How do you know when it’s time to let go of a contractor?

Its a really hard thing to sort out, I suspect even for the experienced producers.  You have somebody under contract to complete a piece of work, usually that is clearly laid out with milestones and checkpoints.  How many milestones should they miss before you regard them as a liability rather than an asset?  Bringing new people up to speed takes time, and often takes you back to ground zero, as new programmers often are more comfortable rewriting the code to suit their style and artists all have a different method of creating that gives them an end result they can work with quickly and efficiently.

This is one of the places where having a weekly staff meeting can be a bonus, even if you are working with contractor.  It’s one of my weakest points, I admit.  I hate “bugging” professionals, even if I’m paying them, but my recent experience has shown me that there’s a certain amount of nagging necessary, even expected if the jobs going to get done at all, let alone done on time.

After working through this particular project, though, I have had to make a number of changes to the way I do business.  Some of them, in my POV, are unfortunate ones.  Paying on completion of a contract is standard business.  I’d rather be able tot help my creatives out, pay as you go, but thus far I’ve been burned by this at least twice during the course of this game, in both cases the contractor in question ditching halfway through, leaving me with half the budget and only a portion of the work done.  Now, you may say, “Hey, half the work is done, you have half the money, so what’s the problem?”

The problem here is ramp-up time.  It takes time (paid time) to get someone new up to speed.  This is particularly true with programmers, but is also true with the creatives as well.  so in reality, what I have is half the work left, half the budget, but an additional 25% of rampup work required.  The numbers go bad and, worst of all, the timing goes bad.  Milestones go by the wayside, funds get taken off the books, from a biz standpoint it’s a nightmare.

So what I’m left with, at this moment, is a set of “arbitrary rules” to work with.  How long do I allow a contractor to go MIA before cutting them off and finding a new one, how draconic do I make my contracts, when do they get paid, all of these things are harsher than I want them to be.  After spending 10 years as a contractor, cribbing about contract terms myself, I am now seeing the *reasons* for these rules.  There are good contractors out there, I know there are, but the bad ones make these rules and cutoff points necessary just for the sake of preserving the project.

The fact that I am traveling on business is, into and of itself, somewhat unusual, I usually try to restrict my travel to places where I already have a couch to crash on because all of this is out of pocket for me.  I don’t work on high budget products, I don’t work for a big name publisher who is willing to send me out on these little jaunts and foot the bill.  When I do work for a “Big Name” its on a freelance basis these days, which means I have to use the tradesman’s entrance, and my name never appears int he credit.  I am half past indie both in development and mindset at the point, which puts me in the budget hotel and hoofing it categories.

Still this is an exciting trip for me.  I’ve not had the chance to be a panelist or a guest speaker prior to this, sure, I’ve applied to be on one occasion or mother, but my subject matter is a little bit quirky and a little too directed and he introductory crowd.  I’m in this from the artistic side of development and, as such, this means I don’t have a new and nifty way to handle shadows in a mobile environment or a great new powerful graphics engine I developed in my basement.  I have a host of useful information for the artist, how to shave an extra 5kb off your title image, different programs you can use to kill your image down to 64 colors without losing too much in the way of image quality.  I have solutions for design issues and a boost of from the tranches commentary on the process of development but not so much of the newer better faster hard core programming that is such a valuable commodity in this industry.

Stay with me, the backstory makes sense eventually.

My youngest son, known to teh Interwebs as Thing03, just touched 4 1/2 and has spent his time recently trying to finish Lego Star Wars #1.    So I know he groks the gaming environment and the kind of puzzle solving process commonly used in games.

Nevertheless, I was surprised when he picked up the controller for Force Unleashed and polished off the first mission like he’d been working on it for weeks.

YES!  My child is a game playing GENIUS!  Somebody call MENSA!

Then he turns to me and says “Mom this is just like Lego: StarWars”

Good Lord, he was right.
Don’t get me wrong, overall, Force Unleashed is a much more complex game, you have the ability to modify your characters, you have the ability to add bonuses or change gear to give you an advantage in different types of terrain or for different mission set, and, of course, Force Unleashed has a custom storyline (and some kissing) but the basic game play elements are remarkably similar.

Both games have the standard 3rd person action game camera and movement sets (walk, ,jump, attack, use (the Force).  Both games are action puzzlers, granted Lego StarWars is a side-scroller and Force Unleashed is in the round, but getting through any level requires you to attack enemies, solve physical puzzles in both the platformer-y sense of “how do I get way way up there” as well as the, “what do i need to open this door” sense.

The levels are short, clearly defined, and even the boss battles follow the same paradigm of “you have to kill this thing more than once to beat it”.  In fact the games are so similar in logic that a 4 year old is able to parse the similarities and use them to his advantage to kick the a** (for at least one level anyway) of s game he’s never seen before.

God help his P.E. Teacher :)

As a form it just vexes me, true

My rapier wit

Sees a Miss and a Hit

But a Limerick’s the best I can do.

Which brings me to the subject of towels.

Like any platinum level card-carrying geek, the first thing that pops into my head when staring at the pile of unwashed beach towels is, “always remember where your towel is”.  The second thing that pops into my head is “wait, they had the wrong towels in the movie”.  Referring of course to the recent 2005 Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (as opposed to the metric oodle of other variations on the IP).

