boomzap

Bunches! There's like a full hour of that in Video 3 of the series I did (free on YouTube) but the biggest thing I would stress is these 3 points:

Don't Track. Hours.

People get really bent out of shape about "How do I know what they are doing? How do I know if they are at work? You don't, you, won't, and it doesn't matter. All you care about is the number of tasks that people get done every day, and the quality of those tasks. You know how much they should be getting done in a day... so check and make sure they did that, and you're fine.

Have Core Hours of Communication

At Boomzap, this is 10-5 daily, Singapore time. You don't have to WORK these hours, but you have to be logged in to slack, and answering questions and available for conversations/calls. THis is critical to making sure that part of your studio isn't waiting on information from other parts of your studio.

Daily Tasks, Daily Reports, Weekly goals

Everyone in the studio has a clear weekly goal - thi s what I will have done by Friday. They are checked on that weekly. If done, then great, your're done. if not, we need to figure out why. Then, every day everyone starts with a quick post "This is what I will do today" and at the end of every day, they post "this is what I did today" with links of the work they have done, screenshots, etc - so the rest of the team is up to date on what they are doing.

We have 2 contract models. One is "full time contractor" and the other is "pay-by-task" contractor.

The first - full-time-contractors - are people we intend to work a solid 40 hour week (well, to produce enough stuff to fill a 40 hour week, anyway) on our games, every week, and we want their creative energies for games focused on what we do. For them, we ask that they do not take on any other games-related work. But we are fine w/them doing other non-game stuff. Some make comics, teach at schools, etc. We not only allow, but encourage that. It makes them healthier, better rounded people. But we want their "game energy" on our games, so they are exclusive to us for game development.

Our "Pay-by-task" contractors are given work as we have it - such as "make these characters" or "Make this Hidden Object scene" - and since I am not promising them to always have work for them on a consistent monthly basis, it would be unrealistic and unfair of me to expect them to ONLY work with us. For them, they are welcome to take any contracts they want, in or out of games. It's my responsibility to pay well enough, and make our projects interesting enough that we're their first priority. That's how the free market is supposed to work. :)

Whatever I did last. :)

Every game is a different challenge. A lot of it is mental. Every time you make a game there is this guy on your shoulder, constantly telling you "You are gonna f*ck this up! You're no good! Just quit!" and you have to just ignore him, no matter how loud he screams, and keep going. And he is LOUD.

Some days, this is just really, really hard. You go to Discord and people are like "I hate all of your new changes, why didn't you do bla bla bla" and suddenly that guy on your shoulder is like "BWHAHAHAHAH - SEE! I told you you were shit!" and you have to just ignore him, and look at the comments, and see them for what they actually are: Feedback from your users who want a better product. And you process it, and come up with solutions, and keep trying.

To be very honest, successful developers are rarely the most talented or the most creative. They are just the ones who can put their head down, stay honest with themselves, and keep working through the critics, self doubt, and failure. Persistence is everything. You WILL fail. You succeed when you push through that failure.

Almost 1/2 of our studio is in and around Metro Manila. We love the Philippines - which I honestly feel, dollar-for-quality is one of the top game development destinations in the world. Just wonderful people, amazing talents, and they grew up watching the same TV and movies we did, so they come from a similar "cultural space" - which makes them far more adept at understanding how to make entertainment for a western audience. If I ask a Vietnamese artist to make a character "like in this episode of Scooby Doo" it's a real tossup as to whether or not she has ever heard of Scooby Doo. But an artist in Manila, I'm likely to hear "Oh, yeah - cool. Scooby snacks!"

We also have staff in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and quite a few in Indonesia - which has some of the best artists in the world. People just don't know how BIG Indonesia - and how many people are down there. It's just HUGE. And a bunch of those people are super talented. And they are also super nice.

Honestly, one of the best parts of my job is working with this huge diversity of people from all over. It's way fun.

You came all the way to reddit JUST to give me hell about Monsters Inc., Pige? :)

For those not in on the long-running-joke from our Discord, I was the Lead Designer for Monsters Inc. PS2... and it was... not the best experience I ever had in game development...

well let me just quote a few of our critics:

IGN: "Don't be fooled into thinking this is a credible piece of software, cause it's not."

Gamespy: "It’s also not an overly difficult game, nor an overly long game, nor an overly attractive game, nor an overly fun game."

But hey - still averages 2.5 stars on Metacritic... So looks like you can slap Pixar's name on anything and people will give it SOME slack...

What's sad is some of it was really good work. The art and animation, in particular was pretty damn good for it's day. It's a good example of how a few bad parts of a game can trash the whole experience. But what can I say - 25 years making games... you can't win'em all.