4 ms·

I was not implying that game programmers are stupid, sorry. I meant that they way it was told in the company how AAA do it sounded similar to what I learned abo

I was not implying that game programmers are stupid, sorry. I meant that they way it was told in the company how AAA do it sounded similar to what I learned about how big companies done it 10 or something years ago. Coming from agile workplace, I think there were things that could have been kept in place to improve quality of life for developers and art teams. I'm not sure if I can express what I mean correctly. For example, why the dreaded "crunch time" in gaming is treated as norm, while in modern web/mobile shops its believed that something like this is going to result in worse quality over time? I could see arguing here with myself that AAA games are usually "ship and forget", with some bugfixes only. Maybe because company I was working in was not AAA, but small (by industry standards) f2p mobile shop, where applying AAA ideas is not that great (in my opinion). I mean that's where your product is more along lines of web apps - you are going to constantly add content, update code base, refine features, so focusing on quality in long term is better. This, thought, I was not able to articulate clearly and properly to AAA veterans. I feel like not all ideas from current practises can be applied to big gaming studios, but saying that I believe it can be improved. This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Why two companies you mentioned failed? I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile, maybe their games were just not that good, or IP was boring? Still you sound like you have more experience than me here, I'm trying to wrap my head around whole AAA industry thing. I'm ranting about it so much because making games was way more entertaining than web/mobile, but the industry is so poisonous for pure developers that I had to quit to regain my sanity :)

pandaman 12y ago
I am not sure people outside game industry do not crunch. A brief search shows that the term existed long before the modern game industry or any game industry at all. Same goes for "overtime" - the term is even codified in laws. I assure you nobody treats crunch as a normal mode: even people who are forcing unnecessary crunch understand that it's something unordinary and often do it just because it is not something normal (to show how good they are at management, to extort a bigger budget, to undermine their political rivals etc). >This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Infinity Ward, the original home of $1B+ games, had about 100 people at the time of the split from ATVI and founding Respawn. It's about the same size now as well as the Respawn. Media Molecule is just a few dozens. Size does not make a AAA studio. And you don't even need to show the best practices right at the AAA level - start small and if it's any good people will copy you or, at least, you should be able to grow yourself. >Why two companies you mentioned failed? >I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile Indeed, it would be naive to blame Agile on destroying multi-million businesses. Agile seems to be just a symptom. It could be that the management sees that the development process is failing and tries to improve it with a well advertised technique, for example. Or that some Agile enthusiast gets too much power due to the weakened culture. What I was trying to say is that very few AAA studios practice it now and the ones that did in the past are not in the business any more. Also, there is no single AAA development way. For example, Valve's practices are very different from Bungie's, which are different from the R*, which are different from ATVI's COD teams etc.

pandaman 12y ago

I am not sure people outside game industry do not crunch. A brief search shows that the term existed long before the modern game industry or any game industry at all. Same goes for "overtime" - the term is even codified in laws. I assure you nobody treats crunch as a normal mode: even people who are forcing unnecessary crunch understand that it's something unordinary and often do it just because it is not something normal (to show how good they are at management, to extort a bigger budget, to undermine their political rivals etc). >This may need time and risk that companies that are big enough to be called AAA are not willing to take. Infinity Ward, the original home of $1B+ games, had about 100 people at the time of the split from ATVI and founding Respawn. It's about the same size now as well as the Respawn. Media Molecule is just a few dozens. Size does not make a AAA studio. And you don't even need to show the best practices right at the AAA level - start small and if it's any good people will copy you or, at least, you should be able to grow yourself. >Why two companies you mentioned failed? >I think we can assume there might be more reasons to that than only being Agile Indeed, it would be naive to blame Agile on destroying multi-million businesses. Agile seems to be just a symptom. It could be that the management sees that the development process is failing and tries to improve it with a well advertised technique, for example. Or that some Agile enthusiast gets too much power due to the weakened culture. What I was trying to say is that very few AAA studios practice it now and the ones that did in the past are not in the business any more. Also, there is no single AAA development way. For example, Valve's practices are very different from Bungie's, which are different from the R*, which are different from ATVI's COD teams etc.