As @hrobertson just said, the first step is to acknowledge that the job is distinct and important.
Yes, you have got into a bad place. Your producer is currently Keith, and while I am sure he is a great technical coder, that type of skillset is not what usually makes a good producer. Production is about making deals, making plans, tying everything together and working out what is needed and when.
Technical people work in series on problems because that’s how tech usually works, take each task at a time because the tasks are so complex you’d go crazy otherwise. This is a good way to develop technical solutions but it’s a bad way to have a big picture of the work needed to finish a product because many things have to happen in parallel.
Producers think in networks and can work on many parallel but simpler tasks at the same time. Those tasks will be of the form “Chase lawyer for paperwork” or “check Dan has cockpit art ready for review”. They then bring those tasks together at the right time to produce a finished product.
It’s almost impossible to work in both ways at the same time because the last thing you need when you’re close to cracking a difficult shader is to get a reminder to email your ISP to renew a server certificate.
If I were in your shoes I would assign the producer role to one of your artists. Artists tend to be more hollistic thinkers than programmers usually are. If I recall correctly one of your artists had a production role in the Kickstarter video which was delivered successfully and on time. Also the art pipeline does not appear to be on the critical path and with the delays on the coding pipeline there should be spare resource on the art side.
With one of your artists assigned to the role of producer they simply get put in charge of bringing everything together for the next point release. You don’t expect them to do the job perfectly straight away, but they take the pressure off Keith a bit, keeping track of all of your tasks. Gradually they will get better at it as they get used to all the recurring jobs. I can go into much more detail and would happily help advise anyone in this role, but this isn’t the place.
How do you guys all know that their production shedule is bad or nonexisting? Have you seen their project management in detail? Currently 2 people are working on the code, assigning a ‘producer’ in the form of an artist to guide them is pure nonsense IMO. I am sure that they know what needs to be done to release an alpha. I think it is hard to predict how long such a gigantic task is going to take, with only two people minor hiccups can mean days if not weeks of more work I would think. So how would a producer eliminate this problem even?
To me it looks like the whole team is working incredibly hard on this, not to mention doing the much appreciated extra work to give us something to read and play once in a while.
Some of us have first hand experience at delivering software projects, both indie and corporate. We have worked on enough projects to tell the signs of one that is not being managed optimally. We’re not being negative and we’re certainly not trolling. The game concept of Battlescape was chosen because it is a simple one to deliver. We can be quite confident how long it would take if the engine were a pre-existing one.
Because it is not a pre-existing engine there will be hold-ups and we do expect these. Our concern is that those hold-ups are not being managed well. @JB47394 has given some good analysis of that side of things.
One of the worst things that can happen to a community is for it to become full of sycophants who shout down any criticism of the development team. If you tell me to shut up and stop being negative I won’t. I will continue to attempt to raise your awareness that criticism can come from a place of love and hope.
There were specific examples mentioned for hicupps in the development, the devs even asked how a producer would have solved them. So far nobody provided a real answer. The best project management won’t solve engineering problems by itself. A project manager is a great thing If you can afford one, but he isn’t necessary to do the job.
How would an artist even be effective in that position? How do you divide up work If you don’t even know what the work is? I too develop software, and the thought that a designer in my company would shedule and manage my work is quite funny (and I’m just a web-developer, which is total childs-play in comparision what they are doing).
Which goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier: How do we even know If their project management is flawed? Only looking at the results is not enough to make a good judgement on that in my opinion, because the work is so challenging. Also: How is anyone being “a sycophant who tries to shut down criticism” If they just demand the critics to explain more, and be more specific with their not-so-humble advice?
Edit : I was one of the most insisting in obtaining this transparency before, between and after the KS period. We obtained weekly updates, and a big transparency on any part of the game dev road (more than a looooot of companies).
If I was Keith or Flavien right now, I would just stop all this shit. You guys are complaining, like before all of this, so why they would continue to spend so much time on communication ? You’re like “yeah I know how to handle this better than them, just listen to me, it’s simple” but you don’t know what is their context, so you’re already bad producers, acting like this.
Just shut the fucking up and support them instead of being an additional discomfort for them.
I am not sure of the english term for that but in french it’s called “ingérence” and it is really badly perceived to do this. Remember that you’re not part of the company.
@Crayfish OK ! make your shit ! And so what ? Do you think it is going to change anything ? What you say about negative comments inside a community is true, only when it is useful. How could it be useful here : they don’t have money to change anything on this !
I know you’ve had difficulty with this concept, but people that are financially invested in an in-development product have every right to be concerned about its progress. Attacking people for voicing their concerns like this isn’t really acceptable.
EDIT:
For what it’s worth @InovaeFlavien and @InovaeKeith, I give you both credit for handling this criticism with patience. I know certain other communities might have banned @cybercritic for his dissent by now.
I didn’t suggested to ban anyone, personally, I was just saying that your concerns about their internal management issues is due to their transparency. Without their tranparency, you’d do like for every other companies, you’d wait to see if the estimated releases dates would be good and then complain if not.
