You hear about executive producers sending “notes” down to the director or producer of a movie.  That’s what I’m doing these days. “Maybe we should have robots in this scene instead of a dragon?” I’m leaving the dream.

I assume a lot of people read these journals because they like seeing what happens at a game company that they would normally not get to find out about because most game companies these days are publicly held and thus there’s a strict PR leash on everyone. So today I’m going to outline to you what a medium sized game production looks like in terms or organization.

I’m also going to try to show those of you who are aspiring game developers some of the things to look out for that can lead to disaster.

A Stardock Game Org Chart

First, let’s look at the general Stardock game project org-chart.

Stardock Entertainment Model

It looks huge but many of these spots are occupied by 1 person. In fact, some people wear multiple hats in here.  For instance, our art lead also does all the UI. Kael is the Project Manager and also the Design Lead.

The object is to find the right balance between maximizing your “resources” usage (people) and the overall output. That is, sometimes, it’s fine for someone to wear more than one hat – it’s often preferable. The challenge is to find out when they are wearing too many.

Sometimes, you end up having little choice but to stretch people thin. That’s where “crunch” time comes in. It’s when you’re asking people to do far more than they really should be expected to do. Crunch time occurs because someone – usually management – screwed up.

Now, if you look at the titles listed in the chart above, you’ll notice that they don’t sound that gamey.  For marketing, we try to translate our software engineering titles into something that remotely conforms with industry norms such as:

Product Manager = Executive Producer & Lead Designer

Project Manager = Producer & Designer

And so on.

Other Org Charts

Other companies do it differently. At Gas Powered Games, the Lead Designer is on a separate track from the Project Manager. This has some advantages in that the designer doesn’t have to be a software engineer or project manager. With larger teams, you really do need someone with a background in project management to run the show.  Gas Powered Games teams tend to have 30 or more people on it. Hence, finding someone who is both a game designer and someone capable of managing that many resources would be very difficult.

Stardock teams tend to be much smaller. Historically, our game teams are 10 or so people. Elemental: War of Magic  got to be about double that and that’s one of the reasons it got into trouble.

For the first 2.5 years of Elemental’s development the org chart looked like this:

I wore two hats. Product Manager and AI. 

My job was oversee the overall product and provide AI.  Unfortunately, during a good chunk of this, I got diverted to help out another project that was struggling for several months. This turned out to have been a fatal decision – I didn’t assign someone else to take over for me while I was gone.

When I finally got back into the thick of things, it was clear that I needed to add more hats since we couldn’t readily bring in people easily (one of the downsides of being in Michigan, I can’t just go up the local Digipen and get people).

By the time War of Magic shipped, it looked like this:

With the benefit of hindsight and common sense, that’s too many hats (the orange spots). 

Each new hat has its own unique story behind it (Marketing Manager left the company, The printing deadline got changed by a month and I type faster than anyone else, our Producer’s wife was having a baby and could no longer put in the time necessary, the lead developer was having health problems, the tile creation (part of concept) was far behind, etc.). But in the end, I had assigned myself across the whole project. If you’re a new game developer, you may think you can do everyone else’s job. Maybe you can. But you shouldn’t. If you’re the one who gets to decide the game is “ready for release” you shouldn’t be too involved in the parts that determine whether it actually is ready for release. You can get way too close. This is a very very common problem in small software studios. One we knew about but after a shelf of Editor’s Choice Awards, you start to think the rules of software engineering no longer apply.

This is why, if you’re an aspiring game developer, that you should never forget, even for a second, that making a game is an exercise in software engineering  -- and has to be treated as such.  None of the above hat acquisitions occurred overnight. Only gradually, does one realize that people were taking over more and more spots.  Our Art Lead, for example, had taken over all UI and was involved in a lot of the design (XML) implementation. Our Engine lead and I were doing debugging scenarios, etc.  I cannot overstate just how talented our staff here is.  It’s the thing that comes up all the time when people visit us – you did THIS with this few people? It gets dangerously tempting to forget that such a team has any limits at all.

