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America's Army 3 Has Rough Launch, Development Team Canned
incognito84 writes "The development team responsible for the creation of the freeware game America's Army 3 has been canned, days after the launch of the highly flawed game, which was distributed mostly via Steam. 'The anonymous America's Army 3 developers in touch with Kotaku unsurprisingly didn't sound too pleased with the current situation, venting that "a lot of good people [worked] insanely long hours on this game that was butchered by outside sources.' The game's launch was plagued by massive server authentication issues which inhibited most players from playing it even two days afterward. One of the developers made a post on the official forums saying they were 'effectively stabbed in the back,' and that much of the funding was filtered to the bureaucracy. A patch has been released to address some of the game's issues."
"...much of the funding was filtered to the bureaucracy."
I've noticed a pattern in a lot of talent-based industries. On a small scale, or with an upstart CEO you can have talent-driven companies. But, as soon as they hit a critical mass, the bureaucracy becomes the dominate force and turns the talent into powerless labor. Every company I ever interacted with in the corporate world was like this. And, once you've got suits in charge, they make sure that they're well compensated.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
And that sounds much like parts of corporate America and the "rank" system, where those best able to manipulate their managers and stab their co-workers in the back successfully are best enabled for advancement, leading to pure sociopaths at the top tier. Corporations like Microsoft in particular use the rank system...
Sounds more like Slashdot's mod system, where Linux Zealots can pat themselves on the back with +5 Insightful "Linux is awesome" posts, thereby gaining the power to squash anyone who might be "Pro-Microsoft".
I spent four years in the Army myself. I was a "Network Swtiching System Operator/Maintainer." Sounds a lot cooler than it is, trust me. I've got two deployments to Iraq under my belt. Really, I have to tell you, every other iteration of the America's Army "game" I played blew ass. I had more fun going to work. Seriously, they gave you "Task, Condition and Standard" in a video game?!?! Jeeze, I'd rather shine my boots and clean my weapon. Not to mention that they just happened to leave out the whole screaming-in-horrendous-agony part of war. People usually don't just fall down and play dead when shot or hit with shrapnel from one source or another, you can trust me on that too. So, I'm kind of glad this game ate shit. The only "realistic" part of it was how outrageously boring training in the Army can be. Other than that, the only purpose it served was to give children a false impression of war, and how god-forsaken horrible it is. Usually that wouldn't matter in a video game, but it certainly does matter when that video game is really a recruitment tool for the US Army. -Reed
The chance that the entire team was incompetent is very small. When a project fails, look to its management, not to every single engineer on the team. Also keep in mind that half of software projects in general fail; it's a very immature industry.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The situation is not quite that bad, though the summary makes it seem so. From what I gather, it wasn't a major part of the development team that was released, but rather 3-4 people in a small satellite team. Of course, there would definitely be bitterness about this, especially in this economic climate, but the job cut definitely wasn't extensive.
As for AA3 being flawed, the only major issue it's had is that the authentication servers have been overloaded by the hoards of new players trying to log in and play the game all at once. Obviously something like this can't be predicted, so no one is to blame. (I'm sure many of us recall Quake Live being hammered when it was released in open beta for similar reasons. And Demigod as well.)
The game itself is a LOT smoother and cleaner than any of its previous iterations. There are some occasional bugs and glitches that need ironing out, but thus far I haven't seen anything drastic.
(Yes, I am an AA player, and I have enjoyed for quite a long time. No, I'm not at all interested in joining the US Army. I realize it's a recruitment tool, but that doesn't mean there's any reason for me to shun it as a game.)
This doesn't come as a surprise to me... sometime around the version 1.6/1.7 release, a bunch of the DEVs were let go/fired/left (I don't remember specifics) and the game hasn't been the same since. I participated in the beta testing process at one point, and there were a bunch of great guys doing the testing and lots of reports of issues were being relayed to the developers. But it seemed that there were always issues slipping through the cracks because the Army was more interested in phasing in the overall "experience" or storyline of the game, rather than gameplay. I haven't been following the development of the game since a few years ago when the gameplay went south, and I imagine they've been losing lots of veteran players since then. Being the army, it should be easy to assume the DEV team was pressured with unrealistic goals and an unrealistic deadline for launch. Since the game is (obviously) targeted at young adults and they failed big-time on first impressions for many new players coming on board with this release, it's easy to see why someone's head was required on a platter even though the blame really lies with the Army officials. Typical bureaucracy at its finest. I hope the fired DEVs find good paying jobs with companies who don't require treading manure on a daily basis.
That said, I do hope that moving development into the military sector instead of the private sector ends up saving taxpayer money in the long run, IMHO the game as a whole isn't really an effective recruiting tool anyway. The only thing that's really useful is the virtual-reality training for our soldiers, and that should be the main focus of the development.
But, as soon as they hit a critical mass, the bureaucracy becomes the dominate force and turns the talent into powerless labor.
When companies *have* to be large, I believe keeping small, relatively autonomous groups of talented employees is the cure. Once a group becomes too large or the group is stripped of its autonomy to enforce mono-culture, innovation takes a back seat to sweeping, generic, stuffy rules that attempt to keep things 'safe' and 'organized'.
Just about every company wants complete control from the top -- The problem is it's dangerous to assume people from the 'top' have enough insight and knowledge to make good decisions for the 'bottom'. Letting groups of people do their own thing is chaotic, but it's probably good for incubating fresh material and novel ideas.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
Two Words. Socialized Healthcare.
Yes, I much prefer the warm, caring bureaucracy of a private insurance agency over the cold, sterile bureaucracy of a government agency...
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
There is a third option: that he's talking about the US Army/Air Force routinely bombing the crap out of civilian targets we're supposed to be protecting and not getting too bent out of shape over it because it's just "collateral damage".