Worked in the service/retail industry for 15 years, can confirm this sort of issue is a human nature problem in general. Authority figures who can't stand to be held accountable for THEIR mistakes, bad ideas, etc. are absolute _nightmares_ to work with. I witnessed new ideas being implemented at companies I worked with where things started off so well, and then these types of people would come in and RUIN these ideas by turning people against each other, all so they could have "their personal say". They were often delusional. This is why we can't have nice things.
Absolutely, it's a human nature problem, and somehow corporate structure brings out the worst in it. Companies with a strong corporate hierarchy have this problem BIG time, because each rung on the ladder is trying to climb to the next, by any means necessary. They'll not hesitate to cause long-term problems, as long as it brings the short-term benefits necessary to climb up just a little further, and when things go sideways, they just push the blame down the ladder as far as they can.
The human nature argument is unhelpful, because the concept itself is vaguely defined, if not outright impossible to define. If a person is being responsible, doesn't seek glory and titles, will properly credit people, etc. (we've all met people like that I hope), obviously they are not acting against their nature as a human being. If anything, I'm sure many people would say that is an example of human nature too. Humans have the potential for good and bad things, but if a given context overwhelmingly makes them do bad things, and those bad things have bad consequences on other people (such as being in a position of power within a corporate structure), then the problem is the conditions that foster those behaviors, not "human nature". In this case, the problem is corporate hierarchy itself, and beyond that, the laws and systems that let it thrive (as is the case in US society for instance). Like, genuinely, I need to ask anyone who believes in human nature to ask themselves this: "What even is human nature? And, given the complexity of humans, of life, of history, and the fact that I can't objectively detach myself from being a human to observe humanity objectively, how can I be so certain that my definition is accurate and complete?" Don't even reply here or acknowledge this message if you don't want to, just take some time when you're in a philosophical mood (that would be night-time for me, sometimes) to ponder those questions in complete privacy, and see what conclusions you come to.
@@Berutoron it's anywhere with hierarchy and authority, this is the basis for philosophical anarchism. The practical context is irrelevant, which is why they're saying it's a 'human nature problem', because it's a predictable behaviour that transcends any one environment. It's also not a contradiction to say altruistic cooperation is human nature as much as abuse of authority in this sense. Nor is it helpful to say 'this is unhelpful' when the discussion is clearly speaking in terms of "people often do this thing" and not "I am staking a position on the nature of humanity aimed at uncovering the metaphysics of being"-- that is navel gazing.
You basically described in detail why developers have excessive caution now 😅When you are on the receiving end, not being a lead, having no authority and all the responsibility - you learn to pad estimates, sink any idea that seems even remotely risky, safeguard yourself in any way possible. And it gets worse as the team size goes up, because you get detached from the end state of the game, but you're judged based on how many bugs you produced, how many build you've broken etc.
Good point! The whole vision of the game is blurred and the result is an amorphous creature. At best, the result is 90% the previous product. Some people should not be allowed near the developers.
Related: copied from Jeff Atwood's "New Programming Jargon" Blogpost (2012): 5- A Duck: A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product. [...] This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value. The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation. Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."
@@CainOnGames Wow that's awesome! I know I'm asking for too much here, but it would be cool and awesome if you could kindly maybe just mention it in passing in a video where it can be more easily referenced. TH-cam really doesn't like my account and my comments keep getting deleted, pruning all the replies. I couldn't find many solid references for this story so it is appreciated!
@@r.g.thesecond Wait…what? That wasn’t the duck incident. Brian Fargo was the producer for Battle Chess, and whereas there were things he didn’t want hidden in the game (Burger’s decapitation drawing for instance), I don’t recall that being the duck incident. For one, Brian understood game design. Todd Camasta had pretty much Carte Blanch to do as he wanted in Battle Chess - about the only animation that got protested was my roiling, gigantic fireball that Jay Patel screamed about being a memory hog (so pathetically small back in the day). It was a great explosions, too. As far as I recall the duck thing was deployed against EA producer Dave Albert (Alpert, I forget). He was the one who did minor but annoying meddling. So it was Wasteland or Bard’s Tale III - and honestly, I forget which because the duck became a very unofficial mascot of insidious rebellion against people who didn’t have the first clue about creativity.
I work manufacturing QC as an inspector and trainer. We always have "Continuous Improvement" projects, pitched by anyone across the company. When your project is selected, your group leader and manager both have to sign their names on the paperwork. It really helps
I have worked 12 years in a big company on the assisting management level. It is not a videogame industry issue. It is a modern management issue that comes with the certain size of a company. I have always considered this with hierarchy without responsibility. The moment a company is not any longer owned by its founder, this goes to the extreme. We track so many criteria of common workers from time on the clock, extra hours, how fast or how much gets achieved in the time on the clock. However, when a vaguely defined and illogical sounding strategy turns out to be a mistake or the manager are unable to follow through with it: there is never a consequence. Please keep in mind, that the argument for the higher pay of management is always, that they carry more responsibility. But with responsibility, there must come accountability.
Spiderman taught us this: "With great power comes great responsibility." Another one is "Power corrupts.. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." You need independent review panel to test and measure the sucess and execution of an idea is to see if its worth doing. At nintendo when the boss takes a paycut so the workers don't have to lose their jobs due to bad decisions at the top, ...that is such a rare thing. If western game companies did that I think the game industry would be much healthier.
@UToobUsername01 at least in germany, there is a supervisory board above the CEO (&CFO, COO, ...). However, they also name the CEO, etc, which means nepotism at its finest. And do you really assume that they get hard with the person they have placed there? It could be considered their mistake as well if they placed a buffoon. So they usually have really kind words for CEOs facing "tough challenges of the current markets" ;)
Very first job I ever had back in highschool, working at McDonald's, I learned this lesson. Manager A told me to clean the grill in a different way they'd thought up from now on and pushed through anything I said about how I was originally trained to do it. Later on the general manager sees me doing it that new way and I get in trouble, I say "Manager A told me to do it this way instead." Manager A denies it and says they told me to do it the right way, I'm just lazy/argumentative. Sometimes responsibility is only taken by those without the authority to shove it off on someone else. Wasn't any different when I worked at Walmart after highschool, or other jobs since, but now at least I know never to rely on people taking responsibility if they tell me to bend the rules.