I’m friends with “Chantz”, the guy Atari sent in to try to rescue Master of Orion 3 and we have talked a lot over the years about this kind of thing. Beware of the combination of the phrase “I can do it” and also being the guy who gets to evaluate whether they can actually do it. The guy who says “I can do it” and the guy who gets to determine whether they really can do it should never be the same guy.  Because sometimes, you really can’t do it no matter how sure you are that you can. Fatigue, overconfidence, external factors can all weigh in to create a fractured evaluation of a given project.

If it’s a team of a half dozen guys, you can wear a lot of hats. But as the scope of the project gets bigger, you have to be careful because those hats start to get really really big.

Process Matters

This is why delaying a project is pointless if the process is broken. If the process is broken, the result will be broken. Time isn’t the issue in such a case.  This was one of the principle reorg challenges we went through this Fall. Hiring very talented people to fill in some of these key roles.  The biggest piece of advice I can give to game start-ups is this, make sure you separate the business decision makers from the development decision makers. 

I hope you guys find this interesting and useful.

As some of you know, I’m a kook. As I get more time, I intend to indulge in this further but with life being so busy, I only get to do the smash and grab type of kookiness.

This past year I got into supplements and I’ve managed to stick with that. 

The big ones I recommend are:

1. CQ10 if you’re on a Statin drug (which I’m on to control cholesterol). These reduce those general “aches and pains” people get as they get older.

2. Fish oil pills in general. These just generally reduce inflammation.

3. Multi-vitamin.

Now, I take a lot more than these 3 but I cannot verify with certainty that they do something beyond give me expensive pee.

I take two prescription drugs that most definitely make a difference.

The first is LexaPro. This is a fairly commonly prescribed anti-depressant. In my case, they make me less irritable.  I’m probably no more irritable than the average person but because I run a company it is important to me that I am … well, nice.  I’ve heard stories about Steve Jobs being nasty to people. That’s probably how I’d be. I don’t have a lot of patience and can be pretty irritable.  This helps a great deal with that.  This is one that a lot of people would benefit from.

The second is Wellbutrin. This one is a new one that I’ve started taking temporarily since this Fall.  I kind of wrecked my health a bit over the Summer with one of our game projects. I worked over 100 hours a week over the Summer when I had to take over most of the key functions of the project and it still ended up being a failure on release. This has the effect of handling the post-release effects that I expect to reduce and eliminate by the end of this year.  But I recommend this to those who are experiencing mild to significant depression. It’s only useful if you’re low on serotonin – which I am.  Otherwise it can have some nasty effects.

There’s still a fairly significant stigma for people taking medications that are related to depression. That’s a shame since it can really improve life quality.  If you have any questions feel free to talk here.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a creature of the Internet. Some people are “private people”. I’m not. I like sharing stuff with other people because, frankly, I do believe that people are inherently good.

I believe this because I’m a believer of natural selection. People who can’t play well with others have tended not to be as likely to pass on their genes. There are clearly exceptions to that but all in all, most people I interact with fall well into the “good” category.

Over the years I’ve found out what I’m good at: Business.

At the same time, I know what I like to do: Software and game design.

For awhile, I held the conceit that I was pretty decent at game design. But since hiring Derek (Kael) Paxton and Jon Shafer, I’ve come to realize that my skills at a game designer are much like my skills at graphics design or software development – I can do it in a pinch but I’m out of my league compared to a specialist.

It’s a bit of a bummer.

Actually, it’s a lot of a bummer.  I’m a generalist. I can graphics design, I can code, I can write up business plan, I can write a contract, I can manage people, etc.  But I’m no where near as good as people who are specialized in a given area.

I have two programs that we make that should be on every computer but aren’t.  Why that is remains a mystery to me. Poor marketing? Maybe.  I am not sure.

Those two programs are:

1. DeskScapes (www.stardock.com/products/deskskapes) which gives your Windows PC animated wallpaper. I love this program. I have a little cottage running in the background with snow falling. I love it.

2. WindowFX 4 (www.stardock.com/products/windowfx) which lets you get a lot more usability out of Windows. This one is a harder program to explain other than to say that every feature in this program should have been part of Windows in the first place.

