|
 Interview
With the Goddess: A Chat With Rick Hall, Senior
Producer, Ultima Online
GIGnews is pleased
to introduce our new ongoing feature: Interview With
the Goddess. GIGnews recruited Melanie Cambron,
known by most in the industry as The Game Recruiting
Goddess, to use her skills for the good of gamekind and
recruit some of the big names in the industry to give us
all valuable insight into what they do and how they do
it. For her debut interview, Melanie spoke with Rick
Hall, Senior Producer of Ultima Online...More
(September 2001)
Here,
by popular demand are FDL's original ten...
How
to Screw Up a Perfectly Good Game Company in Ten Easy Steps
by François
Dominic Laramée
...There are no
golden paths to game development stardom, but there are many, many
tempting roads leading right into the abyss. Here are just a few of
them. Trespass at your own peril...More
Ten
More Easy Ways to Screw Up Your Game Company
by François
Dominic Laramée
Last January, before this esteemed
web site got on the air, I wrote an article describing ten easy ways to
wreck a perfectly good game startup without even really trying.
I expected that particular piece to
incite at least a few death threats, which would have cemented my status
as Respected Author (tm). No such luck; the response was almost
unanimously positive, leaving me immensely disappointed. However, there
was so much response from all over the business that, in good
game industry fashion, I just had to churn out a sequel.
Here it is, then: ten more ways to run
your very own studio into the ground and, if past history can be
trusted, get a better paying job in the process...More
When All Else Fails: Turning A Project Around
by François
Dominic Laramée
Okay, imagine this: Company X has just hired you as a producer. The head
of studio hands you a complete, detailed design document and says that
the project is expected to go into production in two months. The lead
designer and lead programmer, highly qualified and easygoing people you
know well, are already working on a prototype full-time and it looks
like you have something special on your hands. You spend your two months
carefully planning the project, the company approves the resource
allocation plan you submit, and by the time the rest of the team is
ready to rock and roll, you’re well on your way to a blockbuster.
If that’s the situation
you find yourself in, you’re luckier than me, and there are numerous
how-to books and articles that can tell you how to proceed. (Heck, you
might even be able to apply some of those nifty concepts they showered
you with at graduate business school. Never happened to me, but it might
happen to you.)...More
The
Designer's Production Guide
by William Anderson
Design
for the situation and your team. This is a very
simple rule but one frequently overlooked by Designers, Producers, and
Managers. They get so caught up
in the desire to realize their vision that they don't stop to ask the
important questions: "Is this concept
beyond my teams ability to make?" or "Do we, as a company, have
the know-how to bring in the right
staff and technology quickly enough to do the game on time and in a cost
effective manner?" Failure to
address these simple issues has needlessly killed many projects, teams, and
companies...More
|
 |
