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How 2 Snoot It Up: Part 2 – Human Capital & Getting your foot in the door
By Michael Yick
Game development is a unique sector of work due to its lack of regulation, lack of hard capital requirements, and thus ease of start by anyone. The good part of this is that you don’t need credentials or permission from anyone to get started and the bad part is that you’re potentially competing with everyone else with an internet connection to get ahead. For this reason, the differentiating factors that set your studio aside from the rest are imperative for your success. This article will focus on the type of people you need and the first-moving strategies you have to get something started.
How to start with yourself from nothing
Game development is a multi-media endeavor and that necessitates having multiple skills. The first person you should look at is yourself: what do you bring to the table? Are you good at something? If you’re not good at something, are you at least good at learning things? Do you have the willpower to learn and improve? Take questions like these in earnestly and honestly. If you’re not skilled or capable in any way, then your project will be nothing but a masturbatory waste of time that you deluded yourself into doing. If you are skilled and capable, and you just self-deprecated yourself due to some internal complex, then you may have just talked yourself out of a great artistic and business venture that would leave you happier and more fulfilled in life (if this is what you really want to do).
However, your execution might be worth $70,000 one day.
If you don’t know how to measure your own skill, that’s fine. Skill is malleable and will improve through learning. If you practice a thing, study under someone else, read good books on the subject, and apply lessons learned from the past, you’ll become better naturally. The best time to start refining your skills was yesterday, get working on it now so you’re not even more late and even less capable.
The more important question than “am I skilled enough” is “can I even tolerate doing this thing enough to get good at it?”. You decide to learn a skill, but if every moment of doing it is a torturous endeavor, then you’re going to just not learn it. For example, I, Michael, am a software engineer and writer. I despise drawing. Doing it hurts my hand, hurts my feeble geometrically retarded brain, and bores me for its repetition. If I decided to “learn to draw”, every moment of learning would be pain, pain that would eventually make me give up (rightfully so, as I was miserable doing it). Know your limitations, you’re only one man. Quitting isn’t as evil as people make it out to be if you’re quitting for the right reasons.
As an aside, this is one reason why one-man-armies are bad. Most people are not capable of doing a one-man-army team. There’s a limited amount of hours in a day, and there’s even less of those you’ll be in peak operation. If you have certain skills you hate doing, then those are going to be more taxing on you, which will unfortunately burn more of your time. and more importantly, your interest in a project. If you don’t want to be the eternal tinkerer who starts a project mid way through another project, never releasing anything of value, then learn to budget your attention to maximize your ability, then offload what you don’t want to do onto someone else. Even if you’re the perfect artistic multi-skill, capable of doing everything without any drag, you’re going to eventually run into marketing, bureaucratic work, and accounting, which will likely cripple you. If you don’t get used to offloading work now, you’ll make a bad decision when offloading work then, and it may be the worst mistake of your life because you signed away your autism project to someone you shouldn’t have trusted.
How to assess your own skill level
Once you’ve established what skill you’re going to ride on for your utility as apart of your team, it’s important that you know where you stand. There’s two ways to do this that I would suggest: trying to complete a challenge and comparing yourself to others.
Completing a challenge is rather simple. If you’re good with a skill, you should be able to take in just about any arbitrary task and complete it to a good enough standard. This includes dealing with situations you’ve never seen before, as someone good with a skill should know how to complete any arbitrary challenge, or at least learn how to complete it. However, challenges like these don’t give you an overall view of where you stand in comparison to others.
This is where self-comparison comes in. Look at something you look up to or want to emulate, study it to see what makes it tick, and compare it to your own work. This isn’t just about surface level comparison either, if you can get your hands on a creator’s reasoning for making specific decisions, you can assess those in relation to your own work as well to compare with what you’re doing.
Often times from what we see, people will emulate the form of our work while completely missing out on the substance of it. Many fan projects around Snoot Game fall into this unfortunate trap: They merely copy the minutia and beats of a specific project (blank-face human character, edgy dinosaur girl, high school setting) without getting into “why” for it working. This lack of why also tends to create projects that are doomed to fail from the start. “I Wani Hug That Gator”, before Snoot Game’s original team took over directorship of the project, was like this and it sucked to work on and would have been a bad product for this reason.
The best way to be an artist is to stop acting like an artist
Now, self-comparison tends to get a bad reputation among lower quality content creators. People tend to get upset that their work is not good enough when they see something else and end up feeling defeated, upset, or experience some other kind of ego damage when they see something better. This is your internal artist speaking. This internal artist identifies your own self-worth as an individual with the content you produce, meaning that when your content is inferior you will feel inferior and when your content is superior, you will feel superior. The internal artist is bad news for the success of any project, being the driver of most self-congratulating delusion and infinite crab-mentality butthurt that comes from artistic peoples when they see someone genuinely better than them or suggesting they be better.
The internal artist is the part of you that wants to identify the label of “artist” as an intrinsic quality of yourself. An artist is someone generative. When someone is an Artist, he’s wishing to create and have their creations loved. When the Artist label is identified with, this desire becomes an entitlement.
This is because, to justify your label, you must create art to feel “like an artist” even if that art is vague, nonsense, or actually not important to anyone. You will end up deluding yourself to keep that badge of honor if you internalize the label. Ironically, this will make you a terrible artist as your constant need to justify said label will push you to create for creations sake rather than creating for any higher point.
A good artist is goal orientated: he sees his message and his target, and will want to get his message to his target in the most successful way possible.1 If that means ripping apart his comfortable assumptions about his project, then so be it. All attributes of your art, besides being able to be made, must submit to the original intention of your goal. Only once the artist has achieved his goal successful may he bask in that comfort of knowing he did something right (and hopefully good for the world too!), but even then that glory must never be integrated as an intrinsic part of the identity both because its fleeting and because the value in artistry lies in the success of the goal, not any kind of label identity formed around it.
So, the best artist is he who succeeds in reaching his goal. This gives you a rather objective measuring stick to say if your art is good or bad at being art. A bad artist fails to reach his initial goal and a good artist succeeds. This measuring stick waves away much of the obfuscation and subjectivity the art world has built around itself to protect its worst members from critique. If you operate with quality in mind, a good goal to start, and a willingness to do, you have a good chance of actually making good art that’s both worth people’s time and money.
The make-up of your core team
Now that you have a general understanding of your own skill set, and hopefully have an idea of what you want to do for your game, you’re going to need people to cover your weaknesses. This is your core team: people who you can trust that do things that you don’t do. This group ought to be kept small, trustworthy, and highly motivated to enable the success of your project. After all, you’re likely going to be spending years working with these people, make sure that whoever these people are top-tier choices who are aligned with you. Whatever flaws they have must be tolerable, able to be mitigated, or do not affect development.
These strict requirements on your core team likely will rule out a number of your discord “gaming buddies” that just smoke weed all day and play League of Legends. That’s intentional. These people are “chill to hang out with”, but they’re not “chill to manage the 25 thousand dollar merchandise deal you’re working on”. These are people who have a high likelihood of creating the “million dollar mistake that sends your life on a hell spiral”. Don’t let them anywhere near the levers of power.
In fact, any notions of egalitarianism should be discarded in the favor of mixed trust-and-merit based hierarchy for nearly all decision making relating to “who gets to do what”. As mean as it sounds, some people are just inherently worse than others not only for specific lines of work, but in general ability as well. The people managing your group should not act like McDonalds employees. This is an improper inversion of natural hierarchy that will have tangible effects on human psyche. The lower grade people managing your group will be unhappy with the responsibility if they’re moral, but want to do their best. They’ll also screw up more often due to a simple lack of competence. If you’re really unlucky and the lower grade people are also immoral, they’ll abuse the responsibility for their own gain, embezzling funds, screwing your fans, or otherwise creating up problems that you do not need at no gain to you. At least the guy who is scummy, but good at his job can get a job done, though that’s not much of a glowing recommendation either (we’ll get to these ugly traits soon enough).
Still, let’s say that you get your platinum-grade, best of the best core team assembled. They’re competent, trustworthy, and can cover whatever weaknesses you have. How do you ensure they stick with you instead of jumping ship to some other project? Top-tier people are a rarity and anyone with half a brain will want to poach them:
Simple. You align their success with the success of your studio. In terse terms: a cut of the profits, managerial voting privileges, and other benefits will let you buy their loyalty. Someone merely paid a stipend for work done gets his stipend no matter if your organization is succeeding or failing. Lower sales don’t matter since he is entitled to the amount agreed upon for the duration of your agreement. Even if your group fails, that guy is entitled to compensation for work done, at least by United States law, that is. A core team member however will suffer as your group suffers, and succeed as your group succeeds. He has good incentive to contribute to success within the system under a system like this. Every extra hour poured in and every extra risk personally swallowed increases his chances of future benefits and earnings down the line.
Remember, when you assemble your core team, you’re a part of it too. Everything said above about alignment applies to you as well. If your core team realizes you’re a dead weight, don’t be shocked if they form a new team without you. Business is a brutal ecosystem where niceties don’t make good products for customers. No one wants to be led by a loser. If you want to make kino, you have to come to terms with this reality. Your own personal success must be tied to the success of the organization as well to incentivize you to make good choices as you’re not above slacking. So don’t take a stipend.
