Early Concerns about FM10

[wwfan]

Well, if everyone worked in the same way, then it would be.

It's certainly easy enough to do that with University work, for example.

The problem comes when you rely on other people, which I guess almost every business no matter what sector their in have to do.

There speaks a man who has never worked in an organization. It's not the relying on other people, it is the multitude of unanticipated consequences that cascade from every action. Although this is especially true of software development, any and all organizations suffer from it. One seemingly insignificant action done with the best intentions can create hours of extra work for others not originally involved. For example, one bug fix that took 20 mins to locate and rewrite can result in knock ons that take hours of work from various different sources to find and sort.

[x42bn6]

Also, you get more feedback the more developed your product becomes, so the load increases faster than linearly as time goes on.

The alternative is to pile on the workload early - but you end up throwing tons of work on others as well and you will eventually be deadlocked by everyone else.

[Wakers]

There speaks a man who has never worked in an organization. It's not the relying on other people, it is the multitude of unanticipated consequences that cascade from every action. Although this is especially true of software development, any and all organizations suffer from it. One seemingly insignificant action done with the best intentions can create hours of extra work for others not originally involved. For example, one bug fix that took 20 mins to locate and rewrite can result in knock ons that take hours of work from various different sources to find and sort.

wwfan, get over yourself, seriously.

How you can judge from that post that i have "never worked in an organisation" shows just how narrow minded you can be.

Your experience of working in an organisation does not instantly mean that it applies to everyone else in the world.

I have worked for a multinational auctioneer - our record on deadlines was good, without the need for working all nighters and giving up weekends.

This ranged from outfitting offices with new computers to the creation of a new database system to cope with thousands of machines and literally hundreds of thousands of customers, and one that had to be fully interactive with the backend of the live auction system.

Kindly take your typically condescending attitude elsewhere.

[x42bn6]

For software companies, though, deadline crunches are rather common.

Software development teams are usually very granular and that means that one change will affect multiple teams - lots of internal politicking occurs during this phase.

Even a simple: "We'll add a button to support a player's instructions on their profile" will raise concerns over storage space, how it will be overridden, how it will be presented on the UI, how the assistant manager will give advice on it, how it translates over into the match engine, what happens if there is an error in this new tab, whether usability studies agree with it, how a user will know that changing options on the tactics screen will change the player instructions or just for that game - and so on.

Architecture teams have the luxury of having long timescales and less deadline crunches as they always plan for scalability and long-term usage, but writing code is a whole different story.

[wwfan]

wwfan, get over yourself, seriously.

How you can judge from that post that i have "never worked in an organisation" shows just how narrow minded you can be.

Your experience of working in an organisation does not instantly mean that it applies to everyone else in the world.

I have worked for a multinational auctioneer - our record on deadlines was good, without the need for working all nighters and giving up weekends.

This ranged from outfitting offices with new computers to the creation of a new database system to cope with thousands of machines and literally hundreds of thousands of customers, and one that had to be fully interactive with the backend of the live auction system.

Kindly take your typically condescending attitude elsewhere.

I actually work in organization research, so am speaking from far more than personal experience. I make my living from researching and understanding organizational practices and processes, with a specific interest in high tech and creative corporations. Applying any sort of 'we don't have to work overtime to meet deadlines so nor should you' to any creative or strong culture organization is a laughable perspective.

So, yes, my perspective on creative and/or strong culture organizations does apply to the large proportion of them, having been derived from extensive experience in theoretical and practical research in these areas. I'm very happy for you that your organization is a model of perfection in terms of deadlines and practices. However, applying your personal limited knowledge and experience of a specific company operating in a very narrow area of expertise carries very little weight I'm afraid, so your conclusions must be taken with a large dose of salt. They simply sit at odds with common organizational practices, structures and experiences. I could list a wide range of reading material for you to peruse on this matter, for some of which I have been part of the research process (Gideon Kunda is a good starting point). If you wait a few more months you could even read my book on the subject, especially looking at how employees cope with the pressures of organizational expectations of commitment against personal emotions and requirements for maintaining a private and critical perspective.

I also took into account your age when making the observation. I'm not trying to be rude, but it is very unlikely you had a job that required extensive intellectual and emotional commitment prior to university study, and will only be easing your way into one should you now have left university. That kind of experience really cannot enable you to make blanket statements about working processes, management and organization. I might well be wrong of course, and you might have been pulling in the big bucks at 19, in which case I apologise.

[Wakers]

So as usual there, you've prattled on without apologising for being condescending, taken completely the wrong end of the stick from my post, and added another rather large helping of arrogance and pomposity.

If you would have taken the time to think about my post before launching your tirade of pomposity and patronisation, you would have realised that the point I was trying to make is that a) I do not work in the games industry, hence my starting of this thread and b) not every business that has ever existed has the same complex projects and approaches every task in exactly the same way. Comparatively small businesses, if we go by employee numbers - of which I would include SI, would normally have less problems meeting deadlines - of course, this isn't true because of the nature of the industry they are in.

That is something that, thanks to people who are both more polite and more helpful than yourself, I have learned since starting this thread.

Once again, please do not reply to me with your condescending prattle that only serves your own rather inflated ego.

[wwfan]

OK, I unreservedly apologise for questioning your organizational experience and knowledge.

However, I've no idea how I'm expected to read between the lines so that this:

Well, if everyone worked in the same way, then it would be.

It's certainly easy enough to do that with University work, for example.

The problem comes when you rely on other people, which I guess almost every business no matter what sector their in have to do.

equals this:

a) I do not work in the games industry, hence my starting of this thread and b) not every business that has ever existed has the same complex projects and approaches every task in exactly the same way.

