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Author Topic: Interview/Postmortem with Adam Carpenter of Auran  (Read 41185 times)
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on: December 07, 2007, 07:01:42 PM

Interview/Postmortem with Adam Carpenter of Auran

This was a one on one interview with Adam Carpenter. Everything after the bump are his personal thoughts on the development of Fury and how it evolved.

Prepare yourself, it's a long one.

» Read More
Tale
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Reply #1 on: December 07, 2007, 07:21:44 PM

Quote
GO was in development from January 2004 until March 2005, and I think it was officially canceled in May of 2005.

Nice to get a game out, then. Grats.
geldonyetich2
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Reply #2 on: December 07, 2007, 07:34:13 PM

Interesting stuff.

I'm not really sure if the lone employee running off and whining really cost 20 more people their jobs.  More likely they're just inventing excuses because their game hasn't caught on to the point where they can afford to hire that many people.

That said, Fury is a case of a game that was made for me, the experienced gamer, and I totally missed it because it was being presented as a Guild Wars alternative that had an additional $9.99/mo cost if you wanted all the features in the game.  Meanwhile, if you're a hardcore gamer, you already own Guild Wars and it doesn't cost you anything beyond that (unless you wanted all the expansions).  There was no real room for me to get into it seriously.  Now, if it were cheap - say $20 or free - then maybe this $9.99/mo subscription idea might have been justified.

However, then you get into the game itself and you have trouble.  Hardcore, skilled players being lured in by lucrative cash prizes, exploiting every slight misbalancing of the game to rape everybody else, and probably using 3rd party cheating programs if they can.  More importantly, the unskilled players were being dropped immediately into the game with a trial by fire that ultimately frustrated them.  Solution? Less lucrative prizes and protracted and fun tutorial system geared to get the average player capable able to defending themselves before dropping them into the lion's den.  But it's coming late now, the main push of development is over, and they just dropped over half their development team.
Montague
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Reply #3 on: December 07, 2007, 07:56:14 PM

Hmmm. A significant portion of the developers only wanted to be there until 5.

Now was this because these guys are lazy, unmotivated workers? Or is it because they were well aware that the design direction sucked and this game had no chance?

If it's the former, weren't these the same people who worked on the previous project and was there not ample time to weed them out?

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Viin
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Reply #4 on: December 07, 2007, 08:16:44 PM

As a rule I don't work more than 40 hours a week, except in rare circumstances. It has nothing to do with accepting someone else's vision or not - it's just that I don't believe that quality products are created by overworking yourself to the allusion of getting more done.

But, in any company, there are a lot of people who do it just because they got the job (and pay) not because they actually enjoy it. Welcome to the technology industry.

- Viin
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Reply #5 on: December 07, 2007, 08:21:43 PM

He's saying they were only there for the 9-5 pay I think. I didn't go further on it because that's how I interpreted it. 9-5 is what you make of it. The passionate, talented ones are obviously going to be more valuable during those hours. While people who are just there for the job are punks taking jobs from people who want them.
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Reply #6 on: December 07, 2007, 08:52:44 PM

Not neccessarily.  It's true that you could say that people who are willing to sign away all their free time to their job want the job more.  However, that doesn't neccessarily mean you're in the wrong to suggest that you're both passionate about that work while wanting a little time to yourself.

Ooo, I betcha that's going to rub some people's parental engaged work ethic wrong.
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Reply #7 on: December 07, 2007, 08:59:04 PM

To say what Geldon just said without sounding like a gigantic tool, I know people who are amazing at their jobs, love what they do, and are passionate, but generally only put in an 8-to-9-hour workday for family and personal reasons. There are also your only-care-about-promotions-and-pay people who will do 10+ hours of semi-productive work a day, and the same sorts who only do the 9-to-5 equivalent.

I'll take folks from the first category in every circumstance. Loving what you do but living a balance life is pretty much The Ultimate from a personal perspective. And, if your company thinks beyond the immediate-term, The Ultimate from theirs too.
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Reply #8 on: December 07, 2007, 09:08:52 PM

(I seem get called a "tool" a lot.  I need figure out if that provides any more productive feedback to my failing.  I used to think I'm being called a, "One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used."  But I'm beginning to think that people just randomly throw that out there as a generic replacement for 'dick', which is about as inciteful to me as a McDonald's commercial.  Anywho, thread not about me, lets keep it that way.)

