Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

splok said:

For a production track position, assuming you don"t want to start in testing, not having industry experience can make things pretty difficult.

Click to expand...

I believe that two of my producers were formerly QA/Analysts and the other was formerly a programmer, heh.

On a somewhat related note, I believe that we have 8? Full Sail graduates in our studio, four of which are on my design team alone, heh. Assuming that you have the time and money, there are some solid degrees offered by the likes of Full Sail and DigiPen; the folks that I"ve worked with from FS definately came out with the necessary tools. My roomy (current Audio Lead for our Midnight Club stuff) went to Vancouver Film School for sound design and seems to be pretty good at what he does *shrugs* Point being, there"s always THAT route; it"s not necessary but it definately looks good on a resume, assuming it"s a solid program and not some tacked-on degree that was only added to pad/attract people to the CS department.

In the end, I got lucky because Sigil was in dire straights and had to hire people without experience. Now, I suppose that I can"t really complain; current experience/enviornment (and pay if I had stayed in Academia) is much better than what I would have gotten after grad school. Not to mention, I don"t have to wear a lab coat or write grants

splok said:

For some people, a job is a job and working to make a toaster is the same as working to make a game. For that type of person, it doesn"t make sense to go into the game industry. No one"s arguing that point. No one is saying that the game industry is better paying or more stable than other industries. Everyone gets the point. What some people don"t seem to get is that there are also other people who don"t believe a job is just a job, who don"t think working on a toaster is as rewarding as working on a game, and who are aware of and accept the negatives of the game industry. Just because something doesn"t fit your personal priorities doesn"t mean it"s a bad decision for everyone.

Click to expand...

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

This is well said.

If your primary objective is to find the surest way of making a nice living with little risk, then the games industry should be low on your list of career options.

Click to expand...

This is one of the foundational problems in the gaming industry, because of the environment it produces. It builds into the analogy I keep coming back to of our gaming industry needing a paradigm shift in its organizational approach akin to the rise of quality management in the manufacturing industries in Japan in the 50"s. And I don"t mean applying statistical analysis.

You have two problems coming out of an "insecure industry". One is that knowledge is a degree of security and so people will be reluctant to share everything they know. The second effect, follow on from the first, is much more damaging. Its that increasing levels of management do not participate in the base and technical knowledge that people responsible for the creative processes possess. This makes it extremely difficult to manage or plan a games development.


Technically adept/creative people (generally, but not always) have three traits :

i) they aren"t huge on communication;

ii) they like to play with the latest shiny toys (whether its Ciscos latest switch or the latest 3d rendering package);

ii) they will not stick to doing just what they are asked - they will attempt to implement nth degrees of complexity and push their creative tools as far as they can.


Take all of the above and the management processes required to keep a top MMO on track do not presently exist.


I can think of numerous ways of beginning to deal with this, but an easy one for GMG to adopt would be to implement an MMO development training programme (possibly giving a degree of sponsorship) for University students, mature or otherwise. Your primary objective would be to produce Project Managers, who understand all the creative processes involved in an MMOs development and who would have formal training, and appreciation of, quality. This ultimate aim (to produce Managers and Project Managers) would be known only by GMG Directors, or possibly senior staff, or some employees might find it threatening having a potential future boss sat alongside them, in the students summer months or gap year.


Unless these sorts of medium to long term plans start taking shape there will be no paradigm shift taking place in the quality of games the industry puts out. Even a company whose ethos and staff picks are as exceptional as GMG will be reliant on a very small number of key individuals to keep the wheels rolling. Sooner or later a wheel will come off.



How can you ever have continuity, resilience, reliability, control and scalability in your development processes, when you haven"t got those things in your staff ? (thats aimed at the industry as a whole, not specifically GMG).

Gecko said:

Most games do not provide much value. It"s like bad movies. I"m sure Uwe Boll also thinks he is helping the world and has great satisfaction in his work. Forgive me if I disagree. The only difference is an Uwe Boll type would still get work in games companies while Joel and Ethan Coen wouldn"t be allowed in, or would get fired.

Click to expand...

Certainly there are people in entertainment fields (movies, games, TV, etc.) that do what they do solely because they can make money. In fact, there are a lot of those people. They see a property that is extremely successful and think they can cash in by making a similar product. They make decisions based on economic reasons, not artistic ones.

And that doesn"t have to be a bad thing. Business is business, and at the end of the day people need to eat. A studio made up purely of artistic idealists is just as bound to fail, if not more so, than a studio made up of mercenaries out to make a buck no matter what kind of dreck they produce.

