Useless gaming news & chatter

[Kail]

Sorry to interrupt the wankery, but AGDQ 2015 is going on right now until the 10th.  http://www.twitch.tv/gamesdonequick

And you're lucky enough to have missed the Sonic and FZero blocks.  Boring as hell.

Personally, I find games like Sonic and F-Zero to be more palatable than half the other stuff I've caught.  At least they're designed to look OK when you're moving fast.  For some reason, I get really motion sick when I'm watching people speedrun FPS (though I have no problem playing them), can't take more than about five minutes of it.

Some of this stuff is pretty crazy, though.  Was watching the quick run through of Jedi Knight yesterday, guy killed the final boss with a giant stack of detonation pack charges.  "Yeah, he's actually invulnerable to this weapon, what's killing him is that it throws him off at such high speed that he hits the wall and takes impact damage"

[Shannow]

I'm just going to leave this here...

Play a couple of thousand MSDOS games through your browser.

[Paelos]

Interesting!

[cironian]

So now we're arguing over the definition of "culture".  Cool, f13 had been lacking a philosophy and linguistics thread.

I disagree. It's really more of a subthread.

[Miasma]

I'm just going to leave this here...

Play a couple of thousand MSDOS games through your browser.

Captain Bible in the Dome of Darkness

[bhodi]

Has this been posted anywhere yet?

Seems like it's a Schild special.

We have seen that four factors – total project duration, team experience level, financial incentives based on individual performance, and re-use of an existing game engine from a similar game – have clear correlations with game project outcomes.

Our study found several surprises, including a complete lack of any correlations between factors that one would assume should have a large impact, such as team size, game genre, target platforms, the production methodology the team used, or any additional financial incentives the team was offered beyond individual performance compensation.

Part 2 is particularly good. "If your team is directionless assholes, you're probably going to fail, no matter how much money is thrown at you". But with science! And Numbers!

[schild]

Saw part 1 when it was posted. Basically it's a study where logic and a rudimentary understanding of the history of game development would have sufficed.

[Jeff Kelly]

It can basically be summarized as "if your team has no hierarchy and no management your gonna have a bad time", or "how to run a company for dummies". Seeing just how many game companies claim to still want to be "like a startup" or "lean" even though they have a staff of over 200 people does make these super obvious obeservation kind of necessary though.

Last week saw another social media meltdown of a senior engineer in the games business - this time from Valve - over just how fucked up the corporate culture in those companies is and just how little oversight and direction those people are given by "management". The gist of it: nothing gets ever done, people only work on their pet projects or on what's fun at the time and everyone acts like a super asshole.

[Margalis]

Our study found several surprises, including a complete lack of any correlations between factors that one would assume should have a large impact, such as team size, game genre, target platforms, the production methodology the team used, or any additional financial incentives the team was offered beyond individual performance compensation.

This isn't surprising, especially the production methodology. That stuff is just snake oil fad nonsense, no different from diet books or the "how to run a successful business using this exciting new approach" books you see in airport bookstores.

Production methodology adherents are like cult members - they make up certifications and job titles, bill themselves out as "experts" in a thing they just invented. "you need a certified scrum master!!!"

[Jeff Kelly]

You should check out the recent blog posts by the disgruntled Valve employee.

He said that working for Microsoft was by comparison more enjoyable than working for Valve. The link to Valve's employee handbook is now legendary, as is it's high turnover rate. He also linked to Valves "Open Plan" office space that looked right out of a chinese sweatshop and he criticized Valve's "lack of hierarchy and leadership"

You can be a cool and hip creative company and still have a management hierarchy and a clear leadership structure, if you ignore all the basics that make up a successful company than no amount of business snake oil will help you if you're not lucky enough to have infinite cash flow because of one lucky product.

[Falconeer]

So that's why we don't have Half Life 3 yet? Because of anarchy?

[Jeff Kelly]

Basically.

If you are interested there have been a number of high profile ex-Valve employees spilling the beans about Valve's internal culture. The two biggest complaints by all ex-employees have been Valve's stack ranking system for employee performance and how toxic that system is to team work and employee interaction and the lack of a leadership structure. Third on the list were the cramped working conditions.

