If nothing else, my recent article in The Escapist was a call to invest in our people as a way to make more money. That’s the bottom line. Forget all the feel good crap. Wanna make more money? Invest in your people and processes.

Overall, feedback has been very positive for the piece, with the link making the rounds on various private industry lists, Slashdot clocking almost 350 comments and pick ups at GameDaily BIZ and the blogosphere in general.

But of course, not everyone agrees. Among the points of contention is the notion that games aren’t just software so software engineering processes can’t really help. Right and wrong. First a mature PRODUCTION process should encompass all aspects of development, not just code. And second, the code is still a massive component of the production, so efforts to optimize the software specific stuff will still hit a lot of fat.

A related issue is the fact that games are a creative endeavor, and art cannot be formalized. Bah! Chaos is just chaos. Structure and formalization on the part of the producers/managers establishes the platform from which the artists can be creative.

Then again, from Tim Moss’ God of War postmortem at GDC:

“Basically we didn’t do very much. We kept an up to date task list and I could tell anyone what we would be doing for the next few weeks. But I didn’t keep a schedule as such. I relied on my judgement and the senior-only team. They didn’t let me down.”

Anyway, it is amazing the extent by which folks cling to their broken ways and find any way to rationalize away the potential good that could come from change. Also, rampant xenophobia just doesn’t help…

I didn’t stick it in the article, but I really like something that gameLab honcho Eric Zimmerman always says “we want our people to have a healthy and active life outside of work because this makes them better game creators when they are at work.”

Nice.

Ironic Note #1: EA’s director of technology, Mark Dochtermann, was rated as the man that has the best job in America by Money magazine.

Ironic Note #2: EA’s ex head of HR (during the whole ea_spouse situation), Rusty Rueff, has co-authored a book titled Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business.