The producer is in charge of overseeing the whole project, as pointed out. Usually it's divided in teams with each lead being in charge of their department.
Mike however is in charge of the mechanics of the game and most likely the vision of what the game should become. Considering a lot of the complaints are design related, it's fair to accuse him so long you realized that what he failed at here is the management of the design team. He's not alone in creating mechanics, other people are working on that too but it's basically his job to keep the vision homogenize and he has the last word on the job accomplished by other designers. Same goes to every lead in their respective field.
The team, according to Mike was composed of Senior designers and it frankly puzzle me as to how it could end up like what it is with nothing but experienced designers but at the same time I believe it was the mistake. Having some fresh meat in the team is usually keeping things fresh.
In graphic design firms for example (another creativity related industry) it's not rare to see people retire early or straight up lose their job to younger people with fresher ideas. Usually fresh meat is involved in every project for their ideas and eagerness to prove themselves by thinking outside the box. The difficulty in a creative industry is that you consistently have to reinvent yourself. Juxtapose that with fast evolving technology and it's really hard to keep up.
The problem with senior designers, in my opinion, is that while they are experienced, it seems that they sometime go ''out of touch'' with the gaming scene due to multiple factors (family, kids, lack of time, loss of interest, so on) as they get older. The result them trying to catch up with the ''fresh ideas'' that sometime became stale already. It's more or less the case here in my opinion.
What I really question of Mike's thinking however is, having full knowledge of the timeframe allowed for Dragon Age 2 development, why suddenly decide to change so much in so little time? Instead of expanding the mechanics in place that made the success of the game, they did (in his own words) a 180 degree with it and provided us (in my opinion and many others) half baked mechanics. They are not necessarily bad but a lot of those mechanics felt very incomplete or badly executed. Not only that but doing a 180 degree with a relatively new franchise on the first sequel, alienating the fans in the process is questionable at best. I mean even if there was publisher pressure to change stuff, it's up to them to stand up to that and be confident in what they created previously.
Firing him would accomplish nothing but losing a designer that proved himself worthy. What he really needs to do however is instead of trying to damage control, denying and blaming it on X or Y, is to really accept the complaints and think about it (which i'm sure he will). All those interviews stating people don't like changes makes me frown a bit every time I read them.
Modifié par Saboera, 25 mars 2011 - 12:43 .
Ce sujet est fermé
Retour en haut
