Note: for some reason, this post was stuck as a draft since April 2009 – just to put this into better perspective, i was still working at EA Phenomic at the time.
Yes, it can. My humble opinion. No, actually, this is my conviction.
I’m not talking about crunch time. About taking on too much work so that everyone has to work overtime. I am talking about planning for (or having to plan for, or simply doing) too much production in order to get all the work done in time, so that most everything else falls by the wayside.
This is my experience which i’ve had confirmed today during an interesting conversation at work. With “experience” i mean that if you work at a larger company you can – depending on the work you do – easily dig into your own line of work and forget everything around you. That isn’t something that gets planned but it’s easy to fall into this mode if everyone around you is swarming around like a busy bee-hive and you just want to get your own damned work done. But, it’s crucial to regularly lift up your head and ask what’s going on. If, company-wide, no such time is planned in and certainly no one cares to stop and look around, watching, listening, mentoring, let alone “leadershipping” then that’s the model most people will follow, eventually. That or busting their heads together. Busy worker bees.
Or so it seems.
What it doesn’t say is that people aren’t bees. They have needs for communication, for understanding and learning. People want to get feedback, they want to participate, they want to be asked and decide for themselves. However, working in a Bee hive accomplishes only work. Communication – and that is my experience – falls completely by the wayside except for the one focused on the work at hand. Some may glee over this perceived efficiency. But i can tell you – it is not an experience that creates happyiness ever-after. The counterweight that communication whole is that all the good ideas, the criticism and desires are shared like outbursts, at the wrong time, with the wrong people, or both. There’s only two options: eat it, or die.
It’s a slow process. Something like that frog put into cold water and heating it until it boils. He won’t jump out – only if the water was hot from the start. What happens is that unless you are fortunate enough to be able to work (mostly) in isolation on isolated parts of the game on your own accord, you are drained into this whole hive of swarming bees. Everyone wants a part of me, it seems. Since everyone is so busy, communication is focused on the essential. Like robots. Only that feelings still get hurt.
It gets worse if the communication fails to instill ownership or a time frame. You can be certain that phrases like “We’ll talk about it this week.” will be the last thing you’ve heard about this topic for the week. Responsibility goes down the drain – unless you have to be responsible. It’s simple and effective – being bombarded with work can make you …. work. Work hard. So hard, in fact, that communicating, cooperating, getting an agreement with other people seems like a drag you want to avoid. As much as possible. Just like everything else that isn’t directly beneficial to your work. Helping others, especially mentoring or training. Offering opportunities for growth and learning. Career planning. And so on.
As a side note: even the busiest bee-hive couldn’t survive for long if the bees would stop their intricate communication dances. With a company, you’ll know that something’s up when the communication still happens but goes sour very quickly, and there’s a lot of talking behind closed doors, respectively awkward silence when you enter a room.
Ignore everybody. I got the link to the book from GameProducer’s Insider (private) forum. It’s from Hugh MacLeod who also draws business card cartoons such as the one above.
Ignore everybody. This is good advice. Really good advice. You should read it. Especially if you read my previous post Making a Living (gladly) as an iPhone freelance programmer and the one before that: How is life as freelancer?
At the moment my first project with Ravensburger Digital is being tested. I’m eagerly awaiting feedback and if all turns out well it could be ready for release next week. In the meantime i’ve sent out 3 more project proposals, i have at least two others yet to be done, then there are two promised and three ongoing talks for potential projects or cooperations, former colleagues would like to hire me for an incredibly interesting project and finally there’ll be a minor update for 51 Japanese Characters coming soon and we’re thinking about potential spinoffs and cooperations to create a “Characters” series. There’s one more option to consider still: making a living on the iPhone App Store by publishing my own game(s). All i really need for that is some spare money to pay someone else to create art and audio for me. I’m also looking into proposing a business opportunity to a 3rd party whose work i admire and adore – so yet another option, this one i follow through simply out of sheer interest in the product that particular company creates – and it’s got nothing to do with computer games at all!
Overall i’d say i really enjoy being in such high demand, and i feel kind of bad already that i’ll eventually have to choose between some of these outstanding proposals. If i could clone myself i think i’ll need more than just one clone. I’m actually considering something similar to what Dr Touch is doing: a band of freelance game programming brothers working under one name and distributing the workload based on qualification, free time and interest in the project. In the long run it could lead to me actually starting a game programming service company, who knows? But let me not get ahead of myself, i’m still working on the base technology for my cloning facility.
I really, and i mean really, wonder why none of my other colleagues have chosen to go that road? I have some thoughts … because those were mine and i do what everyone does: i conclude that what i experience, others experience as well.
When i was first thinking to work as freelancer in late 2009, i expected to spend most of my time alone, to be disconnected from the people i have to rely on to get a job. To have a huge problem reaching out to contacts and getting them interested, or simply making new contacts. My worst imagination had me begging for projects for low prices just so i could sustain a living. But to the contrary, now i could easily find enough work for two. I’m lucky that i know some people who do have the contacts and that’s just as important as having the contacts yourself. And the payment … well, i’m currently expecting to earn more than in my last year as an employee with bonus program and stock options. But of course i have higher running costs as well.
I also worried about all the extra costs a freelancer has, and all the paperwork it involves. Especially considering taxes, and paying them monthly in advance. Let alone the process of registering a business and running it properly, with all the legal and tax issues to be considered. It turns out that a helpful tax consultant is worth a lot – if only to take away those uncertainties and worries. Yes, i just spent an hour filling out my first tax form – and 15 minutes on the phone with my tax consultant to make sure i’m making the important checks and correct entries that are in my best interest. Time well spent.
In addition i was put off by certain internet platforms offering work for freelancers. I get a daily summary of jobs offered and over the last 2 months there have been only 2-3 iPhone programming jobs offered. The rest required absurd skills in insurance policies, high-technology systems, low-level engineering, highly specialized areas of expertise – it’s all about buzzwords like Kordoba, SAP BPS, CATS, ABAP-OO, SOA/ESB, Microsoft SCCM, Citrix, PL/SQL, HFM, PMO and roles like Process Analyst, IT Security Manager, Online Banking System Expert, Solaris Administrator, Oracle Consultant and of course the obligatory Business Analyst. Definetely not the kind of jobs i would know anything about. And that painted a skewed picture of demand – if you look in the right places, or advertise yourself in the right places (such as the cocos2d forum through which i got 2 contacts) and have the right contacts in your business it does become obviouswhat the answer to the question “What should we call a developer who concentrates on developing for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad?” is: in demand!
I’m still accepting offers and i’m always happy to talk about potential cooperations – if you think that’ll be interesting for you, check out my application website with CV and references. After all: more options means i can get to choose the best job at the right time.
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