of the demo was present in the game according to Jim(No relation to the Bill Murray sitcom) Sterling, or Totalbiscuit. Isn't this kind of false advertising illegal?

 

[Alfador_VII]

A conventional demo would be just a level or part of a level from the game presented more or less how it ends up in the final game.

A "vertical slice" demo is where they take sections from several parts of the game and stich them together with transitions that may not be in the game, or just flick from one part to another.

Aliens: Colonial Marines claimed to be showing a vertical slice of gameplay to the media, but it bore little or no resemblance to the finished product. It's somewhere between over-blown marketing, and sheer fabrication, as Jim Sterling presented in his excellent video.

Is it misleading and unethical? Definitely. Is it illegal? it should be!

 

[Alandoril]

A conventional demo would be just a level or part of a level from the game presented more or less how it ends up in the final game.

A "vertical slice" demo is where they take sections from several parts of the game and stich them together with transitions that may not be in the game, or just flick from one part to another.

Aliens: Colonial Marines claimed to be showing a vertical slice of gameplay to the media, but it bore little or no resemblance to the finished product. It's somewhere between over-blown marketing, and sheer fabrication, as Jim Sterling presented in his excellent video.

Is it misleading and unethical? Definitely. Is it illegal? it should be!

But I suppose it is technically illegal because it's false advertising. That is illegal right? I only ask because it gets done so often these days that it's almost as if such laws don't exist.