We’re starting to see “Theatre experience a plus” on job descriptions for producers and directors. I’d dig up a link but I’m lazy. I’ve noticed striking similarites between the duties of producers, and the duties of stage managers. The two trades are similar in very general terms; at the very least, collaborative and creative.

As for the DOT anaolgy, much of the time government agencies are hamstrung by their own state/federal requirements to have all the bells and whistles for prevailing wages, minority owned busineses participation, mandatory profit levels, review cycles, inspections, etc (as well as regular dog and pony shows to let the Prime know everything is on track (or not)). That adds an incredible amount of time and cost to any project.

Often times it was easier and faster to do things on Internal company money and sell it to the government as a finished product (like it seems Intel did).

I thought it curiously funny, in a sad way, when I often read about public projects that are running over budget and take longer than expected. The excuses are always numerous.

Then I watch a PBS special about the construction of a mulit-billion dollar building in Manhattan and at the shows end we find that the building comes in just a bit early and just under the original budget (I guess a bridge or such is just so much more complex than the 100+ story multi billion dollar skyscraper).

A few years ago Intel decided to build a factory near where I live. The government approved but only if Intel also built a new off/on ramp for the freeway (the existing ramp could not handle the amount of predicted traffic).

Intel agreed and asked the DOT (Department of Transportation) for a cost estimate/bid. When DOT got around to giving the bid, Intel was dumbfounded by the high cost estimate and the lengthy time the project would take.

Intel went out for privet bids and found that reputable companies were bidding the project at half the cost and haft the time that was bid by the DOT crew.

DOT said that the privet bids were impossible and must have been flawed.

A privet company ended up building a grand series of ramps designed for higher traffic flow than the small old ramp (actually very nice looking as far as freeway ramps are concerned). They built the ramps on time and on the original budget. When the DOT was asked by the press to comment on the huge discrepancy between the DOT’s bid and the privet companies actually accomplishment….the DOT said it was a fluke occurrence. (A great deal of testing and overview showed the company that did the work met all required specs.)

Excuses for incompetence are never ending. Also, the MMO industry is no longer in its infancy.

I doubt anyone’s really “mystified that X happened and delayed a smooth and timely launch”. They know it’s coming. They’re just getting tons of pressure to put a brave face on and get the game out there making money ASAP. Maybe the publisher’s mystified, because the developer’s been showing them hacked-together demos for ages. Then again, the pub knows that, so they’re probably not mystified either.

They’re using the best software dev techniques they could find from outside the gamedev world. They’re very responsive to where those techniques don’t match up with the different demands of game development, and adapt them where possible.

And it’s still really difficult. They have none of the problems you named in your rant, and it’s still impossible to create an ambitious, exciting, potentially successful game in a predictable fashion.

I’m not saying the companies you’re referring to aren’t addressing their perceived problems in the worst, most counterproductive way (fuck reason, work everyone to the bone!). I’m saying the solutions are a lot harder than you’re suggesting.

Software development methodologies, in general, are still pretty rough. Game development methodologies lag behind those sub-par ones by roughly a generation. So even the most intelligent and well-educated process managers are still going to be experimenting as they go. Of course, it exacerbates the problem that many companies aren’t experimenting with process, and aren’t trying anything other than “work harder, ignore the problem and hope it goes away”.

The companies are sort of getting it. They are definitely in a mode where they are thinking “if we release and it sucks ass, we’re fucked”, which is why you see more pushbacks more often than not.

Still, to play devil’s advocate, it sure seems like server technology totally fails to scale with the network and hardware requirements to support MMOs. Anytime you see a new zone or something open up in an MMO or something otherwise shiny that requires you being in one or two places, it’s a slideshow. I can agree that partial responsibility falls on the developer to prepare as much as they can for these contingencies, but at the same time, without knowing dick about how the industry actually works I have a sense that the tech just isn’t there to handle Johnny McMMOAddict and his 500+ friends in the same place.

However, I am now further emboldened to suggest my own former career track’s solutions! Do you know what happens in a union shop when an actor picks up a hammer? For that matter, do you know what happens in a union shop when the badly paid, entry level people are forced to work for more than eight hours without a break?

See, because there are dozens of wannabees for every job, theater people could very easily be exploited… oh wait, that doesn’t sound AT ALL familiar!

Sure, it gets taken too far, as all of us who ever sat and rotted in a cavernous convention center (waiting for the sole Authorized Cart Pusher to fetch the shipping crates) know. But actors with hammers are rarely safe or productive… and neither are the hacks with design document access.