Jorge Molinari |
Agreed. If the speech was anything like this “article”, I can imagine the dumbfounded WTF faces of the attendees. Poor writing material IMO.
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Kris Graft |
You both consider this trash talking? It's an inside look into one of the most interesting studios that was making some of the most interesting games in the industry. It's ridiculous to say that someone pulling back the veil on a not-so-perfect creative process is gratuitous "trash talking."
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Dave Smith |
heh this is why no one is ever honest with these things.
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Chris Bell |
To help give a more rounded recount of Robin's talk, here is an alternative recap from IGN's Mitch Dyer: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/14/how-thatgamecompany-strugg
led-to-save-journey#.UCuLOzbZqAo.twitter I also look forward to the talk itself appearing on the GDC Vault. |
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Aaron Casillas |
Most if not all creative project and endeavors are exactly like this, especially if the vision changes or is not super clear. Robin's experience is really no different that most places I've been at....
Especially the cultural differences between team members, the workaholic and the I- have- to- relax to- think- straight person, there's a balance there that the director has to find. Give the workaholic less responsibility and allow or force them to relax and find out what's causing the latter to have to take long walks to think. Otherwise the burden of the project falls on a small group or an individual and it could lead to some serious animosity. |
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Steven An |
Yeah honestly I don't see this as a super negative article. It's just what happens sometimes. Not everyone gets along super well! It's nothing personal, just a fact of life. It is very difficult to find creative people who work well together all the time. So...yeah man, it's just how it is.
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Terry Matthes |
The article walks a fine line, but she stays on the good side of it and I for one appreciate the real look into the creative workings of a large team. Robin is brave and honest for making this talk if nothing else.
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Jonathan Jennings |
If anything i find this encouraging I consider journey to be one of the best games i pressed in recent memory and if an amazing team that put out an incredible title like that faces issues that we all face it encourages me to know that no development process is without its flaws .
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Paul Taylor |
The only trash-talking I can see on this page is in the first two comments....
Just like everything else in this world, if you're not happy with it, go out and do it better! |
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Joseph Rios |
I agree with all the positive comments about this article, she was just sharing what it was like to be part of the team and the hardships endured. Didn't see any form of trash talking
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David Phan |
"When you work on high pressure projects, you're bound to get into situations where you are angry and frustrated at the people you work with and it's impossible to hide that but it's often really difficult to confront it and process it in a way that gets resolved."
Truth. |
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Bernard Yee |
Not well written, but I've known Robin for years - she cares deeply about her team and how they work together, and shares not to vent but to provide examples and lessons to other devs. Maybe the first few 'commenters' ought to think about lessons learnable from a team that built one of the best games of the year and in the process, clearly burned a few of the core team out.
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Jonathan Ghazarian |
Did people even read the article? This was essentially a post mortem like any other, just more open. As for "trash talking a former employer" not once does she ever cast blame on anyone. It's also worth pointing out that at last year's gdc she and Kellee gave a very candid presentation while they were still working on Journey on issues their studio had run into. This was for the sake of trying to inform others of potential pitfalls, not to insult the people they worked with. It sounds like people looking for drama where it doesn't exist.
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sean baity |
I love Robin's honesty and candor. Three years is a lot of time to put into a project and I feel her short post- mortem was accurate and informative. Listen to what she is saying and see if you can avoid the same problems on your own project. She is staying positive in a bad situation.
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Jean-Michel Vilain |
What she points out matters a lot, everyone knows communication is key, yet it's so hard to get it right.
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Jed Hubic |
I don't see much shit talking in this article, it seems she implies she was a part of the mistakes.
I'd like to hear more from the developers/programmers/designers on the front lines though about things that go wrong and the culture and stress. To me it's more interesting to hear from the people getting stressed and seeing the failures, who are the ones that actually have to work the real overtime and fall asleep at their desks from exhaustion. You hear one higher level person pick apart a company, and you've heard them all to be honest. |
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Pres N |
Yeah, I'm not seeing where she's bad-mouthing her former employer. If nothing else, did you not remember that she was the producer for the game? As in, the person whose job was setting deadlines, keeping the project on task, and negotiating with Sony? Kind of hard to say she's blaming the company for a problem that by definition she was involved in trying to prevent.
Honestly, this sound like exactly what you would expect to happen when you take a 5-7 person team and balloon it to 18 people- you find out the hard way about scoping and predicting timelines. Flower was over time too, as was Flow. |
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Stewart Spilkin |
Sounds like she's just being honest and trying to learn from the experience. Producing is never easy, and large teams require some different methodologies. Trying to figure it out as you go, while industry standard, results in lots of pain and frustration, also industry standard. Reasonably accurate scheduling is usually a triangulation between your gut, your leads, and the person doing the work. Knowing the people you are working with and their tendencies helps, but to paraphrase; no schedule survives contact with the enemy.
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Kellee Santiago |
It was definitely not her intention to "bad-mouth" TGC, and, very unfortunately, Cassandra decided to only focus on 25% of her talk - the 5 specific "wrongs." There were "rights," of course, and the first half of the talk was more of a timeline of the project.
I think the people who are pointing out the these 5 Wrongs are not unique are really nailing it on the head! One of the goals of the talk, as I understood from working with Robin on it, was to try and demonstrate that really we didn't have magic powers at TGC, and if you are interested in making games like Journey, it's totally within your capability! I wish I could say our problems were unique, but they were not - they just ended up being a particular Rubik's Cube we could not solve in time to keep the company going as it was. Anyways, if you are interested, I hope you can check it out when it goes up in the Vault! |
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