Lemmings. These adorable little green topped yellow guys can do anything that you want them to do. Tell them to stop and redirect traffic, and they’ll put on a hat that grabs the attention of the other lemmings, put out their arms, and shake their heads telling the other lemmings to turn around and not continue going that direction.

Sometimes it seems as though gamers feel that the people developing the games can do the same thing - as though each person who is a “developer” is so multi-faceted that they can do anything and everything, and tend to do so and not look at other areas until “one area” has been worked on and completed.

It is very frustrating to read forums or hop into IRC and see the misconception from people who ordinarily, I would find to be highly intelligent people. In this “area”, it seems that the ball is falling short of the intelligence hoop.

Many forum posts that I’ve seen game after game, often following an expansion, an update, or a release of the game, tend to look something like this:

… they wasted all that time and energy in updating the high-level content, but nothing was done with _______, very little done with _________, …

or

Its really nice to have such a rich storyline, but if they would just put more time and effort in updating and implementing updates to _________ and _________ as they’re important and have been a problem for (x number) of days…

or

So that’s what the developer thinks is important?! They hate my class so much that they put all their effort in nurfing it so that it’s useless in a group when they could have been putting time and energy into these other areas… (insert really long demi-novel of a post outlining all the inconsistencies that the person views are more important than the class which was updated)

So to all who have felt the desire or have read and nodded your head at things similar to the above, here is information that you might find interesting.

Development companies at all levels have teams of people working on many different areas, and there are many tiers to that as well. General space-shuttle view would typically have 3 main groups that do the direct hands-on work . Engineers, Designers, and Integrators. (Side note: This is not even mentioning management, project managers, or the many other people that do a lot of the groundwork and support for those doing the direct hands-on work in addition to the others who are involved after and with external work.)

Engineers build every last little teeny nuance of what a program does, from its response to you putting your mouse hovering over a button, to the thousands of things that happen when you click on the mentioned button. Serious basic level description for people who have to think of every last item and element for anything at all.

Designers work with everything you see, and sometimes DON’T see - things that just sort of are there, unnoticed, often unappreciated, and taken entirely for granted. Everything from a rock that is placed on a ground which causes a bump in a HUGE road, to the buttons that you click on. (side note - yes, I am aware that a designer is not technically a “developer”, but from the gamer’s view - they are part of the development team, and hence, are wrapped into the lump of a name “Developer”.)

Integrators are those who are part designer and part engineer, and often specialize in one side or another, and often don’t officially have a title of integrator, are often just an engineer who understands designers, or a designer who understands engineers, so they tend to be the people who do the interfacing for the rest of their team. Now, I’m actually somewhat fuzzy on how different development studios use integrators, and often times I find that they go by different methods, so please forgive this blog/rant.

This all seems like a lot - but it truly is like looking down at the world from a space shuttle… So let me paint a picture for those who don’t quite get my meaning by saying that we’re looking down at the world form a space shuttle.

The world is pretty rotating on its axis as it continues its journey around the sun among the backdrop of space, dark matter, stars, and other planets. The clouds cover lands, rain is showering down from the darkened heavy clouds, and somewhere below those clouds, there are millions of billions of people and animals and a myriad of things that are occurring on the green lands, rocky mountains, blue oceans, and white icecaps. Millions of billions of things occurring in fractions of every second, that you are not seeing from that space shuttle, but you know that they are happening somewhere or thousands of somewheres below on that beautiful viewing of our world.

Think about it from that scale. If you’re thinking about it correctly, you should have a feeling of “wow” and an inkling of an idea regarding the unthought of level of things that occur in development. If you don’t have that feeling of “wow” then you’re either A) In that world already and are having the itching feeling that you need to correct me and flesh out what I’ve written because I’ve messed up, left a hundred million things out, etc., or B) You’re not getting the point.

Going back to the main topic at hand, developers aren’t Lemmings. Let’s name a few pretend people here who have the tag above their head of “Developer”. We’ll name them the last few letters of the alphebet. Dev Z, Dev Y, Dev X, and Dev W.

The quotes in the beginning of this give the assumption that Devs Z, Y, X, and W walk in the door and talk to their boss or check their email, receiving a notice that “today, we’re going to work on building that mountain, and implementing the sound.” and that’s what Z, Y, X, and W do. Like lemmings, they put on hats and vests, hand each other signs that direct the other lemmings around them on where to go and what to do, and work on building that mountain and putting in sound elements for that mountain. The next day, they walk in, talk to their boss, or check their email, and receive a notice that says, “Today, you’re working on backstory, and graphics for the new combat”, and then devs Z, Y, X and W do just that, pull out their writer vests equiped with pencils and paper, and a graphics designer hat, and go do those things, and do entirely different jobs every day, because the boss said so.

Sorry to say, that’s not how it works.

Now, on a basic level, such as fast-food - you could guess that anyone could walk in and be able to at some level understand how to do everything, dawn the hat of the burger flipper, and flip burgers all day. But when you get into things that are more advanced, that’s just not how it works.

When someone specializes, they tend to be put into a group of others who specialize, and they work in their specialty groups together. They have project managers who make sure those specialists don’t have to worry about anything but what they’re specializing in, and they work and work and work until the things that their group is working on are ready for being connected with other parts. Sometimes multiple specialist groups work together(insert here the sound of someone being shocked).

Lets find a specific example - a sound like the sound of someone taking a step upon gravel. The single step. For this one sound - there’s the person who wrote/composed/recorded the sound, the person who built the computer for the person who wrote/composed the sound, the person who is thinking of where that sound is going to go, what elements need to trigger that sound, what elements stop that sound from occuring, and when that sound combines with other sounds; the person who writes the code that makes the sound actually start, stop, and integrates with other elements, the ui person who makes the nobs on the dashboard which allow the user to turn the sound elements up and down or entirely off, people who test every last elements back and forth and backwards, upsidedown and makes sure that nothing breaks no matter what order nor setting change occurs, and more and more and more people completely unmentioned…

That’s just for 1 thing.

1.

Developers aren’t lemmings, they can often do many different projects at the same time, pull off what appears to be miraculous feats in programming, graphics, sound, and more, but they’re not lemmings. If something releases in a patch or an expansion, and something else is left out, it’s not necessarily because they haven’t thought of working on it. Its likely that they aren’t done with whatever it is that you’re concerned with and just plain and simply aren’t going to release it within the timeline given to the managers, media, and gamers regarding the next release of whatever it is that they are releasing. Personally, if its not done and broken to the point where they just plain and simply won’t release it and are able to get approval from upper management to continue working and not having it release until its closer if not entirely in a status of “ready” - I’d rather wait. Not everything is released in a status of “complete” that the developers would have liked it to be, but its often not in their hands to decide…

When you have something as complex as an MMO - often there are so many elements that tie into 1 little thing, that the decision HAS to be made to push something out, even when a developer says it’s not “done”, and this is often where other teams come in that are sort of clean-up active-content teams, which make this “unfinished” content still function and get it updated after the fact. The hope is that the content is so much further than the player base, that they’ll have time to “complete” the content between the content’s status as being shrink-wrap sent and the gamers consuming up to the point where they might get to experience the new content.

But I digress.

Developers are not lemmings. At every day, every hour, there are many people working on many different aspects of a game at the exact same time as other developers are working on other parts of a game. They don’t invest ALL their time on one project, then ALL their time on another project… they most certainly will prioritize top-level projects, but will continue to work on various aspects of the game with many people touching every last element that you may or may not notice.

They ARE NOT Lemmings.