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| Seriously, the fact that they had to stay late kills me by Ice Cream Jonsey 12/18/2007, 9:45pm PST | ||||
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| There is a book called something like "Death March" in the field of software engineering, that speaks to those projects that are on a never-ending highway to failure. Duke Nukem 4 is clearly a death march. This iteration of DN4 may be on-target and well-managed, but let's be honest. What are the odds of that? When I say that Duke Nukem Forever is a death march, I'm speaking of the entire project in development since 1996.
3D Realms doesn't quite fit the profile of a company in "Death March," because they have the resources to stop all the horseshit and restart. They can/could put the people they have on an 18 month cycle followed by six months of testing, a month of crunch and a delivery. Any competent manager would have done this by, hooooah, 2001, but while Broussard may be a nice guy, he is clearly the worst software project manager in the whole of recorded human history. When it comes to his announcement, I admit that there is a chance that Broussard is simply recognizing the hard work of his current team. Those developers and artists would not care that a bunch of snarky assholes posting in purple are hissing; they would instead appreciate the recognition that their boss gave them. I think that this can only help the current team. It is obvious that Broussard is not a yeller or a screamer, because a volatile manager in a software project going on its 12th year would have seen his own heart explode. So while it is possible that he is attempting to build up the confidence of his team, it's also possible that his post on Shacknews was the first clue any of the current developers had that Broussard was still employed by 3D Realms, that he was their boss, and that - to some of the new hires - that he even truly existed, and was not simply some virtual corporate legend or mascot. The entire thing is fascinating to me, because the lack of production is so foreign to all of the places I've worked. (And I'm not trying to come off as someone who has worked for a bunch of "Fortune Five" companies, I've been in good and bad places like anyone else.) The 3D Realms fiasco really gives strength to the argument that the gaming press is a bunch of spoiled little shits and the farthest thing from journalists, in so much as they have all had twelve man years eachto try to detail what the hell has gone on with the game, but no real news, or even gossip about the debacle, ever seems to escape. I don't think there is a Pulitzer Prize here, but the problems of Duke Nukem 4 transcend entertainment software and should become a key, documented disaster within the greater field of software engineering. the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey! |
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