Types of workers: what you need and what will kill you
Okay, so you’ve picked some good people for your core team. They’re cool, competent, and you think you’re going to go places with them. You also have a pretty good idea for what you’re going to be doing and everyone is on board with making it happen. This is the point where you can actually start working on the pre-production phase, turning your idea from a collection of disconnected thoughts into a coherent, real, and tangible thing for people to enjoy.
The fix is more human capital, which comes in two ways: Skilling up or bringing new people in. Skilling up involves the people you already have spending time to learn a new skill for your project. This option is attractive since this person is someone you already have a working relationship with, but it faces the same the one-man-army developer deals with: you have limited time and limited attention, and by splitting your attention, you’re going to necessarily be taking away from something else.
If you choose to get more capital by learning, that’s time taken away from development directly. Even if you do learn the skill, the work you’re doing with the new skills necessarily deprives time from old responsibilities. On smaller projects, this isn’t that much of an issue. One person can manage an entire game, but that will necessitate cutting corners, for example:
Snoot Game’s original release code was not organized. Every choice, piece of choreography, condition for score logic, and word of chapter dialogue was stuffed into a 28k line long file called script.rpy. I was able to manage the game myself, but at the complete cost of organization. In a one-man project this didn’t matter, but Snoot Game became more than a one-man project over time due to the additions of many collaborators. Technically, I could have done all of their work myself given enough time, but that would have taken years. If you factored in the translations as well, decades. That’s time that Snoot Game would dwindle out of public consciousness, thus degrading the value of my work since no one would have seen it. Art is for other people. What’s the point of a game, even a good game, if no one is there to play it?
So that leads us into the second option: bringing in new people. Newbies let you offload your work onto them so you can spend more time on fewer areas, increasing polish, and letting you get more done. Three guys splitting their work while under good leadership are just able to make better things than the one guy going solo. They are not only faster, but can spend more time focusing in on their best skills and fixations. If you want a game full of detail, effort, and kino, you have to ensure that your guys are capable of spending the time necessary to polish their work to make it the best thing it can possibly be. Sorry to my anti-social cowboys out there, but your game is just not gonna make it.
However, with the introduction of new people, you’ve introduced new variables to your studio. New variables means new conflicts, new problems, and new headaches. People who are cool on their own are not cool when you mix their personalities with incompatible people. Welcome to the problem of management. I’m sorry for the horrors you’re about to endure.
The Good
But before we get into the horrors, let’s start on a positive note: the traits you want in a new person and how to attract or find talent. New people are an opportunity for more perfectly executing the vision of your core team, or enhancing it in some way to more align it with the “why” of your project. A great addition to your team is someone who makes problems go awhile while offering only minimal problems for you in return. There are no problem-free people, but there are people who have massive gain to you while taking very little. These people are your best assets. Keep them close, treat them nice, and make sure they’re happy even if they’re not speaking up for themselves.
The best people for getting rid of problems are people who do the following:
- They’re eager to do something. They’ll jump up and volunteer for a project and then follow through on doing it. If they can’t help directly, they’ll help indirectly by providing critique, direction, or teaching.
- They’re up front and clean with their desires. If they want pay, they’ll just quote you and make it simple. If they want to influence your project in a certain way, they’ll tell you overtly. If they refuse to work on Fridays, they’ll make that clear to you from day one.
- They’re honest and trustworthy. When something comes up that irks them, they’ll let you know in good faith in the hopes that you’ll handle it. They won’t play weird e-drama games, instead favoring working behind the scenes to solve problems rather than make more. They’ll play internal politics in a fair and clean way: never trying to intentionally create bad blood and always trying to further push the solution to a problem.
- They know what they got. If they’re skilled, they’re not going to lie to you about it and show off their competency to the degree they have it. If they’re not skilled, but willing to learn, they’ll make it clear that’s what they want to do.
- They’re people who, when they screw up, will minimize the consequences of screwing up. They’ll fix the problem themselves and just make a small memo on the mistake if they’re capable. If they’re out of their league with a problem they caused, they’ll contact you and tell you promptly.
This list is rather short because its general, more specific traits will be department dependent, but in general these are what you should be looking for: honest, fair, and reasonable people who will offer you reasonable work for reasonable expectations and with reasonable clean up for their mistakes. People like this are a dependable bedrock to build your project under. The kinds of problems they cause are reasonable and, when there are problems, they do not intend on making more. These guys are genuinely happy working with you, see your arrangement as fair, and won’t suddenly blow up out of the blue or burn out in a catastrophic collapse.
Now, one big factor that’s missing from this list is raw skill. Raw skill is great, but what’s even better than it is dependability. The guy who can dependably give you a 8/10 is something worth killing over. His work’s not the greatest, but you don’t have to play clean up on it constantly. The traits described above all play into that dependability factor. Even in times where he’s not cooperating for one reason or another, there is a clear path to regain that cooperation in a clean manner. It’s just a matter of you and your core team either offering what he desires, or offering an agreeable alternative instead.
The Bad
As previously established, you’re never going to get a person who doesn’t provide you with problems. You just hope that the problems that are provided are problems you can handle. We call these “weirdness points”.
Weirdness points are your allotted amount of disagreeable, odd, or strange traits that you may have in relation to your positive traits. The guy who is consistent, dependable, and overall pretty good is tolerated in being a little annoying with his My Little Pony obsession sometimes because, overall, he’s pretty good and his excesses are not doing substantial overall harm. Similarly, a guy who is overly negative and a little mean is someone to keep around if he makes up for it by being consistently dependable when called upon and clean in negotiations.
Weirdness points are also relative. What’s really off-putting to one is tolerable to another. Something you must take into account is who is having to manage and deal with a specific person: If you have a hardened asshole dealing with your programmers, and many of your programmers are a little too mean spirited at times, it won’t matter that much that they’re pricks since their boss can handle it. Similarly, if the people who draw pretty pictures are flamboyantly artistic, and their boss is used to dealing with that kind of sappiness, the weirdness points are mitigated as well so long as the boss handles them.
The goal is to ensure that no one is trouble to work with. This can’t be done by picking for perfection, as everyone has something weird and obnoxious about them. Picking for perfection is bound to fail you, as you skip out on the reasonable weirdos for the weirdos who are really good at hiding their weirdness. All that can be done is that you pick tolerant people, and the intolerable nonsense is filtered through management as to minimize problems.
As an example of this: We, like any good organization, have a hard working sperg on our team who is consistent in his output, clean in his work, and has a knack for polishing what he codes into something that’s not only functional, but also nice looking. He’s very dependable, and often will solve problems as they come up, making less work for everyone around him. His fatal flaw: he is very pedantic, very perfectionist, and very bad at softly requesting for things. This annoys the shit out of our more “go-with-the-flow” artsy type people, who do not jive with the type of structured and rigid desires he has. Now, this doesn’t mean that he is inherently wrong when he brings something up, I’ve sided with him multiple times on subjects I believed were important, but it does mean that he can be a pain to work with and that pain makes people not want to cooperate with his desires (useful or pedantic). The solution? Filter his requests through one layer of management to help weed out the nonsense and keep everything on track for success. I can deal with his weirdness and strip out the pain of dealing with that weirdness when dealing with the other departments. Doing that makes everyone’s lives better: Our loyal sperg gets a clean answer on his suggestion, our artsy fartsy people have minimal amounts of pain when interfacing with the suggestion, and if the suggestion is adopted, we now have one more utility to make working on our project better.
These issues will require making judgment calls, judgement calls that will have your head on a platter if you fail. If you decide to take someone’s weird suggestion the consequences of said suggestion, good and bad, will fall upon your ownership. There is no one-size-fits-all answer to deciding if a suggestion is good or bad, but the cost-benefit analysis is the best algorithm for deciding if a suggestion is good or bad. This is a subject with a depth of its own for another time, but to give you a quick summary: Benefits are those things that bring you closer to your goal OR make future achievements easier and costs are what bring you further from your goal OR deprive resources from things that bring you closer to your goal. You likely set your goal on the “Why” question, and thus you should have a measuring tool to decide if a judgement is good or bad.
Now, what if your judgement causes unforeseen consequences? Not consequences born of the actions you took, but consequences born internally from internal politics? What if your decision pissed someone off personally? You’re entering into the world of the ugly traits: the traits that are irredeemable and, if found, will require immediate ejection from your group for the safety of the interior. Unfortunately, on the internet at least, many people possess these traits. When they rear their head, they’re an ugly sight to behold.
The Ugly
The ugly traits are all magically bad in their own spectacular ways, so this section will deviate from the rest and look more at individual traits rather than a general view of what to look for. When these traits show up and are allowed to incur their full wrath, they have a good chance of entirely killing a project and salting the land it once stood on so nothing may rise out of it ever again. These traits usually exist as a hyper-charged version of a normal bad trait. That means that these traits likely lurk somewhere deep within yourself too! If that sounds scary, that means that you have enough consciousness to want to avoid blowing it, which is a good thing since self awareness is one part of the prevention process.
That being said, it’s not all you need. You must be vigilant of these traits forming primarily within yourself, and secondarily within others. That doesn’t mean you have free reign to start purging people on the suspicion of having ugly traits (the danger of these people tends to show itself very proudly, so you’ll know when to get rid of someone when you see it), but it does mean you should keep a watchful eye and start looking hard when something off putting happens.
