IMHO the single most honest truth is that everyone involved in mmorpgs or gaming in general, from the players to the devs to the suits etc, are responsible for the state of the gaming industry as it stands now for various reason from various viewpoints that are all valid.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Are financial people evil? No not all of them. Some are and some aren't. Are all creative devs unable to deliver and manage projects in a sane and profitable way? No some are and some aren't.
But a large portion of the suits are fucking idiots that push really stupid ideas or attempt to force devs into going after fads at the expense of the quality of the game. And places like EA and Ubisoft are scum.
Don't be fooled into thinking that because the "suits" are concerned with money because its their job to be concerned that they therefore make good decisions about such things. They often push really fucking bad ideas because of those concerns but they are still really fucking bad ideas. And while some devs are not so good about bottom line financial decisions or simply don't want to be invovled in that sort of stuff there are still a lot of devs who are quite cognizent of such things.
It is certainly a mistake to not have someone competent about money concerns and project management involved in a project, this could be a business type guy who is good enough to actually listen to the developers or it could be a dev with a good head on his shoulders. Either one can work fine.
But don't let that fact fool you. Alot of the "suit" are either evil or incompetent or both. Most of the shenanigans are usually on these guys and they usually ignore the devs input on these shenanigans as well exactly because they are dickheads and scum. There is a big difference between a dev with years of coding experience and some monkey in business suit who thinks he is smart.
It's the lack of education about Other Peoples Money. Mostly the goverment fails on this hard, but in this conversation it's the creative / artsy / consumer types that fail to understand. You only get a say so when its your money or time. You agree to work for someone else or take their money there will be strings attached!
I don't believe corporate people are all evil, but the corporate environment seems to restrict the way people can act around each other. If the devs don't have a fun environment to work in it's likely they won't make a fun game for people to play. I've seen the same thing happen in the movie industry where almost everything has to be taken seriously now. As much as people hate WoW the game had a lot of fun easter eggs in it when it first came out. Stuff that was done just for some humor. The fact is it's hard to be creative in a corporate environment because there is little room to take chances or make mistakes. They like you to use what has worked in the past. When you use past models that you know work you will likely end up with a lot of stale games that don't have many issues bug wise. It's kind of similar to what Apple has done to the computer world of late. Their products don't promote freedom or creativity. They just promote doing exactly what they want you to do with said devices. This can be very boring for people who like to do things like work with the command line or customize their OS.
When you mention "suits" that is the reason right there because there are too many people in charge.That means high overhead before anything is even started.
The old school guys like David Carmack and MANY others ..Naughty Dog team,the Unreal team ect ect all did this on their own,no big investors to ruin their plans.
We can even look at one that hit the spot light,NCSOFT wanted Lord British's work,so it was changed and failed badly.Then those very suits who were in full command tried to push the Blame on the Lord,but of course he won the law suit and got his money,however the promised support of his brother did not materialize.
EA had and most likely still are forcing their workers into incredible lengthy time frames,some as much as 60-70 hours a week.They even had some workers remain on site,sleep in the offices,no way in hell are you going to get good results like that.
Square Enix suits did not want to take the blame for a RUSHED FFXIV,instead made Tanaka take the blame in the public's eye.They gave him a NEW team and told him a time frame and it was very obvious that time frame could not be met.
EVERY single piece of FFXI had great effort,buildings with insides ect ect,as soon as they were losing money on the new game engine,they RUSHED everything,the next xpac was absolute garbage,no more insides of buildings,instead that lame f2p look with NPC's standing in from the buildings,i guess if it rains they have water proof skin lol.
SOE losing their shirts,millions of dollars in losses.So what do i see,yep corner cutting,content stream lined for easier creation,less effort.less cost.What do i see from the next 3 xpacks,total garbage,each xpack was like 1/4 of a true xpack.Xpacks are already kind of lame in gaming,we have grown to expect a small package.
oh i did not mention the SUITS sent a memo to the Square Enix divisions,i believe there are 7 or 8,to NOT be creative,instead use only tried and tested ideas because they could not afford to take any more risk with millions in losses developing the Crystal Tools.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Originally posted by mmorobo It's the lack of education about Other Peoples Money. Mostly the goverment fails on this hard, but in this conversation it's the creative / artsy / consumer types that fail to understand. You only get a say so when its your money or time. You agree to work for someone else or take their money there will be strings attached!
