Fri 27 Apr 2007
Ironically, the little effort I put into the whole violence/censorship issue, gets a disproportionate amount of attention. In fact, almost none of my professional time is spent dealing with the topic (other than a few random media interviews, and speaking on a panel every now and again).Though, I do have a great deal of personal passion for the topic…
Before the run in with Jack, I did an interview with the very stylish GameAlmighty gaming site, which they just posted. The piece doesn’t touch the violence topic at all. Instead, we go over the IGDA’s work and progress with quality of life and developers’ working conditions, game dev education, industry crediting standards and games with an agenda.
So there, rather than being characterized as some kind of mouthpiece, that’s the stuff that’s keeping me busy (of course, above and beyond just overseeing the entire operations of the IGDA itself).
Two meta points:
- I say “sort of” and “kind of” way too much. Need to stop doing that.
- I need to get out of the habit of calling producers “clueless”, or I’m gonna piss off Jamie Fristrom again (hmm, maybe that’s what Casey meant by “making enemies”)… I need a more diplomatic way of saying that most producers simply do not have the training and experience for the critical role they are asked to serve.
To the second point, that was a big part of the motivation behind doing the IGDA Leadership Forum with the Production SIG (and, very happy that Jamie agreed to serve on the conference committee).
April 28th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I don’t think it was the name calling that previously annoyed Jamie, myself, and others. We get called worse every day (it’s tiresome but ultimately unimportant.)
I think it was that you were attributing all of our QoL ills to a single cause: production methods. And you were offering a single solution: process improvement.
Those of us who have worked hard on process improvement over the years found that offensive because if it were really that easy we’d be done by now. But we aren’t. And the reason we aren’t is that QoL is unrelated to good process.
April 30th, 2007 at 8:45 am
(Regarding post 1)
I don’t think Jason was offering process improvement as a silver bullet. Rather, process improvement is a fix to a symptom of the industry. Obviously, my statement implies a larger problem.
Like Jason said, the industry is young. Inexperienced individuals are put into positions of management because (a) their superiors don’t know what kind of person is the right one for the job and/or (b) their superiors are under such time/financial constraints they have little choice but to promote a programmer or an artist.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:18 am
> I think it was that you were attributing
> all of our QoL ills to a single cause:
> production methods.
Right, understood. Apologies if that’s how my statements have come across. I generally do try my best to describe poor QoL as a symptom of many factors (eg, business/economic pressure, lack of management training/experience, elusiveness of “finding fun”, passion of developers, etc).
> And the reason we aren’t is that
> QoL is unrelated to good process.
Sorry, can’t agree with you there. Good process is one element that can contribute to good QoL. But ya, not by itself…
May 1st, 2007 at 7:12 am
The making enemies thing was about two groups of people. Those who think they’ve got something to lose in this QoL thing, and those who don’t like being told they’re doing something wrong.
I tend to agree with Jason that in fact people have everything to gain from improved QoL. It’s that QoL seems to be a symptom of other issues. Sometimes those issues come from outside of a single office though, and that’s where it can get complicated.
People also don’t like being told that they’re doing something wrong, even if they know they are. This is usually when you get “that’s just the way it is (has been, should be, can be),” arguments.
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:25 am
As a “worker bee” for the last eleven years, I can say that process (the underlying mechanics of game creation) DEFINITELY affects QoL.
Especially if I am having to work arbitrary overtime because someone’s grandfathered processes, while “good” at the time, are proving not scalable between hardware generations.
May 5th, 2007 at 6:32 am
@Stitched
I have previously recorded increases in productivity due to PI and yet noticed a general degradation of QoL at the same time. The link you see between PI and QoL is a coincidence, just as it is in my case.
If I’m being asked to work overtime it’s normally because the person scheduling my time (and that could be me) didn’t allocate enough time to do it. If I had better processes I might get more done in less time. But the person scheduling my time (everything else being equal) will account for that, and continue to underestimate the schedule. I will still be asked to do overtime!
Having to work overtime is bad enough. And to do it using bad processes makes it that much more annoying. But we musn’t fall into the trap of trying to make overtime more bearable when what we really want is a reduction in overtime.
We certainly should not use QoL as a guide to how well our PI programs are doing, good or bad.
May 5th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
@Paul Sinnett
I would love to read or see any research that shows “recorded increases in productivity due to PI and yet noticed a general degradation of QoL at the same time”. In the interests of an open forum, please share your findings with us all.
If the person responsible for scheduling doesn’t know how much time to allocate to your process, then that person has no idea what your process is or how to do it effectively. That makes them, as a manager, somewhat lacking. If you are having to work overtime just “to work overtime”, that person is just hemorrhaging company resources; money, goodwill of the employee, or otherwise.
I highly recommend the book “The Unwritten Laws of Engineering” by W.J. King (written in 1944) as it uncovers pretty fundamental points on managing people and projects (since your are in the UK, they have republished this small book for a mere £5).
Please for love of all things holy, if you manage people in this industry, READ THIS BOOK!
I never said that QoL determines how well your PI programs work, however, I would argue that it definitely is a by-product for the workers who feel that they are getting a fair deal from the people they work for.
May 6th, 2007 at 12:12 am
> I will still be asked to do overtime!
What’s that saying about filling up hard drive space ;)
Seriously though, I get what you are saying: good process does not automagically equate to good QoL.
Though, I would argue that bad process makes it much more difficult to have good QoL (or, good process more easily enables good QoL).
But, rounding back to the start, bad QoL is a symptom of many other factors beyond process… Though, process is indeed one of the factors!
May 10th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
jason said: “What’s that saying about filling up hard drive space ;)”
I think you’re talking about Parkinson’s Law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Parkinson said: “I think Parkinson’s Law came to me, or is based upon, experiencing the armed forces. I was serving in a joint headquarters, that is to say army and Royal Air Force, and the headquarters was headed by an air vice marshal, who was assisted, or possibly impeded, by a colonel in the army, who was impeded, or possibly assisted, by a wing commander in the air force, and then all three of them were assisted (but definitely assisted!) by me. I was then a major in the army, and we were all very busy winning the war.
“But the day came when the air vice marshal went on leave. Shortly afterwards, as it happened, the colonel fell sick. The wing commander was attending a course, and I found I was the group. And I also found that, while the work had lessened as each of my superiors had disappeared, by the time it came to me, there was nothing to do at all. There never had been anything to do. We’d been making work for each other.” — source http://www.vdare.com/pb/parkinson_review.htm