They basically all said that stack ranking has destroyed employee morale, team work and team spirit and has pitted all employees against each other with everyone looking out for themselves/screwing over the competition. They also all said that Valve's lack of leadership/management structure meant that basically nothing got ever done/finished on time or at all as ideas and projects went in and out of favour with key persons constantly or because people were more worried about their popularity because of the stack ranking system. Most people allegedly got away with doing whatever they felt like doing at the time as long as it was cool and didn't hurt their standing amongst their peers. They basically claim that most projects get done by small teams despite the fucked up corporate culture even though Valve has now >200 employees because bigger teams degenerate into petty high-school politics and cliques.

This is no singular opinion by one disgruntled ex-employee either, numerous people have come forward now and basically said the same things. After reading up on this it seems that Valve basically only exists because of steam and it's constant revenue stream subsidizing everything.

[Margalis]

I'm pretty sure we had a thread years ago on the Valve Handbook and at the time I said it was marketing fluff, but I may be misremembering.

This Valve stuff coming out doesn't surprise me. I'm not at liberty to say why, beyond that in the limited capacity I interacted with them there seemed to be pretty obvious issues. They gave me a pretty swank pen though - it still works!

[Kageru]

I would be impressed to see the company culture or structure that could survive stack ranking. The incentives it creates are likely to be destructive unless your workers truly are interchangeable widgets and you've got an endless supply of easily integrated new hires.

The valve handbook does cover that they use stack ranking but for remuneration rather than continued employment. Of course if they mean different levels of bonus on top of a good wage or changing your base salary to a "you might as well quit" level is an important detail not mentioned.

I would suspect no half-life 3 because valve is not that large (330 employees, EA has thousands) and DOTA / CS:GO and Steam / Steambox itself are higher priority and more lucrative. Though a game company being a gaggle of competing egos and poor focus certainly wouldn't be new either.

[Jeff Kelly]

There's a dedicated Neogaf thread discussing the fact that Steam has no dedicated customer service staff or backend developers so I'd guess it's mostly the latter (poor focus) although I guess that Valve makes more than enough money with Steam, Dota, CS:GO and Team Fortress that they don't reallyfeel the pressure to change anything either.

To have one insanely successful product that secures your cash flow can be a sweet sweet poison. See Microsoft and Google for reference. Google in particular seems like a company that pretty much fails at everything that is not search yet makes enough money from search that they don't really care that they burn billions on projects that go nowhere fast.

[KallDrexx]

There's a dedicated Neogaf thread discussing the fact that Steam has no dedicated customer service staff or backend developers so I'd guess it's mostly the latter (poor focus) although I guess that Valve makes more than enough money with Steam, Dota, CS:GO and Team Fortress that they don't reallyfeel the pressure to change anything either.

I also imagine working on CS or steam's backend isn't sexy enough that your co-workers won't notice, and thus you'll end up at the end of the stack ranking (cause no one cares what you are working on).  So in fact Valve's own culture prevents people from trying to improve those things.

[Kageru]

Since Valve is privately held no stock-holders demanding ever greater efficiency / profits either. Which gives them a lot of freedom but one less reason to focus on company discipline. And since ego, status and money demand being part of the sexy big-win projects I'm not really surprised no one dedicates themselves to customer service.

Of course they do avoid the expense and tensions of a more traditional management structure.

[Ironwood]

Links Jeff ??

[Maven]

Yeah, I'd like to read those disgruntled posts. I heard about Valve's structure and thought it was an interesting idea, but failed to take psychology, social theory, and business organization principles into consideration.

Everyone working on what interests them so projects are chosen by a popularity contest! How novel! Wait, it creates a toxic work culture? Oh... oh.

[Jeff Kelly]

It's the other way around Maven. Stack ranking creates an environment where such things happen because your performance is evaluated by your peers. In theory this should be good because your team knows best who was great and who wasn't. Stack ranking is usually zero sum though so for everyone that gets a better than average evaluation there has to be one below average. Since the results of the stack ranking usually also determine bonus payments and also promotions/firings it creates an environment where people deliberately tank the performance of their colleagues to seem better by comparison or campaign for their own popularity.

So if nobody likes you or doesn't like what you're doing or doesn't even know your exist you're more likely to end up in the bottom rung than if you're well liked or work on cool shit. Combine that with a dysfunctional management structure and you get all kinds of crazy.

There are dozens of accounts by employees of companies that use/used stack ranking on the internet that describe just how toxic that system is.

[Jeff Kelly]

The GAF thread I mentioned is a good starting off point. The OP collects most of the info posted by the ex-valve guy on twitter and Facebook and in the thread a few other ex-employees are mentioned by name that stated similar stuff in the past. The OP also has a picture of the DOTA2 part of Valves office as an example of the cramped offices.

