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How not to develop a game aka The After

Colson33 · 2002-05-30T15:20:46

Hey all, My name is Chris Olson, and I am a former developer for The After. I thought you should know what the true current status of the game is, and how certain issues can lead to the downfall of a game. The majority of the programmers and certain other developers have left the team due to a constant state of lying and the inability of the team do perform any work. First, a bit about myself. I am a professional windows developer with almost five years of professional experience in the industry. I have worked on a couple games in the past, although nothing that was officially published. I originally joined The After team 9 or 10 months ago. After a month or two, the project had not moved anywhere so I decided to leave since I was looking for a sincere project. A few months ago, I decided to rejoin hoping that perhaps things had changed. In the beginning, it did seem that The After was going somewhere. There was a lot of talk in the chat rooms, and a lot of promises were made. However, it turned out that most of these were not true. There are quite a few problems with The After, those of which I will outline below. 1) The majority of the team is under the age of 18, and probably 90% of them have no real world experience in the fields that they are working. Numerous times the programming department asked the art department to give them models based on specific requirements, only to be responded to with comments such as "We don't want to read the manual, we just want to make models". You cannot ask a team with absolutely no experience to go out and develop a MMORPG. The time and scale of the project is massive, and is just not possible with team of not only inexperienced game developers, but inexperienced developers in whole. 2) The fact that the majority of the team is under 18 meant that the times that most people were on varied. Also, the fact that the team is comprised of people from all over the world did not help. Not that international teams cannot work, but you need to have some centralized time to meet. Half the team did not know the other half. 3) The constant switching of engines. It seemed that every week the higher-up's were telling this person or that person or this internet site or that one that we had a different engine. One week it was the Torque engine, the next it was the LithTech engine. Quite a few times the programmers would visit a site to learn that once again the management had changed the engine, without any coordination with the programmers. In fact, I noticed in your article they state that they will be using the Big World Games engine. This has once again changed. I have no idea what their reasoning is behind switching engines every week, perhaps to make the project seem more realistic, who knows. 4) The lack of organization. This was one of the key problems with this team, and is the reason that there is a very high turnover rate. In just the few months I was there, there was 3 different lead programmers, and I can't tell you how many artists, managers, etc... came and went. The problem is that the majority of the people on the team "just wanted to make a game", but didn't have the heart, desire, knowledge, or fortitude to actually put the time into it. The most common reason I heard when people left was that "No one is doing anything, and no one is telling anyone to do anything." 5) The lying to employees. This will kill any company. It's an understandable fact that people will hype up consumers to make them want the product. But when you try to perform these same tactics on your own employees, you're bound to fail. We were lied to about everything from people's skills, ages, and experience to proposed publishing deals. Small events would happen, and management would juice them up to the employees making it seem that things were more true than they really were. 6) The unwillingness to actually do any work. NetEmp, the company that is developing The After, was just formed last week. For months now we had told management that the company had to be officially formed, but every week there was another excuse to why it wasn't done. The managements presented NetEmp as a real company to both investors, consumers, and potential employees, and it was a bold faced lie. The company was formed 2 days before E3, and it's almost a slap in the face to the people that have actually done work. The business plan that is currently being used by NetEmp was written by one of the developers that had left. He was one of the most dedicated to the project, and also had done the most work, but in the end, even he could not take all the deception anymore. In the end, both the lead programmer, the lead client programmer, and the database programmer/COO decided to leave. This has also spilled over into other areas of The After team, and so far two other members have already left to join us. There is a movie currently up on The After website that supposedly shows character creation and GUI shots. The part that they don't let you know is that this is just a concept movie. That character creation is simply done in a movie creator, and the GUI shots are still shots of the Torque Engine with Photoshopped items layed over it. If you look closely, you will notice that all of the Torque engine shots are still shots done with a non-modified engine (in fact, they are not even animated shots, just a still shot being zoomed in and out of). You and I could download the engine right now and do the exact same thing, no work has been done to it what so ever. In fact, the team is so disorganized and in miscommunication that half the team thinks that those shots are from modified engine code. The After is a great idea. I will not argue that. The design concepts are good. But anyone can write a design document, it takes true work to actually make it come to life. No one at NetEmp is willing to do that though. Ocasionally there were momentary spurts of work, followed by long weeks of silence. At this point The After is another Dawn, it is nothing more than vaporware. I've heard arguments back that "We're still in the design phase". This is fine, but when you tell your employees, your consumers, and your investors that it is more than in the design phase, you are lying to both yourself and what could be the heart and soul of your game. This game is vaporware, which is because of the fact that is can never move past design phase. Working on this project has taught me that you have to double check everything that is told to you, since people can easily persuade you into thinking something that is not true. The developers and programmers that have left The After are re-grouping and we are going to attempt to put out a good project that will live up to the expectations that we originally were trying to live up to. Considering that there is now basically no programming department, and the fact that the actual technical design documents were written by the people who left, I hope that the managent at The After will rehaul their current process and actually try to get a good, solid, experienced team together. If the current work process' that are in place for The After stay in place, I am sad to say that there will be no After. Sincerely, Chris Olson Former Lead Client for The After (www.netemp.net/after if you would like to see how easily it is to fool people ) [edited by - Colson33 on May 29, 2002 4:00:24 PM]

Games Business and Law Business

Started by Colson33 May 29, 2002 02:58 PM

13 comments, last by Colson33 22 years, 1 month ago

Xeract

122

May 30, 2002 02:56 PM

Hey,
Just like to point out that i have been following The After for several months now, and i have talked many times with William (A.K.A. Servivas) and he isnt the kind of person that would lie about the game. He is an honest person who just wants to develop The After too its full potential, and to have a bit of support from the fans while doing it.
Netemp havent denied they have problems, but can you expect a new company in any business, let alone games developing, to go without any hitches?
I, and many others will be following TA for a long time to come. So i advise you all to come and visit us on IRC sometimes, post a bit on the forums, and please dont just dismiss TA as just another Dawn.

Thank you

Xeract

Colson33

122

Author

May 30, 2002 03:02 PM

I won''t argue that he wants to develop it, he just doesn''t know how, that''s all

Not that I could do it either, but that''s the special job that the producers/lead developers have, the ability to actually make a game

www.ollysoftware.com"Bringing the game back into gaming"

Anonymous

May 30, 2002 03:06 PM

The number one reason startup companies fail is management/leadership.

Dosent matter how bad you want to do something or how much passion you have in it, if you dont have the talent to manage, you just dont.

Anonymous

May 30, 2002 03:19 PM

quote: Original post by Servivas
It''s still in early alpha

That implies that you have all the functionality done. So let''s see the game.

LordKronos

122

May 30, 2002 03:20 PM

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster Also like he said....wouldnt the lack of programming be the programmars fault?

No, not necessarily. If technology or requirements change constantly, you constantly have to scrap work. In the case of an engine changing, I can see nearly 100% of the work needing to be scrapped.

Ron FrazierKronos Softwarewww.kronos-software.comMiko & Molly - Taking Puzzle Games to A Whole New Dimension

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