Quick video:

http://screencast.com/t/On8vqDPDu

I’m the anti-packrat.  That is, I don’t keep stuff. I’m not living anything like a zen existence but I don’t like to keep “clutter”. However, I do keep things that I form some sort of attachment to. Clearly, I’d never make a good Jedi.

Considering the number of moves I’ve made over the years, the threshold of importance to keep it through these moves would have to be pretty high. 

Here’s something that has made the moves: The Balance of power 1990 manual. I have it “just in case” I play Chris Crawford’s classic game again with it’s crazy copy protection.

I played it on the Amiga (both original and 1990) and again on the PC.  A truly classic game.

Do you have a game that fits this description?

Which one?

The Energy Detective is a kit that you can purchase online that lets people monitor how much power their house is using in real-time.  While there are newer kits that work with your power meter, many advanced power meters (such as what I have) won’t work with them.

The way TED works is as follows:

The measuring “donuts” hook up inside your electrical panel. These donuts then are connected (and powered) by one of the breakers. The electrical line connected to the breaker is used to send a signal to a remote “gateway” that can then be connected to your router.

Hooking this up is, unfortunately, non-trivial if you’re non-technical, especially if you’re not familiar with electrical equipment or have an electrician at your beck and call.

My Installation

My house has 4 different panels so I used their highest end model that came with 4 sets of “donuts” that connect to their MTU (the gadget that records the data and sends it out to the gateway.

Now, the documentation for TED (and the help forums) assume that the people doing this sort of thing can, on the one hand, afford a $500 gadget to measure their power output but on the other hand assumes the user is going to be unable or unwilling to spend a relatively small amount to make it easy to hook up.  As a result, there are a lot of aggravated users on the TED forums.

The main reason: The power line communications choice that TED uses.  Basically, TED sends its signal from its MTU to its gateway over your power line. This makes it very vulnerable to electrical interference and weak signals.  Even if you overcome this, odds are, it by itself will interfere with other gadgets are that using the power lines to communicate as well (security systems and other smart home features).

I decided to bypass this pain by spending an additional $100 on two things:

1) An additional circuit breaker + power outlet dedicated just to this.

2) Netgear WNCE2001 Universal WiFi Internet Adapter

These two things bypassed many many pages of frustration you’d get under normal circumstances.

The first is so that you have a clean line from your donuts/MTUs directly to the Gateway.  The second is to make it easy to get the Gateway data to my wireless router.

This is the Netgear Ethernet to Wireless adapter which I hooked up to the TED gateway.

This is my crappy setup. I’ll clean it up later once I’m satisfied it’s working.  Basically, all 4 donuts/MTUs output to a single line that goes to the outlet that the gateway is plugged into. By doing this, I bypass all the line noise nonsense/interference with my security system that I’d get if I tried to have it use a regular outlet. I had an electrician come over and install the outlet I needed.

This is my breaker box after I unscrewed the cover that hides the spaghetti. So those two donuts go around the black and red lines and are connected to the TED “MTU” (measuring gadget) that is then powered/connected to one of my breakers which is fed to a dedicated power outlet.

TED also has a decent real-time measuring system that you can see below.

Now, I picked this up because I was trying to figure out why my house is using so much electricity.  The big yellow jump there is the geothermal turning on that heats our pool room.  The blue line is the total amount.  The light blue line are the lights, control 4 and home automation controls. The pink is something I’m still investigating but mostly has to do with our kitchen (my wife was making dinner in our electrical stove during this).  The green I’m still trying to figure out what’s using that.

Verdict

If you’re pretty technical and not afraid of of messing with your electrical system a bit, TED is a good choice. I will admit that my casual/careless nature (you saw the picture above) meant I experienced a few shocks. You need to be careful when doing this kind of thing – more careful than I am.

If you can use a system that works with your electrical meter outside your house, I’d recommend that.  But for the large % of people who, like me, cannot do that then TED is really your only option.

