http://www.igda.org/diversity/report.php
I'm not entirely surprised by this, but something that happened this week gives it a new spin.
We had our first "publisher" meeting on Thursday, with a developer friend of my partner's who's self-published a few things on Verizon phones. I'd met some publishing reps as well as some developers at E3 this year, and I hadn't been wonderfully thrilled with the developer half of the equation, though the publishing reps actually seemed like pretty neat guys. The ratio of game-absorbed and/or so-white-it-blinds-you stereotypes to actual developers seemed to approach near-parity. Now, I can be quite game-nerdy when I feel like it, and the girl I'm seeing likes to joke about how white I am, but realistically, at this point in my life, I don't really have much trouble minging freely with people of all sorts of interests and cultural or racial groups.
This "publisher" friend of my partner, who we weren't talking to for a deal, but simply for advice, seemed like a decent enough guy, but I wasn't thrilled with his acumen as a publisher. He didn't do very much to dispel the developer stereotypes I was talking about above, either. He took a brief, not too serious look at the game I've been working my ass off on for months, made a few offhand comments about it being pretty, then laughed about how Verizon would never take it because it wasn't complicated enough or branded. He then proceeded to chat my partner up about various industry things for the rest of the lunch. I occasionally tried to prod him for a useful fact or two after that, such as percentages of market penetrations on older phones that I'm currently jumping through hoops trying to support, but never got anything beyond rather vague and not-very-useful half-answers.
Thankfully, my partner and I both agreed that his assessment might not have been accurate, but he's worried now that the demo is inadequate. I disagree, and feel like it accurately conveys a sense of what our game is about and how good it could be as a finished product, but now I'm stuck working my ass off this weekend trying to get more features into the game before we show it to anyone.
For a variety of reasons, I have never quite managed to develop a tolerance of people who stick to their own comfort groups instead of taking the time to develop themselves and experience a larger world. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the game industry, especially the development side of it, falls down on that side of the equation these days.
I'm irritated at this point because my workload has increased without any compensation at least partially due to the fact that this guy offhandedly decided that he knew enough about what Verizon likes, and doesn't like, to disregard our demo. Obviously, I don't have any direct experience with Verizon myself, but I do think that there's a strong possibility that some of his rejected applications over the last few months have been aided by his lack of social graces or business smarts, and weren't caused by the games themselves. I ran into a similar situation at an E3 panel I attended. One of the developers stood up and launched into a several-minute rant about how he'd had this game done since 2002 and it wasn't fair, no one would take a chance on it. Given the complaint-heavy and somewhat self-centered way that he presented it, I understood completely why he was having a hard time getting a deal.
In the short term, I'm pissed because now I have to work my ass off on something I don't agree with, while still being fairly broke with no immediate sign of further income.
In the longer term, though, I'm starting to understand why the publishers wield tremendous control in the game industry. As my friend put it, "those who are cool, calm, and collected can gradually but consistently take power away from those who aren't" - and, to me, it makes sense that people with balanced judgement and good social skills will probably be both more in touch with the realities of making money in the marketplace, as well as what has to be done in order to get products to it. I'm not even convinced it's a bad thing right now that the publishers have so much power, actually, even though many other developers are.
Whatever one's judgement of the situation, it seems like it's going to continue. People who spend as much time programming and learning new technologies as we do tend to have less time to develop social skills than we might otherwise. I don't tend to think I usually do badly in this area, but it seems like a lot of the developers that are out there are nowhere near as good with people as they are with a compiler. Obviously, the industry is persisting and succeeding despite this, but if developers want to be able to actually control and wield some of the power in this industry, we're going to have to make an effort to increase our social skills to the point where we can truly effectively plead our cases to the publishing reps. Again, I feel fairly confident in my ability to do so when the time comes, but I believe that if every developer in the industry could do this, we would be able to achieve some actual power.
I'm not entirely surprised by this, but something that happened this week gives it a new spin.
We had our first "publisher" meeting on Thursday, with a developer friend of my partner's who's self-published a few things on Verizon phones. I'd met some publishing reps as well as some developers at E3 this year, and I hadn't been wonderfully thrilled with the developer half of the equation, though the publishing reps actually seemed like pretty neat guys. The ratio of game-absorbed and/or so-white-it-blinds-you stereotypes to actual developers seemed to approach near-parity. Now, I can be quite game-nerdy when I feel like it, and the girl I'm seeing likes to joke about how white I am, but realistically, at this point in my life, I don't really have much trouble minging freely with people of all sorts of interests and cultural or racial groups.
This "publisher" friend of my partner, who we weren't talking to for a deal, but simply for advice, seemed like a decent enough guy, but I wasn't thrilled with his acumen as a publisher. He didn't do very much to dispel the developer stereotypes I was talking about above, either. He took a brief, not too serious look at the game I've been working my ass off on for months, made a few offhand comments about it being pretty, then laughed about how Verizon would never take it because it wasn't complicated enough or branded. He then proceeded to chat my partner up about various industry things for the rest of the lunch. I occasionally tried to prod him for a useful fact or two after that, such as percentages of market penetrations on older phones that I'm currently jumping through hoops trying to support, but never got anything beyond rather vague and not-very-useful half-answers.
Thankfully, my partner and I both agreed that his assessment might not have been accurate, but he's worried now that the demo is inadequate. I disagree, and feel like it accurately conveys a sense of what our game is about and how good it could be as a finished product, but now I'm stuck working my ass off this weekend trying to get more features into the game before we show it to anyone.
For a variety of reasons, I have never quite managed to develop a tolerance of people who stick to their own comfort groups instead of taking the time to develop themselves and experience a larger world. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of the game industry, especially the development side of it, falls down on that side of the equation these days.
I'm irritated at this point because my workload has increased without any compensation at least partially due to the fact that this guy offhandedly decided that he knew enough about what Verizon likes, and doesn't like, to disregard our demo. Obviously, I don't have any direct experience with Verizon myself, but I do think that there's a strong possibility that some of his rejected applications over the last few months have been aided by his lack of social graces or business smarts, and weren't caused by the games themselves. I ran into a similar situation at an E3 panel I attended. One of the developers stood up and launched into a several-minute rant about how he'd had this game done since 2002 and it wasn't fair, no one would take a chance on it. Given the complaint-heavy and somewhat self-centered way that he presented it, I understood completely why he was having a hard time getting a deal.
In the short term, I'm pissed because now I have to work my ass off on something I don't agree with, while still being fairly broke with no immediate sign of further income.
In the longer term, though, I'm starting to understand why the publishers wield tremendous control in the game industry. As my friend put it, "those who are cool, calm, and collected can gradually but consistently take power away from those who aren't" - and, to me, it makes sense that people with balanced judgement and good social skills will probably be both more in touch with the realities of making money in the marketplace, as well as what has to be done in order to get products to it. I'm not even convinced it's a bad thing right now that the publishers have so much power, actually, even though many other developers are.
Whatever one's judgement of the situation, it seems like it's going to continue. People who spend as much time programming and learning new technologies as we do tend to have less time to develop social skills than we might otherwise. I don't tend to think I usually do badly in this area, but it seems like a lot of the developers that are out there are nowhere near as good with people as they are with a compiler. Obviously, the industry is persisting and succeeding despite this, but if developers want to be able to actually control and wield some of the power in this industry, we're going to have to make an effort to increase our social skills to the point where we can truly effectively plead our cases to the publishing reps. Again, I feel fairly confident in my ability to do so when the time comes, but I believe that if every developer in the industry could do this, we would be able to achieve some actual power.