Still, without further delay, let me introduce you to the traits that (almost) killed Cavemanon.
Mister “Obsessed”
Mister “Obsessed” is someone who latches onto one part of the project he’s on and guards it like a rabid dog. No one is allowed to touch it without his permission, no one is allowed to critique it in his presence, and no one is allowed to influence it without his approval. He’ll make working in and around him a living hell when it comes to his personal pet project within your project to satiate his own ego. Pity should be on the man who has one of these types latch onto an important or core fact in the project.
These types come in many shapes and sides: They may be motivated by a sense that outwardly hands will taint his “perfection” or he has a sentimental and personal attachment to his work. The one we dealt with was neither of these, and instead was just a raw, masturbatory obsession with a character from Wani, so much so that the character is regarded as the weakest part of the story.
These types of people forget, or maybe never understand to begin with, that the project they work on is not for their consumption, but rather for the audience it’s intended to reach. If sight of this is lost, the project is lost as well, as the project will just devolve into something self-satisfying rather than productive.
Warding this off in yourself is as easy as submitting your own will to the goal you placed out for yourself. Measure every decision you make against this goal, and see if it improves your chances at success. If your personal taste aligns with success with your goal, that’s great, but must be understood to not be necessarily the case. Bend your taste to your goals if you must have your taste reflected in your work.
Mister “Blunder-cover”
Mister “Blunder-cover” is someone who screws up or who just doesn’t have the raw ability to do as asked, but instead of just swallowing his pride and just telling you, says he can do it anyways. A job of a manager is to work with their workers and contributors to set mutually agreed upon expectations. Mister “Blunder-cover” breaks this by not pushing back when expectations are too high, instead agreeing anyways only to disappoint you later.
Mister “Blunder-cover” has many origin points. Sometimes he’s just a liar who wants to suck money or time away from you. Sometimes he’s someone who puts too much on his plate and is incapable of saying no, letting it build up until it crashes down on him (and you as well). Our case was rather tragic, with the guy not wanting to disappoint us, so he kept providing work at the cost of his integrity as he plagiarized many Public Domain tracks.
Unlike other problem children listed here, Mister “Blunder-cover” tends, for us, to be someone you can sympathize with. He wants to meet your standards, he doesn’t want to see your disappointment, so he tries to “fix” the situation with a stupid solution that hurts everyone. When Mister “Blunder-cover” is like this, he’s the most dangerous because his unrelenting loyalty and admiration for your work may make you wish to trust him more.
Warding off Mister “Blunder-cover” primarily involves accepting limits. If you simply cannot do a job, voicing that early and responsibly is paramount to success. In our case, if our guy simply said he could not do the job and needed to fill in with some Public Domain tracks, we would have been more than happy to accept that. There’s nothing wrong with admitting a limit. The other side of this is that management should never get mad at someone who earnestly says they can’t do it. Doing so encourages this type of behavior. Reassigning people is management’s job, and if the choice is between spending an hour training a guy or reorganizing work and spending possibly weeks on a tower of lies caving in, it’s best to just spend the hour.
Mister “Fan Fucker”
Mister “Fan Fucker” gets way too involved with his fans. Now, this isn’t exclusive to literally fucking your fans, but sometimes can just be “being friends with your fans”. Either way, emotionally tying yourself to your fan base is a high speed monorail ticket to being manipulated for your clout, influence, or worse yet, access to your team’s secrets or valuables. Unfortunately, being the guy to “pwn” the biggest man in the room, in your case a high-ranking game developer, is a damn good way to become smugly e-famous. If something happens in the fandom (which it will because fandom culture sucks), you do not want collateral that affects your project, people’s pay checks, and the moral of those you work with every day.
To a fan of our work, this may seem off-putting or mean spirited, but it’s for good reason: If someone internal to the project is able to be influenced or manipulated into having influence on the project, the project won’t be answering to its ultimate goal, or the “why” behind it, and instead to the whims of someone external who does not have skin in the game for the project’s success. If you want good projects, those involved on the project must be dedicated to making the project good, otherwise it will turn out bad. Furthermore, there are unfortunately many manipulators who wish to see people with respect fall, often to further their own social standing and seem righteous. Being emotionally vulnerable and dependent on these types will permit them to use you (and your group’s resources) for their own gain.
You provide your fans with a product with a specific intent and purpose. If your intent and purpose is good, then you have done good to them without necessarily being personally involved with them. The surgeon needs not be friends with his patient, the soup kitchen worker needs not be friends with the homeless, nor does the business man with his customer. You are here to reach a goal. Reach it and bask in the goodness it brings if it is a good goal. “Moral and good” does not necessarily mean “nice and personable”.
Avoiding this may be rather painful for some, as the types who want to engage in this behavior (when they’re not sex pests, that is) are of good heart. Wanting to be a friend of all, however, is impossible. If you somehow do it, you’ll be stuck as a spineless fence-sitter, placating to everyone no matter how unnerving or detestable or end up making enemies with people who suck and have way too much time on their hands to ruin your life. The solution? Keep it professional and clean. Only engage with fans for furthering your goals, rather that’s to improve understanding of your art or for money reasons. It’s cold, but it has to be cold, your friends are your friends, your customers are your customers. Don’t mix the two or else you’ll end up trusting adversaries and losing friends to e-drama.
On the topic of actually, literally fucking your fans:
Mister “Bigshot”
Mister “Bigshot” thinks he’s “the guy”. He wants to be behind the big mahogany desk, cigar in mouth, calling the shots on what happens and who does what. In reality, he’s just some dude who wants to weasel his way into your core group without being worthy of that position. Sometimes, he doesn’t even want in for the money, he just wants in so he can sit on the throne.
In our case, our Mister “Bigshot” was an outsider coming in, trying to throw money around to get ahead. He gifted us some cash, then had an expectation that he was “one of the guys”. He then spent time and money paying for adverts we didn’t want, impersonating us in the process. It was very cringe. His magnum opus of Trump-style “Art of the deal” moves was to offer us 5,000 USD in exchange for 10% of our revenue, along with the ability to buy 15% of the company. When he saw that we weren’t impressed, he played it off like it was a “placeholder suggestion” and that he just wanted us to review the contract’s formatting. The only reason we kept in contact with him was because of the naive assumption that no one would blow 1,000 USD to have influence on a then fledgling 4chan-based game studio.
Mister “Bigshot” is why a promise and a hand-shake doesn’t work anymore. He wants to insert himself into your process just to take it for a joy ride and crash it. He may gift you stuff to win over your interest, only then to start acting like just because he gave you something, he’s entitled to something. He’ll play weird games when brokering with you instead of just shooting straight and telling you what he wants up front.
Of all the people here, Mister “Bigshot” is the most dangerous since he could trap you in some nonsense agreement that gives him undeserved power over your project. The solution is always to demand contracts and to always go over their contents with someone you trust (ideally a lawyer) before even considering signing. Never rush an agreement. Clean agreements with expressly shown terms and with plenty of consideration can save you from being legally obligated to kill your project by handing it to some sleazy goof ball who sees an opportunity to ruin you.
Mister “Bigshot” can arrive in yourself too, but likely in a less overtly scummy fashion. This is through complacency: If you “make it” with your art, you’re going to no longer feel that pressure on you to make that 10/10 hit. You will be willing to do less and to let your money work for you instead. You’ll sit behind your big desk, signing off on projects, kicking back and producing nothing good as your work degrades and you grow out of touch. This is how media slides into “sequel slop” habit of just making the same junk over-and-over again; This is how you get FIFA 23 and 52 Call of Duty games. This is why the scrappy indie project is usually more interesting than the AAA establishment project. If Cavemanon wanted to whore out, we could just endlessly remake Snoot Game and I Wani Hug That Gator, but with different faces plastered on. It would get very old very quick and most of our fans would rightfully hate us for it by the end of it.
If you’re competent and creative, you have to have a fire under you to keep the pressure on and to “keep it real”. You cannot become Mister “Bigshot”. Every action must be for quality and answer the “Why” question. Experimentation cannot be for experimentation’s sake, formula cannot be for formula’s sake, and you can never take your art for a self-serving joy ride. If we return to the Snootiverse, it will have to be with something purposeful, intense, and poignant. At this moment, we don’t have that, but maybe we will some time in the future. If you make it, this must be your mentality too or else you will stagnate.
As a final note for this section, since it covers legal topics: Neither Cavemanon, nor the author(s) who wrote this article, are lawyers and none of this constitutes legal advice.
Mister “Woe is Me”
Mister “Woe is Me” thinks his suffering is your problem and that because he’s suffering he’s entitled to more for less work done. Instead of measuring his value to your project by how difficult it would be to replace his contributions, he measures his value to your project by how much he personally is suffering to contribute to you. Furthermore, instead of realizing he’s getting less than he wants and quitting with proper notice and grace, he sticks around, makes demands, and feels entitled.
Do note, there’s nothing wrong with renegotiating a deal if more work is required from someone. If one of your best men comes up to you, says he’s offering you quite a lot in output and wants more as a reward for it, and you agree with him, then it’s in your best interest to provide him with more of whatever resource he requested, rather that’s profit, influence, or anything else of the sorts. Your best guys cannot be lost, talent is scarce, and talent that’s dependable even more so. Anyone would poach a good guy.