See, growing up near the ocean, we have these amazing beach towels.  Beach towels so large and luxurious you could potentially have sex on them, on the beach, and still not get sand in the works (so to speak).  So when the term “towel” shows up anywhere, this is the first type of towel that comes to mind.  This is, in fact, the *perfect* kind of towel for travel, big enough to serve as a blanket if you end up sleeping in the back of a lorry, thick enough to dry off three kids, a spouse and the family dog if you get stuck in the rain, tough enough to allow you to sunbathe on a field of broken glass, were you to be so unfortunate to be stuck in such a place.  So, to me, naturally, if you need to know where your towel is, this is the towel you are going to be looking for.

But in the movie they had these panzy-a** little hotel towels.  The kind you don’t feel bad about stealing because they are so chintzy and small that you’d be better of with a box of Kleenex and a wet-nap.  Okay, yes, they are portable, easy to stuff in a pocket, carrying a towel of this stripe around with you is most certainly a touch more on the side of the ludicrous than carrying something that might genuinely have purpose.

Which then brings me to preconceptions and misconceptions, and more particularly whether or not these things can ruin a game experience.  Advertising and product development have been aware of these kinds of things for a long time.  McDonalds, for example, puts mustard on their cheeze burgers in certain parts of the US, and in other places they may or may not use those nasty little diced onions.  In games we see “import” versions of games that can include different content than you might have in a US release (should the game in question actually have a US release).

With the market for games seemingly heading for a separation into ponderous, multi-year development AAA titles and smaller, nimbler, fast-release mobile/web titles, I’m starting to wonder if it might be an interesting move to regionalize these smaller games.  Release one version of Castle Crashers in west Texas, but a slightly different version in NYC for example.  Similar things are being done.  As a current example, the new DrWho game is only available in the UK, and you’re blocked from downloading it if you live elsewhere.  (Yes, yes, I KNOW you can get your hands on it by other, slightly more nefarious means, but I’m taking a “high-road” approach here).

The question, I guess, would be in how you target the specific differences.  McDonalds knows (through focus group testing and trial and error) that BBQ sauce A fits the tastes of the Deep South better than BBQ sauce B.  Is it even possible to target games in such a specific manner, or does the historically more “global” nature of games mean that we’ve already begun to homogenize the gaming community to the point where these kinds of local differences are simply not worth the effort?

It’s been interesting.  Normally I’m not the social butterfly type, getting up the oomph to speak with a total stranger in a room full of total strangers in suits and ties takes a bit of doing for me.  If alcohol didn’t wreak such irritating havoc on my creative capacity, I’d probably need a stiff shot before attempting any sort of real conversation, but it it’s turning into something I don’t completely suck at.  Which is a good thing.

I have all these irons in the fire right now.  A couple of them are approaching hot, just coming up at the point where I will need to strike.  They’re almost all connected, all branching and supporting one another.  Once one goes hot, the rest are going to follow in short order and I am talking, asking questions, seeking advice for the things I am going to need to put into play. 

I ask questions.  I ask a LOT of questions.  I ask a lot of n00b questions in the areas in which I am not yet well-versed, and occasioanlly make statements that are not so much designed to prove I am an expert (which, lets face it I’m not even close in many of these fields) but to provoke a conversation that will allow me to ask those questions.  Sometimes these conversations are less than pleasant (particularly if I’ve hit a nerve unintentionally) but they are *all* a learning experience, they are all the chance to meet someone new, to find someone who can give me a glimpse behind the closed door of my immediate future.

And it’s a heck of a lot more fun than it ought to be.

Like half the planet, I eagerly lined up to see Star Wars Episode 1.  I even went to the trouble of camping out overnight for a ticket to one of the earliest showings (being young at the time and still in ownership of an all-weather sleeping bag).  Granted, I didn’t feel quite as outraged at JarJar as everyone else (I have a high tolerance for that kind of nuttery, it’s a gift) but it wasn’t *my* Star Wars, it didn’t quite engender the same spark that the first one had.  I was…  well, not quite disappointed, because by that time in my life I was well aware that most things you remember from being a kid aren’t as cool as you remember, and I just wrote it off as the same sort of nostalgic near-miss.

But then I saw the reaction of my best friends girlfriends son, 10 years old at the time.

He was in awe.  Of everything.  The whole da** movie.  Then he went back and saw the “first” three.  We spent about a month hearing  “And did you know that Boba Fett did this…  Did you know Anakin can do this…  Did you know…”

I just recently saw another, similar reaction with my own kids, when I brought home the newest GCI of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  What went before, the shortcomings that may or may not have been there went unnoticed.  The legacy was hidden and for my kids it was a fresh, new experience.

And now there’s another new rash of “Reboots” on the horizon.  I’m rather excited about a couple of them, kindof “meh” about others.  Thing is, I think I’m going to hold my opinion.  I’m already biased, one way or another, and there’s no point in wrecking the fun for someone.  These reboots, these new takes on an older story, they’re not *for* me.  They’re for a new group of moviegoers, a new audience.  If the new guys are excited, if these reboots breathe new life into a franchise I knew and loved (even if I hate the redo) then who am I to pee in everyone elses Cheerios?