38 Studios is Working on a Game, Apparently, Afterall (Kingdoms of Amular)

[Fordel]

I've heard stuff about the 45 minute thing before with regards to classes at school. Like we can only handle about that much of any topic at one time before we start to just lose stuff from the beginning.

[Lantyssa]

That's processing new information though.

[UnSub]

Wikipedia points to a source for the 40 minute attention concept.

There's also the idea that mental load is like a muscle (although I've seen authors hate that comparison as well) and can be trained up. So you can enter that flow with enough practise. How much mental load you have also depends on things like your physical and emotional state.

... really derailed the thread here...

[Sky]

Flow can be entered quite quickly and easily, in the right circumstances. We dropped into it Sunday at my friend's housewarming. She's a renwench so there was a nice turnout of musicians. We set up in her living room and two hours later decided maybe we should take a break from jamming. I have no idea how many songs we played or what most of them were. But I was in the moment, focused on playing over unfamiliar changes, and jamming like a madman. So much fun. And it seemed to last about five minutes in my mind.

The funny part was she has a small house, so all the musicians (two acoustic guitars, a twelve-string, my classical, a banjo, a mando, a violin and two bodhrans) filled the room and the audience had to sit outside the room to listen.

Anyway. As a musician, entering 'flow' is normal and quick. Then you can get into how chunk memory works. I'm constantly fascinated on how my mind breaks up my musical knowledge. Sometimes I'll have little bits strung together, sometimes I'll have to focus on individual parts, but then there's long memorized passages to the point of some pieces being a single memory block to the extent that I find it difficult to impossible to begin playing from the middle of the piece.

[Kageru]

The flow works much better when you have a clear path for the work and don't hit blockages. So Jamming would be a good example. If it's programming with a clear goal I can have music on and hours pass fast. If it's planning or working on something I don't fully understand it very rarely works like that. I suspect the work periods idea is more about not getting distracted when a task is something hard or unpleasant you don't really want to do.

The Pomodoro technique is 45 minute bursts I think, not sure on if there's any research backing it up.

It would also be nice if someone ended up owning Reckoning and did a steam sale. The game is still sitting at 70AUD$ on steam while it's 20$ on amazon. They could get some more money out of it while people still remember it exists.

[Severian]

Results of the auctions are a total of $830K going to the state of Rhode Island. $650K came from the RI location and $180K from the former Big Huge Games location.

[naum]

[satael]

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/nesi/edc-files-lawsuit-over-38-studios-deal  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUzu__yfJe4#! Chafee's video statement 

[satael]

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TBphK_v8H0I#!

[Mrbloodworth]

That's a deep rabbit hole right there that is.

[Sophismata]

I stand most of the time at work.  Most of the time there is at least modest mobility, and I have a chair to use whenever I want.  The mobility is key.  I have my doubts about the benefit of standingvs sitting if you are relatively immobile.

I worked as a croupier for a couple of years. Standing all night sucks.

Having done the same, I'd like to suggest that sitting in the crappy baccarat chairs was arguably worse. Either way, though, the regular breaks croupiers get make it much better than retail (IMO).

[Severian]

Big Huge Games has resurfaced as Impossible Studios, under Epic.

http://epicgames.com/community/2012/08/epic-games-announces-impossible-studios/

That didn't last long. :(

A Message from Tim Sweeney, Epic Games

We’re closing Impossible Studios.

When former members of Big Huge Games approached Epic last year, we saw the opportunity to help a great group of people while putting them to work on a project that needed a team.  It was a bold initiative and the Impossible folks made a gallant effort, but ultimately it wasn’t working out for Epic. In addition to providing Impossible Studios employees with 3 months of severance pay, we’ll be giving the team the opportunity to form a new company with the Impossible Studios name and the awesome Impossibear logo. This means that Infinity Blade: Dungeons is now on hold as we figure out the future of the project.


http://epicgames.com/community/2013/02/a-message-from-tim-sweeney/

[Numtini]

Yet another punchline. The "bloody sock" that Schilling put up as backing for loans isn't actually the bloody sock from the ALCS Yankee game that everyone remembers, it's another bloody sock from the world series that, well, mostly nobody cares about.

[Merusk]

At this point it's not news that Curt Schilling is a lying douche, but that is pathetic.

[WayAbvPar]

New Article about Harvard case study

I wouldn't even mention it, but this paragraph just had to be shared-

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

I am pretty sure you can see the clownshoes from space.

[Khaldun]

The f13 intelligentsia, you'll remember, tried to convince him of that very point, with no success.

Reminds me of a meeting I had with a group of media producers working on a documentary TV series. A friend who was in the group called me to consult because he knew I'd written a bit about virtual worlds. They wanted to build a very full-featured MMORPG to go along with the series (one of their backers was insisting on it, in fact) and handed me the design document for it. I asked what the budget for this part of the overall production was, and they hemmed and hawed and finally said, "About $25,000? Maybe $50,000?" I laughed and laughed, and told them that to make even half of what they had down on the document would take more money that they had budgeted for two years worth of TV production.  So Schilling's initial cluelessness in this respect is not unusual--what's unusual is throwing all your own money and a bunch of other peoples' money at it without bothering to educate yourself.

[Phred]

New Article about Harvard case study

I wouldn't even mention it, but this paragraph just had to be shared-

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

I am pretty sure you can see the clownshoes from space.