No, Mister “Woe is Me” doesn’t see the relationship like this: he skips works, constantly blows off tasks, and doesn’t provide you with that much value (or worse, causes you problems), and then demands for more out of a sense of entitlement to more because he is suffering. This is a key point in this: a wrong assessment about value doesn’t mean you’re Mister “Woe is me”, it’s a wrong assessment that your suffering matters for the health of the project that leads to it.
Furthermore, this isn’t an advocacy for any kind of cruelty (which is something that will cause your best men to burn out and hate you quickly). If someone is sick, has their life fall apart, or is in some way temporarily reduced in their ability to contribute, a reduction of obligations should be granted, but with the standard amount of compensation still received. However, this arrangement should be temporary, both parties should work towards returning to the usual expected norm, and the reprieve only entitles someone to a lesser obligation to suffer for the project, not more compensation for said suffering.
Mister “Woe is me”‘s origin ultimately lies in misunderstanding what the project serves: The project’s goal is to fulfill the vision of the core group, who will then deliver it to the customer or audience for their benefit. All artistic projects ultimately come down to communicating something to their audience and everything that inhibits that must be stripped away or maneuvered back into the name of doing this. Mister “Woe is me” thinks just because contributing to the project costs him, he’s entitled to more direct support from your core group, who then shifts this cost onto your customers if the project is commercial. Every compensation made is an expense that must be accounted for in some fashion. Mister “Woe is me” wishes to become a leeching crony who puts his own well-being above the purpose of the project. The core management in a project, who ultimately bear all expenses, must stomp this out for the benefit of the project.
This includes stomping it out in yourself. Management’s entitlement is more dangerous than the entitlement of any individual as management has ultimate ability to make decisions about what happens. A corrupt management can forgo the quality of their project, hurting their customers, and the satisfaction of their hardest workers in the name of taking the spoils of their venture all for themselves. This is a dangerous perversion that will do more damage than any worker’s entitlement, as the management, in this scenario, is no longer acting in a way to support the quality and sustainability of their project, and thus hurts getting their message to their audience. Management must live and die by their project’s success by getting a portion of the profits as a reward, but anything further than what’s absolutely necessary to keep management aligned with the project’s goals amounts to corrupting greed, which will kill the project.
“Loose lips sink ships”
Talk is cheap, doing is expensive: Don’t get addicted to the cheap drug of talk and instead focus on getting things done. More tersely: When you’re working on a project, shut up about working on it unless there is an actual incentive or reason to blab. If it’s not going to get you money to fund your project or make future work on the project easier, there’s no reason to come forward with what you’re doing.
This may seem counter-intuitive: You want critique from people to make the best project possible. You don’t want to be trapped in a bubble of your own guys in case it turns out that you’ve deluded yourselves into loving something that sucks. That’s all very true, but there are many more harms that blabbing can bring:
When you’re “showing off”, you’re implicitly making promises. You’re setting the bar and standard for your work when you’re talking about what you want to happen or what your goals are, you’re running the risk of pulling a No Man’s Sky on your project. If people don’t see what they think you’ve promised, they’re going to be disappointed and complain, even if all you were doing was spitballing an idea that you didn’t fully think out.
This was one of the reasons, besides avoiding getting hit with nonsense DMCA claims by KO_OP, that Snoot Game’s development was near radio silent while it happened. We didn’t want to attract attention or make hype for a project that didn’t exist and wouldn’t have any commercial reason to have hype. That protected us not only legally, but also from over-promising and under-delivering.
More pressingly however, talking about what you’re doing is a very cheap way of doing ego stroking. If you want to feel important and like you’ve done something, the best thing you can do is to chatter about something that ultimately isn’t real. Yeah, your cool battle system or awesome sprite work is cool in concept, but without any tangible or real thing to experience outside of what you say, why does it matter? No one can play a game that only exists in a couple sprite sheets and in your mind.
Really, this section is just an extension piece on Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games – Keep Your Internal Pressure High [Work Ethic], which is a video with great advice about this very subject. The summary is: It’s better to shut up and build up your idea into something real rather than get the relief of talking about it while producing nothing. We still would suggest watching the video in full.
That being said, there are times when talking is actually good for your project: If you can find some outsider people who won’t leak things, blab, and will give you an honest opinion, that’s a good way of fishing for a reality check on your project’s quality. We did this several times during Snoot Game’s development, and it was a great way of giving us proper reality checks on if we were going in the right direction or not.
Also, we do run a paid development blog, you’re reading it now. The funds we gain from yapping about our projects will go directly back into supporting further development, and us talking about what we do serves as proof that we’re working. The only reason we can get away with doing something like this is because we’re wagering our reputation: If we fail to bring a good article out, we’re failing to prove that we’re working, and thus our patrons have no reason to pay us. This is a tactic that can only really work if you already have established proof that you can produce.
Do it for free first
Another piece of advice we have for getting your foot in the door is to make your first project non-commercial. This is both so you can see if you can actually make a project and, if you can, if you’re able to build up an audience if you’re successful. The lack of barrier to entry for your project means that can easily spread and you can garner reputation. Reputation is a very lucrative and rare asset, if people know that you’re the guys behind a thing that they like, they’re going to be more likely to take a risk on buying something from you on the next go around. This is especially true if your next go around is very similar to your first one, like with what we did.
Snoot Game was a “literal who” project that took off for being good. The only reason people gave it a chance was because it cost nothing but time to play. Few people want to risk their hard earned money on something they may not enjoy. Snoot Game acted as a “try before you buy” of sorts for our work. If you liked the game, and wanted more, you could play “I Wani Hug That Gator!”. Wani was similar, but different enough that it’s not a boring re-hash of Snoot Game.
This strategy of using a free product to create reputation and a paid one to then cash in on it worked wonderfully in our favor and, because of that, we suggest that others try something similar. Only through hedging our reputation could we convince people to buy and play Wani. Since Wani was well received, we intend to do the same thing again to our next game, Exit 665. We now have a track record of making things people like, so people in the future will trust us more in bringing us something that will be good. This reputation is our greatest asset to our success and, if we want to continue that success, we must keep making quality games for our audience to enjoy.
“Doing it for free” may seem stupid, since that would take time, but many talented people already are doing it for free and may not even realize it: Do you mod a game that has a small audience? Do you translate games for other people as a hobby and you’re pretty good at it? Do you draw fan art for another game that people actually like? If so, then you have a chance to use your small reputation to either build a bigger one in game development or to cash in on it in some other way. Of course, you don’t have to do game development, most would not fare well in this field, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do something else. If you are capable in game development, for example if you make total game conversion Minecraft mods, hedging your reputation as a game modder may be worth it to get your foot in the door.
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9 responses to “How 2 Snoot It Up: Part 2 – Human Capital & Getting your foot in the door”
This was a wonderful explanation, thank you so very much! Even if I’m not in game development (and being honest, I’m definitely not the type to pursue it, I just enjoy playing them and giving my support where I can), I couldn’t help but apply a lot of things to my own self and career. It’s always nice to get someone else’s perspective on these things, and while I can’t say for sure that I definitely became a better person from the explanation, realizing some faults within myself is never a bad thing.
I can definitely tell that a lot of these were learned the hard way, and while it’s probably very arrogant and forward for me to say, I’m very glad you were able to come out the other side of them with a reputation and product that are both successful. The fact this article has so much to unpack and learn genuinely reflects your drive to be successful in an honest and earnest way–a lot of devblogs are usually filled with teasers and one paragraph of something genuinely useful; yours so far has legitimately taught me a lot and just fuels my interest in your projects/products.
I got my first taste of management during the whole ‘rona thing, when everyone was working remotely. Supervisors and Managers exist to do what we can to keep the project rolling, assist the people on the team, and filter out a lot of the weirdness of people, but I know a lot of folks see those positions as money-wasters (and they definitely can be if they’re inexperienced or just terrible at the task). I’ve never seen myself as a leader, at least not until that point, so it came as a shock to me when the company took a gamble on me to do it. I like to think I did alright, not great, but alright. Still, a lot of these are absolutely applicable to many different spheres of production or work, so if anyone bothers to read the blog and this comment, don’t feel like you should discard any of the advice above since you’re probably not in game development.
Once again, thank you so much for this post–now it makes sense why doing a sequel of Wani doesn’t really make sense right now. For some reason, I had this vague notion in my head that it wouldn’t work out so soon, but I couldn’t articulate it. Seeing the actual explanation, however, does a lot to help me understand why iterating on what you’ve already done might not be for the best. As a kid, I always got confused when studios would mix things up: I liked thing A, so when they made thing J, I got frustrated, because I just wanted more of thing A or a vague concept of thing B. You did a great job of outlining why a studio can’t just keep making thing A or adjacent thing B, because then you fall into the sequelitis or remake-machine that we see all the time. Sure, you’ll have workers that really, REALLY just like making one thing, but that isn’t artistic or fulfiling; that’s just an assembly line.
>I couldn’t help but apply a lot of things to my own self and career.