The problem isn't that there is strings attached.
Of course there are, unless as you say, you fund/own everything what have you.
The problems occur when the suits are in charge of the devs instead of partnering with them. Keep in mind a "suit" is almost always just an employee exactly as a dev is. In the really scummy places like Ubisoft this results in really really stupidly destructive to capital technological disasters. There is no fucking way in the world a majority of the Ubisoft devs thought all that DRM shit they was a good idea. And if they did they should be fired. No the "suits" made it clear that they should up and take it.
Compare that to Steam, which is most certainly a money making enterprise, does not pull technically incompetent completely scummy bullshit like that. They may or may not do things you don't like, they certainly have DRM and other things but they are not the utter crap and disaster of a Ubisoft with something preventing people from playing a game or completely losing save files and never giving you the option to store them locally and forcing paying customer to lose days worth of play time. Why is this? Because Steam is run by Corporate officers who were devs. There is a reason for the expression "Valve Time". You see marked difference when a company is run by someone who is both sane in a business sense and competent technically.
You serious crap when you have suits in charge. Now to be sure some smaller places are run a by devs who ARE NOT good at management or business and they can be just as bad. Doublefine fucked up its kickstarter basically because they are too much of a wishy washy creative outfit and you probably can't just them to deliver. They can clearly make great games but they just aren't that solid on the rest. These cases are a lot rarer of course.
Both bad casses can wind up with crappy project peddaled your way. Either due to poor planning or unrealistic ideas about scope or just constantly adding stuff a dev can run out of money before they have a project that should actually be sold. But this happens all the time in outfits where the "suits" run everything from on high as well.
But one is more common than the other because a "suit" tends to assume another "suit" is needed to manage the place and Devs are just little worker bees for them. The places that reliably deliver decent quality software tend to have equal input from both ends in some way.
The side that is weak is more often than not the Dev side. A lot of times this is because the manager on the dev side is just not a strong enough personality to push back. Devs tend to be introverted and not want conflict. But at the same time the "suits" tend to be arrogant idiots who think they are smart and simply won't listen. The latter one is far more common.
The fact of the matter is that in most cases neither side of the equation actually has ownership of the any of the money involved. At best they have some sort of stewardship, but in the end they are all simply employees steering their part of the ship.
In some cases some part does have real ownership or they are the ones on the hook for loans or venture captial obligations. But for most publishers no. EA or Ubisoft or NCSoft etc. none of the "suits" own jack. They are just some dickhead with an MBA.
So are "corporate suites". People that manage a project/ team don't really need to know how to code.
You can't lead ppl if you do not understand their work.
You'd be surprised how often this is not true. I've lost track of how many people i know in leadership positions simply because they're good at leading people. Of course intimate knowledge into what your people are doing is great but it's often overlooked in favor of that specific talent.
In a perfect world, the ones in charge are better at the job than the people they're leading. How often does this happen though?
Alot of the "suit" are either evil or incompetent or both.
Those people did not become excecs of multi million dollar companies because they are particularly stupid or incompetent...
These rants are usually made by the little people who have no idea what it takes to keep the business they go out to work running.
Hah that is funny. In an organization only one or two out the 100 suits there qualify for what you say. And guess what? Those guys are not the ones interacting with devs for an individual game.
You ever been to a software requirements meeting? Because I have. I have been to many many of them. Let me know the next one you go to one with a multi-millionaire (not including their retirement fund).
Originally posted by AldersYou'd be surprised how often this is not true. I've lost track of how many people i know in leadership positions simply because they're good at leading people. Of course intimate knowledge into what your people are doing is great but it's often overlooked in favor of that specific talent.In a perfect world, the ones in charge are better at the job than the people they're leading. How often does this happen though?
Knowledge can be gained but you need to be born with a talent.
Are financial people evil? No not all of them. Some are and some aren't. Are all creative devs unable to deliver and manage projects in a sane and profitable way? No some are and some aren't.
But a large portion of the suits are fucking idiots that push really stupid ideas or attempt to force devs into going after fads at the expense of the quality of the game. And places like EA and Ubisoft are scum.
Don't be fooled into thinking that because the "suits" are concerned with money because its their job to be concerned that they therefore make good decisions about such things. They often push really fucking bad ideas because of those concerns but they are still really fucking bad ideas. And while some devs are not so good about bottom line financial decisions or simply don't want to be invovled in that sort of stuff there are still a lot of devs who are quite cognizent of such things.