There was once this PM on another team who came to our PM to ask about adding a feature. Our PM said no, so the other PM went to a different PM who just joined on our team who didn't own the part of the product the feature would land in, and the new PM said oh yeah that sounds like it could be an interesting idea, so the new PM went to the previous PM on our team and got told the external PM was shopping around. When the feature didn't get worked on, the external PM started making a fuss about YOUR TEAM PROMISED ME! Didn't even need to wait until after the feature shipped to see if he would take accountability -- obviously deviant behavior in the open from the beginning -- but upper leadership didn't see it as a problem. I imagine part of the issue is that a lot of leaders don't study leadership scientifically, so we get lots of gut-based decisions informed by motivational speakers instead, or were just kicked out of the nest and left to figure things out on their own.
This is terrible. It seems that often the only way to avoid such problems is to lock the developers in one room and not allow them to communicate with any external controllers or managers.
One of my first cubicles was opposite the team's meeting room. I will never forget hearing the quick programming team meeting where the tech director said: "I want to be very clear about this. [Designer] is not your boss. I am your boss. If [designer] is asking you directly to do something, tell them to ask me to schedule it. If you aren't working on what I put on your schedule, you are not working for me." [Designer] wasn't necessarily a bad person, but they would sneak in features by asking around until someone caved, and a lot of our instability at the time could be traced to that. Of course, there's also the QA manager who would order QA teams to enter his ideas as showstopper bugs. Going through a layoff was traumatic, but knowing that manager got fired made it a little more palatable.
This sort of narcissism/ego ruined one of my favourite jobs and contributed to me quitting because I was tired of arguing against random ideas getting pushed onto the team. IMO another instance of this is when e.g. mass lay-offs happen. The execs very rarely are the ones that get affected (in fact, probably rewarded) even though their decisions most likely contributed heavily to the outcome.
this is making me feel *so* validated right now. I'm dealing with a major health issue, with doctors demanding various things while ignoring the impact of their demands on me. I've been feeling like they're all treating me like I'm being difficult, when really, I'm making myself more sick pushing to meet their demands and they're not meeting me halfway.
Tim. Love your games and your life lessons. I’m an Officer in the United States Marine Corps and your leadership advice is sound. From one leader to another, thank you for your wisdom.
Tim, I love the way you frame your experiences and your pieces of advice. I am a call center manager, not a game developer, but ALOT of what you have to say ABSOLUTLEY applies to areas outside of game development... You should write a book!
I've never been a developer but did work as an implementer and general troubleshooter on development teams. I've been in meetings that are reminiscent of this. Some important things I learned were: 1) get as many directives as possible in writing; managers who want to constantly go off the record with these kinds of things are not your friends 2) if you are working for a place where this is happening and people might get hung out to dry, make sure your resume is up to date and you've got a clean exit plan and some savings My experience was over 15 years ago, but it's even more applicable today.
One thing I've learnt from playing and reading about video games for 20+ years is that you can never know who, why, when or how a particular feature or bug made it into a game.
This is one of my most passionate topics, and I had my own term for it "Responsibility shifting" because you take your responsibilities and shift them onto someone else. It's a skill thats exclusive to the Manager class.
i worked on a game where we were told to implement a feature that we knew people would hate. my leads pushed back on it, to no avail. we were told to do it anyway because the feature was intended to boost a specific metric. when the game shipped, it was clowned on for having the feature, and then the publisher released a statement saying that the developers went rogue and it wasn't supposed to be like that. then we had to crunch to get a patch out to remove the feature.
“Hey I think _________ idea/feature would really work great in this game can you put it in?” “Sure thing except for a minor issue it’s not a feature that the board of directors were informed about in pitch. Can you send them an email request for approval to add your feature suggestion to the board/publisher and CC me in? Once we get the go ahead from the board of directors about your feature we’ll go with their decision.” “Hey I noticed you didn’t send that email to the board and instead were suggesting it directly to staff/other managers so I sent the email notifying them of your suggestion/feature and CCd you in let’s wait till we hear back so no one gets in trouble for overstepping the boards expectations”
Worked for a company with a lot of departments. A head of marketing for quite some time could just come in and ask, even demand, a feature or two. It took one of the team leads to calmly explain to him that there is such a thing as a process and we all have to abide by it. Which went well, but then we learned that The Marketing Guy had silent approval from the higher-ups, since his team "was providing money" to the company. Meanwhile IT dep was a cost center, so...
It's funny, I describe this from the other side as "responsibility without authority" In a manufacturing job I was tasked to make the operation more efficient, but any change I made 5 people had veto power over. Unsurprisingly very little was changed, and the one person who was resistant to all change received no blame. Just me. Glad I got out of there
In the book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" Ben Horowitz gives the following problem and its solution: You are the boss and a team member comes to you asking for a raise. Should you give it to him? If you do, he might be happy, but now you've established that people have to ask to get an increase in salary, and unless they want to fall behind their peers, they have to do it often enough. How often? As often as they dare. In addition some of your people are uncomfortable asking for a raise and will resent the system that rewards the bold. You would like to retain those people. The solution proposed in the book is doing periodic 360 reviews of everybody and handing out raises based on the reviews. No raises are given "off cycle" just because somebody comes and asks for it. If there are no set rules, domineering people will grab what they can. Formalizing the system takes away some of their power. Thus I wonder if some kind of formal "new feature proposal" process might tame these feature cowboys trying to pull rank. Then they couldn't just slip a feature in by pressuring one person. They would have to try and vanquish The Process.
I've seen this with organisations that have pay bands for positions. no massive black marks in the performance review, your pay gets bumped up a couple % until you hit the cap for your role
Ive got to say, i LOVE how when people mention that they think youre punching down, instead of trying to absolve yourself of that or justifying jt, you say, "y'know? Okay, lets punch up this time" I so respect this tbh
Oh man that Futurama reference was great. Bit of a side story but I first watched Futurama when I was in Elementary School (I stayed up late so I could watch adult swim after cartoon network lol) and still nearly 20 years later to this day I'm not over how damn heartbreaking the Seymour episode was with Fry & his dog, talk about tearing your heart out damn lol.
I happen to be in a position of authority in my day job (not game dev unfortunately) and I work really hard to ensure that I don’t take credit for successes created by my team members. Giving them the glory is sure way to keep them motivated, committed and engaged for long. THAT is way more valuable than any temporary fame. 👌🏻
Oh! Cool stuff As far as my experience tells me - this usually happens when GDD is not being conducted - then what is happening in the studio starts to happen at the whim of the bosses' left heel Tim, have you seen Bruce Nesmith's interview with Minmax? It literally describes the consequences of this when creating Bethesda games. Roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined otherwise, there will be a fight for resources in the studio and deadlines will be missed.