Honestly, I was not aware this advice could extend beyond our sphere, but it makes sense if it does: Most of this concerns people and management, which are the two foundations of basically all work. I’m glad our wisdom can be applied elsewhere in more real endeavors than game dev.
>a lot of devblogs are usually filled with teasers and one paragraph of something genuinely useful; yours so far has legitimately taught me a lot and just fuels my interest in your projects/products.
Most of the desire to do this, at least from me, is seeing the >ABSOLUTE STATE of the game development industry. This industry is very isolated from conventional wisdom that guides most successful projects and enterprise, especially at the entrepreneur/indie level. I’d like to say that this is because of a lack of mingling between successful people and those just getting started, that is that no one has a mentor, but that’s just the vibe I’m getting. However, I do think the lack of wisdom is hurting the industry: there’s just not enough artsy weirdos with good ideas acting in a professional manner to get their project made. If there were, I’m sure 2020s culture would be way cooler than it is right now, especially given how weird and interesting living in this time period is.
>I know a lot of folks see those positions as money-wasters (and they definitely can be if they’re inexperienced or just terrible at the task).
Management in most large companies is total bloat and the fact their salaried rather than paid a percentage of profit does a lot of damage to their projects. Once you get to a point where managers are managing managers, shareholders above those managers get a really bad type of blindness that causes them to not be able to appreciate their company in a holistic fashion. Companies act a lot like living organisms, with individual organs and functions, and if the “brain” of the operation can’t see the importance of any one thing, they may neglect it or cut it.
This is why the managers must take a cut of the profit instead of a salary. That will force them to look at the whole project and ensure its success or else they’ll starve. This makes good products for customers that are worth buying, and keep a reputation high. This is especially important in game development, as reputation is one of the most valuable assets you have since it attracts talent, makes customers willing to take risks on you, and can be leveraged for profit with more risky ventures. If the manager fails, he doesn’t eat. That’s a really good reason to not fail.
>don’t feel like you should discard any of the advice above since you’re probably not in game development.
If you want to go on about your own experiences, you can do some good for the readers at home. I’m sure there are some good people trying to get to the “next level” of providing value and being cool out there who would want the wisdom of someone who has led a project, even if a non game-dev project, before.
>Sure, you’ll have workers that really, REALLY just like making one thing, but that isn’t artistic or fulfilling; that’s just an assembly line.
That’s a great way of putting it.
I think the best thing studios can do, and this section was cut out of this article because I was unable to articulate the importance of it, is to learn what their best skill is. Once they find that out, they can boil that down and iterate on it in new and exciting ways. For us, it’s very clearly character writing and “feels”. No one comes to a Cavemanon game for the well executed gameplay, at least as of right now anyway, and it’s clear that all things that aren’t writing are made to enhance the writing. The drawings, animations, UI design, stagecraft/choreography, and all the other details that go into one of our works are nice, but would never stand on their own. No one would care about Fang and Anon’s story or Olivia and Inco’s if it was poorly wrote hogwash presented in a pretty package. That would just be all style with no substance.
To play a dangerous game and yap a little: Our hope with our next project, Exit 665, is to take the core of what we’re good at and translate it into a new format. We’re aiming for great writing, with good visuals, and good gameplay. We know our strengths and what to focus on after doing this for 4 years. If we can pull that off successfully we will (fingers-crossed) have a success as impactful as our last two games, hopefully. Of course, we’re not entitled to that success and we’re going to have to work hard to prove we’re worth people’s time and money, but I think we have a chance of pulling this off.
>I’m glad our wisdom can be applied elsewhere in more real endeavors than game dev.
You would be surprised, especially in either the service or bureaucratic fields. At least with something like game development, there’s a lot of different things people can work on or achieve, but when it comes to other fields, it can become a grind of ‘same thing; different day.’ When you have a team of people you want to see succeed, but all they’re doing is literally the same thing over and over again, their individual quirks can really start to bleed through their work.
As an example, I worked with a telecommunication company that was helping the IRS with their call-center. This was during the rollout of the stimulus package authorized by congress, so naturally, a lot of people had questions, and the phone lines were swiftly overwhelmed. The IRS has a lot of issues with its call centers due to a billion questions about taxes, only for the stimulus situation to be dumped into their laps without any real consideration as to IF they could even do the job. Therefore, it was up to contractors to help.
The above situation meant there were a lot of people that were confused or under-informed as to how the program would even work, so the IRS had to put together a Question and Answer website for folks. As contractors, our task was to answer questions from the caller (using JUST the website) before determining whether or not they needed to be forwarded to an actual IRS agent. This meant a LOT of repetition, and the IRS was very serious about our behavior on the phones, as our behavior could also reflect poorly on the IRS. The IRS is already the most-disliked segment of the government, so doing poorly wasn’t going to help matters.
Almost all of the negative quirks you outlined in the article were on display, especially as hundreds of people that had been laid off from their regular jobs/careers had to figure out how to talk to people over the phones in a diplomatic and courteous manner. When you have a lot of distressed, angry, or slow-to-understand folks calling, everyone’s personalities are going to be tested. Figuring out who could fulfill the role and who could not was, unfortunately, one of my tasks as a supervisor, but trying to help manage these traits was also part of my duties. Naturally, I had to try figuring out where they were coming from in order to help them with the drastic change in professions. Sometimes, knowing their worst behaviors, letting them hear their own voice as those traits emerge, can help someone in mitigating their own behavior.
Like I said before, I don’t think I did great, but I know I did alright.
>I do think the lack of wisdom is hurting the industry: there’s just not enough artsy weirdos with good ideas acting in a professional manner to get their project made.
I’m not familiar with game development specifically, but I can comment in other fields. Naturally, there’s a lot I am not allowed to talk about, so speaking in a generic sense: there is this fundamental lack of good leadership and mentorship going on right now in many fields. You mentioned earlier that poaching can be a big problem, and that is most definitely the case in many, many fields, especially since it’s never been easier to find the most qualified people. Additionally, there is a popular saying going around that being a company-man no longer gets you to success; moving to new companies every few years is how you get better pay and benefits now. This means that those of excellent experience and good leadership qualities are constantly either pulled or pushed to different companies, and many of those same individuals are retiring at an alarming rate (for one reason or another). One of the best guys I ever worked under retired two years ago, and his absence is still felt.
I’m not sure what the underlying cause could be, however. I wish I could figure it out, so I could maybe address it, or at the very least, keep trying to get the experience needed to provide that leadership I’ve felt lacking. I’m not sure if there is a blockage in the fundamental procedure of passing on wisdom from one generation to the next, or passing that wisdom from one team to another, so I’m not qualified to speculate. I do know that sensation you’re talking.
>Once you get to a point where managers are managing managers, shareholders above those managers get a really bad type of blindness that causes them to not be able to appreciate their company in a holistic fashion.
My thoughts exactly–much like with coffee or tea, if you put too many filters on something, you’re just not going to get a great view of the situation (and you’re going to get a lot more instances of that “Blunder-Cover” or “Big Shot” mentality in almost any sphere of management). Upper management becomes obsessed with looking good to shareholders, and that mentality starts filtering down the chain, resulting in middle managers not communicating their needs to decision-makers in the first place.
If you’re familiar with the monkey-ladder experiment, it goes something like this: They put several chimpanzees into a room with a ladder. At the top of the ladder is a banana, but whenever one of the chimpanzees tries to climb the ladder, they get sprayed with water, and after enough time, they learn this result and stop going for the ladder. One monkey is swapped out, who then goes towards the ladder, and all the other chimpanzees restrain or beat down the offender in order to not get sprayed with water. Eventually, as you swap out chimpanzees, they now perpetuate the practice of preventing each other from climbing the ladder, even if they have no idea why they do it in the first place.
The reason I bring up this example: as old management retires or leaves, new management tries to do their best to communicate the needs of their teams properly, only to get scolded by the other managers. This has happened to three different companies I have worked with, and yes, it’s insanity-in-motion every time. Since there are way too many filters between production and decision-making, no one knows what the issues are–or they know but feel too pressured to say nothing–that those actually working on production are either sacked or leave out of disgust. So far, the only solution that has worked has been to unionize, but if you know anything about unions, that’s not an ideal solution either, as that puts a lot of pressure on decision-makers that now have to contend with a complicated legal procedure instead of actually focusing on the goal.
>I’m sure there are some good people trying to get to the “next level” of providing value and being cool out there who would want the wisdom of someone who has led a project, even if a non game-dev project, before.
From my own experiences, your article does a better job of explaining things than I ever could. To reinforce the point, as a manager, you have to keep both the needs of your team and the needs of the ultimate goal in mind. Yes, that means you don’t make decisions as to what the ultimate goal even is. Yes, that means your team is going to you with every single problem–ESPECIALLY some of the most inane stuff you’ve ever heard–but being the filter is some of the most important work you have to do as a manager.
First off, find your spine. You have to be willing to bat for your team when it’s obvious they have need of something from decision-makers. You back up what they need with examples (where applicable), you communicate their needs with both their words and your own, show respect to your superiors, but never, EVER show your superior that you fear them. The moment you fear them, they will subconsciously know they can push you around as much as they want. If you are managing a team or several teams, you have to be the one to stand alone in a room, sometimes with some very scary people, and insist that what your team needs will be of benefit to the ultimate goal (this is where knowing what the goal is, even if you don’t agree with it, is highly important).