It is certainly a mistake to not have someone competent about money concerns and project management involved in a project, this could be a business type guy who is good enough to actually listen to the developers or it could be a dev with a good head on his shoulders. Either one can work fine.
But don't let that fact fool you. Alot of the "suit" are either evil or incompetent or both. Most of the shenanigans are usually on these guys and they usually ignore the devs input on these shenanigans as well exactly because they are dickheads and scum. There is a big difference between a dev with years of coding experience and some monkey in business suit who thinks he is smart.
So are "corporate suites". People that manage a project/ team don't really need to know how to code.
You can't lead ppl if you do not understand their work.
You'd be surprised how often this is not true. I've lost track of how many people i know in leadership positions simply because they're good at leading people. Of course intimate knowledge into what your people are doing is great but it's often overlooked in favor of that specific talent.
In a perfect world, the ones in charge are better at the job than the people they're leading. How often does this happen though?
You don't need to understand the work to lead. Not exactly. But you need to listen to your people and pull out of them what the concerns are. There is a certain process to leading that is important. Many people think they are listening when they are not. For example something you see in software a lot especially from "suits", is they think some small UI feature is automatically easy because its just a button or checkbox. When the devs tell them it isn't they just don't listen. When the devs try to explain why, the "suit" says "look that is technical stuff, technical stuff is your job. Just do it.". This is common and it is the opposite of good leadership.
Now there are ways to push back against this sort of thing and in many places that are sufficiently large that these things play out as push and pull between two "leaders" in the organization.
By and large a lot of managers are pretty poor leaders. Generally because they are bad at listening. This should not be surprising as this quality is quite rare. There are a large number of middle managers and various companies and corporations and small businesses need to work with what they get. So none of this is ever going to change much. As far as sitting around and hoping you get managed by a good leader well that is a pipedream. There are some organizations that have structured themselves in such a way that the OK leaders they likely have are essentially pushed/prodded/manipulated into compromising.
A good manager is a good leader. Good leaders are rare. Therefore good managers are rare. Rare enough that you won't find one at many jobs. You might find an OK manager. In general OK managers are somewhat common and certainly findable.
Not all software managers are what would be described as "suits". I am not going to go into who qualifies as a suit and who doesn't. If you have worked in various places you have a pretty good idea of who is a "suit" and who isn't. They aren't even always executives but may be attached to them.
One of the key personality differences between Devs and people who went to business school though, is that people in business are much more in tune to being social competitive and dominant. What you tend to get then is a devolution into some kind of political blame game. Where the Dev manager allows a "Be careful what you wish for" scenario to play out. The stupid feature that seemed easy but wasn't then causes a bunch of other things to fail.
Thus lack of good leadership causes multiple features to fail AND internal conflict all for one feature that the party who admitted he doesn't actually know the details insists it is all very easy and simple to do. Whereas good leadership where the asking party listening the knowledgable party could resulted in a plan and perhaps someway to mitigate extra impacts to any money or timeline concerns.
This sort of stuff happens extremely commonly in the software world. There is not a steady hand on the tiller in a majority of projects. And by and large, more often than not, it is someone who 3 out of 4 workers would agree would qualify as a "suit" that is the cause of the needless crap or just plain bad ideas. In some circumstances it is in fact the owner of the business. Usually that person has some sort of other virtues that make the business stay afloat, sadly if they only just did that and actually found a good manager they would double their money.
If people think this is all sour grapes or some little man talking, then I feel bad for you, son. Go be a developer for a few years. You will see. None of this is really particularly egregious really. Many workplaces have some form of this kind of stuff. Software just had a much greater intersection with "suit" than many other type on engineering. A lot more creating and changing of requirements. And even worse is far younger and more unsettled. If the sort of stuff that happens in software engineering were to happen anywhere that did Civil Engineering the civil engineers would just look at the "suit" like he was wearing a fish on head and then ignore or laugh at him. To be sure exactly the same sort of stuff happens to civil engineers. But when some dude says he want the bridge to look different while you are pouring concrete the civil engineer usually just says "yeah, too late, maybe you should have had a think about this earlier". But for software engineering there is no such thing as "too late" to the incompetent "suit". Certainly to competent managers (who can also be a "suit" but the two together is rare), they understand that there really is such a thing as "too late" because you are almost certain to degrade your product. And a good manager will fight tooth and nail against such pushes and do so to such a consistent degree that people will begin to think that a release IS like pouring concrete because getting past Mr Good Manager is like trying to jackhammer concrete (sadly its not because they understand what make quality products).
