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There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

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Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#81

Post by stuxnet79 »

tombert wrote: post #21

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I did leave with the impression that John Carmack is an amazingly smart guy, who also has the potential to be a colossal asshole. I was only five when Quake came out, so obviously I couldn't really have worked on it, but I'm pretty sure that (if Masters of Doom is to be believed) I would have probably told Carmack to go fu…

> One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom.

Loved this book as well. Convinced me more than anything to stay out of game dev. It was also cool getting the inside story on why Ion Storm went belly up. I have huge respect for the games that the Austin office put out and IMO Warren Spector is one of the top game designers of our generation. But it seems like the Daikatana flop was one of those rare career ending failures. It took down the Dallas office which was the main HQ, left a black mark on many people's careers and was also ill timed with the popping of the Dot Com Bubble. Funding for new, risky ideas was essentially gone in the aftermath.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#82

Post by malnourish »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

Supergiant games appears to have taken these lessons to heart given their output cadence and apparent low rate of turnover.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#83

Post by efficax »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #72

Didn't Adrian Carmack (the art guy; no relation) get something like 10x more equity in the company than Carmack and Romero b/c of how badly they botched their cap table?

he had a 41% stake which led to some legal conflict https://www.eurogamer.net/news280905carmacksues

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#84

Post by supertroop »

Weird. Quake 1 was amazing. All my peers were counting the days for the release and the soundtrack hit right when nin was breaking huge. Sure the end of the game was lame, but the environment was magical. Unfortunately for a lot of people FPS games just became straight up redundant as we aged out of the genre.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#85

Post by lokimedes »

mikeocool wrote: post #50
lokimedes wrote: post #9

Young energy shouldn’t be apologized. Apparently Bill Gates had that psycho energy too, Jobs and many others too. On a civilizational scale it seems like a net benefit that young, eager and driven people give a bit more than they wanted to in retrospect. It do indeed change things for the rest of us. The patriotic call of armed forces has been driven by this for millennia. At least Carmack and Co. chose their own mis…

I’m not sure it’s necessarily a given that what Jobs, Gates, and Carmack created are net-positives when talking on a civilizational scale. Though Carmack certainly gets credit for keeping me entertained for a good portion of my youth. And gates probably gets some civilizational credit for what he’s done with his wealth after he made it.

I’m sitting here in Denmark having been affected by these geeks. They may not have built the Pantheon, but surely they have channeled a group of people’s creativity towards something we have integrated into our society?

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#86

Post by bigstrat2003 »

logicchains wrote: post #56
grim_io wrote: post #18

Maybe peak excellence is simply not sustainable.

Let's let GTA6 be the judge of that.

We don't need to wait for GTA 6. RDR 2 was already a serious letdown from the first game. Rockstar has lost sight of the fact that they are making games, not movies, and that games need to be fun to play. RDR 2 is significantly less fun to play than its predecessor because they are constantly trying to shove cinematic moments and immersion into the game.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#87

Post by aurareturn »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

Many founders/bosses often think that their employees are lazy because they don't work as hard as they do. They usually forget that their employees are usually paid a lot less or have magnitudes less equity.

Not everyone owns 15% of the company. I will grind too if I'm paid well enough and the potential reward is worth it.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#88

Post by mothballed »

kakacik wrote: post #53
analognoise wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more an age thing, and it's fixed by experience. Which is why there's such a focus on youth - who else can you get to sacrifice themselves with the whisper promise that it will make them rich, who else is easily goaded with "You're so smart you should work more"? We learn, but that's not what The Machine optimizes for, so when you realize it you leave. Other bodies throw themselves on the gears, the cycle rep…

> This is more an age thing, and it's fixed by experience. There is a simple trick for that, its called ageism. Good luck finding job in some youngish teams when you are over 50, you need to show extraordinary talent, experience and flexibility to be considered. I agree with others - people often think they are smarter than others, and smart folks tend to fall into that trap easily, triple that with young age. It wor…

At age 50 you contract to do the thing the young bucks butchered after the investors / executives realize what happened and beg for a "hired gun" to get it done. Then you GTFO.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#89

Post by dietr1ch »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

The MBAs don't care about the long term. Burnt out employees are an externality they can just lay off. Also, since there's a lot of risks in many dimensions, nailing work-life balance, but failing in another aspect will also end your company, so why not make them try their best in the short term while there's some runway left.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#90

Post by OnionBlender »

tombert wrote: post #21

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I did leave with the impression that John Carmack is an amazingly smart guy, who also has the potential to be a colossal asshole. I was only five when Quake came out, so obviously I couldn't really have worked on it, but I'm pretty sure that (if Masters of Doom is to be believed) I would have probably told Carmack to go fu…

If you haven't already, you should read John Romero's autobiography "Doom Guy: Life in First Person". There are some details from "Masters of Doom" that Romero disputes.
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