we are off to a pretty good start so far
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Wow.
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this was a rollercoaster of a thread to read
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Just wanted to give some insights from a process standpoint as a fellow software engineer in the industry. Everyone at PixelTail, you guys are doing a great job and have a great product on your hands whose quality has surprised me.
Work scheduling is something a lot of people have a hard time understanding. Even people in game dev continually underestimate the amount of time it takes to do things. This isn’t because these people are incompetent or bad developers. It’s because this is the nature of building any complex system.
At the base level of building a feature like Community Condos, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered from nearly every department of a game studio. UI needs to be created. Systems design needs to be done from both a game design and programming perspective. Features like these often require diving back into older, established parts of the game and tweaking things. Parts of the program that may have been appropriate for what was needed a year ago or even a month ago might not be good enough for a new feature. Going back and touching up systems like these takes immense amounts of time, and it’s often a one or two man job at least from the programming standpoint. Too many cooks in the kitchen is a nightmare when writing code.
All of these problems are purely at a “what needs to be done to make Community Condos real” level. This doesn’t even begin to address resource allocation (i.e.: who is working on what):
- Burnout is a real, nasty phenomenon, especially in game dev. People often talk about the physical and mental health affects, but there are also product quality effects. Often times, working on something for too long decreases its quality. Taking a break, working on something else, and coming back to tackle a problem with fresh eyes helps immensely.
- Only so many people can work on something at a time. A common complaint I’ve seen lodged against “lazy” developers is “Throw more people at the problem! Outsource!”. Imagine you’re baking a cake. You could put all of your chefs into mixing the batter, but if 5 different people are trying to stir the spoon, I can guarantee you’re gonna get nowhere. A cake will get done faster if someone’s mixing the batter, someone’s mixing the frosting, and someone’s cutting the strawberries. But ultimately, frosting is way easier to make than the base of a cake, and Frosting Person is going to be done a lot sooner than Cake Person. So Frosting Person can sit and wait until Cake Person is done, or Frosting Person can move onto cooking other orders. This is why multiple things is being worked on. There is no sense in Frosting Person sitting and waiting.
- Some people are better at making things than others. Extreme example: asking your artist to program is probably not going to work well at all. But there are also more subtle things. Some programmers are great at building server infrastructure, while others are brilliant UI programmers. Artists can be better at 2D than 3D. Having the right person for the right job helps immensely, and is sometimes the only way to complete work. Taking someone off something they’re good at means less features done down the road.
This isn’t to say PixelTail has done a perfect job. Any company can improve, and it sounds like they’re working towards concentrating on single features instead of bouncing around. But the bottom line is this: software development is hard. Knowing how and when to do things is difficult, especially when you’re trying to keep your game working for thousands of users. However, for a small team of 10, I’m extremely impressed. You are very transparent with your work schedule, which is neat to see, and it seems like you have a good set of priorities.
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This is beyond refreshing to read. I think I speak for all of us in saying that we appreciate this immensely. Thanks.
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thank you for giving an answer better than any of the devs. But baking a cake is nothing close than updating a game.
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At this point he’s just trying to bait people because it’s very obvious he has no understanding of game development
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This idea of “It’s just a game, I can totally run your studio better” and “just hire more people to do the same job” is among greatest hits of ignorance. Some other bangers from the same album:
“There’s so many doctors in the world yet cancer isn’t cured, yeah right”
“How do we run out of money just print more lol”
“If your kid is crying just tell him to stop”
Whatever. It’s spawning good responses from everyone else, so it kinda works out I guess. TU team is great. Their patience with the community is very respectable. I’m grumpy and constant disappointed all the time but I love what you guys are doing, so genuinely thank you.
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nothing close to*
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Hello Mr. Game Developer People, I want you to hire 1000 people becuause hirign people is free so you can get the video game done in 2 second. Also I know gaem developmemt more than you do because I have never made a video gaem be4. Please.
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We’d love to hire more people but currently we can’t afford to, plus even if we add a new developer we’ve gotta get them up to speed and learn the entire code base (which is not small).
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Congrats, you all won the arguments never made. Never did I say to hire more people or that I could run the studio better, but you guys made it seem so. Good job.
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When does the circus move to another town
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I want to get off of Mr. Bones’ wild ride.
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It already has
Hmm…
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Maybe it would be a good idea to close down the thread, this isnt gonna go anywhere better
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I mean you’re not wrong, but I’m calling the “I was silenced!” counter post in the next few days.
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