Warning it's GAF so lots of stupid in between the largely decent and insightful discussion

Former Valve dev talks about firings, productivity, cliques, bad management, office

[Jeff Kelly]

Gamasutra published a list of names of people that got fired last year during an internal restructuring of Valve operations: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/186592/Several_out_of_work_as_Valve_makes_large_decisions_about_its_future.php

A few of them have since also come forward about the working conditions at valve, especially Jeri Ellsworth.

I cannot find the thread about Steam support and how it is implemented right now.

[Jeff Kelly]

From the thread: "Steam has no dedicated customer support staff. There's no outsourced CS, no internal people hired specifically for CS, nor do they hire employees with specific skill sets intended for development of things like the client or the web site. It takes days or weeks to get responses from Steam support. (...)

These aren't things the "internet knows," these are things discussed directly in the Steam thread on this forum by people who have applied for jobs at Valve, taken tours of Valve, and have direct contact with people who work for Valve. And even if all of the Valve employees did nothing but Steam support and development, the size would still be a fraction of what every similar platform has and needs to run well. Even EA's support on Origin makes Steam's look bad."

[Jeff Kelly]

Just so I don't just shit on Valve. The thread features a few examples of other AAA developers with similar problems

[schild]

It's hard to give a shit because Steam is fucking awesome. I can ignore everything else they do because I never have to go to Egghead software again.

[Yegolev]

Until there is some sort of Lord of the Flies event in the Valve cube-farm and we all lose our pretend shit.

[Paelos]

Dirty secret, nobody cares about your working conditions if they love the product. You are choosing to work there.

[Yegolev]

This applies to bosses as well as customers.

[Paelos]

This applies to bosses as well as customers.

Bosses care if losing people costs them money. If there's a qualified candidate line to get in the building, you're going to get treated like shit for the most part.

Sports organizations are the worst about this. They pay the office staff dick because every fan would love to work for a pro sports organization, so they can afford to treat people poorly.

[HaemishM]

It's hard to give a shit because Steam is fucking awesome. I can ignore everything else they do because I never have to go to Egghead software again.

This. I've never ever had to have one interaction with Steam Support. I've had multiple interactions with Origin support and it has never fixed the problem. At work, I cannot download games on Origin anymore - it worked, then it stopped working after a patch, fixed itself at some point months beyond that, then it broke again and all interactions with Origin support send me down the same rabbit hole that has yet to work. I have to use a proxy connection to make Origin download  at work. What's even stupider is that once the game is downloaded, I'm able to play it, even multiplayer without any issues (I can also patch Origin without any issues). Meanwhile I've never had an issue with Steam at home or work.

Stack ranking sounds like the dumbest middle manager-created bullshit imaginable.

[Shannow]

I was gonna say MBA wankery at its finest.

[Trippy]

Middle mangers are subject to stack ranking. So it's an executive-level idea.

[MahrinSkel]

Stack ranking is literally nothing but a way to wield the hatchet in a "10% Layoffs" situation, turned into a permanent policy. All of the bells and whistles like 360 degree reviews are all embroidery around creating a permanent culture of fear, where everyone is *constantly* maneuvering not to be caught without a seat in a never-ending game of hardcore Musical Chairs.

Of course it produces toxic cultures. That's its primary feature. In an environment where the axe is always swinging, the headsman is God.

It looks good to companies that have been through a lot of growth, especially growth by acquisition, and accumulated a lot of people that don't actually do much (and may not have anything meaningful to do), because it looks like a fair way to prune off the dead weight. But maintained for more than a year or so, it turns into something else entirely.

--Dave

[Paelos]

Corporate policies, like government programs, have a way of existing well after their intended use and morphing into something completely unintended.

[MahrinSkel]

And it mostly is MBA wankery, when you look at the mindset that Business School cultivates (essentially a focus on market dynamics rather than products, and a constant awareness of relative performance) stack ranking is a perfect fit. Biz School attracts and molds people that focus on the politics of a business rather than what that business actually does.

To such people, the fact that someone is ridiculously, mutant-level competent at their skillset does not make up for being unsocial or even unlikeable. Of course a company where everyone is more like them will be a better company. It is literally unpossible for it to be any other way.

To the extent that it works at all, it's because stock analysts and institutional buyers are themselves Biz School types, and love the idea, so companies that go this route tend to see rising stock values. But since Valve is a private company, they don't even have that excuse.

--Dave