To flesh out what I meant a bit more, it basically goes back to my "games as art" perspective.  You can't work somebody into the ground, EA-Spouse style, and expect people to put out good games because you've basically crushed their artistic spirit.  It's not work ethic, it's lunacy.  You want something interesting that works, take a look at how they do things at Valve in Yahtzee's visit.
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Reply #9 on: December 07, 2007, 09:14:38 PM

outlier
out·li·er (out'lī'ər)  Pronunciation Key
n. 

   1. One whose domicile lies at an appreciable distance from his or her place of business.
   2. A value far from most others in a set of data: "Outliers make statistical analyses difficult" (Harvey Motulsky).
Montague
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Reply #10 on: December 07, 2007, 09:17:07 PM

From my understanding, working more than eight hours in the game industry is the norm rather than the exception. To me, this isn't a question of Auran being cruel taskmasters per se. What happened seems to be a failure of project management. If a substantial portion of your team is not "buying in", then it's incumbent on management to either get the wayward folk to buy in, or to replace them. It's unclear from the interview if this had been an ongoing problem, but as I've stated before if it was they had plenty of time to make a change when they changed projects.


When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross - Sinclair Lewis.

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Reply #11 on: December 07, 2007, 09:17:36 PM

 awesome, for real

 Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

 ACK!

 Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?

 ACK!

.........

 ACK!
SnakeCharmer
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Reply #12 on: December 07, 2007, 09:19:21 PM

So.

Another game/pseudoMMO/arenawhatever that was funded with too much money that probably never should have gotten funded to begin with is released and fails to live up to investors expected return and has the plug pulled because it didn't generate WoW returns past a few months...

Amirite?

Also, only people that put in 16 hours a day love what they are doing.  Anyone else is just there for a paycheck.
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Reply #13 on: December 07, 2007, 09:37:50 PM

To say what Geldon just said without sounding like a gigantic tool, I know people who are amazing at their jobs, love what they do, and are passionate, but generally only put in an 8-to-9-hour workday for family and personal reasons. There are also your only-care-about-promotions-and-pay people who will do 10+ hours of semi-productive work a day, and the same sorts who only do the 9-to-5 equivalent.

I'll take folks from the first category in every circumstance. Loving what you do but living a balance life is pretty much The Ultimate from a personal perspective. And, if your company thinks beyond the immediate-term, The Ultimate from theirs too.

I want to clarify that I use the phrase 9-5 to describe a mentality and work ethic equaling the bare minimum.  I don’t use the phrase as a literal translation of hours worked.

As you so rightly point out, there are vast differences between individuals who work at 95% efficiency for 8 hours a day, those who work at 75% for 10 hours and sadly those who work at 60% for <8 hours a day.

Tebonas
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Reply #14 on: December 07, 2007, 09:50:14 PM

Now I've got that Dolly Parton song stuck in my head. Damn you all!
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Reply #15 on: December 08, 2007, 05:30:41 AM

Has nothing to do with laziness. If one doesn't get overtime for going over 40, then the employer sucks balls (as is the case with most of the gaming industry). Simple as that. Fuck passion. Justice and self respect is more important.
Murgos
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Reply #16 on: December 08, 2007, 07:23:37 AM

I just recently went through an evolution with one HIGHLY (in the 200's) paid employee that worked 50+ hours a week.  He produced less than nothing, he produced obstacles and difficulties for everyone he worked with.  Because he was an expert on paper and had lots of experience (worked on USB) and worked so hard at being in early and out late and was very personable he was camouflaged to the upper level. 

Because he was so senior for a long time he only sat in on peer reviews and didn't volunteer to be reviewed.  People started to worry when pretty much nothing technical he said made any sense or when he would offer advice that would turn out to be utterly wrong.

Peer review after peer review showed, with different sets of peers and technical leads, that he didn't have a clue what he was doing.  Finally we had a review of his work, that I sat in on, and the first 10 requirement blocks looked at were wrong, his interpretation of the requirements didn't match the written requirements (different interpretations, as long as they can be vetted as achieving the same results are allowed, it happens when you work with lots of Ph.D's) and worse, his code didn't match either his version of the requirements OR the written requirements which was just inexcusable.