Secondly, you are a manager. No one, and I mean no one, gives a single shit about your opinion when it comes to the ultimate goal. You were hired to support the goal, not force your opinion onto the goal. Learn to let go of your ego in that regard. This also applies to the people above you as well. No one cares if you think the next guy up the chain is a colossal asshole. Just as you filter out the inane things of your team from going up the chain, you also act as a filter for the insane things from your boss from reaching your team.
Thirdly, Stop, and I mean STOP, trying to be friends with your teams and team members. As a manager, it falls to you to promote, demote, praise, or punish those that violate the rules. It sucks. No one likes doing it. No one enjoys kicking people off a team or having them transferred to another team. No one likes filling out the paperwork or having to do one-on-one sessions with people that are clearly struggling, but that’s what you were hired to do. Being friends with your teams makes that so, so much harder, especially if they try to blackmail you with that friendship status in a moment of emotional distress. That’s not to say be a heartless bastard to your team members or treat them in abusive ways (your authority is NOT to be used as a cudgel to beat people senseless), but neither can you be the shoulder they cry upon. As a manager, you have to be willing to go to bat for your team, but that also means you have to go to bat for the company when your team is being unreasonable.
Listen to your team, understand what their issues, complications, and needs are, and filter them out based upon what actually needs action. No one above your paygrade cares that there was a death in someone’s family, as harsh as that is to say, so it stands to you to shoulder that. Sympathize and be supportive, but the last thing you should do is be their hand-holding nanny at the funeral. However, if there is a fundamental software requirement that your team needs to accomplish their task, that’s when you pass that up the chain and become the biggest pain in the rear until that requirement is satisfied. Separating the personal from the professional is an important skill everyone should learn, but don’t expect your team members to learn that. As their manager, you have to learn that instantly and practice it from the word GO.
It sucks. No one wants to hear that advice. No one wants to embody that advice. No one wants to practice that advice. But it’s true. That’s not to say you cannot be human, that’s not to say you cannot do nice things for your team in order to ensure they’re satisfied and in good spirits. However, if workers are where the rubber meets the road, you are the brakes.
Sorry if a lot of this sounds overly harsh or soul-crushing, but these are just things I had to learn the hard way, and if what I say can help people in a managerial role, so much the better. I would rather folks learn what happened to me and avoid that from happening to them. It might not be fully applicable to every job sector or professional field, however. Use your head and do your best.
>Our hope with our next project, Exit 665, is to take the core of what we’re good at and translate it into a new format.
That makes a lot of sense to me, and I really do look forward to seeing the culmination of those efforts! Seeing you all push the envelope like this really gives me a lot of hope and excitement for the next project, especially since this blog is so communicative, educational, and informative.
Sorry for the absolute wall of text, tho.
>When you have a team of people you want to see succeed, but all they’re doing is literally the same thing over and over again, their individual quirks can really start to bleed through their work.
That tends to happen a lot in low-autonomy jobs from my experience. I don’t think most people do well in very controlled and repetitive tasks, they tend to rebel in their own ways if they don’t have an outlet of some kind. Usually, this rebellion is inert and does nothing since most people are powerless to the systems they’re beholden to. Personally, I always tried to solve the problem at the root by automating it away or somehow getting rid of it entirely, this usually led to issues for me when working in other organizations. Most organizations are very calcified in their way and are interested in repeating process that’s known rather than finding new ways to save labor, especially if saving labor has up-front costs and little prospect for stockholder return.
I think this concept is a manifestation of “The Power Process” as defined in Industrial Society And Its Future: As people move further away from directly having influence on their own success or failure, they become more miserable. Most people are aware of the “soul-crushing grey office work” motif in American culture and many resonate with its messaging since big bureaucracies almost always incentivize compliance with known standards over experimentation, even if the experimentation would obviously be good for stockholder value.
>As contractors, our task was to answer questions from the caller (using JUST the website) before determining whether or not they needed to be forwarded to an actual IRS agent.
Now that’s some next-level time wasting! Only an agency as horrible and convoluted as the IRS could come up with something that dumb. Instead of just coming up with a proper solution that could be useful for reducing labor burden and possibly exported to other tasks as well, money and man hours are just thrown at the problem until it goes away. I guess this is what happens when you get a monopoly on violence that has zero incentive to ensure customer satisfaction.
I’m sure it was a decision made by a member of a multi-layered managerial, entrenched boomer-ocracy member that had zero reason to prioritize efficiency over personal convenience. The IRS doesn’t even have shareholders to ensure compliance to attempt to filter out stupid decisions like that since it’s ran by a government that shifts political administration every decade or so.
>Sometimes, knowing their worst behaviors, letting them hear their own voice as those traits emerge, can help someone in mitigating their own behavior.
Given the circumstances, this is objectively the correct decision as a manager here: using the tools and power provided do your best to decrease the amount of problems. I’d hate to have that job though, given that an organization like the IRS has no reason to improve conditions or optimize their workload. Everyone will always act in a way to ensure the bare minimum: not getting fired.
>Like I said before, I don’t think I did great, but I know I did alright.
In my opinion, you couldn’t realistically have done any better given the resources provided. The IRS has no reason to ensure customer satisfaction, as not being their “customer” leads to you being jailed or shot. No single manager could have done anything about the leviathan over them.
At least to relate this to the article’s topic though: A manager who’s salary is the company’s profit could choose to adopt proper reforms and improvements, eating the risk that entails, and then gaining the rewards. If there was a better proposal to handle the calls, perhaps something automated, a shareholding manager could stomach the risk personally to try it out, and from there reap the rewards or costs of his decisions. Natural market order is the only reliable tool I’ve seen for cutting down on over-systematizing and other wasteful and manager-serving nonsense. The IRS doesn’t operate by these rules and is a very sick organization because of it. If any private company, especially a start up that is low on “screw up” money, acted like this, they would crash and burn in only a year’s time.
>Naturally, there’s a lot I am not allowed to talk about, so speaking in a generic sense: there is this fundamental lack of good leadership and mentorship going on right now in many fields.
>Additionally, there is a popular saying going around that being a company-man no longer gets you to success; moving to new companies every few years is how you get better pay and benefits now.
>This means that those of excellent experience and good leadership qualities are constantly either pulled or pushed to different companies, and many of those same individuals are retiring at an alarming rate (for one reason or another).
>I’m not sure what the underlying cause could be, however. I wish I could figure it outI believe most people interested in the topic refer to it as “The Competence Crisis”. Looking into that phrase, you can find many strange substack articles from odd-ball techbros and other weirdos who are correct. There’s many reasons for this crisis, but few people in the mainstream are talking about them in depth. I believe most of the hesitation is because the current scientism-focused, paternalistic, and egalitarian world-view would be crushed under the hash realities of how most businesses operate successfully. Certain moral axioms, i.e, the total equity of people and a moral obligation to support those of lower societal status, are just incompatible with business by nature.
This is namely because businesses are hierarchical, Darwinistic (meaning they exist as and within ecosystems to compete for success), organic in nature (and thus can’t be properly understood in function with statistical models and conventional science), and, when working properly, purges non-contributors and costly individuals. They’re not the place for social reformer and empathetic work, they’re the place to organize and incentivize the generation of value for a customer base. This is why Mister “Woe-is-Me” is a bad person to have in business: he’s looking for charity in a place to make money.
To address your question about company-men not getting rewarded, I think this is because of modernity’s near autistic obsession with optimizing around data and numbers rather than treating organic structures like businesses as what they are. One of the permutations of this is with how companies do not value their most hard working employees. They instead treat them as cogs in a machine to be changed and snubbed rather than integral parts of a greater system to be rewarded for continuing that system. Your best guys serve a vital role in regulating and contributing to the sustainability of a company’s ecosystem and to hurt them is to hurt your longevity. Offering good people no incentive to participate will only get selfish behavior from them. This leads to them swapping sides and not building up wisdom to then be passed down to newer generations coming into the company. This is likely a root of the competency crisis.
This autistic disregard for the bigger picture is how you get snubbed seniors with no loyalties: the best men are just going to play the same game as the companies and swap sides to obtain the most profitable outcome. They have no loyalties because there’s no incentive to be loyal. Management has simply failed to recognize reality and why things in the past worked, and they’re going to suffer with dumber people for it. This is especially bad for publicly traded companies, who are legally obligated to care about autistic data and finance statistics in the name of short-term growth rather than long-term sustainability.
This is why in the article I note that your best men must be rewarded. If they aren’t, they will leave for somewhere better. Smaller businesses, especially ones working in a tight market like entertainment, cannot act like publicly traded companies no matter how much a manager’s desire to be a “Big Shot” makes him want to. If you do this in a small environment, you’re going to end up hated by the people who built you. It would be like your brain declaring war on your liver, no one wins here as both are vital for each other’s survival.
>STOP, trying to be friends with your teams and team members
I think this advice should have a little hesitation put into it: Comradery is a fine trait between members, and often makes work easier, but only IF AND ONLY IF everyone understands that the goal is to work together to make a project that’s good and hopefully make money with it. Money and friendship can mix if this trait is respected, but harsh purges of anyone abusing friendship for money or influence must be enacted to maintain its sustainability. A sense of entitlement to more merely for being a friend of a manager and providing no further value misses the point of a business.
