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Notch talks about teams
I thought this post by Notch, the creator of Minecraft, was intereseting and might explain one of the many reasons why new big MMOs lack personality, innovation, originality, or however we can name "it":
Top ten movies of 2011!
No, just kidding. Instead, I will ramble about working in teams.
Some people have asked me why we don’t hire a lot more programmers to work on Minecraft. The answer is that I think that would be an incredibly bad thing to do.. or at least that it WOULD have been an incredibly bad thing to do. One reason why Minecraft has managed to get as much personality as it does it that it’s only been a couple of fairly nerdy game developers working on it.
At first, it was just me, and the game really represented what I thought was fun. Later on, Jens joined in and added his own personality to the game in a way that fit really well with what I had done. Naturally, we took in a lot of external input (especially from players, thank you all so much!), but the end result was still filtered through us, making sure it was personal.
I guess in some sense, this is a big reason of why I like “indie games”. Or games made by small teams, rather. I’m growing more wary of using the term “indie games”, as there are too many definitions of what that means… to me it means a game made for the sake of exploring some game idea, made by a small team that wants to express themselves.. But I digress..
On one hand, I could see how Minecraft has at this point grown to a level where it could use some extra hands to work on it. There’s a lot of infrastructure that needs to be done, and a lot of the tone for the game is already set. On the other, I worry that having too many developers on it could water it down. On the third, it could also mean less “quirks” (bugs).. on the fourth, some of these quirks are what give the game a personality. Score: &e0. And so on.
I could argue back and forth forever, but what I really want to do as a developer, is to work on games in tiny, tiny teams. It means less compromise when it comes to design. It means more freedom when it comes to implementation.
At the moment, I am working on a bigger version of my Ludum Dare 22 entry, because I really liked working in that code base. In the relatively near future, I expect to start work on a new, bigger game. I will be the only programmer on that game until the game mechanics are fleshed out and the tone is set. I do feel an enormous pressure to live up to the Minecraft legacy, but I will try not to let that hold me back. I will keep focusing on just making games I want to play.
Happy new year, Internet!
Comments
You misspelled Notch twice.
It's all about the guys in charge. If the vision of the game is simple and linear, then the game will be simple and linear.
SWTOR is the prime example. I'll reference their PvP content:
BioWare understands the need for PvP. It's an increasingly growing crowd. However, their simple and linear mindset has settled on 3 small instances: Void Star, Huttball, and Tattooine. After that, it's Ilum, which is ultimately a Warzone without even teams. This was the simple vision of BioWare. It doesn't matter how many people code it. They do what they are told. If BioWare wanted an extremely deep PvP system that included the entire galaxy, they could've done so.
I blame the leaders in charge.
Yea, I don't think Notch understands that teams typically have leaders.
In his small mind, he thinks a large team would have 100's of personalities clashing in the game.
Fortunately, he is totally unaware of the role of leadership in a team.
You don't pay people to fulfill their own dreams. You pay them to fulfill yours.
Notch is also completely ignoring the REAL reason you dont hire massive amounts of programmers. Programming isn't something you can simply share easily. Not only would it take new programmers quite awhile to get used to how the code works, but each one writes uniquely and would typically have to read and understand other's code. Each time this is required, it slows down everyone involved.
From my understanding, although this is debated among programmers (or people who claim to be, online) you simply cannot say "Lets get 100 programmers to work on the same thing." It's more along the lines of programmers each taking an individual task, typically ones which link together with their other tasks. For example, saying "You handle getting the graphics working and performance increases, and I'll work on the implementation of the UI and server, while Johnny McFly works on the A.I. and combat."
Instead of "All 100 of you, help me code this 1 page of A.I.!"
IMO, Notch is nothing special. He worked on Wurm Online, a totally fail game, and only succeded in Minecraft due to hype and popularity (marketing) and the fact he took Wurm Online, a great idea, and copied it but solved the fail part. You know, the fail part that makes Wurm Online insanely boring and one of the dumbest games ever made. So he is more along the lines of a "Not Idiot" who got lucky. I wouldn't listen to any of his advice, to be honest. All future releases (Such as Minecraft2, or anything else) will be lackluster at best.
Yeah "team" definitely doesn't mean putting every decision to a vote. Especially if "infrastructure work" is what needs to be done, adding programmers isn't magically going to cause the game's creative direction to spin out of control.