Weirdly pervasive in another industry; education (especially around extreme behaviour settings)- Management demand a strategy despite pushback- if it works, they know best. If it doesn't, no accountability. Not true of my current employer, but definitely true of previous places I worked.
7:42 It absolutely does. I don't think Poor Management/Abuse of Perceived Power is industry specific, but a feature of any system where measured decisions can be overridden by executive power without consistent consequence.
Authority without responsibility is laying off 200+ people who just shipped one of your best expansions, then setting your twitter profile to private because someone might hurt your feelings and buying some expensive cars.
Hi Tim Edit: This issue and the caution are linked in that management of this type leads to people trying to avoid doing anything they could be blamed for. I'm a UPS driver, and as far as I have seen when I go into a business and everybody runs away from signing for a delivery it's because management is this kind of toxic. Anything you do that goes wrong is punished anything that I do that goes wrong is ignored. Anything you do that goes right is ignored and anything I do that goes right is praised (by me). Who wants to take a risk in that environment?
It's like the guy in Andor asking if he could be made Prefect while knowing the title means nothing and the ISB agent says that he can wear a ball gown if he'd like.
for some reasons i thought this was about the recent spree of bans in turkey judging from the title not the thing i expected, but still an awesome episode
Hey Tim, are you familiar with the Stop Killing Games initiative in the EU? What are you thoughts on live service games having to provide the necessary tools or binaries so that games with online features can remain playable after an official live service has ended? It's been a hot topic recently with other game developers and consumer rights content creators discussing the impact this would have on the industry and consumer rights.
I have two approaches for this problem either: A) Use time estimation to my advantage: "This means we won't have the time to add these other planned for features, are you sure you want to make that tradeoff?" B) If possible within game type, platform and time: "Sure, we can test it", measure it's performance and if it performs badly remove it or stop making similar things.
If you work in corporation, you never do anything without written mail. "You wanna this feature? Sure, write me email with detailed explanation and I'll start right away". Verbal means it doesn't exist, it never happened. Thats all there's to it.
Most societal problems current and historical stem from a lack of responsibility/accountability from people with power. It's no surprise it shows up in workplaces and continues the trend.
One day, I decided to take responsibility for my ideas and make my own game, after I commented a long list of suggestions to someone and realized that they would never be added in unless I make my own game. Most people don't have the luxury of taking responsibility. It takes so much time. I'm not surprised people in leadership positions can't help but divert the responsibility for their ideas, everyone always wants to get their suggestions in but few people actually want to make it happen. It's a shame.
This hit me hard. I watched this video a long time ago and felt i learnt a lot of things. I got into my first job 8 months ago and lately things have been hectic because of projects going live etc. I think i need to watch this video every 3 months to remind myself to be better.😂
Working in sales, all my stories for this would be about using this to my advantage to get around problematic people and get the company to buy what I'm trying to sell regardless.
To go further on the "two Executive Producer types" bit, you also can bet your dunning-kruger effect that many of the "got the title without working" types don't even know they are bad. The worst kind in my experience are the ones spitballing random ideas during meetings with clients without consulting the team beforehand, leading to dramatic and often difficult changes. And since it's the client that is now asking for such changes, they don't take responsibility either when it turns out to be a terrible idea!
This is so sad. Yes, having patience to explain in detail why certain feature does not fit in the project does pay off, and it can gain understanding and make collaboration better and more fluid. But at the same time, all details go exactly as you've described, and it is so tiring and stressfull. All you can do is make sure who can call the calls about given topic, and if somebody above makes call you strongly advised against, you can document who made decision and what were their arguments. And then, it's funny how begginer's game design is very objective, about right level of challenge, flow channel, legibility, core loops, difficulty and learning curves... but at the end of the day, when it's not obvious or not test-able at the moment, it all comes down to deciding wether you feel that certain feature is good or bad and go for it.
Can't fix it, it's human nature, experienced both in the gaming industry and outside of it. The real issue is when you are one of those members of the team they go to if the main Lead/Manager rejected the idea already... the less power you have in a company/team/hierarchy the harder it is to be "true to yourself" and say no, your solution would be to go to your lead and let them know and hope your Lead is a reasonable person who cares about their team.
I also know the experience from the complete opposite side. Since I don't want to give away any secrets, I'll put it abstractly. We were a group and I had the opportunity to get the group to do two things. One was A, which was a success, and the other was B, which was a failure. Both A and B had equal value. And Both things were done in the same time frame. And both were my idea, not theirs. Not a single person thanked me for A, the successful thing. Instead, the whole crowd focused on B. I got all the blame for B. And no thanks for A.
Your arms look strong, do you work out? As mostly sitting job I presume game development is, do you have any thoughts on physicall exercise being necessity in this field of work?
A buddy of mine was going to leave his job as assistant director of photography at his studio job and to get him to stay they offered him the title of “vice president of assistant DP” as if that meant anything lol
I have managers like that. I usualy just tell them why certain thing wont work or are a bad idea. If they are pushy I demand they give me their ideas in writting. If they don't do that I simply ignore them. Since I'm usualy the most senior system engineer my team comes to me for all sorts of things and usually don't implement things I've shown them to be a bad idea. My managers typicaly get around me being a hurdle when I'm on vacation and approach the newest team member to implement their latest brain farts.
TIM please do a review / talk about Fallout London when you can! I’d also like to know your opinion about whether studios should support mod authors; especially in the context of Fallout London. Thank you!
It wasnt until i started watching your videos that i learned executive producer didnt essentially mean investor. I was under the impression it was an honorary title, but its something closer to PM when done correctly.
Unfortunately these people need to be told that they are abusing their position and told that they must allow the team to consider their suggestion before implementing it.
This situation is inherent to the power structure, and comes into play anywhere there is creativity in the workplace. The proper way to address it is, of course, a democratic discussion of the idea. Well if fascism is running govt like a business then what does that say about your chances of a democratic sit down with the boss in your workplace? Going further, the emphasis on ideas in creative spaces, rather than the tremendous labor it takes to make even a good idea look good in practice, outright incentives management to behave that way. My experience with the amateur game dev scene reminds me of the "idea guy" who thinks their ability to visualize an apple makes them special or a meaningful addition to a project, as if it's not something everyone can do. If an idea works, it's the developers who made it work who ought to get credit.
can you talk about the stopkillinggames movment and its feasibility. also what do you think of LLMs in future games that are only armed with in game world knowledge?