In mid 2010, when the big game project in Stardock Entertainment was floundering, I had to take over the reigns of designer, producer, and lead developer.  And while I can design games, I’m not even remotely in the league of say a Derek Paxton or a Jon Shafer so it’s a non-ideal situation.  And while I can project manage, it’s insanely non-cost effective for me to do that given the sheer number of projects going on company-wide. And while I can do software development, I’m no where in the same ballpark as some of our top developers on the non-games side of the business.

So what exactly is it I do? What is my value-add? Basically I’m an oxymoron. That is, I’m the technologist-bean counter. I live my days in evaluating balance sheets, revenue projections, consumer trends, marketing analysis, technology reports, you name it.  In a pinch, I can inject myself into any part of the business but it’s a last resort.

Running a business is a lot like playing a strategy game. You have resources, you have obstacles and you have goals. The object of the game is to use your resources to overcome the obstacles to achieve your goals. The “hard” part of this game is that there’s a lot of unknowns (a lot of fog of war), a lot of math, and a lot of dealing with human allies and opponents who are of various degrees of skill or ineptitude depending on what you’re dealing with.

Over time, I’ve used my generalist knowledge to recruit people who are a lot lot lot smarter than I am in a particular area and let them do their thing. I think that’s one of the reasons we have no voluntary turn-over here at Stardock (Mittens left I think 3 years ago or so) which is a pretty impressive statistic for a technology company these days. The key here being we let smart people do what they do with as little interference as possible. My job is to count the beans and know the tech.

“Expansion Packs”

In the time before digital distribution, you had “expansion packs”. It is a concept that has survived well into the digital distribution age.

You’d release say Galactic Civilizations II: Dark Avatar as an expansion for people who had the game and then Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition for new buyers.  Similarly, we released Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy and Sins of a solar Empire: Trinity for new buyers. 

So why was that done? The answer is, in the old days, there was no sure fire way to tell if someone had the original game. So you had to offer a second SCU just for those people.  On the business software side, all kinds of efforts have been made to try to get new editions down to a single SCU including installers that sniffed for the original version, send in a copy of your manual, you name it.

A New Team

Fallen Enchantress gives us the opportunity to have a very different fantasy strategy game than War of Magic. While the original intent was simply to eliminate an unnecessary SCU (we can simply have Fallen Enchantress with an upgrade price for people who have War of Magic), in this case, it lets us make an even bigger break from War of Magic because it has a new Lead Designer (Kael instead of myself) with Jon Shafer helping as well as we begin pre-production of Jon’s new game along with many other changes. It’s still Stardock but it’s a very different Stardock than what made War of Magic (or GalCiv II for that matter).

I’m still filling the role of studio lead developer and Executive Producer but we’re actively seeking out industry veterans to take over the role of lead developer of Stardock Entertainment.

A New Game

There is also another advantage to Fallen Enchantress being its own game rather than an “expansion pack”. And that is, it frees the team to make radical changes to the basics of the game while allowing War of Magic to still be updated on its own source tree.  A user of Fallen Enchantress won’t have to have War of Magic to play it and can treat War of Magic as a separate game.

This will be the same case for the third entry in the Elemental world which won’t be out for a long time still (but will be free for people who got War of Magic before the end of October 2010).  It’ll be its own game as well not requiring War of Magic and Fallen Enchantress but be available at a sharp discount to those who have the previous entries in the game world.

The Changing Market

A few years ago, this wouldn’t be possible. Retailers would have refused to carry just stand-alone expansion. There were exceptions and the Company of Heroes series did a lot of good for our industry by paving the way here. Supreme Commander’s “stand alone” expansion helps as well. 

Of course, no one has brought more attention to the changing digital model of PC games more than Blizzard with its recent release of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty which will have two additional stand-alone games in the Starcraft 2 universe. 

Will this be a good thing for PC gamers? I think it depends on how it’s handled. Personally, I’d like to see people get discounts if they have other chapters in the series. That’s going to be our model for the foreseeable future but part of that is because we have our own digital distribution platform (Impulse).

Sometimes good things come in very small packages. v1.11 is pure AI and bug fixing.  Grab it now. I think you’ll be pleased.