I think comradery is more important for artsy projects than more dry ones. In artsy projects, you have to discuss with fellow members about common goals, philosophies, hardships, and enjoyments to have a shared ethos to guide a project. This is especially true in our case given that we wish to return to making more socio-politically orientated work. If Snoot Game was not made by people who shared a similar worldview and understanding of each other, it would have been a disjointed mess, boringly agreeable, or would have died because of in-fighting. Artistic endeavors require more than just a working relationship if it is to be successful. That doesn’t mean “get taken advantage of” or “be someone’s emotional tampon”, but you should enjoy your co-workers and understand the worldview of those you’re working with if you’re going to be making anything of substance collaboratively.
However, if you’re in the meat canning industry, the goal is to get canned meat to customers. Being buddies with the people who put meat in cans is not important. So, I understand where you’re coming from on this front. It’s just that this mentality is likely an exception to the rule for artistic work.
>Sorry for the absolute wall of text, tho.
No worries, this is a wall-of-text article and I hoped that by pay-walling discussion, it would filter out shitposters and make the comments overwhelmingly interesting and earnest. There’s few places online anymore where people can actually discuss with some level of care for what they’re saying. I hope that the comments become good content in addition to the articles, hence why we’ve been tried to stay active in replying to comments of substance that are related to the article’s content. If someone is willing to sit through a massive 40-or-so minute long development article, I’m sure that they would not mind a couple paragraph-sized comments on the subject as well.
>Most people are aware of the “soul-crushing grey office work” motif in American culture and many resonate with its messaging since big bureaucracies almost always incentivize compliance with known standards over experimentation, even if the experimentation would obviously be good for stockholder value.
I can definitely understand that, especially if the building you enter to work is literally the embodiment of that mental concept. I don’t think the phenomenon we’re witnessing is just enforced from the top-down, though; even where I work, automation and AI would vastly help in the resolution of tasks, but it would also create a lot of empty space for folks, and if the job pays well enough (even if they’re doing exactly the kind of jobs automation and AI were meant to replace), then the workers would instantly try to unionize and rebel. Where I work right now, we get a lot of folks that just aren’t talented in more creative or technical fields, and the job itself honestly doesn’t require a lot of brain power. However, since it’s tied at the hip with the government, that means it’s usually the last to innovate, so that means my situation is enforced from both ends. I never thought a job could feel completely paralyzed, but I’m guessing mine isn’t the only one suffering from that same effect.
I guess what I’m trying to say: From my experience, the top-down wants the grey office work, and the workers have gotten used to it enough, and are getting paid enough, to keep it in place. I’m not sure what could be done about that, though. Considering the average worker’s role used to be farming, then assembly/production, and now just endless waves of cubicles, what does the ‘job for the 50%’ even look like after automation and AI? Just endless QA of the AI’s output? I’m definitely not smart enough to see where that goes.
>Now that’s some next-level time wasting!
I had thought the same thing back then, but usually when it comes to government programs like these, it’s not really about solving the problem so much as making the problem leave or making it someone else’s issue, especially if it’s temporary. After a year, the contract was more-or-less completed, so the entire contracting team was let go.
What I think was the thought process: Not everyone has a computer or smart-phone, and there are a lot of people that just don’t understand the internet. The government was obligated to service those that just wanted someone to talk to about what was going on, especially if they had never received their part of the stimulus, because the requirements of getting it were very poorly communicated to the taxpayer at the start. All they heard on the radio or television was the fact the government was giving people cash, but they either weren’t paying attention to the rest or didn’t care.
Effectively, the contracting team was to be a filter for some really angry or really confused people, which were a lot of them. A lot of my team even had to utilize resources to help prevent suicides, crimes, and other forms of distress. Note that most of my team were menial office workers, your run-of-the-mill labor force, or just general store associates, and trying to train them to be proper phone agents–or in some cases, crisis responders–was mentally exhausting.
>Everyone will always act in a way to ensure the bare minimum: not getting fired.
You probably have some experience with that particular phenomenon, but I do see that a lot. People call it something along the lines of ‘quiet quitting’ or something similar to that. The folks that just do the bare minimum, because doing anything more is either not rewarding or just not worth the headache.
>If there was a better proposal to handle the calls, perhaps something automated, a shareholding manager could stomach the risk personally to try it out, and from there reap the rewards or costs of his decisions.
We were definitely told, under no uncertain terms, that using any form of voice recordings on the part of the phone operators, regardless of context, would result in immediate termination. Even if one or a few of our agents were particularly industrious or clever in order to lighten the workload on themselves, it was supposed to be excised faster than the speed of light. The official explanation I got: “No one likes to talk to a robot.” This felt rather flat as a reason to me at the time, but its just another example of this sort of thing being enforced from both directions.
I guess I just wasn’t sure what they really expected of grabbing a lot of randoms that had been recently laid off from a wide variety of jobs and having them basically be robots in the first place (they were only allowed to use one resource to answer questions, they were not allowed to deviate from the script, and they weren’t supposed to get personal with the caller). I knew the ultimate goal of the job, I did what I could for the team, but it still felt like a fresh train-wreck every day.
>A manager who’s salary is the company’s profit could choose to adopt proper reforms and improvements, eating the risk that entails, and then gaining the rewards.
I think that’s definitely true for a lot of career fields and product types; I’m not sure that sort of model would work out for folks that just want a steady paycheck. I meet a lot of folks in my area of the world that just want the 9-5, paid every two weeks, same-work-different-day, experience, even if they might lament it in their spare time. I think that’s probably just the huge difference between the creative process world and average joe world, though.
However, as you say, if managers don’t have some sort of personal stake in the business they’re working, if they don’t have every motivation to see the mission or ultimate goal succeed, how in the world are things supposed to improve?
>This is likely a root of the competency crisis.
All of that makes a lot of sense to me–there’s honestly not a lot I could add to that aside from just the context of the shareholders to begin, I suppose. I remember seeing several studies that a lot of folks wait too long to start saving up for retirement. Excluding the gigantic investment megacorps for a moment, you have an ocean of people that have been told to put their money into the world of company shares and investment in order for the returns to essentially fund your living after you are either physically unable to work anymore or are just too tired mentally to work anymore.
This naturally leads to a situation where people are attracted to stocks, bonds, and shares that perform well and can be easily swapped out at a moment’s notice towards other fields or sectors or even companies in order to maintain that growth of investment returns. Just as these firms don’t seem interested in employee loyalty–because they want that constant cycle of people they can pay at one rate ad infinitum–that means there also isn’t any real loyalty between investor and the business. This results in that phenomenon you mentioned of constantly prioritizing short-term gains over long-term sustainability, because they’re trying to attract more investors in the short-term because they know no one is committed to them in the long term, as everyone is just out to make their twilight-year savings-account as big as it can be.
I remember when my grandparents were finally able to retire. They went across the whole country in their RV, going to beaches, historical landmarks, that kind of thing. They looked so happy doing it, and yet, I just couldn’t get it out of my brain that they had to work so hard, wait so long, and invest so much just to achieve that. I guess I’m still trying to process that kind of thing in my head, even after they’ve already passed, like there’s some aspect to it that still bothers me. That’s just one example though.
Multiply that example across millions of families, and I can see why things are the way they exist, I suppose.
>This is why in the article I note that your best men must be rewarded.
I appreciate you going to such lengths to explain these things in detail–because both your top performers and your managers are all invested in the success of the business (either because good performance deserves good pay or you’re literally invested in the success of your company and product), everyone is always motivated to make that product something great. I just can’t help but see a lot of folks that just want to clock-in, do a job, clock-out, get paid, get on with what they actually want to do, making Anon’s story feel all that more real and tangible. Just as Anon originally wanted to just slide through school, there are a lot of folks that treat life the same way. I’m not even certain if I can really judge them for it either, seeing things the way they are now.
>It’s just that this mentality is likely an exception to the rule for artistic work.
You’re probably right about that, honestly. I found myself going back to my own post, wondering if I should or shouldn’t re-word it or at least come off as less harsh. Like I said before, I had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way, so that was probably just a gross over-correction on my part. I can definitely see camaraderie being very important in the creative process, since there’s the expectation of a lot more communication, whereas in my job, active and continual communication between folks is actively discouraged (usually because the people spending more time talking than working throw one another under the bus the moment any sort of performance review occurs, and the people contracting our company just generally come across as the most miserable people on earth, I swear).
>There’s few places online anymore where people can actually discuss with some level of care for what they’re saying.
I know exactly what you mean by that, and I’m glad such thought and care went into how you all run things. It’s honestly refreshing to see a business have this level of consideration for everything they’re trying to accomplish without seeming like just another corp. We’re even seeing places monetize folks based upon engagement, which really just boils down to “how can I make someone angry enough to post on my post today?” This is why I never really liked the idea of “monetize your haters,” because it always struck me as just perpetuating an argument rather than actually solving anything.
This is such an enlightening and informative discussion by gross comparison, it’s not even funny, and I truly appreciate you taking the time out of your day for going over all of this with me, so from the bottom of my heart, well-and-truly, thank you.