The former seems suggestive that an organization could, with good management practices and the right employees, do much better than SI are doing now. It also reads like an attack on some of their employees and a suggestion you could do better, hence my reaction. I give up a lot of my free time to help with developing and testing the tactics' creator, and take it personally when people suggest that individual practices are at fault. Your latter statement is fine and I've had had no issue with it, but that is not what you said.

For the record, the only person who has slung insults is you. All I suggested was you had limited understanding of how organizations work, which I will still stand by, even if my phrase of 'never having worked for an organization' was a little over the top.

[Wakers]

Well, at least you apologised, but you still can't help shoving words into my mouth.

Somehow you think that my comment on university work translates into an attack on the way that SI run things. You deserve applause for that effort, that's a truly ingenious twisting of logic.

You are right, my only experience of an organisation is working in one that has less than a hundred employees. That was the point of me starting this thread - similar sized (in terms of employees) company, one where employees do not need to pull all nighters or give up weekends, and one that does. Again, and let this be abundantly clear, this was the reason why I started this thread. Not to moan at SI (that will be saved for release day ), not to say that I can do it better with my handful of years of experience working at a low level within an organisation, and not so that you can come in here and stroke your own ego.

Personally, I have no time for you. Over the years, you have often shown yourself to have a contemptible attitude towards others who do not have your experience nor share the same opinions as you.

By the way, regarding your two quotations above - my mistake, i meant to refer to my original post, and not the offhanded one about university work.

[wwfan]

I've let you get away with insulting me for three posts now. Don't do it again. If anyone needs to apologise, it is you, although I don't expect one.

That you respond to the phrase 'There speaks a man who has never worked in an organization' with a litany of personal abuse, despite it being a throwaway remark preceding a valid point about high tech organizational behaviour when dealing with unanticipated consequences which mean it can't be compared to university deadlines, speaks volumes. Perhaps I shouldn't have said it, and perhaps it was hurtful to you, but I didn't mean it to be.

However, calling me pompous, condescending, arrogant, narrow-minded, contemptible, patronising, egoistic and needing to get over my self is a deliberate attempt to provoke and upset. I would infract you in a second had you written that about anyone else. At no point have I ever questioned your personality or character, just your knowledge about organizational behaviour and then defended why my own position was a more valid one than yours. I've even gone to the trouble in explaining how I read your post, which partly derives from your history on these forums. Perhaps I should have taken that post in isolated context and forgotten all your previous attacks on SI? Then maybe I'd have read it as intended.

All this because you were overly sensitive about a single sentence. Sheesh!

Saw your edit. The previous paragraph explains why I read your post the way I did. You cannot escape your forum identity and expect every post to be read in isolated context. Can you not see how I could read it in the way I did? Your OP I have no issue with, but I do about comparing your personal experiences of university deadlines with those in a high tech organization. They simply can't compare and I read a lot of tension in your doing so in relation to those who are working on the product, which includes myself. Perhaps I was overly sensitive, but your reputation precedes you.

[Wakers]

Considering what I said in the OP about "keeping an open mind", then yes, that is how you should have read into it.

Not that you would have noticed, but I have made a concerted effort to tone down my criticism of SI and their methods over the last few months.

I have no reason to accept patronising replies from anyone on this board, moderator or not. Yes you have annoyed me, yes I have a temper at times, and that is why you have received the replies from me that you got. But continually adding insinuations about me into your replies is not a good way to diffuse a situation.

I apologise for going over the top.

[muncherdave]

Well if you remember last year, the demo was unplayable. The release version of the game had a patch released along with it, and they were two totally different entities.

Playing the demo gave you no idea about how the game would play if you bought it.

It was? How was it unplayable exactly? I don't remember the demo being that bad, although I don't really remember much about it at all tbh.

I have friends who have bought the game, never patched it and yet they are still enjoying playing it. If they had bothered with the demo I'm sure that very little changed between that and the actual game itself. You seem to have wrongly come to the conclusion that people can't be satisfied playing the game without the release day patch or that the game will fail to work properly without it.

Just a general observation, but with patching becoming the norm for every game these days a lot of members of online communities come across as a tad spoilt sometimes.

[FrazT]

OK Guys- I have been watching this thread since it opened, with some concerns about the outcome. Please get back on topic, without personal accusations, although it is close to having run its course.

[Blanchflower1]

While I'm not in the game industry, I'm in the software development profession and it is totally normal for long hours and late nights just prior to a release.

There is not such thing as a perfect software, there are always things you can add/improve.

A few has complained that there have been new features! (the horror!) While Miles said the key is polish, I take that to mean they will be paying extra attention to ensure there are less bugs than before. They will fix some of the existing bugs and they will try not to introduce too many new ones. I certainly did not take it to mean they will only be bug fixing for the whole year and not add a single new feature!

Let's be honest, who would buy FM2010 if SI told us, no new features, but we polished it all year so you can see your own reflection!

You? Me? Maybe a few of the other members in the forum, but how are they going to market that to all those that needs something new to attract them?

I say let's wait for the demo, and if it's still buggy, sure, bring out the rocket launcher! Until then, be happy that they are putting in an effort to cram in every last fix they've got.

I have a bad feeling that FM 2010 would be buggy but I hope that I am wrong! Is it impossible to release a completely bug free game for the first time instead of waiting for patches?

[Da_Funk]

Is it impossible to release a completely bug free game for the first time instead of waiting for patches?

I use your words to make another sentence.

It is impossible to release a completely bug free game.

There has never been a software without a bug (and I say software, not game) and never will be.

You just have to hope that next FM will have minor bugs that don't affect gameplay and your joy instead of major bugs.

[Matt ex SEGA]

Thanks to the mods for leaving it be, but this is now a really pointless thread.

Judge the game when you've played it. Mindless speculation isn't really going to get us anywhere.

Thanks

Matt