"We were going to add pirates and sea battles, but then our infrastructure coder said he didn't like those things, so we scrapped that idea" <-- This never happens
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
There are PLENTY of software projects with large teams of programmers. There are software development processes that can help manage that. In fact, take ANY AAA game and read the list of programmers .. it is usually a long list.
MOST modern software can be designed in a modular fashion and farmed it out to many programmers to code. For example, the graphics rendering engine, and the physical interaction engine, can be coded by different people. You do need a good consistent archectiture and API so that the pieces are talking to each other correctly.
Its an issue with any team project. The more people involved with the ability to bring in input, the more issues will come up and more compromise. A good example is a project I worked on my own for a little flash game way back when. It was a simple concept that I was really into without any need to compromise. Soon enough I needed someone to provide me with art. My friend was more then willing to join but thats when it opened up having talks and making up details that flowed for us both and we found a happy median. Sure, it worked smoothly for us but there were bumps. The more involved the more bumps there will be and different ways of handling things will be discovered.
The next project that we worked on together ended up being a larger group project. While we did keep focus on ourselves and doing what we saw to accomplish, it brought in far more voice in terms of other group members contributing what they felt was right or giving their own take on things mixed in. A few scuffles were pushed in and there was difficulty among group members. Things became more complex while the process was able to be expanded out on a larger scope. Having more people is good for accomplishing more but there is always a down side in different methods and views people have.
Funny thing about peons is that they still have opinions. No matter how much you try to treat them as mindless cogs in the machine, they end up voicing their input at department meetings. It does change the culture.
Livin' the dream. Sooo jealous!!
That's why people listen to him and not you.
Programation is a lot more complex than writing 2+2=4 ... Certain personality will tend to be cyclick , other will try and permeate as much routine in a single line and other will nerdrage on their code note ... Point being everyone works differently and when you are 5+ people working on a single piece of software it can become extremely haywire ...
It is also true for everything else , sometime you will wonder why such and such zone are so beautifull and then you'll go to that other place and feel like there's no magic .... Well you guessed it is because that certain artist is not to your liking.Not to say that it's impossible to have a general direction in a game but usually the more people work on a project the bigger the time needed to "normalize" the work it takes for the leader.
I'm quite certain the person who created the swtor zone "taris" was not the lead engineer for anything meaningfull ... as fas as i could guess i would say it has been created by the ship designer because other than the destroyed ship the whole zone concept is pretty crap... and it shows in the game because noone i know ever liked that place and is probably an aftertough not very well situated in the middle of a games life.
you may not agree with what he says but he is quite right and you could even argue that when the lead developper is not feeling at his optimal he will take the team down with him no matter how strong his team is... good example of this could be tabula rasa and also daikatana .
Actually, from what I gather here, the only people who listen to "him and not you" are people who DON'T program or have any knowledge of programming.
Half of the people in this thread think notch is a moron when he says adding programmers will ruin things for creative reasons.
I also beg to differ on the "many programmers" post, stating that "large software has a buttload of programmers, just look at the credits!"
It's quite different when you're working on something large like the new Autodesk software. There ARE a lot of programmers there. Yet when you look at other projects, such as video games, the programmers are few and far between. Often you will actually find only one or two programmers in a project with tons of artists.
Unless you've actually programmed or know someone who programs, I'd be seriously inclined to ask some of you to rethink the simple fact that the more programmers you add to a single project, the more complex the code gets when flip flopping around other people's code mingling together different things. A simple leadership position doesn't magically tie everything together, as that's not how programming works.
And to quote Axehilt,
^That is so true. He said it perfectly.
Most programming is simple and ease, but a lengthy and time consuming process that can only be performed by one person at a time, per snippet. You can have multiple programmers working on different things, but the more you have the messier it gets, and the less each person's efficiency is to the programming as a whole. You could say this about any project, but coding is quite complex in its simplicity.
You will often find scores of artistsas opposed to programmers, in video games. Something like the next Autodesk or Adobe software doesn't require these artists, and is a bit different in terms of the various "snippets" required. For Photoshop alone, you could have programmers making single utilities or tools for that one program, because each tool is unique and separated from the program. Coding a game is often the same reptitive task over and over. Add this here, fix that there, work on this zone now, this one next.