You need a mix of folks. Passionate people who look after the soul of the work and practical types who make sure shit gets done. It"s a tricky balance to get right, though, and clearly most of the time it gets screwed up to one side or the other.

Flight said:

You have two problems coming out of an "insecure industry". One is that knowledge is a degree of security and so people will be reluctant to share everything they know. The second effect, follow on from the first, is much more damaging. Its that increasing levels of management do not participate in the base and technical knowledge that people responsible for the creative processes possess. This makes it extremely difficult to manage or plan a games development.

...

How can you ever have continuity, resilience, reliability, control and scalability in your development processes, when you haven"t got those things in your staff ? (thats aimed at the industry as a whole, not specifically GMG).

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, pretty much any creative or skill-based endeavor can be labeled an "insecure industry" if you want to look at it that way. For the kids who want to become professional musicians, athletes, or authors, what are you going to tell them? You can"t say it"s impossible to succeed, because there are tons of examples of people succeeding. The odds are against you, so in that sense your future isn"t as secure as a job at the post office. But some people are willing to take those chances, and there certainly is a potential for reward there. And honestly, a world full of postal workers would be pretty damn boring (sorry, postal workers).

The games industry is, after all, an industry. It isn"t just one guy sitting behind a desk making a game anymore; it"s giant teams of people doing interdependent tasks that all need to come together in a singular whole that is somehow fun and appealing.

You"re right that the industry has a ways to go, and there are a ton of poor processes and process managers currently in place. But it is getting better, and I would argue that there are leaders and project managers working in games whose talents are on par with people in any other industry. They work in games because they enjoy the unique challenges and environments; you don"t automatically get sucky or sub-par people in these positions just because this is the games industry.

Maybe game production will never be as stable and secure as other technical industries. Maybe it will always be more like movie and TV production, where success is a delicate balance that is always hard to get right no matter how much experience you have. Some very talented people will be put off by that lack of sure success, because you can do everything right and at the end of the day still fail. If it was just a matter of learning from the past, you wouldn"t have extremely talented people making movies, books, and TV shows that flop.

Ultimately making games is its own thing, and while parallels can be drawn to other industries there is no direct analogy. Processes need to adapt to fit the model. That"s not to say there isn"t a lot to be learned from other fields, because there is. But a strict duplication of non-industry methods won"t in and of itself ensure greater success.

Gamasutra - Interview: McFarlane Talks 38 Studios, Revitalizing Game Toys

it"s not only about figures there is an update at bottom.

Tonic said:

Would it be safe to assume that doing something in this sense would perhaps be a good idea for a non-massive (see: EA) company?...

Click to expand...

I wouldn"t know. As far as we go, typically when we look for a new hire we give our HR rep a set of criteria (almost always lower then what we post on our careeers site. Remember kids, even if you don"t meet the "requirements" for a position a lot of companies are willing to bend) and they filter through all the applications looking for those that match, then send us a list with the cliff notes.

Depending on how many matches we get we may call them all, call every other one or when just throw a dart.

But we"re a corp.

I can"t speak for every company. I mean in your introduction it can"t hurt to say that you have website with examples of your work or that upon request you can submit a CD/DVD with even more examples. And if it"s a small/independent studio it can"t really hurt to just send it along with.

Honestly, the first thing you want to do is google your own name and make sure that there is nothing embarrassing within the first 10 hits. Most of our recruiters will look at places like myspace, facebook and etc...to help weed people out.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

Just to clarify, pretty much any creative or skill-based endeavor can be labeled an "insecure industry" if you want to look at it that way. For the kids who want to become professional musicians, athletes, or authors, what are you going to tell them? You can"t say it"s impossible to succeed, because there are tons of examples of people succeeding.

Click to expand...

I think thats a poor analogy, to be honest mate.

I started life as an electronics technician in the Army, working to component level on missile systems, using an AVO a CRO and only system and circuit diagrams. Its a fairly unique skill set. Over the years I went through the ranks and was a "manager" of the people whose job were based around what I had been doing. I moved from a technical role to a management role. I knew their job inside out. If you are going to grow / develop / project manage technical people, especially if you are developing time lines and critical paths for projects, you are going to have little to no control unless you know their jobs as well as you know your own.


Applied to your analogy, you don"t tell someone who wants to be an athlete to start off by learning to make running shoes, or tell the guy who wants to be a musician to learn how to make a Violin. Being a Manager or Project Manager of people who are technically creative and - and this is very important - at the leading edge (bleeding edge) of technologies is something very different. The Managers and Project Managers have to have a depth of knowledge of the skill sets their staff employ and knowledge and experience of the mindset of those people. And, of course, then you still need the communication skills, the passion for games, the person needs to see themselves as no better than their work staff and seek to grow them as well as develop the product. All this is the basis for using the Project Management skills that do exist in the market place. Its quite different from the analogy you were suggesting.