This is what makes some organizations actually produce good stuff reliably, it is having mutliple people like Mr Good Manager who establish patterns that cultivate quality. It is not because everyone understands quality and sits around singing Cumbayah. And when it doesn't exist you generally have a bunch of empty suits running around causing a bunch of chaos.
Just because they aren't "villains" doesn't mean they haven't had a seriously detrimental effect on MMORPG game design.
Yes, ofcourse time and budget constraints are bad things from an utopian creative viewpoint.
Ofcourse having to aim your product at a big target audience in order to be able to make back your high budget waters down your lofty niche-oriented design goals.
But let's face it, we live in reality. Someone has to pay for development, and they need to be able to make that money back. Otherwise these games simply don't get made and you get no MMORPG game design at all.
But there is a solution, accept lower standards. A lot of innovative indie stuff out there. Just don't expect your niche games to be AAA quality. Because, as said above, that does not work.
Originally posted by Thebeasttt The devs are the Villains imo. They are the ones selling their souls to crank out garbage. If every Dev refused to make another empty WoW clone we would have zero problems.You couldn't pay a top chef enough to serve a can of chef boyardee in their restaurant so why are top developers serving proverbial chef boyardee to us gamers? Have a little dignity.
They need to eat?
Sure, they could all band together and refuse (like that would ever happen). Then we have a massive influx of unemployed developers. Or do you think they magically have millions set aside to start their own studios?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
But they aren't. The more they do their "jobs", the crappier the games are becoming. Just look at the state of our Genre. Epitomized by Archeage. Who's benefiting from that one? Players? XL? Trion? What if, they actually release that game in a state similar to it's Alpha and only charged a sub? How much more would EVERYONE have benefited then?
Suits are the producers of WoW clones or anything that is safe and bland in this industry. They halt innovation and always go the road of least resistance because they might lose money by taking risks. Its not good business to take risks, so they don't, and we have a flood of mediocre clone games. Now we are into the F2P generation where they are all trying to cash in on cash shops because they are working on other games.
Originally posted by AlBQuirky I respectfully disagree. "Suits" turned MMOs into a business, instead of entertainment.When your top priority is "the bottom line", then creativity (aka: risk) goes away."Suits", to me, are evil. They suck the life out of what they touch, kind of like a succubus
yeah, but the opposite can happen when you let the artists rule the nest. I know several arts organizations, Some large (Hartford Ballet) that went under because there wasn't sufficient oversight.You might think that a game is ruined by the business side but I wonder with some developers of there would even be a game without someone saying "whoa, there just isn't the money" or "great, you made your game, now how do you suggest we support it without funds".Of course, where things can go wrong is when a corporation forgets that the artists are required in order to make a project "good".
That is a very good point, as I know many people who are not "business minded" (me being one - too fair and honest), not just creative people
For me, though, there is a line that gets crossed all too quickly, and you alluded to it: When making money tops creativity.
I look at MMOs today and there is a definite formula that ties them all together: Tutorial + lots of (mindless) quests + massive fighting + gear acquisition + maximum level = MMO success. (It seems the faster the journey, the better.)
Sure, they tweak it here and there, but in essence, that is the "formula for success." And, there is a reason for this formula: It works. Almost every new MMO attracts hundreds of thousands, if not millions of players. Most of them make good money. There is no incentive to look deeply at the formula.
I will adjust my original statement and include today's MMO players also as "succubi", as they keep rewarding companies for what they crank out
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by AlBQuirky I respectfully disagree. "Suits" turned MMOs into a business, instead of entertainment.
MMOs have always been both.
Kind of, but it is way out of balance now. Before the thought process went something like: "Can we do this on a computer?" "I think so." "Cool! Can we make money at it?" "Possibly."
MMOs used to be "ideas" that sometimes (many times?) made money. Pushing the technical envelope was the driving force, not making millions, as it seems today.
I could be wrong. I often am Maybe the original developers had dollar signs in their eyes first and foremost
I make my assumption on the differences in MMOs long ago (so much variety) and the similarities of them today.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by gestalt11 Alot of the "suit" are either evil or incompetent or both.
