3 ms·
>Chevron paid Maxis $75,000 for a prototype of a refinery simulator > I came up and said, “How about, these concepts, principles, and their relation?” and they
by fouc 6y ago
>Chevron paid Maxis $75,000 for a prototype of a refinery simulator
> I came up and said, “How about, these concepts, principles, and their relation?” and they say, “Oh, John, you screwed up, look at – this is wrong.” And I say, “Okay. Help me understand what to do about that.” They did, and they taught me. And all I was doing was field work. I was asking questions and listening carefully. And I’d say, “What about this?” I’d look at a photograph of their oil refinery, and I’d say, “What’s this big pile of sulfur doing here?” “Oh, well you weren’t paying attention to the chemistry, John.”
Great story!
- danso 6y agoThat $75K really caught my eye. I know that is ~$140K in today's dollars, but it still seems like a lowball number given: a) the amount of domain knowledge and research Maxis developers needed to do, b) that this game was intended to be a training tool for not just actual plant operators but non-technical staff, and c) Chervon's market cap and (I assume) massive budget for doing whatever they want. Of course Maxis and its biz-sim division were relatively new, and the value of games and digital simulation much different than today, but I can't imagine that kind of corporate project today being agreed to for anything less than $300K (in 2020 dollars)
- bluedino 6y agoProject bloat. You're right, a similar project these days would probably going into the millions. You'd have all kinds of project managers and 'scrum leaders' and QA and who knows what else. And people probably billed out at $60/hr back then rather than $300. Smaller teams, simpler products, it was a different time.
- GenerocUsername 6y agoAnd somehow, more got done...
- toast0 6y agoSmaller teams always get more done. There's no time for meetings because you have stuff to do. :)
- notahacker 6y agoThe article hints that the project started around the time Maxis were closing on a $10m investment from a VC interested in the market potential business simulation and Delta Logic were to be acquired as part of the deal. So there must have been a lot of motivation on the side of the developers to do the deal at any cost. Chevron apparently publicly described it as a prototype, and I suspect the project documents did as well, along with ambitious outline proposals for how it could be expanded at much greater expense if the pilot was successful.