Darkened Software

10 years ago I was just was just finishing up a project with the 3DO company, not wanting to go through another dev cycle with I got an interview with Microsoft for the Direct X team.  At the time I was very big into openGL, but saw the potential in DirectX and wanted to be on the new leading edge of graphics.  They flew me out for the big interview but when I got there I found out that an internal transfer had already taken the position I was interviewing for.  At MS it is common they interview you for multiple positions and they still wanted to interview me for some Direct X Development Test spots.

Although not what I wanted after a full day of interviewing I had convinced them that I would be a great Development tester.  Slightly upset that the position I wanted was not available I stopped on the way back to the airport and got my hair dyed blue.  At the time I did not understand the rest of the benefit’s of working at Microsoft so I did not consider the offer letter enough to move out of CA and start doing testing again.

If I had known then what I know now I would have dropped everything and gone to work with them in an instant.  This company literally has everything a computer geek could want.

1. You have access to more information than you could ever hope to learn.
   • ms library has access to every ebook and most tech and marketing books ever published.  You can check them out for 3 weeks and have 50 checked out at a time.
   • You have access to almost every consumer report and any marketing research ever done.
   • You have access to IEEE, AMC, and every knowledge database ever collected.
   • You have access to the people that originally wrote a lot of the the software you use.
   • They have more email lists, blogs, docs, meetings, round tables, video’s, industry committees and learning groups on any topic you could imagine.
2. You have access to 30,000 very smart engineers that are willing to help you learn anything you wish, it is like the biggest college on earth.
3. You have free or almost free access to all the software and hardware Microsoft produces.
4. You have one of the best medical plans ever heard of.
5. You have access to one of best fitness club in the world.
6. You have access to the best legal team that you can also use for personal counsel.
7. You have access to a billions of lines of source code from every project Microsoft has ever done.
8. The amount of resources you have for a project is unreal.  If it gets backing it is almost unstoppable force.

So one of the great thing about going through a full interview is then you are in the system and the recruiters never loose contact with you. Anytime a position comes up that fits your resume they contact you right away.  Finally they called me up with a job I could not refuse.

In 2 weeks I have had more hardware resources dropped on me than I have in my entire career.  Been exposed to 2 different engines and more source code than I have seen in my entire life ( which is hard given how much time I spend on source forge ).  Checked out 2 dozen books from the library, downloaded Rosetta Stone for Japanese and finally had access to all game sales numbers imaginable for the first time.

I have gone from spending most of my time to trying to get resources to now trying to prioritize what tech / resources I want to learn / utilize next.  From trying to figure out what the publisher really wants to picking projects and features our team will help out with next.  From trying to just get access to information to trying and scope what information is most important to me so I do not get overwhelmed.

During orientation they discussed how the industry average for getting ramped up to full productivity was 3-4 months and at Microsoft people said it was much closer to 9 months.  Originally I laughed, but now I understood why.  You will reach your standard productive rate within your normal time line but here that is just the beginning as the bar is much higher.

Was recently talking to a college grad working there and it became clear he was squandering the mass opportunities he had lucked into.  Not sure you can ever fully appreciate it with having suffered in the under funded and disorganized world of normal software development.  Only then can one understand what it means to have everything you need and you are the only limit in what you get done.

Someone recently asked me how I would make Red Dead Redemption a better game and take advantage of more online elements.  True the game could do more with some online elements that would make it a better, ie allow you to own farms, build a ranching empire and start land wars with your neighbors online ( complete with hangings ).

The more I thought about it though it becomes clear the best thing they could do is port it to the Wii.  Although the designers did an amazing job of mapping the complex controls needed to pull off all the different gameplay systems to the controller.  The result is still kind of clunky and often times frustrating.

Just think of it:

• how much faster and better dueling would have been with the Wii remote were you really have to pull it up and aim when they say draw.
• roping a horse would have been a lot more fun and less frustrating.
• they would not needed such a over whelming auto targeting system and shooting would be fun instead of just tapping the targeting trigger over and over again.
• they had to put in a slow mode system for shoot outs that would not have been needed if you could just aim.  Their systems works but looses some of its intensity since it is all happening in slow mode.
• hog tie up things could be an interactive event instead of just a cinematic.
• knife fights could be skill based instead of just button mashing.
• wiping your horse to run faster would be interactive instead of just button pressing against a meter.
• most of the mini games including tossing flaming bottles, horse shoes could be motion based.
• skinning animals could be way more detailed and a mini game

One could go on and on…

New things they could add with a Wii Remote:

• knife throwing
• hand to hand combat while riding horses to knock them off
• axe combat

Again one could go on and on…

It would be hard to reduce its graphics enough to get it running on the Wii but I think the gameplay would be even better if someone did.