Those people did not become excecs of multi million dollar companies because they are particularly stupid or incompetent...These rants are usually made by the little people who have no idea what it takes to keep the business they go out to work running.
And some of them even run huge businesses into the ground and STILL make million dollar bonuses, then go the next big company.
Incompetent? Sounds like it. Stupid? Not in the least. They sold ice cubes to Eskimos.
Remember, most "high up" jobs (suits) are not based on qualifications, but rather who you know and who you hire (headhunters) to market yourself. MBAs are not that tough to acquire.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by JamesP I think some people who have actually worked in the industry would tell you differently... Why do you think there are people leaving the AAA scene all the time starting up their own Indie Companies so they are free from "Suits" telling them what to do and how to make their games. They leave so they don't have their creativity stifled... Look at the Developers of TorchLight and TorchLight 2 alot of them worked for Blizzard I believe it was and they left so they could let their creativity shine through instead of being told what to do by their investors.
Heaven forbid the people paying your salaries have a voice in how you do it...
The problem is that they have no experience, knowledge, or talent in the field. Their job is making the financials work, but people who control the money have too much creative power and have an awful tendency to think themselves (much) smarter than they really are.
How many times have you heard some utterly stupid creative decision in a movie that ended up being the result of a Hollywood executive throwing around his weight. The same thing happens -all the time- in software development. When you hire professional programmers and developers, you should let them do their jobs and not think you know better than them. The same way you should let a movie director do his job. You don't tell a doctor how to perform surgery.
It's one thing to hold them to particular budget constraints or time-tables, it's entirely another to override their professional experience.
Those people did not become excecs of multi million dollar companies because they are particularly stupid or incompetent...
These rants are usually made by the little people who have no idea what it takes to keep the business they go out to work running.
While I wouldn't go as far to say stupid or incompetent(although I've had a few that were pretty close), I do think you far overestimate the intelligence of the average business executive. Getting those positions is far more about who you know than what you know.
There are definitely the occasional sharp ones, but in my experience they generally aren't any more intelligent than your average person, and significantly less intelligent than your average programmer/scientist/engineer etc. Their main traits seem to be that they are professionally "driven" , socially accomplished, and that they network *extremely* well.
I actually know a guy that I've known since high-school (good guy, but always was had that kinda fake routine going on) that is now an executive at a major corporation. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a particularly intelligent individual... and he'll be the first to tell you. But he has always had tons of drive and he puts enough effort into business networking that he could probably write a book on it. That's really what it comes down to. He now makes a 7 figure salary and makes decisions for hundreds of people than are significantly more intelligent than him and making a fraction of the money. It's kinda scary honestly.
Comments
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
OP is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay into rosy scenario land.
Are financial people evil? No not all of them. Some are and some aren't. Are all creative devs unable to deliver and manage projects in a sane and profitable way? No some are and some aren't.
But a large portion of the suits are fucking idiots that push really stupid ideas or attempt to force devs into going after fads at the expense of the quality of the game. And places like EA and Ubisoft are scum.
Don't be fooled into thinking that because the "suits" are concerned with money because its their job to be concerned that they therefore make good decisions about such things. They often push really fucking bad ideas because of those concerns but they are still really fucking bad ideas. And while some devs are not so good about bottom line financial decisions or simply don't want to be invovled in that sort of stuff there are still a lot of devs who are quite cognizent of such things.
It is certainly a mistake to not have someone competent about money concerns and project management involved in a project, this could be a business type guy who is good enough to actually listen to the developers or it could be a dev with a good head on his shoulders. Either one can work fine.
But don't let that fact fool you. Alot of the "suit" are either evil or incompetent or both. Most of the shenanigans are usually on these guys and they usually ignore the devs input on these shenanigans as well exactly because they are dickheads and scum. There is a big difference between a dev with years of coding experience and some monkey in business suit who thinks he is smart.
Remember coffee is for closers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMFwFgG9NE8
When you mention "suits" that is the reason right there because there are too many people in charge.That means high overhead before anything is even started.
The old school guys like David Carmack and MANY others ..Naughty Dog team,the Unreal team ect ect all did this on their own,no big investors to ruin their plans.
We can even look at one that hit the spot light,NCSOFT wanted Lord British's work,so it was changed and failed badly.Then those very suits who were in full command tried to push the Blame on the Lord,but of course he won the law suit and got his money,however the promised support of his brother did not materialize.