Hi Tim , Have you ever mention this in any video of yours , if not here is my question about it ; I just wondering have you ever encounter with very good idea either that idea came by yourself or someone elses idea that you like the idea but never implemented any of your works or the works you involved in , either can't find a right spot to fit in or the other team members not find a place to fit in or because of some time limitations problem , that idea never came up to the surface.
Yes, my idea books are FILLED with ideas that I like but never got to add to any game that I made. I have even posted a few videos on this channel about such ideas.
@@CainOnGames If you can't stop That is, there is a risk of turning into Chris Roberts and his "Star Citizen" :) He will never finish development Once his studio was able to release "Freelancer" only because Microsoft kicked him out" The more ideas - the greater the risk that the game will become "deep as a puddle and wide as an ocean" (and the water will quickly evaporate!)
I can’t think of a way to tell those stories without (a) making the person easily identifiable and (b) sounding like I’m holding a grudge about it. I’ll say this: I took responsibility for things at Troika on things that I had given complete authority over to someone else. They got to make final decisions, but then took no responsibility for those decisions not being good.
@@CainOnGames What would you do differently? Is there a way to put responsibility on someone delegated? I guess not since at the end of the day it comes down to the company owner still
People like that make a workplace toxic, it can't be tolerated as it undermines the defined roles and authorities of the positions as they stand It should be the game director's decision to add, remove, change, etc features that's going into the game that they're directing. They'll have a vision of what they want, and sure they can have things suggested to them, but stuff like breaking the chain of command to issue orders to your underling's underlings is dumb I think it was in New Vegas where there was that whole quest line where you could depose that brotherhood chapter's leader because he did exactly that Maybe they were right to codify that rule in their codex, I think more companies would benefit for it Also, as an aside, that rhetoric sounds a lot like the sort of stuff you hear from a popular politician in the US I wonder if he's one of those kinds of people :P
Look at sports team owners, most of them don't know jack squat about scouting, personnel, or positional techniques but by god it's their team so they're gonna tell people what to do so they feel like they had SOME part in it other than paying people.
my response to "well im your boss" is "that doesnt give you permission to force something in that risks ruining the game." and then if theyre extra insistant, ask them if they would like to take on your job's responsibilites too then.
You've talked a couple times about taking the blame for things nobody else would, but did that have consequences for you or your career? Getting one's name attached to failures seems like a common point of anxiety, so how big of deal does it end up being?
When I took the blame, some people saw me as a problem (look at the issues he's causing), while others saw me as honorable (he took one for the team). The latter enjoyed working with me and wanted to work with me again, the former not so much. In the long run, such self-selection was nice.
He didn't have high enough speech to convince Tim [Speech 75/100], but high enough to go through the longer route by convincing multiple minions [Speech 75/50], [Speech 75/69], [Speech 75/75] and the perk [Argumentum Ad Verecundiam] for the remaining 2.
Every job industry is having the same problems and downstream of the political landscape. You can scratch your head indefinitely wondering why and how this is all happening or you can just look to the bureaucratic nightmare realm of the laptop class elites
The phrase would be “easier”, not softer. But then Tim was so easy to work with, I had completely forgotten he did some programming work for me on Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. My own experience with programmers is that they are either open to an idea and all too willing to go off into a side tunnel even when it wasn’t in the original design docs because they are the epitome of enthusiasm (*cough*Burger*cough*), and there are those that are like Tim - basically, “you figure it out and get back to me”. Now, they may not see it so much as a problem, they just have enough on their plate as it is, that they don’t want to deal with it (Troy Miles). And either you do just that (figure it out), or you accept things as they are because they have a very good point.
Worked in the service/retail industry for 15 years, can confirm this sort of issue is a human nature problem in general. Authority figures who can't stand to be held accountable for THEIR mistakes, bad ideas, etc. are absolute _nightmares_ to work with. I witnessed new ideas being implemented at companies I worked with where things started off so well, and then these types of people would come in and RUIN these ideas by turning people against each other, all so they could have "their personal say". They were often delusional. This is why we can't have nice things.
I've worked in healthcare a fair bit. Can absolutely confirm it's no different.
Absolutely, it's a human nature problem, and somehow corporate structure brings out the worst in it.
Companies with a strong corporate hierarchy have this problem BIG time, because each rung on the ladder is trying to climb to the next, by any means necessary. They'll not hesitate to cause long-term problems, as long as it brings the short-term benefits necessary to climb up just a little further, and when things go sideways, they just push the blame down the ladder as far as they can.
The human nature argument is unhelpful, because the concept itself is vaguely defined, if not outright impossible to define. If a person is being responsible, doesn't seek glory and titles, will properly credit people, etc. (we've all met people like that I hope), obviously they are not acting against their nature as a human being. If anything, I'm sure many people would say that is an example of human nature too. Humans have the potential for good and bad things, but if a given context overwhelmingly makes them do bad things, and those bad things have bad consequences on other people (such as being in a position of power within a corporate structure), then the problem is the conditions that foster those behaviors, not "human nature". In this case, the problem is corporate hierarchy itself, and beyond that, the laws and systems that let it thrive (as is the case in US society for instance).
Like, genuinely, I need to ask anyone who believes in human nature to ask themselves this: "What even is human nature? And, given the complexity of humans, of life, of history, and the fact that I can't objectively detach myself from being a human to observe humanity objectively, how can I be so certain that my definition is accurate and complete?" Don't even reply here or acknowledge this message if you don't want to, just take some time when you're in a philosophical mood (that would be night-time for me, sometimes) to ponder those questions in complete privacy, and see what conclusions you come to.
@@Berutoron it's anywhere with hierarchy and authority, this is the basis for philosophical anarchism. The practical context is irrelevant, which is why they're saying it's a 'human nature problem', because it's a predictable behaviour that transcends any one environment. It's also not a contradiction to say altruistic cooperation is human nature as much as abuse of authority in this sense.
Nor is it helpful to say 'this is unhelpful' when the discussion is clearly speaking in terms of "people often do this thing" and not "I am staking a position on the nature of humanity aimed at uncovering the metaphysics of being"-- that is navel gazing.
