“How did this ship? How did no one see that this would be a problem?” – A player of almost every game ever.

Oh they did. Trust me, someone on the team saw this was an issue, but the reality is due to the complex nature of people and leadership structures it’s not always easy to guarantee the best result in game development. And where that can crop up often has to do with a company’s preferred culture.

Take Nintendo for example. Nintendo is an extremely conservatively cultured top down approach. If the game director or someone above you says “We’re doing X”, then guess what…it’s happening. The challenge was navigating those conversations to convince that leader that something was going to be an issue. Depending on the quality of that leader, the conversation could go well, or it could go no where. So sometimes you’d find yourself knowing something was off, but being unable to do anything about it. For the devs on the team, this can be extremely demotivating. If you had a good lead though, their experience and wisdom can help keep games on track and making the right decisions to avoid major issues.

Now take Riot as the opposite example. Riot is almost the opposite, and can often be bottom up in it’s culture, empowering people to make decisions towards their projects. This can feel awesome, as even newer people on teams and companies can make major impacts by driving decisions they think make the best game. However, this can result in high experienced leads having to let their teams make mistakes and live with those consequences. As an example, I remember distinctly during Set 5 development telling Meddler that we were making Shadow Items (due to a lack of time and other options), and they were going to be kiss/curse versions of the core items. Meddler strongly advised me to reconsider, since every time League had tried kiss/curse, it had gone very poorly. I figured it was fine, we were a strategy game and our players would like that sort of challenge. At Nintendo Meddler could have simply said “Nope” and that would be that. But at Riot he had to watch as I made the mistake.

No matter where a company falls on this spectrum, eventually a decision has to be made somewhere by someone. And no one, no matter how skilled or experienced, has a perfect track record. All you can do is if you are in the position to make key decisions, make sure you take everything into account. If you’re a lead with a team yelling at you not to do a thing, understand why and don’t just assume you’re right. If you’re an IC with leads warning you to be careful before shipping something and waving big red flags, stop and consider that you may be wrong and you’re missing something. It’s tough…but it’s the job.

Ok that’s it for today. And yes for those of you that like detecting undertones or reasoning for posts, this totally came up from a certain gold augment. So yeah… Ok now I’m taking the family out for waffles. Until tomorrow, take it easy!