David Sirlin has great GDC notes up. Particularly:

Jaime Griesemer made a point yesterday that when gets feedback, he doesn’t like hearing solutions, just problems. He’s ok with “I don’t like this” and he’s even better with “I don’t like this because [of X]” but he’s not hot on “this should be changed to that.” Often these solutions are not feasible. Sometimes they have technical problems, sometimes they cause other even worse problems in some other area of the game, or whatever. He says don’t discuss solutions with playtesters, do that with other designers.

GOOD GOD YES. Three quarters of time I have responding to feedback is trying to turn “this should be changed to that” into “I don’t like this” and almost always I think the person I’m conversing with is thinking I am just mining for a way to ignore the comment. There are dozens of ways to solve most problems in design. Your solution is probably pretty good, but unless I know the underlying problem you are trying to solve, I can’t find that one that merges so beautifully with that system or dynamic that you just don’t know about yet.

I think people make the assumption internally that if they don’t offer up a solution that they will seem dumb, especially if the solution is clear. Not so. It’s my job to understand how the systems of the game work. If you think there is a problem with one, tell me, but don’t tell me how to fix it as I am likely the one most qualified as I know the systems the best. It’s not an ego thing, but a specialization thing.

I try my best when artists show me things to respond in the same way. I try not to say “make this darker”. Instead I try to say, “that’s hard to read” or “that might obstruct this other thing”. I say “try” because it is so damn easy to fall back on doing the thinking for someone else.

Finally watched Jesse’s DICE speech. Amazing as always. Really inspirational and frightening. Especially to those trying to ride the Farmville wave. What he talks about is what I think Booyah Society was trying (unsuccessfully) to do.

Innovations are just gimmicks you happen to like.

Tycho

I’m hoping this gets linked all over the Internet today, but Clint Hocking has posted an invitation to the folks who want to ban Bully that is the most rational, even-handed and thoughtful approach to this book-burning video-game banning debate I’ve ever read.

It’s pretty obvious to me (and likely anyone whose played the game, which, interestingly enough, Clint hasn’t) that the outrage is based on the faulty assumption that Bully = Grand Theft Auto + School. It’s easy to make that assumption. The creators have made some morally reprehensible games in the past and the bullet list on the back of the box reads similarly to GTA: open world, free-form, missions, factions, &c. But once you play the game, you realize that while many of the mechanics are similar to what’s going on in GTA, the main character isn’t some sociopath insisting the player act out some repressed sadist fantasy. The game shouldn’t have been called something as provocative for the media as Bully. I think that is 90% of the problem.

But I’m preaching to the choir. Click the link.

Today’s exaggerated two-minutes-hate towards EA is starting to push the boundary of ludicrous. God forbid someone in the industry who understands what is going on makes a Wikipedia edit that is out-of-date and now, as such, untrue. No one at this studio is required to work eighty hours a week during normal development. No one. The statement probably wouldn’t even have been noticed if it hadn’t been worded in such an HR-like manner. If the editor was truly acting to delete any opposition, he/she would have removed mention of the lawsuits as well.

The edits I see in the comparison remove NPOV, out-of-date, and/or redundant verbiage and unrelated items. The statement the editor made about the NFL licensing is 100% true, but because the Internet loves to dole out the hate, it will continually be reverted no matter what the truth really is. If this was an article about Blizzard or Valve, no one would bat an eye.

No one realizes how frustrating it is – how difficult it is – to make games for gamers when gamers just want to criticize and destroy your efforts.

I’m reminded of a story one of the executive producers told me last week. He was to present at a local college’s game development program’s project day, talk a little about the industry and answer questions. As the presentation ended, the first question was along the lines of “Why do you work there when GameDeveloper called your studio the worst place to work in the industry?” He answered [I'm paraphrasing throughout], “For one, GameDeveloper didn’t say that. The article in GameDeveloper quoted a single person’s anecdotal reports that this was a bad place to work. That having been said, there has been a lot of changes to focus on work-life balance while at the same time meeting all of our obligations and still creating great games. But it can be hard to fit in everything one wants to do with limited resources.”

Later, he was asked to review the student’s game project. He did and found it underwhelming and incomplete. He asked, “So how close are you to being alpha?” The students looked at the producer quizzically and said “3 more days. We’ll be alpha on Monday.” He laughed and said they would never be alpha on Monday because the game was still missing such and such and this and this. So he asked, “Given all that is missing, how will you be Alpha on Monday?” They genuinely thought what he was saying was valid and got that fire lit behind the eyes where determination breeds. “We’re going to work all night and Saturday and Sunday from 9am-4am until we get it done!” And they were excited and literally high-fived each other.

My former boss nodded and said, “Remember an hour ago when you criticized my studio for its work-life balance? Here you are with a class project with no budget, with no real stakeholders beyond yourselves, no communication issues when you only have to meet with the other couple people on your team and yet you plan on working eighteen hours a day, seven days a week just to get it done. Now imagine my teams. We are working on much bigger projects that have incredible levels of contingencies. We have budgets in the eight figures. We have stockholders. We have relationships with suppliers and retailers that we get done by certain dates. We have expansive marketing budgets where content has to be ready for simultaneous delivery with the product. How can you criticize us for wanting to put out a decent game by working copious overtime, when you freely decide you want to do it on your own?”

I thought it was a great story.

And I haven’t worked a weekend in almost a year.