You basically described in detail why developers have excessive caution now 😅When you are on the receiving end, not being a lead, having no authority and all the responsibility - you learn to pad estimates, sink any idea that seems even remotely risky, safeguard yourself in any way possible. And it gets worse as the team size goes up, because you get detached from the end state of the game, but you're judged based on how many bugs you produced, how many build you've broken etc.
Good point!
The whole vision of the game is blurred and the result is an amorphous creature. At best, the result is 90% the previous product. Some people should not be allowed near the developers.
Sounds like a normal day for every developer no matter the industry tbh.
And then layoffs happen and people act all surprised
@@Chuck9852 they can lose the job. Everyone has to eat.
When a company goes south the workers take the blunt of the hit
Related: copied from Jeff Atwood's "New Programming Jargon" Blogpost (2012):
5- A Duck: A feature added for no other reason than to draw management attention and be removed, thus avoiding unnecessary changes in other aspects of the product. [...]
This started as a piece of Interplay corporate lore. It was well known that producers (a game industry position, roughly equivalent to PMs) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value.
The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation.
Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."
I know I'm very late to this video, but since Tim was at Interplay around (more accurately just after) those times I wonder if this really happened.
It happened. I saw that duck show up in other games.
@@CainOnGames Wow that's awesome! I know I'm asking for too much here, but it would be cool and awesome if you could kindly maybe just mention it in passing in a video where it can be more easily referenced. TH-cam really doesn't like my account and my comments keep getting deleted, pruning all the replies. I couldn't find many solid references for this story so it is appreciated!
@@r.g.thesecond Wait…what? That wasn’t the duck incident. Brian Fargo was the producer for Battle Chess, and whereas there were things he didn’t want hidden in the game (Burger’s decapitation drawing for instance), I don’t recall that being the duck incident. For one, Brian understood game design. Todd Camasta had pretty much Carte Blanch to do as he wanted in Battle Chess - about the only animation that got protested was my roiling, gigantic fireball that Jay Patel screamed about being a memory hog (so pathetically small back in the day). It was a great explosions, too.
As far as I recall the duck thing was deployed against EA producer Dave Albert (Alpert, I forget). He was the one who did minor but annoying meddling. So it was Wasteland or Bard’s Tale III - and honestly, I forget which because the duck became a very unofficial mascot of insidious rebellion against people who didn’t have the first clue about creativity.
_"Respect my Authoritah!!!!"_
Executive Cartman, probably
I work manufacturing QC as an inspector and trainer. We always have "Continuous Improvement" projects, pitched by anyone across the company. When your project is selected, your group leader and manager both have to sign their names on the paperwork. It really helps
I have worked 12 years in a big company on the assisting management level. It is not a videogame industry issue. It is a modern management issue that comes with the certain size of a company. I have always considered this with hierarchy without responsibility. The moment a company is not any longer owned by its founder, this goes to the extreme.
We track so many criteria of common workers from time on the clock, extra hours, how fast or how much gets achieved in the time on the clock.
However, when a vaguely defined and illogical sounding strategy turns out to be a mistake or the manager are unable to follow through with it: there is never a consequence.
Please keep in mind, that the argument for the higher pay of management is always, that they carry more responsibility.
But with responsibility, there must come accountability.
Spiderman taught us this: "With great power comes great responsibility."
Another one is "Power corrupts.. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
You need independent review panel to test and measure the sucess and execution of an idea is to see if its worth doing.
At nintendo when the boss takes a paycut so the workers don't have to lose their jobs due to bad decisions at the top, ...that is such a rare thing. If western game companies did that I think the game industry would be much healthier.
@UToobUsername01 at least in germany, there is a supervisory board above the CEO (&CFO, COO, ...). However, they also name the CEO, etc, which means nepotism at its finest. And do you really assume that they get hard with the person they have placed there?
It could be considered their mistake as well if they placed a buffoon.
So they usually have really kind words for CEOs facing "tough challenges of the current markets" ;)
Variation of a classic: success has a thousand fathers, failure? None.
I put that line in my memoir. I learned that lesson several times.
Very first job I ever had back in highschool, working at McDonald's, I learned this lesson. Manager A told me to clean the grill in a different way they'd thought up from now on and pushed through anything I said about how I was originally trained to do it. Later on the general manager sees me doing it that new way and I get in trouble, I say "Manager A told me to do it this way instead." Manager A denies it and says they told me to do it the right way, I'm just lazy/argumentative.
Sometimes responsibility is only taken by those without the authority to shove it off on someone else. Wasn't any different when I worked at Walmart after highschool, or other jobs since, but now at least I know never to rely on people taking responsibility if they tell me to bend the rules.
There was once this PM on another team who came to our PM to ask about adding a feature. Our PM said no, so the other PM went to a different PM who just joined on our team who didn't own the part of the product the feature would land in, and the new PM said oh yeah that sounds like it could be an interesting idea, so the new PM went to the previous PM on our team and got told the external PM was shopping around. When the feature didn't get worked on, the external PM started making a fuss about YOUR TEAM PROMISED ME! Didn't even need to wait until after the feature shipped to see if he would take accountability -- obviously deviant behavior in the open from the beginning -- but upper leadership didn't see it as a problem.
I imagine part of the issue is that a lot of leaders don't study leadership scientifically, so we get lots of gut-based decisions informed by motivational speakers instead, or were just kicked out of the nest and left to figure things out on their own.
This is terrible. It seems that often the only way to avoid such problems is to lock the developers in one room and not allow them to communicate with any external controllers or managers.
One of my first cubicles was opposite the team's meeting room. I will never forget hearing the quick programming team meeting where the tech director said: "I want to be very clear about this. [Designer] is not your boss. I am your boss. If [designer] is asking you directly to do something, tell them to ask me to schedule it. If you aren't working on what I put on your schedule, you are not working for me." [Designer] wasn't necessarily a bad person, but they would sneak in features by asking around until someone caved, and a lot of our instability at the time could be traced to that.
Of course, there's also the QA manager who would order QA teams to enter his ideas as showstopper bugs. Going through a layoff was traumatic, but knowing that manager got fired made it a little more palatable.
This sort of narcissism/ego ruined one of my favourite jobs and contributed to me quitting because I was tired of arguing against random ideas getting pushed onto the team. IMO another instance of this is when e.g. mass lay-offs happen. The execs very rarely are the ones that get affected (in fact, probably rewarded) even though their decisions most likely contributed heavily to the outcome.
