My friend just set me this blog from an ex-RTW employee. It's a very interesting read and will hopefully prevent other developers from making the same mistakes that they did.
Summary of the Blog
- (Founder of RTW) Dave Jones had a Reality Distortion Field where employees could believe almost anything. (An example is that they believed the game would come together at the last minute)
- They spent all the money made available to them (Luke says they were following Parkinson's Law) and as a result, hired way too many staff members with useless jobs.
- As a result, time was wasted with numerous meetings that went nowhere.
- Hired the wrong people and as a result, there were arguments between the people who wanted to become more "corporate" and imitate other large companies and others who wanted to keep the company the same way.
- The Development Team and Business Team were separated to the point where the Business team handled all the finances and the Development team was kept in the dark about the actual costs for everything.
- Mentions that while the gameplay and mechanics were poor, they were part of a larger problem. He says, It would be tantamount to pointing the finger at a small number of staff and saying “it was all your fault”.
- They were afraid to show of their game and even the so called, "live" gameplay was practiced over and over by the staff.
- They wanted to wait until the mechanics were perfect before allowing users to test the game but without feedback there was no way they would reach that level.
- Even the community team had many divisions which prevented other teams from reading the forums or another team to record forum activity. All these divisions got in the way of communicating with the players.
Let this be a reminder, if you make a successful game, don't let it go to your head!
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