SOE Boss: Non-Gamers "Have No Business In This Business"

[nathan-dts]

Agreed. Only a gamer knows what a gamer wants, and why.

 

[Irridium]

Hell, I'd settle for them just being forced to use their services.

If John Riccitiello was made to use Origin, methinks we'd see some drastic improvements happen real fast.

Same with Yves Guillemot and Uplay.

Of course, that depends on them being gamers. I think more gamers at the top would be a good thing. But if all the people at the top were gamers? Yeah... I don't know. It's important to have people who can snap you back at reality. It's also good to have people who play games and actually know about games be able to point and say "this will work, this won't. I know because I play it." Perhaps then we'd have less throwing huge piles of money into projects where it's obvious it'll never make a good amount of money. Why, hello EA and your $200 million or so you threw into The Old Republic. And dumping so much money into Dead Space 3 that it needs to sell 5 million even though the games before it haven't sold that much combined.

So yeah, a mix of gamers and non-gamers at the top would be good.

 

[gigastar]

While I'm sure he has good intentions with that statement, I don't quite agree with him. To compare to something like writing literature, it is often encouraged that you read outside the genre you are writing in. So if you write fantasy, look at some technical books, or some biographies, anything to extend your areas of understanding.

pretty bad comparison.

Elaborate would you please?

You say writers should be reading outside the genre that they write for.

Smedley says that non-gamers shouldnt be making games.

Not exactly the same thing if you ask me.

 

[kortin]

My love for Smedley grows by the day. This guy is just pure awesome incarnate.

 

[mysecondlife]

You don't need to be a gamer to make music for games. You don't need to be a gamer to write for a game. YOu don't need to be a gamer to voice-act for a game. And you don't need to be a gamer to sit in the management of a game related company. You need a MANAGER.

No. But I imagine it helps immensely if you know about what you're contributing to create.

 

[JediMB]

You don't have to play videogames to compose videogame music.

Or to design videogame visuals.

Or to write videogame stories.

It helps to have knowledge on how the medium works, but actually playing the games as a hobby isn't necessary.

 

[Yal]

Very few software companies are staffed by people who use the software themselves. Take the company I work for as an example. We make logistics software for labor management, transportation management, warehouse management, etc. for big retailers, grocers and other operations. We are not consumer-based, nor does our company use any of those products itself, yet we have a lot of happy customers out there. We have partners, consultants, etc. to share insight of those who have used the products first hand, but the people at the top have no need to ever use it themselves.

It sounds like you're in a sector where you can't eat your own dog food, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't benefit from it if it were feasible. I work at a cloud software company, and find the internal deployment to be very helpful. Our own people are far more invested in the product than any external partner, and as a developer I have better access if something goes wrong.

On the other hand, when someone sufficiently high up the food chain hits a bug they don't like, god help you...

Plus at Semdley's level you're the public face of the organization, which is its own sort of marketing job. The more familiar you are with your own products, the better.

 

[Little Gray]

I think you are right.

At the very least have someone dispassionate about the medium with Veto power there. Someone with the ability to pull those with an artist mindset back to reality.

Exactly! In other words somebody who isnt a complete idiot and knows something about how a business works. Sadly that criteria there pretty much eliminates 99.99% of developers out there and 100% of the ones smack talking big company execs.

 

[Fappy]

-Snip-

I totally see where you are coming from. In a nutshell I was basically saying that you should have people familiar with the product (as producer and consumer) in every level of your business if it's feasible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the top dog needs to be one of them.

 

[daibakuha]

While I'm sure he has good intentions with that statement, I don't quite agree with him. To compare to something like writing literature, it is often encouraged that you read outside the genre you are writing in. So if you write fantasy, look at some technical books, or some biographies, anything to extend your areas of understanding.

I know several prominent authors of genre fiction that would disagree with that, including authors like Orson Scott Card. If you don't have extensive knowledge of the genre you are writing in, you will have no idea what your audience expects of you.

