Asheras wrote on Apr 24
th, 2016 at 2:27pm:
You see the same issues in other entertainment or marketing arenas where technology blends with traditionally highly creative areas. Creativity and structure seem to be mutually exclusive to some degree. Which is why you need to mix highly creative people with strong process and structure people, like PM's to keep things in control while allowing the creative people the freedom to create unique content/ideas.
I very much agree with this. DDO could potentially be turned around if they stopped the incestuous promotion policy and brought in a competent professional. Sadly, I suspect the problem is deeper than just incompetent producers, but goes to orgn priorities, budget and resourcing.
Other orgns harness creative people, but still manage to run a business.
The danger in the games industry is if you have those creative types promoted to management type roles, without having any business sense. These roles are certainly not suited to everyone who's done their time on the front line of game development.
You don't want overly creative or overly controlling people who don't understand the nuance and balance required. Project mgmt is always about trade-offs. You can never have everything.
Turdbine is a good example of these polarised elements.
Most of their producers appear to be in the "creative bucket" (being charitable here - I would normally say incompetent and unprofessional) in that good IT/IS practice is not utilised or heeded.
On the other hand, you have the douchebag
operating with impunity throughout the orgn treating customers with complete disdain (instead of respect).
I think gaming industry customers are characterised as negative, when I would describe many as passionate (although they are diverse), and if you can harness that, you will find a very loyal customer base even if they don't agree with everything you do (and they won't).
Here's a tip for Turdbine. Dismissing, ignoring and mocking them is never going to put you on a winning footing.