I think as a generalization, he's right. It doesn't work for every case though. The Mass Effect series is just incredible in terms of personality and it's not something made by a small team. Same thing with the Shenmue series which was so overbudgeted that every Dreamcast owner around the world had to buy 2 copies for Sega to break even on expenses. A lot of what we consider to be bonafide classics in gaming were done by small teams though. Doom was God's gift to shooters, Super Mario Bros was God's gift to side-scrolling platformers, Megaman and Contra were God's gift to side-scrolling shooters, Counter-Strike was God's gift to tactical first-person shooters(it was originally a mod for Half-Life done by 2 guys), and the list goes on and on.
Who's going to sit back and call Call of Duty 4 a bonafide classic? A lot of those kinds of games with huge teams and a lot of money behind them are good for the immediate experience but I don't think many of them leave a lasting impression on people. Then again that's not really fair to say because I grew up with the above games, I'm not young enough to have grown up with CoD4 and a lot of these newer games.
I wouldn't call indie games the holy grail though. There are some shining examples here and there(most recently in terms of a retail release Dear Esther but you could name a lot from the indie scene), but sometimes they can be incredibly unoriginal. How many dual-thumbstick space shooters do we need for instance?
Now Playing: Mission Against Terror, Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Dark Souls, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the piano. =3
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I don't believe this is true, and that most likely this is a false rumor, similar to those people who come up with ridiculous myths about server costs and MMORPG's going in the red/black.
No company would allow the cost of something they are making for a profit, to exceed the possibility of sales. If literally EVERY owner of a dreamcast bought a copy, and they'd still be 50% at a loss, they would never allow this to happen.
It just doesn't make sense, and thus is most likely a complete myth and rumor.
Like those people who say console developers lose money on every unit they sell...they simply don't understand how things work...and believe this myth because they're naive and...well.....stupid. No company creates a product they lose money on. I guarantee it is cheaper to make a PS3 or Xbox360 than it is to sell it. They wouldn't sell something if they didn't profit off of the unit itself. This is probably one of the biggest myths, based on people being incapable of calculating cost of unit vs price of unit and the exclusion or inclusion of research/invention. It's all a bunch of hoo-haaw, just like what you just said.
If you think I'm wrong, please provide factual evidence proving that people lose money on what they sell, after extensive planning and decades of experience in business.
Am not sure if trolling.
Please google "loss leader".
*writes a really long reply, then realizes it might be a troll, and deletes it*
Taru-Gallante-Blood elf-Elysean-Kelari-Crime Fighting-Imperial Agent
If this IS true, then LMAO @ them. No wonder dreamcast & sega failed :P
I am still checking into the Shenmue myth, but the other things I mentioned i was talking about ARE a confirmed myth and the people who believe it are still ignorant and naive as all get out :P
I apologize if the Shenmue is true; You have to forgive my skepticism as so many people on the interwebs believe some of the dumbest things ever.
Like when HD-DVD / Blu Ray were at war and had just released, and every college freshman was devoutly promising that porn will decide HD-DVD to be the winner...roflmao...
Too funny! This thread made me go into 2007-2008 posts about the war and the morons who thought porn made a difference just because of a VHS / Betamax MYTH, lmao.
You realize that this is against the ToS here at MMORPG.com and if you believe someone is trolling then to use the 'report' button. Fortunately, I both believe YOU are trolling, baiting, or flaming but will not do anything about it.
If you really want to believe in the internet myths and rumors that are void of common sense and reality, then please by all means go ahead. After all, HD-DVD won the war thx to porn right? Yep.
I see this thread has took a turn down as the myth busters (er...myth believers?) have joined this thread to troll others by calling them a troll for stating how naive and ignorant some people are to believe myths such as console manufacture costs > console sale cost...lmao...
k thx bai.
You might want to google "Shemue wikiapedia".
This information, as always when related to an obvious myth, is misrepresented and skewed.
According to IGN, the game, which cost an unprecedented $70 million to make,[37] would have had to be purchased twice by every single Dreamcast owner in order for Sega to turn a profit.
The $70 million investment presumably included the budget for the resources for additional sequels.
Hint: sequelS, meaning MULTIPLE sequels.
IGN just hyped to help misinform and spread this myth, by exagerating the cost / sales requirement of a single title for the budget of 3+ titles.
Meaning... it is like saying the following...
