Inside Rockst*r Games

Inside Rockst*r Games
blog.zerodean.com

I think stories like this are rooted in the fact that the feedback cycle for large-budget video game development is completely broken. For small game projects with small teams and small budgets, you could at least attempt to assign blame for failures and credit for successes to the team members responsible for the result of the project. But when a game project runs for multiple years, with hundreds of developers and tens of millions of dollars spent on development, it becomes increasingly difficult to assign blame for any particular detail. This is worsened by the fact that the success of a game is ultimately up to the whims of the market and other factors outside of the developer's control (like whether any competing titles are released at the same time).

The end result is that leads and executives are effectively insulated from the results of their decisions, which is why they can lead a project that ends up years behind schedule and burns through employees with 72 hour work weeks and not get fired. And ultimately, for a large game publisher, it doesn't matter if a few projects run over budget or fail completely as long as they get enough hits that bring in massive amounts of revenue.

I'm starting to suspect that 90% of commercial games only ship through an act of God, when an angel descends from the heavens a week before gold master to mysteriously fix 50% of open bugs and get the lead designer to stop using meth. Were this the case, it would definitely explain how certain studios like Bethesda always seem to get 'unlucky' and have their games ship with crippling issues and lots of rough edges, despite the fact that people love their work.

The bit about the removal of free sodas and donuts reminds me of: http://steveblank.com/2009/12/21/the-elves-leave-middle-eart...

Of course, whether or not you find it surprising is down to experience.

What causes it? Talented people continue to work there and middle management and infighting rips everyone to shreds. I worked during 'crunch time' which apparently 'happens on every production'.

The most psychotic thing from TFA is where a higher up pulls him in to a meeting room to accuse him of "questioning their authority" over a private email saying "I know the schedule is unrealistic, but guys we shouldn't be watching youtube videos during work hours". Who does that?