EA had and most likely still are forcing their workers into incredible lengthy time frames,some as much as 60-70 hours a week.They even had some workers remain on site,sleep in the offices,no way in hell are you going to get good results like that.
Square Enix suits did not want to take the blame for a RUSHED FFXIV,instead made Tanaka take the blame in the public's eye.They gave him a NEW team and told him a time frame and it was very obvious that time frame could not be met.
EVERY single piece of FFXI had great effort,buildings with insides ect ect,as soon as they were losing money on the new game engine,they RUSHED everything,the next xpac was absolute garbage,no more insides of buildings,instead that lame f2p look with NPC's standing in from the buildings,i guess if it rains they have water proof skin lol.
SOE losing their shirts,millions of dollars in losses.So what do i see,yep corner cutting,content stream lined for easier creation,less effort.less cost.What do i see from the next 3 xpacks,total garbage,each xpack was like 1/4 of a true xpack.Xpacks are already kind of lame in gaming,we have grown to expect a small package.
oh i did not mention the SUITS sent a memo to the Square Enix divisions,i believe there are 7 or 8,to NOT be creative,instead use only tried and tested ideas because they could not afford to take any more risk with millions in losses developing the Crystal Tools.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Those people did not become excecs of multi million dollar companies because they are particularly stupid or incompetent...
These rants are usually made by the little people who have no idea what it takes to keep the business they go out to work running.
The problem isn't that there is strings attached.
Of course there are, unless as you say, you fund/own everything what have you.
The problems occur when the suits are in charge of the devs instead of partnering with them. Keep in mind a "suit" is almost always just an employee exactly as a dev is. In the really scummy places like Ubisoft this results in really really stupidly destructive to capital technological disasters. There is no fucking way in the world a majority of the Ubisoft devs thought all that DRM shit they was a good idea. And if they did they should be fired. No the "suits" made it clear that they should up and take it.
Compare that to Steam, which is most certainly a money making enterprise, does not pull technically incompetent completely scummy bullshit like that. They may or may not do things you don't like, they certainly have DRM and other things but they are not the utter crap and disaster of a Ubisoft with something preventing people from playing a game or completely losing save files and never giving you the option to store them locally and forcing paying customer to lose days worth of play time. Why is this? Because Steam is run by Corporate officers who were devs. There is a reason for the expression "Valve Time". You see marked difference when a company is run by someone who is both sane in a business sense and competent technically.
You serious crap when you have suits in charge. Now to be sure some smaller places are run a by devs who ARE NOT good at management or business and they can be just as bad. Doublefine fucked up its kickstarter basically because they are too much of a wishy washy creative outfit and you probably can't just them to deliver. They can clearly make great games but they just aren't that solid on the rest. These cases are a lot rarer of course.
Both bad casses can wind up with crappy project peddaled your way. Either due to poor planning or unrealistic ideas about scope or just constantly adding stuff a dev can run out of money before they have a project that should actually be sold. But this happens all the time in outfits where the "suits" run everything from on high as well.
But one is more common than the other because a "suit" tends to assume another "suit" is needed to manage the place and Devs are just little worker bees for them. The places that reliably deliver decent quality software tend to have equal input from both ends in some way.
The side that is weak is more often than not the Dev side. A lot of times this is because the manager on the dev side is just not a strong enough personality to push back. Devs tend to be introverted and not want conflict. But at the same time the "suits" tend to be arrogant idiots who think they are smart and simply won't listen. The latter one is far more common.
The fact of the matter is that in most cases neither side of the equation actually has ownership of the any of the money involved. At best they have some sort of stewardship, but in the end they are all simply employees steering their part of the ship.
In some cases some part does have real ownership or they are the ones on the hook for loans or venture captial obligations. But for most publishers no. EA or Ubisoft or NCSoft etc. none of the "suits" own jack. They are just some dickhead with an MBA.
You'd be surprised how often this is not true. I've lost track of how many people i know in leadership positions simply because they're good at leading people. Of course intimate knowledge into what your people are doing is great but it's often overlooked in favor of that specific talent.
In a perfect world, the ones in charge are better at the job than the people they're leading. How often does this happen though?
Ah, here we go.
Hah that is funny. In an organization only one or two out the 100 suits there qualify for what you say. And guess what? Those guys are not the ones interacting with devs for an individual game.