Eventually, with lots of office drama, he was moved to another team on a different project.  As that team ramped up production he was given small tasks of a basic level of competence and supervised closely, like you would a new college grad, to ensure he was working in the proper direction.  He produced nothing usable, stuff that would have to be redone by someone else.  Finally, after 18 months, he was let go.

Similarly, I work with another guy who has a vast wealth of experience and knowledge, he will not work more than 40 hours a week unless it's absolutely necessary for a hard milestone.  He finds solutions to problems before they hit the horizon because he knows what to expect and how to do the job.  If you ask him a question you will learn something new and useful.  It's like The Wolf from Pulp Fiction, "Why didn't you say Bob was on the job?  We cool man, we all cool."

Just because you work lots of hours doesn't mean you are any good.  Just because you write lots of code doesn't mean you are any good.  Even if you only work 40 hours a week you can still be a necessary component for the success of a project.

Also, if the schedule is such that overtime in necessary in more than just minor amounts then the schedule was wrong in the first place.

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Reply #17 on: December 08, 2007, 10:48:02 AM

Perhaps I am biased, but I am of the opinion that you get what you pay for with free testers.  Oh ho ho ho. Reallllly?



 "What I'm saying is you should make friends with a few catasses, they smell funny but they're very helpful."
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Reply #18 on: December 08, 2007, 02:14:44 PM

First off.  Interesting read, thx f13  awesome, for real  I found the bits about the realities of pvp, pvp'ers and gamers at large to jive with personal experience.  I've seen first hand the ugly results of the heavy churn in pvp-only games, it leaves most of them with much smaller playerbases then they deserve versus Lineage Clone#21,431 or Ragnarok Online Clone#453 now with more CUTE!

Its rare that a pvp-only game gets good word of mouth out the gate.  While almost every generic fantasy grindfest has fanbois and apologists coming out of the woodwork.

I will endeavour to bother to use the trial after this patch comes out, but don't count on it.  I have too much fun playing Rumble Fighter when I need my "arena combat" fix. 

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Amaron
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Reply #19 on: December 09, 2007, 02:05:34 AM

I want to clarify that I use the phrase 9-5 to describe a mentality and work ethic equaling the bare minimum.  I don’t use the phrase as a literal translation of hours worked.

As you so rightly point out, there are vast differences between individuals who work at 95% efficiency for 8 hours a day, those who work at 75% for 10 hours and sadly those who work at 60% for <8 hours a day.

I want to ask what you meant by the passionate statements.  I personally find that passionate people don't really add anything to a project over people who are competent professionals who simply care about doing their job properly.   John Carmack is a great example I think.  I don't think that guy is passionate about gaming at all.  He obviously likes gaming but I dont see him doing some stupid "games are art" rant every time I read an article on him.  He doesn't go flapping his jaw about how to make a good game either.  He simply does his job so well that shit gets done in time to fix any problems.  That to me is how you make a decent game without wasting a metric shit ton of money.  So are you talking about this sort of thing as "passion" or are we talking more like Brad McQuaid "this game will be so awesome" passion.
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Reply #20 on: December 09, 2007, 07:03:47 AM

  I personally find that passionate people don't really add anything to a project over people who are competent professionals who simply care about doing their job properly.   

In theory I think your statement makes sense... but in practice I find that a passionate employee gets the job done despite his work environment. In my job, our processes and procedures are horrible. As a result, if I was very professional and just got my job done... things would fall apart. I routinely have to do all sorts of things that are outside the scope of my position just because I care about our customers.
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Reply #21 on: December 09, 2007, 07:10:16 AM

Sounds like a problem with the company you work for. Not the employees.

Being professional and doing your job generally should NOT make things fall apart.  smiley
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Reply #22 on: December 09, 2007, 05:09:13 PM

We're playing Fury right now as a continuous top 5 guild there, and the population is small enough to border on an extreme niche game. Many people may be waiting for the vaunted Dec 14th Age of the Chosen patch to make up their minds as to whether they are going to hang around, or depart for good while throwing Fury in the trash.

Adam is a good guy and maybe he just ran into issues within the company that he couldn't overcome.  I know that the beta community spoke out against things we felt were game ruining, and begged for the game to be delayed by about 90 days. Of course that didn' t happen, and Fury launched with a ton of tech issues, bad skill balance, no PVP ladders, no VOIP, and very little actual game content.

