Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[Larirawiel]

Shareholders are not the problem. The problem is, that creative processes like software development and game development are completely incompatible with the typical management- and bussiness economics mindset. If you have a management, which do not understand it then the products will not be very good. And if a company reaches a certain size then the management and financials will get too much influence on everything.

There is a book with the title "The mythical man month", which describes how the dynamics in a software development process really work. You should have less employees, less fluctuation and let them work longer on a project.

But the typical manager will make the opposite: more employees and the project has to be finished very quickly. More employees means, that he has more power in the company. And tighter deadlines means that he will have things done in a very short time. Both would increase his reputation. Reputation is very important for a manager.

But in the end it will be the opposite. Too many people in a software project waste too much time with talking, meetings and coordination. And the software architecture will propably be much worse because the more people are involved, the higher the propability, that they will interfere with each other. The developers will try to compensate it. And they will end up with a software architecture, which is optimized for not interferring with other developers and not for its initial purpose.

Games, which are buggy, slowish, unfinished and delayed are a typical result of those things.

Cheers