Broken Toys

Coincidentally, WAR is shaping up into a 3-star game.

I know you’re not supposed to comment much about your competitors (much), but I’d love to hear your side of the story someday about cutting huge amounts of content so close to release. Hopefully, you’re not bound to do the same thing if your mmo ever sees the light of day.

When an article starts with a legitimate thought about feature creep and ends with tales about burning heretics, I honestly don’t know what to think.

Maybe the stuff didn’t kick in for the first ten minutes?

That 3 star ability/5 star drive comment, makes me think – more than anything I’ve read all year about the game – that WAR is going to be a stinker.

There are the heretics that provide good suggestions, and the heretics that don’t. Burning the former group is just bad business all around.

I’ve had the chance to hear Paul’s thoughts in-depth on this issue, rather than having to rely on a transcript fragment, so I’ll try to add some clarity.

He’s not arguing that people need to either be fanatically devoted to The Mother Ship or take a hike. He’s talking about people who – for whatever reasons, be they personal, professional, creative or otherwise – have gone down a path that makes it impossible for them to remain at all objective and open about the project. Every conversation subsequently results in a default position of grumpy whining, petty bitching or overt belligerence from them. They’re just poisonous, morale-crushing specimens who can’t seem to come back from the darkness.

We’re not running a day care center and the middle of a multi-million dollar project ain’t the place to hash out your grievances or personal demons, so it’s best for all involved if those people leave the project. There’s often a tendency to get precious about some people – especially if they once did Great Work – but there comes a point where you either support the project or you leave. Hell, if you have made you position known, management disagrees and your disdain for that choice is sufficiently potent that it impacts your overall attitude, you should WANT to leave.

And, just to be clear, Paul’s not talking about anyone that anyone here knows, just to avoid any useless speculation.

Pour encourager les autres.

I agree on some levels with him but there are jobs that need higher skilled workers (especially on the technology and design side of things). If he wants bubbly CSRs and people who pick dye colors that’s great, but I’ll take a stable game client programmed by an a-hole than a buggy one coded by a Moonie.

If they have bad attitudes lock them in the basement or something.

Now Mark Jacobs pops in and says he only hires people with five-star abilities and five-star drive.

Wanna bet?

Josh/DrewC, wouldn’t that type of poisonous person be a 1-star drive?

3-star drive is in the range of not poisonous, but no overly enthusiastic. And that seems odd that you’d choose a superb developer who’s not all cheerleader over a decent developer who has drunk the kool-aid.

DrewC “However, in my experience, amazingly talented employees with bad attitudes have those attitudes as a direct result of management action (or inaction).”

As a talented employee with a bad attitude I can say your experience is 100% correct, which makes me wonder what’s happening at EA-Mystic. Oh well, off to the job farm again.

The fact that this is on Gamasutra implies that Barnett thinks this way of thinking is what more game studios need to adopt, which in turns implies he thinks game studios are full of schleps and grumpy whiners.

Yeah, anyone got anything to say to that?!

Couldn’t be that there’s any connection between this philosophy on the part of Barnett and WAR’s uninspired world design, bland visuals and sub-WoW combat mechanics, right?

Wow! After reading that whole thing, I must say my opinions and hopes regarding WAR just dropped several notches. Simply because I honestly cannot believe someone quite so stupid is in charge.

Granted somewhere in there he may have some legitimate points regarding remaining focused on core goals and ideas, and how those with bad morale can poison a project.

But in one document he has created 10 times more morale issues then he surely had before it. “heretics must be burned publicly”? Less talented ass kissers are preferable to talented people with legitimate questions about the direction things are going? (Gee? I wonder how many talented “heretics” came out of the decision to cancel 4 classes and 4 cities at the last minute?).

And his coments on WoW seem to fully resolve the fact that he is not some brilliant game designer, he is an idiot. this whole sequence is really troubling…

Lesson 6: Play The Games That Are Relevant

There are two camps when it comes to the issue of how familiar designers should be with everything that is being released. The first believes, as Barnett puts it, “If you make computer games you should play all of them obsessively.” The second rebuts, “Bollocks to that. I know best.”

Barnett falls into the second camp. “There comes a point where you get it,” he said. “Only play the games that are relevant, the ones that are going to teach you things that are going to help.”

Surprisingly, he noted that he does not play other MMOs, including the ubiquitous World of Warcraft. “[MMOs] are cancerous and will change the way you think,” he warned. “People on the team come with a design idea – they are corrupted in their thinking by WoW, corrupted to such a degree that they don’t even realize it, not capable of thinking sideways because they knew the answer, and it worked, and it made a lot of money for another game. Why would you do something different?”