It's good that there is Nintendo, where this is not the case.
I sure wish those golden parachutes were weighted like gold too
this is making me feel *so* validated right now. I'm dealing with a major health issue, with doctors demanding various things while ignoring the impact of their demands on me. I've been feeling like they're all treating me like I'm being difficult, when really, I'm making myself more sick pushing to meet their demands and they're not meeting me halfway.
Tim. Love your games and your life lessons. I’m an Officer in the United States Marine Corps and your leadership advice is sound. From one leader to another, thank you for your wisdom.
Tim, I love the way you frame your experiences and your pieces of advice. I am a call center manager, not a game developer, but ALOT of what you have to say ABSOLUTLEY applies to areas outside of game development... You should write a book!
Thanks!
Thank you!
Make and keep a paper trail. Be specific. Make copies. Save emails. Get meeting recaps with specific details.
This is one way to help mitigate it.
I've never been a developer but did work as an implementer and general troubleshooter on development teams. I've been in meetings that are reminiscent of this. Some important things I learned were:
1) get as many directives as possible in writing; managers who want to constantly go off the record with these kinds of things are not your friends
2) if you are working for a place where this is happening and people might get hung out to dry, make sure your resume is up to date and you've got a clean exit plan and some savings
My experience was over 15 years ago, but it's even more applicable today.
One thing I've learnt from playing and reading about video games for 20+ years is that you can never know who, why, when or how a particular feature or bug made it into a game.
This is one of my most passionate topics, and I had my own term for it "Responsibility shifting" because you take your responsibilities and shift them onto someone else.
It's a skill thats exclusive to the Manager class.
i worked on a game where we were told to implement a feature that we knew people would hate. my leads pushed back on it, to no avail. we were told to do it anyway because the feature was intended to boost a specific metric. when the game shipped, it was clowned on for having the feature, and then the publisher released a statement saying that the developers went rogue and it wasn't supposed to be like that. then we had to crunch to get a patch out to remove the feature.
The phrase they used in my business class was “a leader takes credit for success but also takes responsibility for failures”
good afternoon from South Africa, always happy to see another Tim Cain video pop-up.
good afternoon fellow south african and tim
“Hey I think _________ idea/feature would really work great in this game can you put it in?”
“Sure thing except for a minor issue it’s not a feature that the board of directors were informed about in pitch. Can you send them an email request for approval to add your feature suggestion to the board/publisher and CC me in? Once we get the go ahead from the board of directors about your feature we’ll go with their decision.”
“Hey I noticed you didn’t send that email to the board and instead were suggesting it directly to staff/other managers so I sent the email notifying them of your suggestion/feature and CCd you in let’s wait till we hear back so no one gets in trouble for overstepping the boards expectations”
The main thing is that this guy is not from the board of directors XD
@@YarGolubev as long as you can get them to put it in writing you’re covered
Worked for a company with a lot of departments. A head of marketing for quite some time could just come in and ask, even demand, a feature or two. It took one of the team leads to calmly explain to him that there is such a thing as a process and we all have to abide by it. Which went well, but then we learned that The Marketing Guy had silent approval from the higher-ups, since his team "was providing money" to the company. Meanwhile IT dep was a cost center, so...
"Are you willing to put in writing that all the problems that comes from this idea are your responsibility?"
Managements have the memory logic of Cartman and the fish sticks joke
It's funny, I describe this from the other side as "responsibility without authority"
In a manufacturing job I was tasked to make the operation more efficient, but any change I made 5 people had veto power over.
Unsurprisingly very little was changed, and the one person who was resistant to all change received no blame. Just me.
Glad I got out of there
Yeah, totally happens outside of the game industry too. I usually do an overabundance of CYA paper-trails, but that doesn't help all the time.
Morning, Tim and everyone else!! Love watching these with my cup of coffee
In the book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" Ben Horowitz gives the following problem and its solution: You are the boss and a team member comes to you asking for a raise. Should you give it to him? If you do, he might be happy, but now you've established that people have to ask to get an increase in salary, and unless they want to fall behind their peers, they have to do it often enough. How often? As often as they dare. In addition some of your people are uncomfortable asking for a raise and will resent the system that rewards the bold. You would like to retain those people. The solution proposed in the book is doing periodic 360 reviews of everybody and handing out raises based on the reviews. No raises are given "off cycle" just because somebody comes and asks for it. If there are no set rules, domineering people will grab what they can. Formalizing the system takes away some of their power.
Thus I wonder if some kind of formal "new feature proposal" process might tame these feature cowboys trying to pull rank. Then they couldn't just slip a feature in by pressuring one person. They would have to try and vanquish The Process.
I've seen this with organisations that have pay bands for positions. no massive black marks in the performance review, your pay gets bumped up a couple % until you hit the cap for your role
Ive got to say, i LOVE how when people mention that they think youre punching down, instead of trying to absolve yourself of that or justifying jt, you say, "y'know? Okay, lets punch up this time"
I so respect this tbh
I really needed to see this today Tim, you are the best.
Oh man that Futurama reference was great. Bit of a side story but I first watched Futurama when I was in Elementary School (I stayed up late so I could watch adult swim after cartoon network lol) and still nearly 20 years later to this day I'm not over how damn heartbreaking the Seymour episode was with Fry & his dog, talk about tearing your heart out damn lol.
I happen to be in a position of authority in my day job (not game dev unfortunately) and I work really hard to ensure that I don’t take credit for successes created by my team members. Giving them the glory is sure way to keep them motivated, committed and engaged for long. THAT is way more valuable than any temporary fame. 👌🏻
Oh! Cool stuff
As far as my experience tells me - this usually happens when GDD is not being conducted - then what is happening in the studio starts to happen at the whim of the bosses' left heel
Tim, have you seen Bruce Nesmith's interview with Minmax? It literally describes the consequences of this when creating Bethesda games.
Roles and responsibilities must be clearly defined
otherwise, there will be a fight for resources in the studio and deadlines will be missed.
The answer is having a good PM and disallowing scope discussions outside of stakeholder meetings.
One facet of bad managers, take credit for success, but silence or denial on failures/bugs.