Don’t make them feel that they are wasting their time, or wasting their energy on good comm’ resulting on more issues for them.
And again, your concerns don’t make you become an employee or a member of a general assembly of INovae Studios. What are you going to do if they say “fuck you, We handle this how we want if you disagree get a refund” ? Nothing, because you don’t have any power, except for a refund that would be as stupid as to imagine you have any power on INovae’s decisions. So stop acting like if you could do more than that.
If you disagree, so we both have a power on this company. I say that they have to ignore all of you, and you say that they have to listen to you. What should they do ? Who would they have to listen ? …
On these forums, they are the only one that have been able to create all of this. If they want advices, they can ask. If they don’t want your advices, just let them breathe.
The fact that the developers are replying to this thread suggests they are open to criticism and advice, for which I’ve just given them credit.
I’m not saying I have any power over INovae’s decisions, but the whole point of giving feedback is helping identify weaknesses in their approach and suggesting improvements. Naturally, there is scope for disagreement about what those weaknesses are and how they should be improved, but attacking people for offering their input is not at all constructive.
So even if they say “we don’t want feedbacks on the Project management part”, you’re going to give them your opinion on this ?
Edit : And again, how could you give any advice on project management if they were not transparent on this part ? So they didn’t ask for feedbacks, and you’re complaining for something that is inevitable due to their context, and you want them to continue to be transparent ?
You’re going to be hard pressed to stop people expressing an opinion if they think it’s important. If INS are unwilling to discuss it, they simply should not respond (or refuse to respond) to such feedback.
I’m British. The one thing my countrymen have taught me above all else is that you can’t stop people moaning about things that annoy them.
Going foward its probably best to not give any dates or timeframes anymore to avoid discussions like this, like it was already suggested multiple times in this thread. Even though I understand all the reasons for the delay I admit I’m also frustrated that its not going faster. Lesson learned for everybody.
Critique on every aspect is probably welcome. I think its just a matter of how its delivered, and one has to also accept when the critique is rejected or follow up questions are asked.
I’m sure you can agree that feedbacks are made to help the company, alright ?
Explain me how you can help them to do better. Context : everybody on the team is overbooked and work more than they should, and they don’t have any money to hire somebody that would do better than Keith.
If you only can complain on what bothers you, and they already said that they didn’t have better solutions for the moment, why do you insist ?
Okay everyone, there is a difference between giving feedback (or constructive criticism) and having an argument.
We are, of course, free to say we don’t think INovae’s time management is a strong point and to suggest realistic solutions. Assigning a project manager isn’t realistic for them at the moment, but using particular phrases might be.
This can, and should, be done in just a couple of eloquent posts, not a crusade to prove your opponents wrong. Both sides can slip into being guilty of this.
This is becoming a philosophical debate about opinions on how the whole project should be managed. If you want to continue, maybe make a separate thread?
Let’s leave the update thread for feedback on this specific update.
And why the hell anybody should stop being who he is and replace his words for yours ?
Some would have skeptical writes not to give false hopes, others prefer optimistic suggestions, and assume they were wrong in the case it happens.
Does every company on Earth have to work the same way ?
If you’re not helping them with your feedbacks, let them breathe ! @Cybercritic delivered his pov. Keith answered they can’t do anything for the moment. what followed was useless. But it is your right to make them waste more time reading this thread.
The problem isn’t limited to INS not having a project manager, though it would be helpful.
The initial criticism was that estimates given have thus far been mostly unrealistic, and that they aren’t helpful for the community in understanding the progress of the game. I think some of the argument’s got lost since then, but I understand the basic premise. I also understand Keith’s main contention that it’s difficult to give accurate estimates on a project that contains so many unknowns. To which my response would be you remove the focus on deadlines and focus on progress instead. There are fairly well known patterns for this in software project management, and my suggestion was somewhat akin to the Scrum stand-ups methodology where an update consists of only three talking points and no unnecessary mention of deadlines.
If they do, they will have to answer every week at the same question : “Any idea when the next release is going to be delivered ?”
And I know Agile methods sound fashion in a lot of societies, but they are far from being an ideal solution when you’re closer to an R&D pole than a productive pole. the planet tech here is the key that makes this method unsuitable.
edit : @Topperfalkon now that we both are constructive, we can continue by private messages if you want
Alright everyone I think we’ve all had a chance to voice our relative positions and points of view. Like all feedback we’ll absolutely take it into consideration and hopefully we’ve been able to clarify our own position with regard to how we’re building this game. I don’t see a reason to continue the current line of discussion as at this point we’re all just beating a dead horse. If someone feels they have something to say that nobody has mentioned feel free but beyond that lets move on to other topics - otherwise I’m going to have to lock the thread.
I’d argue that INS should release updates at every practical opportunity, at least until Alpha, but… meh
Agile rarely works in my experience. The trick is cannabilising the bits of the process that make sense and then ditching the rest. I’m merely highlighting some techniques that may be useful in providing update reports.
Thanks, though I don’t feel it’s necessary. There’s only so much talk I can stand about software project management before it makes me want to slit my wrists
