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."

Comments

Re:Ever see Fritz Lang's Metropolis?

[ConceptJunkie]

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.