At first everyone was talking about the art style, although I do like NPR in general I was just not a huge fan of borderlands look.  But the gameplay in the end was so good the art style really did not matter.  Which is the way it should be!

So many things to like:

• The mix of a skill tree that actually matters in a first person shooter.
• The quests were not too repetitive, more than just kill X and FedEx missions.
• The humor was actually funny.
• It supported a variety of play styles.
• Open world and lots to explore.

There really is something for everyone in the game which is typically a good recipe for high # of sales.

I only have a few issues that I really hope they fix for Borderlands 2.

• I do not want to be a Mule, but there is more loot than you can possibly carry back in a normal mission.  So I spending my time trying to figure out is something better than my current weapon and if not will it sell for more than anything else I am carrying or  should just drop.  Although it does extend the playthrough time it really is not fun by any means, in fact it quickly becomes a form of hell.
• On the topic of weapons, it is often hard to figure out what weapons is better.  The reload and fire rate stats do not translate into anything we wrap our heads around.  Only damage really makes any sense.  You eventually figure out reload is really important if you can not kill something in one clip so clip size is very important if you have big enemies.  Accuracy is extremely important if you have high rate of fire or you are wasting most of your clip.  I thought money would be a good indicator but quickly figured out it was not.
• If you spend to long in an area exploring then everything that you killed in there can suddenly re-spawn and mess you up really good.  It has now happened more than once while looking for hidden objectives and is a really bad way to die since you are usually looking up or down while it happens and do not get a running start.
• The little green diamonds are often not even close to the real position of the objective, can be really frustrating given the environment.
• The audio priority of the guys getting close to you is way to low.  I have had way to many of the psychotic flaming guys apparently run up behind me and if they are not screaming I have no footsteps or any indicator they are coming.
• The behavior of the enemies is to independent, some times you get some emergent situations but most of the time you get a bunch of boring patterns that gets repetitive quickly.

It will provide my RPG fix until Diablo III comes out.

At Secret Level I used to do a lot of hiring and I would often see resumes where some programmer worked at 1 or 2 companies for the first 8 -10 years and then for the next 5 years or so they jumped jobs every 6 – 12 months.  My first thought was these guys had cracked under the pressure or had in some way become flawed.  Why would they not want to finish out these games and put some more completed titles on their resume.

Having just passed the 10 year mark in the industry myself I now realize I had drawn the wrong conclusion about these guys.  While your learning about the industry you care less about Quality vs Quantity.  But once you have a good handle on things you become very impatient with people and companies not going down the right path to AAA games.

A little quick math, if you finished out every game you start you have about ( 30 years left in career / 3 year dev cycles ) 10 chances to be involved in that hit game .   Since only about 10-15% of the games even make their money back and < 5% are run away hits you only have a 50% chance to ever work on a hit game.  That is not really great odds when you think about it.

But if you drop the requirement for finishing games and leave as soon as you determine the company is both not on the right path and will not listen to the voice of reason to correct itself ( 6 months – 1 year ) then you have at least 30 – 60 chances ( 150 -300% ) to be involved in a hit game.  That takes your career from 50% chance of being meaningless to almost guaranteed success at some point.

But there is a little game theory in it, how many times can you try out a few companies before your resume becomes a liability.  Given that leads have to worry about people leaving at critical times right before shipping and major milestones the number is pretty low.  If I saw a run of 3-4 companies and no explanation ( ie they all went under ) I would only hire them as last resorts.

So in reality the optimal strategy is ( 30 years / ( 7 ( 3 year + 4 * 1 year )  )  = 22 with a 110% chance of shipping a hit and your resume never becomes a complete liability.   This should be the path for the gamblers out there that want to help small companies succeed and risk it all for the chance at big buyout money or crazy royalties.

Point is these guys with somewhat jumpy histories are not necessarily flawed programmers, they are often the really good programmers that are tired of wasting their time at bad companies and are going to jump until they find the right chance for success.

This confirms a lot of things I have suspected about motivation , every programming lead really needs to see this TED Talk