It needs to be made clear that my post, that you quoted, was aimed at process development, project management and organization management, while you appear to be applying it to all levels of the industry, from entry level up. What I"m not saying is that the managers need to know their staffs jobs inside out to the extent that they are capable of doing them, but they need to not have the wool pulled over their eyes when they have asked for X to be done in a time critical part of a project and the technical guy will still be trying to make it do X, Y and Z, as is their want, right up to a deadline.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

Certainly there are people in entertainment fields (movies, games, TV, etc.) that do what they do solely because they can make money. In fact, there are a lot of those people.They see a property that is extremely successful and think they can cash in by making a similar product. They make decisions based on economic reasons, not artistic ones.

And that doesn"t have to be a bad thing. Business is business, and at the end of the day people need to eat. A studio made up purely of artistic idealists is just as bound to fail, if not more so, than a studio made up of mercenaries out to make a buck no matter what kind of dreck they produce.

Click to expand...

This quote is interesting coming from someone at 38 Studios, a company that is leveraging insiders to make a buck off the established MMO genre, I think.

The problem is that everyone see"s Blizzards copying of products and offerings and their subsequent revenue from not innovating and follows the leader.

In regards to business, my point is somewhat the reverse. Most people in the game industry remain there at the cost of cash and career opportunities just to be part of said group, except the top tier.

The best games are labors of love by indy designers who would make games regardless of profit. Most best selling games are prepackaged, over marketed copies brought to you by suits and marketing execs from the EAs and Microsofts of the world.

The problem is how does the game industry become more stable, remain profitable, and allow for more innovation and opportunities for the talented up and comers that it currently shuns due to the nature of the business?

Gecko said:

This quote is interesting coming from someone at 38 Studios, a company that is leveraging insiders to make a buck off the established MMO genre, I think.

Click to expand...

Ever notice that when a non-industry person meets game devs in person how one of the first things they often mention is how passionate the devs were? That"s not devs putting on an act or brainwashing somebody; passion is part of what makes us do what we do. And you get that face to face, but it"s something that"s really hard to convey through posts on a message board.

Look, a game company is made up of people--actual living, breathing people. Their passions aren"t the same across the board; it varies based on the individual. If you look at any studio team, you will find it made up of some people who are passionate about a particular project, some who are passionate about the studio, some who are passionate about the industry, some who are passionate about good process, and yes, some people who are passionate about making sure the studio turns a profit. You absolutely need a mix of passions working together toward common goals.

But passions are so easy to dismiss from the outside looking in. Vanguard is a great example: a game beset by flaws that got a lot of valid criticism, but it had some incredibly passionate people on the team who more than anything wanted to make the best MMO ever created. Yet how many times have such passions been belittled by generalizations such as "Sigil didn"t have a clue" or "Sigil didn"t care." All those hopes and dreams dashed to the rocks because of circumstances those individuals couldn"t control.

A company isn"t some amorphous entity or hive mind. It"s made up of individuals with hopes, dreams, goals, and all the rest. So sure, it"s easy to be cynical and say "38 Studios is only in it to cash in off the success of WoW." But the reality is that we have a group of people here who love MMOs and honestly want to make a truly great game. If you"ve gleaned nothing else from the multitude of posts Curt has made in this thread, it should be obvious that he is passionate about MMOs. We look for that same kind of passion when we hire new people, regardless of the credits on their resume.

But hey, me saying that in a board post isn"t going to change the mind of anybody convinced that we"re just in it for the money or to create jobs for all our insider no-talent buddies (guess we need to hire us some mavericks!). Ultimately, of course, the studio will be judged on the quality and fun of its product. That"s as it should be. Just remember that beneath the surface of every company, from Activision/Blizzard to the smallest indie dev house, there are individuals with passion and dreams and a desire to do something cool and enduring.

Flight said:

It needs to be made clear that my post, that you quoted, was aimed at process development, project management and organization management, while you appear to be applying it to all levels of the industry, from entry level up. What I"m not saying is that the managers need to know their staffs jobs inside out to the extent that they are capable of doing them, but they need to not have the wool pulled over their eyes when they have asked for X to be done in a time critical part of a project and the technical guy will still be trying to make it do X, Y and Z, as is their want, right up to a deadline.

Click to expand...

Sorry, my quote was unclear. I was responding to the notion of an "insecure industry" rather than many of your specific points. My point being that even if process is perfect and the project launches without a single bug, that wouldn"t guarantee the game will be a success. And the same is true of other creative industries such as movies, books, and so forth. It"s that lack of predictable results which seemed to get so much criticism earlier in this thread.