"For the company to break even making Final Fantasy 3, FF4, and FF5, they would have to sell 2 copies of Final Fantasy 3 to every console owner."
Obviously, it is a complete myth that Shenmue cost more than it could have POSSIBLY SOLD.
The possibility of sales is 3+ games, to x1 dreamcast owners.
Dreamcast owners x 3+ > Dreamcast Owners x 2
OH WAIT...what is this? Further evidence of the myth?
At the Game Developer's Conference in 2011 Yu Suzuki stated that the $70 million cost for the development of Shenmue was actually an embellishment and that it only cost $47 million to develop and market.[40]
Please try googling "Shenmue wikipedia" before you EVER try believing in another one of these exagerated myths ever again. Please...for your own sake.
I actually provided evidence to support the FACT this is a myth, and Shenmue didn't cost so much it required Dreamcast Owners x2. A large portion of the second game was already made, and the ACTUAL dev cost wasnt as high. This means that the first two games would be entirely profitable for the dreamcast.
Aren't those facts and evidence so much better than believing a blind myth that is extremely OBVIOUSLY a lie?
Yea Notch is one of the great voices of gaming for this generation, I think most of his ideas are superb. Although while I agree with his idea on large teams I think the reasoning again is wrong. Large teams CAN work, but they have to be left to their own devices. Typically programmers are introverts and introverts do their work better alone, not only that but they come up with brilliant and amazing ideas on their own, they work poorly in large groups.
Here is an article on this... part of the reason is my company is looking to move towards one of these "team-think" oriented designs for software engineering, and I think it wrecks the entire process of thinking engineers have developed over the years:
link
"They essentially want to say 'Correlation proves Causation' when it's just not true." - Sovrath
I hate to digress from the topic but first of all, the original Shenmue was the only one in the series to have a proper release world wide. The second game in the series never made to the US in its Dreamcast form, it was only released in Japan and Europe for the Dreamcast(and I'm the proud owner of an EU import of Shenmue 2 when it was brand new at the time and it cost me a ton).
Shenmue 2 hit the US on the Xbox(own that too thank you very much) with zero advertising and no carry-over feature that allows you to carry your items/moves from the first game to the second(because of the difference in hardware obviously). People who enjoyed the first game in the US either had to buy an Xbox to play the sequel or go without(or import), and I don't think the Xbox was a sure-fire system at the time... it was Microsoft's first system competing against the gargantuan PS2 that came off of the massive success of the PS1. For new people, who wants to start with a sequel in a game that's all about the story? Yeah it included a DVD with cut-scenes from the first game but honestly, who wants that? It's a nice extra, better than nothing, but I don't think many people picked up 2 without playing 1 and popped the DVD in first before playing the game. And of course anything after 2 that they spent money on is a waste because a third game was never released.
I don't get the Final Fantasy analogy because first of all, the US knows 1, 2, 3, and 7 onward. You outline 3, 4 and 5... 3 was Japan only, 4 is what we know as 2 and 5 was Japan only as well(excluding remakes/ports done long after their release). If US 2 had a full worldwide release on the SNES, US 3 had half a release world wide on the SNES with the US counter-part only making it here via the 64/PS1 and 7 never being released at all, it would make more sense. Plus Final Fantasy games are singular experiences per game, they don't tie into each other. You can start from anywhere in the series.
Now obviously I haven't been keeping up with Shenmue news, it's an ancient game by today's standards and until an announcement that they're working on a third game is made, anything Sega puts out regarding Shenmue is probably going to get buried under other industry news. The 2011 article is good for information's sake. Even still, 47 mil is not even half of 70. You can't guarantee that every single person that owns a Dreamcast is going to buy at least one of the two games(just to break even). While it's not as ridiculous as the idea of everyone buying two copies, everyone buying one copy is still an enormous stretch. CoD, Halo, Uncharted, all those heavies that everyone seems to like don't even make those numbers, and those are games that are by-the-numbers in terms of design while Shenmue was... well I don't want to say experimental, but it was far from the norm. It was one of those games that fits right into niche status. An overbudgeted niche-style game is just dumb business sense. I love Yu and thank him for the effort but I can't believe that they thought they were going to recoup the costs and make money on it. It could've worked if it was multi-platform but Sega wasn't doing multi-platform at the time.
It was an overbudgeted series any way you look at it.
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