by Jeff Woleslagle on Nov 27, 2007
Ten Ton Hammer: Regarding talent, it seems like there isn't enough talent to fill all the positions available in the fast growing games industry. Beyond that, are we doing a good job of training new talent and creating a new generation of game developers?
Jessica: No, I really don't believe so. It's a little different in Europe; it's kind of funny after spending three years here. I occasionally go talking at universities up in Finland – the University of Art and Design in Finland – and they just do incredibly creative things. In America what they tend to do is 'hey, I've got to train the next generation of cube monkeys for the next generation, the low level artists and programmers. In Europe, that's just the start. 'Let's go into the media lab and everyone's going to create a game. Here's three things you have to use: TVs, fax machines, and a phone. So it's not just on the screen, it has a TV component, a fax component, and a phone component. The stuff that comes out is just wild.
We'll have enough programmers and artists eventually in America, whether we'll have enough creativity, I don't know. I think we're banging the creativity out of them in college to make sure they fit nicely into those cubes.
Richard: The trouble is, it's hard to identify creativity unless you yourself are creative. Many of the people that are in the position of hiring think they're better than they are. They can't recognize talent, so they might pass over someone that's better just because they like someone else's personality. They don't necessarily understand what it is that a designer is supposed to do – they ask all the wrong questions, and they hire the wrong person. And yea, the person might be reasonably creative, but they're not as good as some other people might be.
Everybody who works in a game developing role – MMOs in particular – everybody wants to be a designer. The artist wants to be a designer, the QA people want to be designers, the producer wants to be a designer and might even be a designer. The truth is that only a designer actually is a designer – and the reason is that they can do something that not many others can do – they can design a game. If everyone thinks they can be a designer just like everyone in a book publisher thinks they can write, and you let them do it, you're going to end up with a substandard product. You've got to pick somebody who you know that whatever they're going to do, it fits in with what you want from them.
Jessica: On the pure nuts and bolts level, we're missing a lot of talent. Lots of programmers, lots of good artists... we're creating those, but it's going to be a while before they hit the stream. What we really need is, well, I've been looking for a good art director for a friend of mine building an MMO in the US for 18 months. Every time they find one, he gets hired away for more money – there are very few good art directors. At the very top lead levels – the senior lead levels – that's where we're really missing good talent. That's where the experience is needed and we don't have it.
Richard: The danger is that you pull someone in who you think's got the experience and vision, but they got where they were before through an accident.
Jessica: Yea, but you can weed those guys out in the interview process for the most part. I've been through it a number of times – I have no problem finding the posers from the guys that have real talent, that know what they're doing. For one company in Atlanta, they found the guy, they made him an offer, and he turned around 2 days later and said, well, I just got offered $220,000 to do it in California. A guy with 10 years experience. They couldn't hardly match that.
Richard: When it comes to what you might call the low level talent – the actual programmers and artists – we have a problem there as well. Developers are prepared to do pretty well anything to get that talent except pay them more than they'd get to program nuclear power stations or databases or banks or anything else. If you want people who are good, and they could get more in another industry, you've got to pay what they can get in another industry. For MMOs, most of the people that work on the server side, it's probably better that they have no games industry experience. If their previous job was doing air traffic control systems, take them! They know how to handle real-time information, critical systems, networking, multiple bandwidth all at the same time, and – oh yea – we'll just pass the client whatever it wants. The client programmers, those are the ones who have the experience in putting the polygons on the screen really fast – those are the ones you need from the games industry. You've got to have the engine as well, but most of the skillset is transferable across industries.
Jessica: The problem is that you need twice as many skills for an online game as you do for a video game. All the sudden, the cost is just shooting through the roof.
Richard: And all programmers are super confident and think they can program anything. 'Yea, I'll write you a server program, I'll just get Server Programming in 21 Days.'
Ten Ton Hammer: Assuming you could find all the talent you needed and were able to move them to a central location and all that good stuff, could you assign a dollar value and a timetable to producing something like an EVE Online at release?
Jessica: Sure, we do it all the time. We're wrong, (laughter), but creativity doesn't work on a timescale. How many blind alleys will you run into? How many assumptions that you made during the design phase were wrong? I don't think anyone's come within 6 months of budgeting the time correctly.
Richard: The longer you spend on design, the greater the chance that you'll be accurate. It's like saying the earlier you set off for the airport, the greater the chance you'll get there before the plane takes off.
Jessica: Most companies don't want to do that. It's fun to actually make something, it's not fun to sit down and write documents. 'Alright, you guys get started on the treatment and we'll get started on the prototype.' Well, wait a minute! (laughter) And it happens every time. The project I just finished up in Germany, we actually did it the right way. We took 18 months – we spent four months writing the treatment, and then we spent the rest of the time writing a game design. Well, first, we did the prototype design, we knew what risks we wanted to check out during the prototype, and then we did the full game design while we were measuring our risks with the prototype. At the end, we had a budget, staffing schedule, we saw that we had solved our risk issues in the prototype, and then it was up to the publisher to decide whether they want to spend the money it's going to take to finish it out.
Richard: That's really unusual. Eighteen months is at least three times longer than you normally get to do a design document. Normally, the design document is 'just get it out of the way so we can start programming! Launch the game as quick as we can, and we can always patch it later. If it comes out 18 months too soon, well ok, we'll give it to them 18 months sooner than they would have got anyway, if the game lasts that long.' If everybody got 18 months, we would have wonders to behold.
Ten Ton Hammer: If there was one thing you could tell a company like CCP that has launched a successful game, what would it be?
Jessica: Take risks. Pick your risks, but take them.
Richard: I'd say, make sure you keep the people. The reason they've got the virtual world as it is is because of the people that created it. Keep them, and then you can make another.
Jessica: That's a really good point, but if you could do both of those – man! And they've got most of the original group here, and they're starting their next game.
Richard: So, that's the conservative versus the progressive.
Thanks to Richard Bartle and Jessica Mulligan for taking time
out of their busy conference schedule to speak with us.
Want to continue the discussion? Visit the Ten Ton Hammer forums!