The Publisher/Developer Relationship 15
Via a Gamers With Jobs Press Pass post, an interview with Dorian Richard, the Atari external producer for Neverwinter Nights 2. The Game Tycoon piece discusses the relationship between publisher and developer, and touches on some of the challenges of creating a sequel to a title like Neverwinter Nights. From the article: "GT: What are the most common challenges you face when interacting with developers? DR: There's inexperienced developers, and there's experienced developers. Inexperienced developers tend to lack staff with sufficient scheduling and managing experience. They might be good at certain development tasks, but they don't know how to read warning signs and manage people, so they frequently fail to recognize when a big slip is looming. They don't plan for likely emergencies, like a key team member getting sick or having a family emergency."
Loved Gameboy Advance developers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Publishers should let Developers Develop (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Publishers should let Developers Develop (Score:3, Interesting)
And budget. Small operators often tend to be underfinanced. Publishers should have enough expertise to help developers to manage cashflow, providing funds as needed.
Re:Publisher Producers - LOL (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the developers would agree with most of the key points. The only difference is that developers would put a lot more of the blame on publishers.
One aspect in particular - He clearly doesn't realise just how much of a loss cancelling a game is for a developer. I don't know why he thinks a relationship with a developer is worth more than the combined cost of development losses so far and paying a development team while the company pitches for a new deal.
He definitely makes some good points about going in the wrong direction and dealing with that. But that's another problem with working with an outside developer. Now I work for a publisher owned studio, and we have so much more freedom and flexibility. The milestones the publisher cares about are Alpha, Beta, Release. That's all. Everything else we do internally. If something doesn't work, or can't be done in time, we drop it. The publisher knows we're working for the best interests of the company. Working with a publisher, every one of these decisions has to be justified.
Re:Publisher Producers - LOL (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I recently resigned from a developer after quite a few years there. According to this interview, we've gone from being "experienced" to "inexperienced" with our ability to deliver games, and yet we've gone from "inexperienced" to "experienced" in terms of implementing a lot of the things he associates with experienced developers.
Schedules and processes are important and have their place; however, there are limits and balances to consider. To the extent that game development is a creative process, it is very difficult to schedule. Schedules need wiggle room (particularly for the harder areas), and processes need flexibility.
In my ex-employer's case, we had neither. The schedule was done down to such tight time increments that it was a nightmare to create and maintain, and the processes made it worse. Leads couldn't lead since they were all always in meetings; when they weren't, they were so flooded with authorization requests and status updates (tied to the schedule) that they were generally ineffective even when they could lead. Inflexible processes (ie, not adapted to the strengths/weaknesses of the team) frustrated pretty much everyone.
So, in terms of what the producer was looking for, we had everything he'd expect from an experienced developer, yet the project's a year behind and possibly facing another delay -- probably 3x our longest delay to date.
Of course, I don't know any specifics about the publisher/developer relationship in the article, so I'm not familiar with how he's regarded by his developers. Like anything else, there's good producers and bad producers. Unfortunately, it seems they're a _lot_ harder to tell apart.
The plus side to this, though, is that with all the ex-employees and soon-to-be ex-employees, the possibility of making something really interesting is getting higher and higher.