 

[bimon_1234567]

I don't think I can agree completely with Mr. Smedley, but I can say this: if you work in an entertainment (or other leisure) field that you don't find entertaining, other people's enjoyment of that entertainment could come across as irrational; we tend to hold irrational things (and people, sadly) in contempt. I don't think it's wise to be in a business where you have contempt--even benign contempt, like "oh isn't it cute how they love their FarmTowns and their Call of Honors?"--for your customers.

This pretty much sums up the reason why I think that John Smedley has a point.

 

[mysecondlife]

You don't need to be a gamer to make music for games. You don't need to be a gamer to write for a game. YOu don't need to be a gamer to voice-act for a game. And you don't need to be a gamer to sit in the management of a game related company. You need a MANAGER.

No. But I imagine it helps immensely if you know about what you're contributing to create.

Obviously. But, like with cars, you don't need to know how to drive one to be able to fix one. You've seen people drive, you've probably been a passenger at one point or people can tell you how it's supposed to feel like and how it feels like now.

Oh boy, car analogy..

I agree, you don't need to play video games to contribute into the product. But the product would probably be crap. It could have been so because musician couldn't make music that complements the game, voice actors who found games unfamiliar experience, or managers who has little idea on what goes in making the product or etc.

Sure you can make crap and call it video game, but people who don't play video game are better off using their talent on whatever they find more familiar.

I kind of understand where SOE boss is coming from considering his position. Investing in team of developers with no knowledge in videogames are significantly a higher risk.

 

[Doom972]

I agree. It's good to have as many gamers as possible involved in the process of game making. Most importantly is that the top person in charge be a gamer.

You don't have to play videogames to compose videogame music.

Or to design videogame visuals.

Or to write videogame stories.

It helps to have knowledge on how the medium works, but actually playing the games as a hobby isn't necessary.

Did one of the following ever happened to you when playing a game:

The music made it hard to hear an important dramatic dialogue or couldn't be appreciated over the sound of gunfire?

You couldn't differentiate between friend and foe, or between different enemy types from a medium distance?

The game constantly kept relying on cutscenes to tell you the story?

If the people doing the jobs you mentioned would've played a few games, they might've taken these things into consideration.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Comments like that piss me off because they come across as very smug, elitist and assholish.

 

[Woodsey]

I agree, to an extent. It's certainly not healthy to have the types of CEO that bounce around from any and every industry.

But does a sound guy need to be a gamer to do his job? Does a writer? It'd certainly help, I guess. Especially for the latter, actually. But it really applies most thoroughly to the corporate side, I think.

Pretty sure I saw an interview with Riccitiello during one of the last two E3s where he was talking about playing through Mass Effect 1 & 2.

Well, he is the head of EA. It's no surprise that he says he's played them.

 

[Two-A]

You don't need to be a gamer to make music for games. You don't need to be a gamer to write for a game. YOu don't need to be a gamer to voice-act for a game. And you don't need to be a gamer to sit in the management of a game related company. You need a MANAGER.

Actually, it would be a pretty good idea to know what a game feels like when you're doing something that will directly affect the final product (especially if you're writing . I'm tired of seeing stories that feel tacked on between gameplay sessions.

 

[Signa]

This reminds me of Pixar. You know, the guys who made Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Cars, etc.

Basically, at Pixar, they use computers a lot. Obviously. So far you're all with me. But then comes the question, who should they hire? Tech-savy guys who know all about how to use the computers and the programs required to actually make the movies they do? NOPE! You hire ARTISTS that have no fucking clue what they're doing the first time they sit down at their desk, but then you TEACH THEM. Why do you do this? It's because it's insanely more easy to teach an artist to handle a program than it is to teach a computer nerd to be an artist.

I think the same applies in this case. A gamer could easily learn to be a good manager, but a manager is gonna have a tough time understanding the gamer if he's not a gamer himself.

That was perfectly stated. I agree with this Sony guy (for once). There aren't enough gamers in the industry right now, just business men. I have nothing against Bobby Kotick as a businessmen, but I fucking hate him as a gamer. The only thing he's learned over the years about gamers and gaming is to shut the fuck up so that people hate him less.