Weirdly pervasive in another industry; education (especially around extreme behaviour settings)- Management demand a strategy despite pushback- if it works, they know best. If it doesn't, no accountability. Not true of my current employer, but definitely true of previous places I worked.
authority without responsibility? sounds like every deadbeat boss ive ever had
7:42 It absolutely does. I don't think Poor Management/Abuse of Perceived Power is industry specific, but a feature of any system where measured decisions can be overridden by executive power without consistent consequence.
Authority without responsibility is laying off 200+ people who just shipped one of your best expansions, then setting your twitter profile to private because someone might hurt your feelings and buying some expensive cars.
Hi Tim
Edit: This issue and the caution are linked in that management of this type leads to people trying to avoid doing anything they could be blamed for.
I'm a UPS driver, and as far as I have seen when I go into a business and everybody runs away from signing for a delivery it's because management is this kind of toxic.
Anything you do that goes wrong is punished anything that I do that goes wrong is ignored. Anything you do that goes right is ignored and anything I do that goes right is praised (by me).
Who wants to take a risk in that environment?
It's like the guy in Andor asking if he could be made Prefect while knowing the title means nothing and the ISB agent says that he can wear a ball gown if he'd like.
for some reasons i thought this was about the recent spree of bans in turkey judging from the title
not the thing i expected, but still an awesome episode
Hey Tim, are you familiar with the Stop Killing Games initiative in the EU? What are you thoughts on live service games having to provide the necessary tools or binaries so that games with online features can remain playable after an official live service has ended? It's been a hot topic recently with other game developers and consumer rights content creators discussing the impact this would have on the industry and consumer rights.
Thank you for talking about this!
Can confirm. This happens in other industries and with all age groups.
I have two approaches for this problem either:
A) Use time estimation to my advantage: "This means we won't have the time to add these other planned for features, are you sure you want to make that tradeoff?"
B) If possible within game type, platform and time: "Sure, we can test it", measure it's performance and if it performs badly remove it or stop making similar things.
If you work in corporation, you never do anything without written mail. "You wanna this feature? Sure, write me email with detailed explanation and I'll start right away". Verbal means it doesn't exist, it never happened. Thats all there's to it.
That episode of the office with Michael's Willy Wonka idea 😂😂
Most societal problems current and historical stem from a lack of responsibility/accountability from people with power. It's no surprise it shows up in workplaces and continues the trend.
I caught a glimpse of your doggy in the glass haha. Had to refocus myself on what you were saying. Love pets.
One day, I decided to take responsibility for my ideas and make my own game, after I commented a long list of suggestions to someone and realized that they would never be added in unless I make my own game.
Most people don't have the luxury of taking responsibility. It takes so much time. I'm not surprised people in leadership positions can't help but divert the responsibility for their ideas, everyone always wants to get their suggestions in but few people actually want to make it happen. It's a shame.
This hit me hard. I watched this video a long time ago and felt i learnt a lot of things.
I got into my first job 8 months ago and lately things have been hectic because of projects going live etc. I think i need to watch this video every 3 months to remind myself to be better.😂
Wait, this was uploaded 2 days ago?
Authority without responsibility is the new taxation without representation ✊
To quote JFK; victory has a thousand parents, but defeat is an orphan.
Fun Friday question: how plausible is the idea of Pacifist, Ascetic, Monk-Like Super Mutants ?
My favourite story of my life is responsibility without authority. Boy is that common for me.
With the title i kinda didn't expect it to be a talk about nepotism.
Working in sales, all my stories for this would be about using this to my advantage to get around problematic people and get the company to buy what I'm trying to sell regardless.
To go further on the "two Executive Producer types" bit, you also can bet your dunning-kruger effect that many of the "got the title without working" types don't even know they are bad. The worst kind in my experience are the ones spitballing random ideas during meetings with clients without consulting the team beforehand, leading to dramatic and often difficult changes. And since it's the client that is now asking for such changes, they don't take responsibility either when it turns out to be a terrible idea!
This is so sad. Yes, having patience to explain in detail why certain feature does not fit in the project does pay off, and it can gain understanding and make collaboration better and more fluid. But at the same time, all details go exactly as you've described, and it is so tiring and stressfull. All you can do is make sure who can call the calls about given topic, and if somebody above makes call you strongly advised against, you can document who made decision and what were their arguments. And then, it's funny how begginer's game design is very objective, about right level of challenge, flow channel, legibility, core loops, difficulty and learning curves... but at the end of the day, when it's not obvious or not test-able at the moment, it all comes down to deciding wether you feel that certain feature is good or bad and go for it.
Can't fix it, it's human nature, experienced both in the gaming industry and outside of it.
The real issue is when you are one of those members of the team they go to if the main Lead/Manager rejected the idea already... the less power you have in a company/team/hierarchy the harder it is to be "true to yourself" and say no, your solution would be to go to your lead and let them know and hope your Lead is a reasonable person who cares about their team.
I also know the experience from the complete opposite side. Since I don't want to give away any secrets, I'll put it abstractly.
We were a group and I had the opportunity to get the group to do two things. One was A, which was a success, and the other was B, which was a failure. Both A and B had equal value. And Both things were done in the same time frame. And both were my idea, not theirs.
Not a single person thanked me for A, the successful thing. Instead, the whole crowd focused on B. I got all the blame for B. And no thanks for A.
Your arms look strong, do you work out? As mostly sitting job I presume game development is, do you have any thoughts on physicall exercise being necessity in this field of work?
This is human nature, this is the reality of working everywhere
A buddy of mine was going to leave his job as assistant director of photography at his studio job and to get him to stay they offered him the title of “vice president of assistant DP” as if that meant anything lol
"to ensure you're credited & for my worklog, email those action items so I can get started"
hold them accntable and c.y.a.
I have managers like that. I usualy just tell them why certain thing wont work or are a bad idea. If they are pushy I demand they give me their ideas in writting. If they don't do that I simply ignore them.
Since I'm usualy the most senior system engineer my team comes to me for all sorts of things and usually don't implement things I've shown them to be a bad idea.
My managers typicaly get around me being a hurdle when I'm on vacation and approach the newest team member to implement their latest brain farts.
TIM please do a review / talk about Fallout London when you can! I’d also like to know your opinion about whether studios should support mod authors; especially in the context of Fallout London. Thank you!
Why I Don't Review Games
th-cam.com/video/mFZSt3TaE7Q/w-d-xo.html
Thank you for your infinite wisdom Tim.
