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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!
A couple of ways to deal with their firings a)Take their skills and go elsewhere. If they're actually any decent, they can make an impressive game to knock the socks off AA3 b)Complain.. c)(and only if it's true ) realize they suck at programming and find a new career. I make no defense of the Army, I'm sure it's a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit, even more then normal(yay for government!), but c'mon. Basic things like not being able to handle auth servers? Something that is at the VERY CORE of the game, that without *the best* you can do is a plain m16 is crap. There was a pretty massive user base for AA2.x and they did a fair amount of hyping for it(hell, I heard about it and I don't even check gaming news websites.) That's one of the more *important* things to handle. Now, if it was crappy funding issues(god knows I don't know what happened), that's another story. If it was programming/design related....that's something *important* to get working right. Who knows? Maybe they are staying truth to the authenticate Army lifestyle, bullshit and all?
'Number-memorizing Chinese people.'-Anon
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...
As a member of the beta team , I can tell you everyone was pretty damn concerned about the state of the game so close to its release.
It was obvious SOMETHING was wrong given the alpha state of the builds they were giving us.
As it is, you load, hit a button and crash, repeat. I tried to withhold my judgement until they released into open beta, but its just horrible.
Strangely, I rarely hear talk of it. For reference, see something called the Dunbar Number.
Any organization that grows over 150 (or so) people either fails or forms a personality-stomping bureaucracy to survive. It doesn't happen right away, but it always seems to happen. And, ahem, the U.S. Army has way way more than 150 people :).
The American army has a long history of killing their own allies.
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
Long hours unpaid, shortage of personnel, impossible deadlines, sounds like my time in the real US Army.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
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.
I think an argument could be made that those organizations tend to split development drivers (groups of designers, etc) into sub-150 person groups which are, at least to some extent, autonomous within their given mandate.
For example, look at DARPA, which is basically designed along exactly this principle.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
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.)
I've heard that 3M corporation does this to an even greater degree. Each time a division is successful enough that it grows past 200, they break up that division's product lines into two subsets, so that they can break up the division into two sub-150 groups. The idea is that for the great majority of human evolution, we've lived in groups smaller than 150, so our brains are pretty well equipped to know and trust and work with that volume of people.
Get much larger than that and you'll start getting weird political BS. Not because people are bad, but because they need short cuts to help them deal with the overwhelming number of personalities they have to interact with to get their jobs done.
The CB App. What's your 20?
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.
Lets put it this way: the worst and most common insult in AA was to call someone an "Obj nub", which stands for "Objective nub".
The honor system heavily favored deathmatching and just plain surviving a round despite your team losing to the point that the easiest way to be successful in the game was to just run off and camp somewhere and try to get a few kills before the timer ran out.
It didnt help that there were literally no controls on honor servers. They could and often did have all sorts of wierd mods running on them.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
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
Phew, wow... I'm sure glad that doesn't happen anywhere else... I was worried it might be like that in other places too.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
If these guy's had use the Imperial handbook, they wouldn't be in this situation.
"The Emperor is most displeased with your apparent lack of effort" - Vader
"He asks the impossible, we need more men, we need more time" - Commander
"Then perhaps you can tell him yourself when he arrives" - Vader
"The Emperor is coming here?" - Commander
"That is correct Commander" - Vader
"We shall redouble our efforts" - Commander
"I hope so Commander for your sake, the Emperor is not as forgiving as I am" - Vader
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.
And, ahem, the U.S. Army has way way more than 150 people :).
However... the typical company (or troop or battery) has approximately 100 people. You can spend as much as 10 years working at the company level before you reach Sergeant Major or Major. Some jobs, e.g. Adjutant General (which is essentially HR) are tied more closely to Big Army, but others, e.g. combat arms, are more insulated. Even now the traditional terms "troop" and "battery" are retained, even though there's some OCD bureaucrat who is waiting for the chance to wipe them out and call everything a "company."
I was a Cavalry Scout and we were aware that they were trying to wipe out personality and make us all fit neatly in to their org charts. All the (arguably stupid looking) emblems the units had painted on their HQs were painted over, they banned profanity, and of course our various alcohol sodden rituals were always causing problems for our CO, but for the most part we just ignored them and did whatever we wanted. The flip side of "don't be an individual" is that the Army also demands that you take pride in your unit.
Why did they work long hours? Against whom is the U.S. Army competing? The game, like its previous 2 incarnations, was to be free-as-in-beer.
And why is programmer psychosis so prevalent among game developers? Is it because so many developers (like me) got their start wanting to write games, hence strong competition for jobs as game developers?
Any time long hours are involved, you can be sure it is the result of one or more of at least 3 things:
* market competition forcing businesses to make promises that cannot be kept except by unreasonable behaviors, such as overtime
* lousy project management (is there such thing as competent project management? Even at firms praised by clients for having "great" PMs, I've found PMs to be lousy)
* developers with mental issues of sanity and pushback willpower
Fuck long hours - especially if they are unpaid (as is almost always the case. It is time for developers to fight-back against being taken advantage-of; we need to demonstrate that we are worthy of respect and reasonable lives too!
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?