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What's Wrong With the Games Industry
Gamasutra has up a piece by game developer Stephen Ford, entitled What's Wrong with the Games Industry (and How to Make it Right). The article covers the idiosyncrasies of game development, such as the problems of pitching a title, making a demo, working to publisher expectations. It then looks at ways to make the same-old same-old 'right'. From the article: "One amazing fact that has yet to permeate the strata of the industry is that most of their employees have the equipment that they need to do their jobs at home. One example is freelance audio engineers, who do most of their work off site and mail the files in. However, for code, design and art there are still large levels of resistance to the idea that you can effectively export work off site and maintain control. On-site control is an illusion, and while the camaraderie of a large office space is nice, it is also the least financially efficient way of getting production work done in an age of broadband."
This is any large business. After my 20 or so years of experience working at companies of all sizes I would plot a chart like this:
Number of employees vs. Efficiency of the company as a whole
1 employee - 100%
4 employees - 95%
10 employees - 90%
100 employees - 50%
1000 employees - 25%
10000 employees - 10%
The U.S. Government - 3%
We simply do not have the collective wisdom to manage large groups of people. Maybe that's the next breakthrough that will allow us to make quantum leaps in productivity in the 21st century. Or maybe we'll just invent robots to do it all for us.
By the way, those numbers are flexible. I once worked in a division of 80 - 100 people who achieved about 5% efficiency for over a year thanks to exceptionally clueless management. By the same token, I would imagine Google doesn't quite fit this scale either.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
One amazing fact that has yet to permeate the strata of the industry is that most of their employees have the equipment that they need to do their jobs at home. One example is freelance audio engineers, who do most of their work off site and mail the files in. However, for code, design and art there are still large levels of resistance to the idea that you can effectively export work off site and maintain control.
"Hey, we were able to cut costs by not hiring a salaried Audio Designer or building a decent sound studio onsite -- turns out there's a hundred suckers willing to pay for all the equipment themselves in exchange for no job security. I wonder if this system for taking advantage of creative professionals can be used against any of the other seats on the development team...?"
In the beginning, there was fewer game devs, the skills was not as common, nowadays there's schools that teach just what you need to code games. Thus, employers have a larger assortment to choose from and thus can place higher demands on the employee. As the company wants to increase it's profits it works to improve the profit margin by increasing productivity, and the typical company hive mind and the company execs usually does just this by introducing elements of taylorism or fordism and thus the industrial mode of production has entered the workplace and the positive workplace atmosphere dissapears and in the long run the innovation and creativity. I do so understand why it's hard to produce cool and entertaining games in a white collar industrial factory.
Maybe I just suck as a software engineer, but really the quality of code I write starts to take a serious dive after my first six or seven hours of work.
On the rare occasions I've pulled a 10 or 12 hour day, I usually got something that didn't crash at the drop of a hat out the door. Then when I needed to extend that code later, it almost always needed to be heavily revised or outright scrapped and redone.
I can't imagine frequent long shifts writing code. There'd be so much junk in the mix it would be a nightmare.