You ever been to a software requirements meeting? Because I have. I have been to many many of them. Let me know the next one you go to one with a multi-millionaire (not including their retirement fund).
Knowledge can be gained but you need to be born with a talent.
You're absolutely right. How the hell did I forget the malfeasance from EA and Ubisoft? I try not to think about dumb bitches.
Just because they aren't "villains" doesn't mean they haven't had a seriously detrimental effect on MMORPG game design.
You don't need to understand the work to lead. Not exactly. But you need to listen to your people and pull out of them what the concerns are. There is a certain process to leading that is important. Many people think they are listening when they are not. For example something you see in software a lot especially from "suits", is they think some small UI feature is automatically easy because its just a button or checkbox. When the devs tell them it isn't they just don't listen. When the devs try to explain why, the "suit" says "look that is technical stuff, technical stuff is your job. Just do it.". This is common and it is the opposite of good leadership.
Now there are ways to push back against this sort of thing and in many places that are sufficiently large that these things play out as push and pull between two "leaders" in the organization.
By and large a lot of managers are pretty poor leaders. Generally because they are bad at listening. This should not be surprising as this quality is quite rare. There are a large number of middle managers and various companies and corporations and small businesses need to work with what they get. So none of this is ever going to change much. As far as sitting around and hoping you get managed by a good leader well that is a pipedream. There are some organizations that have structured themselves in such a way that the OK leaders they likely have are essentially pushed/prodded/manipulated into compromising.
A good manager is a good leader. Good leaders are rare. Therefore good managers are rare. Rare enough that you won't find one at many jobs. You might find an OK manager. In general OK managers are somewhat common and certainly findable.
Not all software managers are what would be described as "suits". I am not going to go into who qualifies as a suit and who doesn't. If you have worked in various places you have a pretty good idea of who is a "suit" and who isn't. They aren't even always executives but may be attached to them.
One of the key personality differences between Devs and people who went to business school though, is that people in business are much more in tune to being social competitive and dominant. What you tend to get then is a devolution into some kind of political blame game. Where the Dev manager allows a "Be careful what you wish for" scenario to play out. The stupid feature that seemed easy but wasn't then causes a bunch of other things to fail.
Thus lack of good leadership causes multiple features to fail AND internal conflict all for one feature that the party who admitted he doesn't actually know the details insists it is all very easy and simple to do. Whereas good leadership where the asking party listening the knowledgable party could resulted in a plan and perhaps someway to mitigate extra impacts to any money or timeline concerns.
This sort of stuff happens extremely commonly in the software world. There is not a steady hand on the tiller in a majority of projects. And by and large, more often than not, it is someone who 3 out of 4 workers would agree would qualify as a "suit" that is the cause of the needless crap or just plain bad ideas. In some circumstances it is in fact the owner of the business. Usually that person has some sort of other virtues that make the business stay afloat, sadly if they only just did that and actually found a good manager they would double their money.
If people think this is all sour grapes or some little man talking, then I feel bad for you, son. Go be a developer for a few years. You will see. None of this is really particularly egregious really. Many workplaces have some form of this kind of stuff. Software just had a much greater intersection with "suit" than many other type on engineering. A lot more creating and changing of requirements. And even worse is far younger and more unsettled. If the sort of stuff that happens in software engineering were to happen anywhere that did Civil Engineering the civil engineers would just look at the "suit" like he was wearing a fish on head and then ignore or laugh at him. To be sure exactly the same sort of stuff happens to civil engineers. But when some dude says he want the bridge to look different while you are pouring concrete the civil engineer usually just says "yeah, too late, maybe you should have had a think about this earlier". But for software engineering there is no such thing as "too late" to the incompetent "suit". Certainly to competent managers (who can also be a "suit" but the two together is rare), they understand that there really is such a thing as "too late" because you are almost certain to degrade your product. And a good manager will fight tooth and nail against such pushes and do so to such a consistent degree that people will begin to think that a release IS like pouring concrete because getting past Mr Good Manager is like trying to jackhammer concrete (sadly its not because they understand what make quality products).
This is what makes some organizations actually produce good stuff reliably, it is having mutliple people like Mr Good Manager who establish patterns that cultivate quality. It is not because everyone understands quality and sits around singing Cumbayah. And when it doesn't exist you generally have a bunch of empty suits running around causing a bunch of chaos.