He answered his own question: “WoW is a work of flawed genius. This means that when you dismantle [it], you can never be too sure if you got the genius or the flaw.” World Of Warcraft is to MMOs what The Beatles are to music, Barnett said – WoW made prior MMOs irrelevant. But you can’t be The Beatles. If you try, he quipped, you will “…end up as the Monkees.”

“I can’t tell what is flaw and what is genius in WoW, so I don’t want to get sucked into copying things in case I get the wrong one,” the amusing Barnett continued. “‘No one’s going to play our game unless it also had elephants!’ No. Don’t be swayed. And stop playing World Of Warcraft.”

He can’t tell what is flawed and what is genius in WoW? And he is a highly paid lead designer on the next big WoW like game? Oh Dear!?!? Here’s a hint. Part of genius with WoW, was that the designers of it WHERE able to look at other games, those that had gone before, and determine what was good and what was bad. To be able to tell by playing them what was the flaw and what was the genius. This gave them a starting point to crreate an evolved game, that was both extremely familiar to players, while at the same time being extremely refined and polished. The GENIUS with WoW was that those who made it could tell what was good in previous games,and understand why it was good. The FLAW with both Barnett and by extrapolation sadly WAR is that Barnett cannot make this mental determination himself. He seems to think that his closest competitor got lucky, and since he can’t see how that happened he will not look at it.

We will not even begin to go into what can be said of a manager or employer who thinks the best way to treat new and inexperienced employees is to make them do tireless souless drudge work, and then toss it in the trash in front of them in order to teach them “old school”. Because yes, after spending 4 years earning a degree in modern computer game creation, nothing brings the 5 star creators to the team like treating them like absolute crap as an opening act. Yeah! That’ll learn em. That approach right there tells us directly WHY they cut 4 classes and 4 cities from their game because they could not get them ready in time.

Sorry, I keep reading through his manifesto, and I keep trying to see the good in it. the valid points. And in some places he almost brushes on some. But as a manager and team leader with 20 years experience, I gotta say, his approach, and his way of verbalizing it is simply appalling, But it seems to be in line with what we have seen with EA’s emploment practices and conditions in the past.

And, to repeat (because I think few people have seen more than one or maybe two of Paul’s published things):

“If you don’t know that Paul tends to exaggerate to make a point by now, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Paul *always* speaks this way (it seems, from my limited interactions) – he finds an extremist analogy to convey the core meaning of whatever complex thing he’s thinking about. I find it extremely funny and refreshing, even though I often know enough about the topic that I’d be happy just talking more directly, without the colourful prose.

Every court needs a court jester to tell the truth to power. Not that power ever listens (until it’s too late), of course.

Isnt that lifted from White House hiring policy?

Interesting. I’ll weigh in on Paul’s side a bit here, just for a bit of Devil’s Advocacy.

If someone technically brilliant comes on board because he needs the money and doesn’t give a damn about the project, his skills will be wasted. But if you have someone who wants the project to succeed, and wants to learn more, then that’s a bit more valuable than the grumpy gus who just doesn’t care. That three-star enthusiast might just bring the whole team down with him, because it’s downright easy to get jaded over a project. It’s not so easy to turn a jaded person back into someone excited to be there.

You know, Paul’s either a genius or about to be a martyr for his leadership style. WAR flops, he’ll be back to flipping burgers for a while until he figures out who’s going to pay for his services again… Personally, I’m guessing on closer to 1mil+ boxes shipped in the first 45 days and a >80% sub retention rate, which would tend to justify his mgmt style… On the other hand, we could both be wrong. Either way, playing in WAR’s beta just makes me think that they’re onto something good here…

And I love how it’s always the ‘anon’ posters that say neat things like “sub-WoW combat mechanics”, “bland visuals”, and “uninspired world design”. Have fun in WoW, fanboi…

The same clowns would be saying things like ‘Ohgawdithurtzmaieyez’ if the world were to be too bright/different/innovative/etc. You can’t please everyone all the time, but some morons don’t deserve a well lit crosswalk, let alone a game that beats the hell out of anything that Nodiatis could ever become.

-’Zog out

#11 was just unnecessary. The whole article in fact read to be just a by-line of one guy’s opinions. And it pretty much seemed from someone who 1) has no background in building and *maintaining* consumer software services, 2) won’t be hanging around to help manage the new service once it’s launched.

It’s very easy to leave bodies on the road on a project. It’s more difficult and better business not to do so. Since very often you need the same people to run and grow your service once it’s built. Waterfall thinking is out.

“The FLAW with both Barnett and by extrapolation sadly WAR is that Barnett cannot make this mental determination himself. He seems to think that his closest competitor got lucky, and since he can’t see how that happened he will not look at it.”

You hit the nail on the head, drove it through the board, and killed the handicapped orphan standing behind it. The problem is not unique to WAR though.

I am particularly annoyed by people who say WoW’s success was mainly due to polish.