>what does the ‘job for the 50%’ even look like after automation and AI? Just endless QA of the AI’s output? I’m definitely not smart enough to see where that goes.
Likely not anything like we know now, as the incentive structures of society will collapse in on themselves. If you’re not needed to make money, but still need to eat, you will find a way to eat even if it isn’t traditional “company work”. I would guess that would entail theft, government welfare (a form of theft in my eyes), odd jobs, prostitution, and desperation behavior in the short term. Eventually, the economy would freeze over this as the production owners really could only trade with each other for items due to owning the wealth.
Long term, as a more hopeful prediction, the only realistic solution would be a decentralization of the means of production as to eliminate the need for the “employer” class: More at-home manufacturing of food, clothing, tools, and other items for life. Essentially: De-industrialization, kind-of. If you grow your own food and make your own stuff, you don’t need to be employed to survive.
If technology goes in a direction that ends up giving more autonomy to local institutions by means of lowering the barrier to entry to production, I believe we could see a decentralized world in the future. I already see this in the technological sphere, with many people teaching themselves their trades through the internet, marketing themselves through the internet, and doing business through the internet. Cavemanon is largely like this with a great amount of the people working for us being self-taught and without any kind of institutional credentials such as diplomas.
However, that all relies on the technological industry to prioritize the creation of tools that enhance the freedom of humanity by liberating them from centralized services and tools. Currently, that’s not the direction most of the wealth in the industry goes, but I believe there is a lot of hope in this project due to the slow cultural rise of the Free and Open Source Software movements, along with sister movements around it (Open Hardware, “Right to Repair”, and tangentially the Prepper, HAM radio, and DIY communities). I’m putting my money (literally as I donate to organizations in these movements) on them being the solution to many of humanity’s modern woes. Furthermore, this is why I am staunch about our games being under Free and Open source software licenses.
>The official explanation I got: “No one likes to talk to a robot.” This felt rather flat as a reason to me at the time, but its just another example of this sort of thing being enforced from both directions.
That kind of nonsense reasoning is the sign of a decrepit, degenerate, and weak order that needs replacing. The fact that people read news articles that aren’t “like newspapers” is enough proof that it doesn’t matter. Still, trying to argue reason to power and establishment is stupid since they’re entrenched and will want to ignore you. It’s best to just offer a better service.
Actually, this is the government we’re talking about. Offering a better service is illegal treason.
>I think that’s definitely true for a lot of career fields and product types; I’m not sure that sort of model would work out for folks that just want a steady paycheck. I meet a lot of folks in my area of the world that just want the 9-5, paid every two weeks, same-work-different-day, experience, even if they might lament it in their spare time. I think that’s probably just the huge difference between the creative process world and average joe world, though.
>I just can’t help but see a lot of folks that just want to clock-in, do a job, clock-out, get paid, get on with what they actually want to do, making Anon’s story feel all that more real and tangible.
>the top-down wants the grey office work, and the workers have gotten used to it enough, and are getting paid enough, to keep it in place. I’m not sure what could be done about that, thoughPre-modern societies had a name for the “steady paycheck” people: Peasantry. There was nothing wrong with being apart of the peasantry class, despite its pejorative use these days (something I think is informed by liberal obsession with status/wealth and communist obsession with egalitarianism). They were a people who lived fulfilling lives like anyone else, but were simpler in their goals, not unlike what most people would call “Normies”.
These people are those who are not motivated and will simply go with the winning team on any given subject. They’re not interested in revolutionary ideals, just what works. If Feudalism works, they’ll go along, If Communism works, they’ll go along, if sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours a day to do 2 hours worth of work is what works, they’ll go along.
All of these systems eventually stagnate and falter and then are replaced by motivated individuals (your Entrepreneurs and other “system shakers breaking up old norms are examples of this). This is a cycle of history that repeats in nearly every context, rather politics or business. The old giants get replaced by scrappy start ups, which in-turn turn into old giants to be replaced by scrappy start-ups. Rather the start-ups are barbarian bands, odd-ball tech companies in California, or weirdo 4chan art groups is just a matter of where you are and what you’re doing.
There used to be a demarcation between classes that formed a healthy society: Your priests, philosophers, and aristocrats operated at the top along side military forces to dictate the norms, customs, and other rule of law that let the lower classes, craftsmen, merchants, and peasants, thrive. The egalitarianism of the French Revolution undermined much of this by positing that the Peasantry (or other lower classes) should own this right, which evolved later into the factions of Liberal-democracy, state Socialism, and the myriad of blend and splinter modes of governance. Not to say that they weren’t right to rebel against the then decaying order, but the consequence of their rebellions brought about the cultural normalization and then enforcement of egalitarianism as a foundational moral.
This form of governance is very degenerate, and I could go on and on about its failings (Read Hoppe’s Democracy: The God that Failed if you’re interested in this subject). As it relates to business and its cycles, this is why workers-cooperatives (such as KO_OP) tend to decay. They’re not guided by the zeal of a couple great men with resources, and instead are governed by a committee of various interested parties, all pulling for their own sects and ideals. Their organizations lack a type of persisting spirit in them that guides them in persisting through time. This form of business governance is not popular among businesses as it thankfully never became a philosophical or cultural norm to be repeated as a moral absolute and those who push for it largely see failure without great amounts of outside support.
Unfortunately though, a different degeneration did become common: middle management acting as a cancer on an organization through the use of party-based office politics. Managers tend to side with comfort and a lack of effort due to the decadence a consistent paycheck will bring you. These are people tasked with making hard decisions and optimizing labor, but with no tangible reward for more successfully optimizing labor. If anything, they have a negative incentive to optimize labor since good managers upset an order of older managers, who may use their power to enforce their order at the cost of innovation.
>This results in that phenomenon you mentioned of constantly prioritizing short-term gains over long-term sustainability, because they’re trying to attract more investors in the short-term because they know no one is committed to them in the long term, as everyone is just out to make their twilight-year savings-account as big as it can be.
This is why I find publicly traded stocks and the current market regulations around them to be abhorrent and counter-productive. The obligation of the majority owner to kneel to the minority owners have been disastrous for companies world-wide and will lead to their downfall. Hopefully governments don’t bail them out when problems arise like they did when fractional reserve banking collapsed in the 1920s. Motivated owners are necessary to guide that spirit, and a form of business shareholder democracy (given that there’s little cost to owning a stock in comparison to actually owning a business directly).
>This is such an enlightening and informative discussion by gross comparison, it’s not even funny, and I truly appreciate you taking the time out of your day for going over all of this with me, so from the bottom of my heart, well-and-truly, thank you.
Really, thank you for supporting us through payment and playing our games. Through contributions like yours, we are able to bring you something worth your time.
Back somewhere in 2020-2021, when I still went by eggboi, I took part in a random person on iFunny’s comment trend where he had characters say stuff with the Persona 4 text bubble. This led to me getting to know the poster a little better, and them eventually asking if I would be interested in joining him and some other internet randos into making our own Persona fan game.
What could possibly go wrong?
I agreed, and was put on a Discord server with a bunch of other teenagers and 20-somethings with no idea on how the creative process worked. We barely had any progress in the storytelling department (the story would take place in America, the twist villain would be your first party member, a frog named… Frog being the mascot character). I think the only bit of progress we ever had on coding was one guy making a fake intro scene in RPG maker.
I admit that I had a hand in a lot of the writing problems. I was Mister “Obsessed”, using your own words, in trying to insert my original character into the story. College aged me was very stupid in assuming that a character with (non-existent to this day) prior lore would be a great idea for a fan project for a JRPG. I think some of my resentment of the character actually stems from trying so hard to insert him into the story and be solely responsible for writing all of his dialogue and story motivations.
(As a quick side note, I have returned to a sense of appreciation for the character, and have tried to think about him in a more healthy manner, asking myself more “Why?” questions in order to potentially include him in my own media someday. I’m especially looking forward to your writing blog update in order to fill in other gaps that I know I am missing in terms of character building.)
Regardless of my own faults, the whole project was failed from the beginning, if you couldn’t tell from the fact that we were just a bunch of iFunny users that had like three ideas for making a story. I don’t keep in contact with any of the people that I had worked with, but I remember the one competent member of our team being a guy named Bill. Bill actually did his best with the managerial role that he found himself in, and implemented deadlines and assignments for members of the team, as well as arranging our only full team conference call. If any person from that team could have made it as a member of today’s gaming industry, it would have to be Bill.
I look back on the experience with a lot of regret, but I think it also shows that I’m not really made for game development. I have no talent for art or coding, and my talents in writing and music do not translate well into the world of gaming. I think that having accepted this fact helps me to appreciate my current job even more now, and recognize the amount of talent and grit that this studio has gone through with producing two incredibly captivating stories.
I honestly don’t have a lot to add, but I would point out that you probably wouldn’t really know if you were cut out for game development if you hadn’t at least tried once or twice. While you might have a lot of regrets concerning the experience, I would say it’s still worthwhile that you tried and found out in your own way, rather than stopping yourself from ever trying in the first place, if that makes sense.
>asking myself more “Why?” questions in order to potentially include him in my own media someday
I do have an unfinished write up for good tactics for asking good “Why?” questions that may come into play for a “How to snoot it up: writing” article. I’ll make a note to finish that segment in my TO-DO list.
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