Because they released early reviews were terrible, a game that advertised itself for a year about being no grind released with a grind (gold and gear), they had a very confusing PVP ladder where you would lose rank for winning, and the subscription wasn't worth it considering most people could play GW/FPS games for free.


If the December 14th update isn't absolute perfection with all the supported features people expected at release, then this game will go downhill quickly as the veteran population will begin to leave enmass. Once that happens, the only way people will keep playing this game is if its 100% free for the game and all its features.

So my post mortem is simply that Fury fell victim to bad internal management, decision making at all levels, greedy investors who rushed it to release, and not delivering the product at release.  PVP gamers are fickle beasts, and they will quickly depart a game that fails expectations on multiple levels much faster than a PVE customer.

The average que in North American prime time is:

4 man Elimination x 8 = 32 players
8 man Vortex = 0
8 man Bloodbath x5 = 40 players

Its been that way since early November, and it will get worse if the Dec 14th update doesn't fix the issues the leading game players/guilds have been bringing up to them over and over since July.

« Last Edit: December 09, 2007, 05:15:07 PM by waylander »

Lords of the Dead
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Reply #23 on: December 09, 2007, 05:50:48 PM

My personal thoughts on the project

- A large majority of the Fury team had major issues with Fury.
- Lots of the feedback sent by other members of the team to leads was dismissed or flat out ignored. A lot of the changes at Beta were mentioned to design and production during Alpha. Some of this feedback never made it to Adam as it was shut down by other team members/leads. Essentially Fury was designed in a vacuum with little collaboration.
- 75% of the designers including Adam rarely played the game at Alpha and Beta unless it was one of the mandatory short 30min - 1hr playtests.
- None of the Fury team worked on Dark Reign, marketing should stop making these comparisons.
- For many of the team this was their first project in the video game industry. Most of the Fury team had never shipped a video game before, this includes the senior management and Adam.
- Props to the die hard members of Fury that put in the blood, sweat, and tears (maybe 10% of team). Overall a bold effort by a very inexperienced team which is represented accurately in the end product.
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Reply #24 on: December 09, 2007, 06:43:35 PM

I've talked about Fury before so will only repeat my key complaint (which was well recognised after the fact): its high barrier to entry that stops new players from learning the game.

Thinking back to alpha / beta, I think that any new PvP game that gets developed should do the following thing:

1) Recruit gamers straight out of internet cafes, gaming shows, wherever, to play their PvP system from scratch (i.e. without pre-made characters).

2) Watch how they play and how they learn the game. With PvE, you can fudge it long enough that players can learn what to do. In PvP, where you will be immediately slaughtered for making a mistake, if the players can't pick the game up quickly, you're in big trouble.

I could play Exteel (shallow as that game is) because it was very easy to pick up and play. Fury didn't have that advantage.

I really hope Auran keeps going - it's one of the few Australian development houses to have made a name for itself internationally.

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Reply #25 on: December 09, 2007, 07:10:14 PM

See, I like depth, I think Fury should endeavor to stay deep.   The trick is leveraging in that "easy to pick up and play" and then eventually allowing established players to get to the deep bits when they're ready for them.
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Reply #26 on: December 09, 2007, 10:15:56 PM

I've talked about Fury before so will only repeat my key complaint (which was well recognised after the fact): its high barrier to entry that stops new players from learning the game.

That's important but it doesn't sound like they chose to have it that way.  They simply lacked enough proper professionals to finish the game at the cost of employing all of them it sounds.  Total management failure.  Some idiot probably thought getting it out on Xmas was more important even though this is probably the worst Xmas ever to release a game.  They should of fired the dud employees and continued finishing the game with the ones they had that didn't suck.  The development costs would of gone down and they could of released it 3 months from now during the gaming lull season.

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Reply #27 on: December 10, 2007, 12:58:55 AM

I've talked about Fury before so will only repeat my key complaint (which was well recognised after the fact): its high barrier to entry that stops new players from learning the game.

That's important but it doesn't sound like they chose to have it that way.  They simply lacked enough proper professionals to finish the game at the cost of employing all of them it sounds.  Total management failure.  Some idiot probably thought getting it out on Xmas was more important even though this is probably the worst Xmas ever to release a game.  They should of fired the dud employees and continued finishing the game with the ones they had that didn't suck.  The development costs would of gone down and they could of released it 3 months from now during the gaming lull season.