You mean even Richard Garriot could see them? But the question is would he recognise them.

[Goreschach]

I'm pretty sure Richard Garriot can't see anything but colon.

[WayAbvPar]

 

I'm pretty sure Richard Garriot can't see anything but colon.

 

[schild]

I'm pretty sure I ripped the fuck into him about those very topics.

Alas, he was a pro baseball player.

Clearly he's smarter than the rest of the dumbest sport in America.

[WayAbvPar]

Who said anything about NASCAR?

[schild]

Not a sport.

[WayAbvPar]

As always, the correct answer.

[Signe]

I feel sorry for him.  He was just trying to realise his dream.  He worked hard throwing baseballs (he was a baseball thrower, right?) and retired (?) hoping to do something awesome.  Then his dream died because he wasn't really a game designer, just your common as muck, everyday, multimillionaire baseball playing mega superstar.  Dead dreams are sad for everyone.  I'm sorry your dream died, Curt.    

[Margalis]

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

This is as much the fault as the people underneath him. As a software developer of any kind you are going to get plenty of suggestions you should ignore based on your better judgement.

[Morat20]

Speaking from personal experience: The personal opinions of your boss and money-man are very, very hard to ignore. Because your boss and/or the guy with the cash can force the issue. Money-men more than bosses, even.

Some bosses actually recognize "relevant expertise" and listen to it, but guys with big wads of cash tend to think they're a LOT smarter than everyone else in the room. Because, you know, he has that wad of cash and you don't. Ergo: Smarter than you.

[Phred]

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

This is as much the fault as the people underneath him. As a software developer of any kind you are going to get plenty of suggestions you should ignore based on your better judgement.

I'd think it was his executives who would carry most of the burden though. That mounted combat story smells like a character smear to me so I doubt it's accurate.

[Ginaz]

Speaking from personal experience: The personal opinions of your boss and money-man are very, very hard to ignore. Because your boss and/or the guy with the cash can force the issue. Money-men more than bosses, even.

Some bosses actually recognize "relevant expertise" and listen to it, but guys with big wads of cash tend to think they're a LOT smarter than everyone else in the room. Because, you know, he has that wad of cash and you don't. Ergo: Smarter than you.

Exactly.  Being in the army for almost 20 years, believe me, there have been many times I've thought "WTF are you thinking...Sir".  However, just like any other low level peon, you either do as you're told or find another job.  Your boss is always right, even when he isn't.

[Venkman]

Yep that's pretty much it. Sometimes you can convince them. Sometimes they're just right because they're rich or they were told by their bosses to be right.

The good ones you stick with.

The not-good ones compel you to try a different organizaton 

[satael]

Schilling had no idea how much time and money it took to build the software required for such a game. And he didn’t exactly help matters by weighing in with suggestions of his own. There was, for example, that instance when he mentioned in an e-mail that it might be cool to have mounted combat on flying pigs. The design team worked on nothing else for a week.

This is as much the fault as the people underneath him. As a software developer of any kind you are going to get plenty of suggestions you should ignore based on your better judgement.

I'd think it was his executives who would carry most of the burden though. That mounted combat story smells like a character smear to me so I doubt it's accurate.

I think the problem with the flying pigs story is that the design team took it as an order to do something rather than just an idea for something to add if/when they have the time for it (or just ignore it if it doesn't fit the game).

[Phred]

I think the problem with the flying pigs story is that the design team took it as an order to do something rather than just an idea for something to add if/when they have the time for it (or just ignore it if it doesn't fit the game).

It just looks too obvious to me, like when Goons would tell Eve "journalists" outrageous lies to see if they'd report them. As the author of that article comes across as pretty clueless about gaming it just seems like he was fed a bill of goods to see if he'd print it.

[Maledict]

The disconnect I have is that Schilling was very clear on various boards that he wasn't doing that sort of thing, and indeed was staying out of that level of design specifically for that reason. Whilst his overall ambition was clearly too big and not planned, that sort of daily meddling is really unlike what anyone else involved including him has mentioned.

Plus - flying pigs? That seems rather a give away...

[UnSub]

Here's a quote from 2012, before the collapse:

Schilling found out the toll he was having on his company when he suggested to his developers that they could make pigs fly.

“I wanted mounted combat on flying pigs,”  Schilling said.

The studio’s executive producer, Jason Roberts, calmly told his imposing boss, “I will never tell you no. I will only tell you how much it will cost.”

“It was an eye-opener,” Schilling said. “I realized all these emails I kept sending out cost me money. So I backed off. When it comes to making games, these guys were the pro athletes. I am not.”

So whether or not the new story indicating that they actually spent time on it is true or not, there's another reference somewhere else about it.

Also, from the NYT article:

According to the state’s pending lawsuit, Mr. Esten was alarmed that 38 Studios’ worst-case projection for its business seemed to rely on releasing a successful game every two years — a track record that most gaming companies can only dream of.

What has always astounded me is that 38 Studios knew they were burning US$4m a month or so right up to the end, but did nothing to slow that down. People knew they were running out of cash, but pushed on regardless.

[Numtini]

I don't remember the pigs thing, but I do remember some "off the record" comments in articles during the collapse talking about chasing down stuff that he wanted done that really wasn't core.

If I had to choose between believing an credulity straining off the record comment in an article written by someone unfamiliar with gaming or a direct sworn statement by Mr. Schilling, I'd go with the flying pigs.