"This game released without enough polish and was received poorly, surely it would have been fixed by adding a new feature"
It wasnt until i started watching your videos that i learned executive producer didnt essentially mean investor. I was under the impression it was an honorary title, but its something closer to PM when done correctly.
I'm sure this is what happened when they decided on salty liquorice as a candy. I have no other explanation.🤣
Unfortunately these people need to be told that they are abusing their position and told that they must allow the team to consider their suggestion before implementing it.
Yay, Tim has muscles ^^
This is why you have to always get everything down in writing
This situation is inherent to the power structure, and comes into play anywhere there is creativity in the workplace.
The proper way to address it is, of course, a democratic discussion of the idea. Well if fascism is running govt like a business then what does that say about your chances of a democratic sit down with the boss in your workplace?
Going further, the emphasis on ideas in creative spaces, rather than the tremendous labor it takes to make even a good idea look good in practice, outright incentives management to behave that way. My experience with the amateur game dev scene reminds me of the "idea guy" who thinks their ability to visualize an apple makes them special or a meaningful addition to a project, as if it's not something everyone can do. If an idea works, it's the developers who made it work who ought to get credit.
"So today, let's punch up." - Something that is sometimes so rare to hear
can you talk about the stopkillinggames movment and its feasibility. also what do you think of LLMs in future games that are only armed with in game world knowledge?
Hi Tim ,
Have you ever mention this in any video of yours , if not here is my question about it ;
I just wondering have you ever encounter with very good idea either that idea came by yourself or someone elses idea that you like the idea but never implemented any of your works or the works you involved in , either can't find a right spot to fit in or the other team members not find a place to fit in or because of some time limitations problem , that idea never came up to the surface.
Yes, my idea books are FILLED with ideas that I like but never got to add to any game that I made. I have even posted a few videos on this channel about such ideas.
@@CainOnGames If you can't stop
That is, there is a risk of turning into Chris Roberts and his "Star Citizen" :)
He will never finish development
Once his studio was able to release "Freelancer" only because Microsoft kicked him out"
The more ideas - the greater the risk that the game will become "deep as a puddle and wide as an ocean" (and the water will quickly evaporate!)
How did it get you in your OWN company? Was that an instance where you successfully resisted? Or was popular pressure powerful enough even then?
I can’t think of a way to tell those stories without (a) making the person easily identifiable and (b) sounding like I’m holding a grudge about it.
I’ll say this: I took responsibility for things at Troika on things that I had given complete authority over to someone else. They got to make final decisions, but then took no responsibility for those decisions not being good.
@@CainOnGames What would you do differently? Is there a way to put responsibility on someone delegated? I guess not since at the end of the day it comes down to the company owner still
Hey uncle Tim
There is an ign video for the trailer of the Outer worlds 2. 5years ago.
Any update to the release?
If you're able to tell us.
People like that make a workplace toxic, it can't be tolerated as it undermines the defined roles and authorities of the positions as they stand
It should be the game director's decision to add, remove, change, etc features that's going into the game that they're directing. They'll have a vision of what they want, and sure they can have things suggested to them, but stuff like breaking the chain of command to issue orders to your underling's underlings is dumb
I think it was in New Vegas where there was that whole quest line where you could depose that brotherhood chapter's leader because he did exactly that
Maybe they were right to codify that rule in their codex, I think more companies would benefit for it
Also, as an aside, that rhetoric sounds a lot like the sort of stuff you hear from a popular politician in the US
I wonder if he's one of those kinds of people :P
How do you actually protect yourself from taking the blame?
In many situations your job can be on the line...
That’s a good question.
Look at sports team owners, most of them don't know jack squat about scouting, personnel, or positional techniques but by god it's their team so they're gonna tell people what to do so they feel like they had SOME part in it other than paying people.
Referencing title statement only there has been a ton of that since the dawn of human society.
my response to "well im your boss" is "that doesnt give you permission to force something in that risks ruining the game." and then if theyre extra insistant, ask them if they would like to take on your job's responsibilites too then.
Unfortunately that can end up making your life needlessly difficult if your boss has a vindictive personality.
Sucess has many fathers. Failure an orphan.
You've talked a couple times about taking the blame for things nobody else would, but did that have consequences for you or your career? Getting one's name attached to failures seems like a common point of anxiety, so how big of deal does it end up being?
When I took the blame, some people saw me as a problem (look at the issues he's causing), while others saw me as honorable (he took one for the team). The latter enjoyed working with me and wanted to work with me again, the former not so much. In the long run, such self-selection was nice.
I want a shirt like that so bad. 😭
Would you play and share games one day here? Would be so fun to watch what stages you go through at gameplay :)
I’ll make an update on my toy games. I’m still working on them
the One Point. Ah yeah.
Is wearing Obsidian shirt in this video coincidence, or related to the topic?
Complete coincidence. I could have worn a shirt from any company
@@CainOnGames Thanks for clarification, Tim.
Er... I mean Gar don't like Green tea 🍵
Euggh punching down beuch a disgusting terms that implies people are inherently inferior ir superior
5:35 "they won't lie"
Nope. To know the truth and be silent is Lying.
He didn't have high enough speech to convince Tim [Speech 75/100], but high enough to go through the longer route by convincing multiple minions [Speech 75/50], [Speech 75/69], [Speech 75/75] and the perk [Argumentum Ad Verecundiam] for the remaining 2.
Every job industry is having the same problems and downstream of the political landscape. You can scratch your head indefinitely wondering why and how this is all happening or you can just look to the bureaucratic nightmare realm of the laptop class elites
Now I know why you didn't answer my question about interior windows not matching exterior windows in Outer Worlds ;)
Do you?
@@CainOnGames I'm just teasing :D
@@blighthornsteelmace820 Were you?
@@CainOnGames weren't I?
@@blighthornsteelmace820Touché
Tim said he's hard to work with, well would they prefer Tim was soft to work with?
The phrase would be “easier”, not softer. But then Tim was so easy to work with, I had completely forgotten he did some programming work for me on Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.
My own experience with programmers is that they are either open to an idea and all too willing to go off into a side tunnel even when it wasn’t in the original design docs because they are the epitome of enthusiasm (*cough*Burger*cough*), and there are those that are like Tim - basically, “you figure it out and get back to me”. Now, they may not see it so much as a problem, they just have enough on their plate as it is, that they don’t want to deal with it (Troy Miles). And either you do just that (figure it out), or you accept things as they are because they have a very good point.