I'm gonna take a huge risk of a: being flamed and b: accidentally offending someone here - and add some small 2 cents to this.
I was there for part of this. I wasn't one of the original ES guys - I came late to the game. I came at the end of Age 3, and worked on a couple of prototype projects. I was part of the mission to take ES into new territory.
My opinion - both of these guys are smart, talented and correct.
It might be hard to imagine that's possible. Here's my explanation. Mr. Fischer and Mr. Bettner have completely different working styles, and roles. They worked with radically different people. Ian's a designer and Paul a programmer. ES had some of the smartest designers I've worked with. They were gamers to the core. They played harder than anyone. They played games that would make your eyes bleed - so you wouldn't have too! So they could take any grain of good gameplay and use it. BUT. to be honest, these guys didn't know from crunch.
I've worked at some companies that were EPIC crunchers. I was actually a terrible manager back in those days, and was responsible for a lot of it. (Sorry everyone - I did my best! I've grown as a person! ) ES's idea of crunch wasn't particularly troublesome. It was well managed, and had plenty of perks. Food. Games. Parties. We actually called it Party Crunch.
To tell the truth, when 'crunch' was called I actually had LESS hours than on my normal day - with all the damn breaks for eating and game playing! Also got fat.
I recall having arguments with managers about me wanting to call a crunch and my bosses telling me to get it done without hurting the team. So that part, imo is true.
ON THE OTHER HAND. Programmers at ES were some of the best I've also worked with. They were hard core engineers. People that made stuff that actually worked, this wasn't empty promises and flaky tools. I've worked with some flaky tools - and I have to say ES could actually make code that performed. I saw programmers at work at 3 am, I saw programmers take work home on weekends, I saw guys who lived and breathed work without a care for family, friends or anything other than WoW.
So, that's my ridiculously long winded way of saying - inside that company, BOTH cultures existed. We had the freedom to work in whatever way we wanted. If you were a stress monkey - you were allowed to wallow in it. So hey guys - let's not argue about it! Remember the good times! Peace out.
Funny - I'm old school - PvE means solo to me - E being Environment, vs Raiding, which means instances, and thus groups...but I bet a 5 man group that learned to work around crowd control as a strategy would be awesome :)
Ex-Ensemble Studios lead designer responds to Bettner rant (update)
Mar 19th 2010 8:48PM (Joystiq)I was there for part of this. I wasn't one of the original ES guys - I came late to the game. I came at the end of Age 3, and worked on a couple of prototype projects. I was part of the mission to take ES into new territory.
My opinion - both of these guys are smart, talented and correct.
It might be hard to imagine that's possible. Here's my explanation. Mr. Fischer and Mr. Bettner have completely different working styles, and roles. They worked with radically different people. Ian's a designer and Paul a programmer. ES had some of the smartest designers I've worked with. They were gamers to the core. They played harder than anyone. They played games that would make your eyes bleed - so you wouldn't have too! So they could take any grain of good gameplay and use it. BUT. to be honest, these guys didn't know from crunch.
I've worked at some companies that were EPIC crunchers. I was actually a terrible manager back in those days, and was responsible for a lot of it. (Sorry everyone - I did my best! I've grown as a person! ) ES's idea of crunch wasn't particularly troublesome. It was well managed, and had plenty of perks. Food. Games. Parties. We actually called it Party Crunch.
To tell the truth, when 'crunch' was called I actually had LESS hours than on my normal day - with all the damn breaks for eating and game playing! Also got fat.
I recall having arguments with managers about me wanting to call a crunch and my bosses telling me to get it done without hurting the team. So that part, imo is true.
ON THE OTHER HAND. Programmers at ES were some of the best I've also worked with. They were hard core engineers. People that made stuff that actually worked, this wasn't empty promises and flaky tools. I've worked with some flaky tools - and I have to say ES could actually make code that performed. I saw programmers at work at 3 am, I saw programmers take work home on weekends, I saw guys who lived and breathed work without a care for family, friends or anything other than WoW.
So, that's my ridiculously long winded way of saying - inside that company, BOTH cultures existed. We had the freedom to work in whatever way we wanted. If you were a stress monkey - you were allowed to wallow in it. So hey guys - let's not argue about it! Remember the good times! Peace out.
Arcane Brilliance: WoW patch 3.3 primer for mages
Dec 7th 2009 8:13PM (WoW)Arcane Brilliance: WoW patch 3.3 primer for mages
Dec 7th 2009 3:13PM (WoW)