You make some great points in this post and others, and obviously spend a lot of time thinking about production. I won"t attempt to confirm or refute much of what you say, because I"m not a producer. I"m one of those evil creative types always mucking things up.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

You make some great points in this post and others, and obviously spend a lot of time thinking about production.

Click to expand...

Its not just theory. I"ve owned IT projects (comprising both hardware and software development), top to bottom, with budgets similar to an MMO development. I understand how techie folk think, work and play - I was one (and still am at heart). I also have degrees in IT, Electronic Engineering and Management.

Moorgard Mobhunter said:

I"m one of those evil creative types always mucking things up.

Click to expand...

I believe you"re joking here (in assigning to me the assertion that its the creative folk messing up), but I want to be absolutely clear that there is ZERO criticism of the vast majority of the workforce in the industry in what I am suggesting. Most especially, there is zero criticism of the creative talent in the industry.


It is, without question, the management in the industry who are letting you (creative folk) down at every step, in every possible way, at all levels, from top tier management to bottom.


Massive amounts of quality, creative talent are wasted hour by hour, day by day, throughout this industry, because of poor management practices, poor development processes and poor, misinformed, project planning.

Alongside that, there is not enough personal development or nurturing of the creative workforce. Honestly, the whole industry needs to give itself a wake up call. Blizzard has shown the potential marketplace. The industry dreams of laying a golden egg and producing a game that will rival theirs. Its just dreamland though, because Blizzard is running itself like an IBM and everyone else is acting like the corner shop that repairs PCs. (Biggest regret of my career was taking a job with IBM, in the process turning down a job offer of being a senior project manager at GCHQ - Britains spy HQ - I could have been the James Bond of the geek world ).


I"m really excited about GMG because of the ethos I see and because of the quality of your recruitment. Based upon my life experiences and the ideas I"m discussing, I honestly believe you are going to deliver something special and shock Blizzard and the industry. BUT DON"T JUST ACCEPT RECRUITING THE BEST PEOPLE YOU CAN FIND AND IMPLEMENTING THEIR EXPERIENCE. Challenge yourselves to produce a paradigm shift in the way the industry is practiced, similar to the one Deming produced in Japanese Manufacturing (to be clear, because someone will suggest it, I"m not saying implement statistical analysis).

For anyone that was interested in the Azeroth Advisor, but saw limited use due to being a long time player, we recently relaunched the product, updated with Wraith content and some real nice new material for 70+ players.
www.azerothadvisor.comis the website

Your link is broken Curt. It goes tohttp://www.azerothadvisor.co(without the M)

Ngruk said:

For anyone that was interested in the Azeroth Advisor, but saw limited use due to being a long time player, we recently relaunched the product, updated with Wraith content and some real nice new material for 70+ players.
www.azerothadvisor.comis the website

Click to expand...

I"m really interested in this, Curt, but it seems limited to US servers. Any plans to extend it to EU servers ? Massive amount of potential users missing out due to a relatively small amount of work your end (EU has a separate armory, if you aren"t aware, atThe World of Warcraft Armory= http eu dot wowarmory dot com).

Flight said:

I"m really interested in this, Curt, but it seems limited to US servers. Any plans to extend it to EU servers ? Massive amount of potential users missing out due to a relatively small amount of work your end (EU has a separate armory, if you aren"t aware, atThe World of Warcraft Armory= http eu dot wowarmory dot com).

Click to expand...

There are plans, but until we can test it as deeply as we feel the need to, it"s on hold and "in the works".

Thanks for the interest though, it"s not something we haven"t and didn"t think of.

Put this in it"s own thread which was likely the best place, but in case anyone missed it.
For you World of Warcraft players out there, you now have a chance to win 1 of 4 hand drawn Todd Mcfarlane originals of YOUR World of Warcraft character forsigning up at the Azeroth Advisor Website

Not often you can get an original Todd McFarlane drawing, of something you want him to draw!

Can you do a life size oil painting of me standing in full Captain Morgan regalia?

Ngruk said:

Put this in it"s own thread which was likely the best place, but in case anyone missed it.
For you World of Warcraft players out there, you now have a chance to win 1 of 4 hand drawn Todd Mcfarlane originals of YOUR World of Warcraft character forsigning up at the Azeroth Advisor Website

Not often you can get an original Todd McFarlane drawing, of something you want him to draw!

Click to expand...

I expect you to allow me to win.

Teljair said:

I expect you to allow me to win.

Click to expand...

You have one WOW toon that"s level 65 that looks like a clown with a pet gorilla.