May 2001
THE
BOSS-SPEAK TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY (ABRIDGED EDITION)
By François
Dominic Laramée
All right, you’re all
exhausted from prepping those E3 demos, so I’m not going to
fry your brains with heavy-duty stuff this month. (Not that my stuff ever
really stimulates the brain in any measurable way, but you get the idea.
No annoying hard work. Nothing useful. Not even close. Rejoice.)
Instead, I’m going to
foolishly delve back into my disturbing memories of graduate business
school, wiping out the effects of six long years of therapy in the
process. Why, do you ask, O gentle readers? Why do I go through this
ordeal at terrible risk to my questionable sanity? Merely to provide you
with something I wish I’d had in hand the first time I went out looking
for a job in the game industry, way back in the Dark Ages. (So long ago
that Hewlett-Packard printers used to spit out clay tablets covered with
hieroglyphics. At a time when Americans would never have elected a
President who would need to be told that the fact there is a map suspended
on a wall in the intelligence briefing room doesn’t mean that the Earth
is flat and rectangular. So far into the past that the Montreal Canadiens
sometimes made the NHL playoffs by accident.)
This artifact of power is a
Boss-Speak to English dictionary.
Treasure it, noble readers. It
may save your life, if only because knowing what the heck these weird
folks in suits are thinking about may, someday, provide you with enough
advance warning to jump ship before they steer the company you work for
into a path of complete and utter destruction. In the meantime, let’s
have a little harmless fun at their expense, shall we?
Boss-Speak
In Job Ads
The typical job ad would like
you to believe that, say, selling doors door-to-door is every bit as
enjoyable as being in charge of talent relations and quality assurance at
the Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest. Beware: the dark side of the force is
strong in those who write that stuff.
Boss-Speak:
"We’re looking for people who will thrive in a fast-paced
environment."
Translation:
"We expect you to work harder than the water-scooper locked up in the
hold of a sinking battleship."
Boss-Speak:
"We provide free food and soft drinks."
Translation:
"We don’t ever want you to leave the office, not even to shop for
groceries. Unfortunately, if you don’t eat, you die, and if you die, you
stop working. So we’ll feed you. A little."
Boss-Speak:
"We offer competitive salaries."
Translation:
"Our competitors are just as cheap as we are."
Boss-Speak:
"Our salaries are low, but we have a generous profit-sharing
plan."
Translation:
"We can only afford the worst employees in the entire industry, so we
don’t plan on making any profits, ever."
Boss-Speak:
"We pay relocation costs, but you will have to refund part of them if
you leave the company within 2 years."
Translation:
"Relocation costs are equivalent to six months of your salary, so you
will be an indentured servant. Please step into our brand-new medieval
torture chamber for some quickie toenail removal."
Boss-Speak:
"We offer plenty of exciting challenges."
Translation:
"We have no idea how to do the work we’re contracted to do, and we’re
already three months late."
Boss-Speak:
"We have an open-area office concept."
Translation:
"Cubicles are too good for you development drones. Besides, we can
save an extra $12 a month by packing you tighter than the stuff at the
core of a neutron star."
Boss-Speak:
"We have an open-door policy."
Translation:
"Throwing people out through closed doors causes damage, and damage
is expensive."
Boss-Speak:
"In this company, everyone shares in the glory of what we
accomplish."
Translation:
"Expect to see many strangers listed as producers and designers on
your game’s credit page."
Boss-Speak In
Game Design
Also known as "ruthless
disfigurement of the truth", "abject bovine excretory
material" and "press release copy", the Boss-Speak you will
hear when executives discuss game design is second to none in vileness and
debauchery. For example:
Boss-Speak:
"We want to develop games for the interactive TV set-top box
market."
Translation:
"No publisher has been foolish enough to give us a Game Boy
development contract yet. But there’s a sucker born every minute, so you
never know."
Boss-Speak:
"We’re going to revolutionize the RPG genre."
Translation:
"Our elves have purple skin."
Boss-Speak:
"Quality-Assurance has raised minor playability issues."
Translation:
"Playing the game is more painful than sitting through a 12-day Hulk
Hogan movie marathon."
Boss-Speak:
"We want to make budget games for the mass market."
Translation:
"We don’t have anyone on staff who can program in OpenGL."
Boss-Speak:
"Let’s build bleeding-edge technology that will leave everyone
dazzled with our programming wizardry."
Translation:
"This way, we won’t have to bother with one of those annoying game
designers."
Boss-Speak:
"We are going to make a really innovative first-person shooter."
Translation:
Ah, come on, you can make your own joke about this one, can’t you?
Boss-Speak
At Trade Shows
Ah, the trade show,
money pit of publishers and justification for many pre-alpha builds and
faked demos. By far the most stressful event of the year, if you don’t
count great-aunt Margaret’s annual choreographed karaoke rendition of
the Macarena on Thanksgiving night. The source of many of the best
Boss-Speak pearls of wisdom of all time:
Boss-Speak:
"Do you mind carrying these 25 freebie t-shirts in your luggage on
your way to the big trade show in <insert scary foreign country living
under a repressive regime here> ?"
Translation:
"I’d rather see you rot in a foreign prison than pay 50 cents to
clear customs rights on a bag of laundry."
Boss-Speak:
"You are free to roam the trade show floor. No booth duty for
you."
Translation:
"You are ugly. You will scare the customers away."
Boss-Speak:
"I am leaving you in charge of the office while we go to the big
trade show. It’s a big responsibility, but I know I can count on
you."
Translation:
"You are so repulsive that you might scare the customers away even if
you’re not in our booth."
Boss-Speak
In Project Management
Nothing in the world begets
more Boss-Speak than a discussion of schedules. For example:
Boss-Speak:
"We’re on schedule."
Translation:
"We’re late."
Boss-Speak:
"We’re going alpha next week."
Translation:
"We’re really late."
Boss-Speak:
"We should be in stores for Christmas."
Translation:
"We couldn’t be later if we were twelve months pregnant."
Boss-Speak: "Yes,
Mr. Publisher, you can audit our books to verify that we have spent your
advance only on your project. How does next Friday sound to you?"
Translation:
"I need the extra week to plan my escape to a country with which the
U.S. has not yet signed an extradition treaty."
Boss-Speak:
"We had a rough stretch, but we’ve just turned the corner."
Translation:
"We’ve laid off so many people that the board is giving me a
bonus."
Boss-Speak:
"We are leveraging our existing code base to make a new and exciting
product."
Translation:
"We are cloning our own Quake clone, and our technology is more
outdated than jokes about Monica Lewinsky."
There, that’s all I have to
say this month. If you’re lucky enough to read this after E3, go to
sleep, you deserve it. If not… Hold on, the worst is almost over.
Oh, and remember: I’m a game
industry professional, so I love sequels; if you have good Boss-Speak
incantations you’d like to see exposed in a future installment of this
column, don’t hesitate to send them my
way. It’ll make you feel better. I swear.
Bio
François Dominic Laramée has plagued the game industry for almost a
decade, during which he finagled his way into a variety of short-lived
jobs as studio head, producer, designer and programmer until he ran out
of luck and had to become a freelancer. He is responsible for
single-handedly wrecking over 20 titles released on half a dozen
platforms, has waylaid thousands of readers with his articles, and
somehow managed to con two different universities into granting him
graduate degrees. (Well, one he's still working on.) Visit
his mediocre web site, http://pages.infinit.net/idjy,
at your own risk.
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