It's almost never as easy as just "firing the duds and move on", at least here there's laws that makes it either very expensive or hard to fire selected people. Also, from the looks of it, a lot of the team members seems to be owners as well, making it even harder.
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Reply #28 on: December 10, 2007, 06:12:24 AM

Great interview, another glimpse of the fucked-up world of game design and production.  I wish I could comment more directly on the game and the gameplay itself, but the "steep" system requirements wouldn't even get me into Beta.  My mind never even went back to this title until now...games with high system requirements seem to fail time after time.
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Reply #29 on: December 10, 2007, 12:48:52 PM

The Fury design credo seems to be that an asstons of options is the same thing as depth in gameplay. It isn't. The gameplay was incredibley shallow. Jump into an arena, hit a bunch of buttons while running around. Having an asston of classes, and another asston of abilities for each of those classes isn't depth, and the way it was presented, it drowned all but the most dedicated player in numbers, skills and stats the player has no way of comprehending. All of that could have been alleviated if the matching system hadn't placed people in with one-shot one-kill beasts (i.e. skilled, experienced players) but really the problem was in mistaking tons of options for depth.

As for dogging 9-5 people, most have already said what should be said about that. But to add to the general thrust, the games industry's biggest fucking problem (and the tech industry in general) is that it too often equates passion with overtime, but refuses to compensate that "passion" accordingly. If you want your team to put in overtime, fucking pay them for it and don't bitch like a scolded dog when your team doesn't want to work overtime on a game it doesn't take Nostradums to figure out is a trainwreck.

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Reply #30 on: December 10, 2007, 04:43:35 PM

See, I like depth, I think Fury should endeavor to stay deep.   The trick is leveraging in that "easy to pick up and play" and then eventually allowing established players to get to the deep bits when they're ready for them.

Don't get me wrong - I liked the large range of powers to choose from (even if they are really recoloured versions of the same power for different mana types) - but being presented with 20 powers to choose from after you've been playing the game for less than an hour just leads to choice paralysis and not logging back in.

Also, I should have said yesterday - great interview.

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Reply #31 on: December 11, 2007, 05:08:51 PM

It's almost never as easy as just "firing the duds and move on", at least here there's laws that makes it either very expensive or hard to fire selected people. Also, from the looks of it, a lot of the team members seems to be owners as well, making it even harder.

Aside from the owners thing I'm not sure I understand.  Are these some Australian laws that make it expensive to fire people?  It depends on what state you live in but in the US it's usually pretty easy to fire someone for being a crap employee.   Sometimes they might have themselves covered somehow but theres almost always some other way to let them go.  Either way no matter how "hard" it is we can obviously see the results of refusing to jump that hurdle when it needs to be jumped.
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Reply #32 on: December 11, 2007, 05:32:12 PM

I've never seen a game go free so fast in my life. Check out this latest scheme.

Quote

Cockpit, Austin, TX - December 10, 2007 – Gamecock Media Group and Auran Games today announced a new Free to Download, Free to Play option for their fast paced arena combat game FURY. The new business model will begin with the release of the first major free content update “Age of the Chosen” on December 14, 2007.

“FURY was built around giving players options that suit their play style and their wallet,” said Tony Hilliam, CEO of Auran. “With the AotC update, we are introducing a new player category called “Chosen”. As one of the Chosen, players can access all game types, equip all weapons and unlock all 400 abilities – and they can play as much as they like absolutely free. This is a fantastic opportunity for players to jump into battle with their mates and discover the frenetic pace of the fastest RPG combat ever. Chosen will earn less gold and essence, and will not be able to trade with other players.”

“Chosen players can purchase game gold from the FURY store or upgrade to “Hero” status to earn more Essence and Gold. Retail stores sell the “Hero” status pack, along with a free month of “Immortal” status, so this is $30 value for the new price of $19.99 (in US stores). As a Hero or Immortal players can unlock abilities faster and purchase better gear, but the matchmaker then ensures they are playing against other players of similar skill and rank.”