Yes, ofcourse time and budget constraints are bad things from an utopian creative viewpoint.
Ofcourse having to aim your product at a big target audience in order to be able to make back your high budget waters down your lofty niche-oriented design goals.
But let's face it, we live in reality. Someone has to pay for development, and they need to be able to make that money back. Otherwise these games simply don't get made and you get no MMORPG game design at all.
But there is a solution, accept lower standards. A lot of innovative indie stuff out there. Just don't expect your niche games to be AAA quality. Because, as said above, that does not work.
That would be incompetence.
Unless you understand the work of your subordinates, you have no way to tell whether concerns are legitimate.
Term "suits" does not mean what you think it means.
What you talk about is middle management. The "suits" are senior management, entirely different management level and responsibilities.
Sure, they could all band together and refuse (like that would ever happen). Then we have a massive influx of unemployed developers. Or do you think they magically have millions set aside to start their own studios?
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
But they aren't. The more they do their "jobs", the crappier the games are becoming. Just look at the state of our Genre. Epitomized by Archeage. Who's benefiting from that one? Players? XL? Trion? What if, they actually release that game in a state similar to it's Alpha and only charged a sub? How much more would EVERYONE have benefited then?
Suits are the producers of WoW clones or anything that is safe and bland in this industry. They halt innovation and always go the road of least resistance because they might lose money by taking risks. Its not good business to take risks, so they don't, and we have a flood of mediocre clone games. Now we are into the F2P generation where they are all trying to cash in on cash shops because they are working on other games.
It's a sad day for the genre.
For me, though, there is a line that gets crossed all too quickly, and you alluded to it: When making money tops creativity.
I look at MMOs today and there is a definite formula that ties them all together:
Tutorial + lots of (mindless) quests + massive fighting + gear acquisition + maximum level = MMO success. (It seems the faster the journey, the better.)
Sure, they tweak it here and there, but in essence, that is the "formula for success." And, there is a reason for this formula: It works. Almost every new MMO attracts hundreds of thousands, if not millions of players. Most of them make good money. There is no incentive to look deeply at the formula.
I will adjust my original statement and include today's MMO players also as "succubi", as they keep rewarding companies for what they crank out
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
"Can we do this on a computer?"
"I think so."
"Cool! Can we make money at it?"
"Possibly."
MMOs used to be "ideas" that sometimes (many times?) made money. Pushing the technical envelope was the driving force, not making millions, as it seems today.
I could be wrong. I often am
Maybe the original developers had dollar signs in their eyes first and foremost 
I make my assumption on the differences in MMOs long ago (so much variety) and the similarities of them today.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Incompetent? Sounds like it.
Stupid? Not in the least. They sold ice cubes to Eskimos.
Remember, most "high up" jobs (suits) are not based on qualifications, but rather who you know and who you hire (headhunters) to market yourself. MBAs are not that tough to acquire.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
The problem is that they have no experience, knowledge, or talent in the field. Their job is making the financials work, but people who control the money have too much creative power and have an awful tendency to think themselves (much) smarter than they really are.
How many times have you heard some utterly stupid creative decision in a movie that ended up being the result of a Hollywood executive throwing around his weight. The same thing happens -all the time- in software development. When you hire professional programmers and developers, you should let them do their jobs and not think you know better than them. The same way you should let a movie director do his job. You don't tell a doctor how to perform surgery.
It's one thing to hold them to particular budget constraints or time-tables, it's entirely another to override their professional experience.
While I wouldn't go as far to say stupid or incompetent(although I've had a few that were pretty close), I do think you far overestimate the intelligence of the average business executive. Getting those positions is far more about who you know than what you know.
There are definitely the occasional sharp ones, but in my experience they generally aren't any more intelligent than your average person, and significantly less intelligent than your average programmer/scientist/engineer etc. Their main traits seem to be that they are professionally "driven" , socially accomplished, and that they network *extremely* well.
I actually know a guy that I've known since high-school (good guy, but always was had that kinda fake routine going on) that is now an executive at a major corporation. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a particularly intelligent individual... and he'll be the first to tell you. But he has always had tons of drive and he puts enough effort into business networking that he could probably write a book on it. That's really what it comes down to. He now makes a 7 figure salary and makes decisions for hundreds of people than are significantly more intelligent than him and making a fraction of the money. It's kinda scary honestly.
Pi*1337/100 = 42