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It seems some features/changes lend themselves to user stories: "as a user, I want to be prompted to exit or retry the battle after the hero dies, since these are the only two common navigations". But other features wouldn't be a good fit for stories, like a detailed description of which game elements appear during an event.

How are these detailed specs incorporated into the agile task system? Certainly the umbrella task could be written as an epic, but the specs seem not to fit as stories. (They are not about direct user motivation or benefit, because these specs often make the game harder, like "boss health should refill at 100% per 90 seconds".)

Note: we're using Jira to track bugs and tasks.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Jira is just a tool. It's not explicitly "agile" in nature. Also this question is far too broad, and answers would be subjective. Do what you feel works for you. \$\endgroup\$ – Ian Young Aug 7 '18 at 9:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ @IanYoung It's only too broad if there's no canonical best practice. If that's the case, I still appreciate knowing it. \$\endgroup\$ – piojo Aug 7 '18 at 9:40
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    \$\begingroup\$ Many areas of game development lack a universal best practice. Design process is one area with a huge amount of variability. There are some studios where designers write stories and specs similar to what you've described, some studios where they use variants not entirely like what you've described, and some studios that use other processes entirely. If you want to use this process and it works for you, great, it doesn't matter whether it's considered a "canonical best practice" or not. I've edited your question to remove the "do designers do X" part to focus on the more practical "how do I…" \$\endgroup\$ – DMGregory♦ Aug 7 '18 at 11:49
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I suggest you purchase Agile Game Development by Clinton Keith.

Yes, it is absolutely encouraged to draft user stories for various interaction scenarios.

Like most things Agile, you and your team will soon enough get a feel for what is detailed enough vs. too detailed, in terms of these stories. That all depends on your own processes & dynamics.

P.S. Personally, I prefer the way Pivotal Tracker, Phabricator or similar handles user stories. Jira just feels a bit clunky to me, but whatever works for you.

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