FURY: Age of the Chosen is a massive free content update that introduces two new game types aimed at the new player. “Carnage” throws two teams into battle with the aim of returning blood tokens to their base faster than their opposition. Blood tokens are gained from killing bots, not other players, so the action is indirect competition rather than head to head. The 1v1 Elimination game type means games will spawn faster and matches are more evenly balanced.


For more on FURY, visit www.unleashthefury.com. Also, be sure and visit http://www.unleashthefury.com/ageofthechosen/ for information on the Age of the Chosen update and new business model.

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Reply #33 on: December 11, 2007, 06:59:24 PM

It's almost never as easy as just "firing the duds and move on", at least here there's laws that makes it either very expensive or hard to fire selected people. Also, from the looks of it, a lot of the team members seems to be owners as well, making it even harder.

Aside from the owners thing I'm not sure I understand.  Are these some Australian laws that make it expensive to fire people?  It depends on what state you live in but in the US it's usually pretty easy to fire someone for being a crap employee.   Sometimes they might have themselves covered somehow but theres almost always some other way to let them go.  Either way no matter how "hard" it is we can obviously see the results of refusing to jump that hurdle when it needs to be jumped.

Until something like 2006, it was difficult to just fire someone who wasn't pulling their weight in Australia. Sure, if they are stealing from the company or doing something illegal, you could kick them, but it wasn't easy to just let someone go. Government legislation - called Workchoices - did make it easier to let people go, but it was also revised and I think its unfair dismissal requirements were tightened.

So two things:

1) it's not really in Australian company culture to treat workers as faceless resources as much as it is for the US (and until fairly recently it wasn't really an option - you parked someone in place until they left or backwards promoted them out of your hair); and

2) finding experienced games programmers in Australia isn't an easy proposition. Anyone Auran found to replace the person they dumped would likely need a lot of training time and education to bring them up to speed, which Auran didn't have in the lead up to releasing Fury. This isn't to say that Australia doesn't have programmers - we do - but tested games programmers? We don't have the industry size to provide a very wide talent pool of applicants.

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Reply #34 on: December 11, 2007, 08:10:23 PM

I feel a rant coming on.  We have had 3 dismal failures in a row (Vanguard, Tabula Rasa, and now Fury).  All three failed as a *direct* result of the leadership of the projects.  All three said leaders have been all *over* the place pointing at everyone but themselves as the reason.  And they probably genuinely believe it, and that's what's pissing me off.

We have defined "Professionalism" as "Thou shalt not point out the stink of the boss's shit."  Adam, I'm trying hard to be calm here because you are getting loaded with a lot of baggage you didn't earn.  But I *have* to point some things out.

1) If your team lacked an understanding of the game design, and wasn't motivated to work hard to make it a reality, that was *your* failure, not theirs. That should be at least 50% of a Creative Director/Lead Designer's job, communicating what the game is supposed to become and getting people excited about making it happen.

2) If you had paid *any* attention to the last 10 years of PvP MMO's, you would have seen a direct correlation between the success of the game and the amount of things *besides* PvP the game allowed you to do.  The closest parallels to the game you were making were Planetside and Guild Wars.  One has nothing but gankage, the other has lots of PvE.  One is successful, one is not.  For a "Creative Director" of a PvP-oriented game, the conlusion should not be rocket science.

3) The 80-20 distribution of PvP success is not an aberration created by low numbers, but an inescapable fact of life known as the Pareto Optimum.  You have to design around it, so the game is fun for the 80% of the players who will lose 80% of the time.  This is why Little League gives everyone a trophy at the end of the season (American baseball for 7-10 year olds, I assume Australia has some kind of equivalent).

4) Teams of 40+ cannot be made up completely of highly motivated people.  Highly motivated people are motivated not only because they like the game concept, but because they have "bought into" it because they feel it includes a part of their own creativity.  This does not scale.  This is a management problem you should have worked around.  Some of your people are going to be there to collect a paycheck and not get fired, you have to figure out how to get useful product out of them.

Sorry, but it's a little disingenuous of you to spend 20 paragraphs explaining how the game failed because your subordinates were lazy and/or stupid, then get all self-righteous about the malcontent that went to Angry Gamer and spilled the beans.  How does Tantalus feel about their new employees now that you've just described how much dead weight there was on the Fury team?  Or are you only giving Tantalus the *good* employees, and keeping the 9 to 5 seatwarmer crew on?

--Dave

--Signature Unclear
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