This is my take on it too. I think jpharrah1010 brought this up a while back, and I responded then. My view is that covid prompted a lot of companies to implement WFH without really thinking through what it would do. So now there's a backlash, partly due to issues, partly due to management's desire for control expressed in theses in management journals that point out problems that are mostly due to rushed implementation (see covid). If people need to congregate to solve problems, activate synergies, then face time needs to be part of the plan, but flexibility for workers is important too.
Absolutely. Some jobs can’t be remote. You can’t work on a car assembly line and be remote. Having remote workers does allow a company to hire in a much wider area…ergo you may possibly be able to hire a much better candidate who otherwise wouldn’t be able or willing to relocate. End of the day, it’s managements responsibility to manage productivity and turn out a good product, and quite frankly, that’s where the criticism should end. How someone does their job shouldn’t be a concern for us.
It was a lovely interview! I enjoyed watching it very much. I think you did a fantastic job as an interviewer.
Remote if theres a pandemic then sure its needed but outside of that should be earned and based on their skill after some time and not full remote only but part remote,their current open positions still include remote the game feels like its on maintaince mode so it makes fully sense why now, Is there nobody checking and telling them that they are not providing the community with quality content? Studio is mostly abonded since most work remote..The bar they have set seems super low it makes only sense why the content and the game feels the way it does and with this half effort they are just gonna lose more and more players this episode is just a few weeks old and already the population is low. The term lack of devs was used for years but even with more devs the content has barely improved infact it has gotten worse in some content since some devs left and were replaced by new ones who didnt provide the same quality in my opinion,we need Quality and highly motivated devs just like previous lead designer was if theres one area where they should be hyper focused on quality it should be on those positions who design,create,produce mechanics,boss battles everything that involves combat and gameplay and new content experience.
Well, thanks to our remote workers working from home my job on our project is now a full day behind because neither I nor anyone else could reach the WFH people in the Art Dept and Sales. When 5:00 pm hit on Friday with no response to my emails and no returned phone calls, I left. So now when I go back into the office Monday, I am a full day behind on a project with a tight turnaround. And who do you think Management is going to blame for my part of the project being late? Here's a hint, it won't be the Art team or the Sales team who get to work from home, it will be me, all because the WFH people weren't really working. When we have the review meeting on this project, you better believe I won't have any problems throwing the WFH people under the bus for the delays because it entirely their fault.
Just a general observation about remote work — I’ve been remote nearly 20 years in the tech industry at high profile companies. Not gaming, but in industries with similar work. You can find studies that say it boosts productivity and you can find studies that say it hurts productivity. They’re all flawed studies usually, most notably, by not even defining what productivity is. The two ways of working are just different ways of working and require different approaches. There’s literally no way to know from the outside if remote work has hurt DCUO. Lack of staff or turn over could play a role as much as changing to remote work.
Great Interview! On the end topic about episode stories, I agree that they seem abrupt, but that's a two-fold problem. On one side, grand stories involving a bulk of the big heroes and villains seem more suited for multi-episode arcs, and on the other we completely lack storylines suited for one episode (came pretty close with Shock to the System, and Atlantis). As a writer, I'd love to see story lines that reflect what we read in comics, where a single Hero/Villain (and related teams) is the focus. For example, I can read a Flash or Wonder Woman run with maybe a visit from another hero and a couple of villains to deal with along the way before taking down the main antagonist. I think that would be suited for a one-shot episode in this game, then you have the big cross-over event. I know part of what prevents this is the development efficiency of having a story big enough for villains and heroes to unite, but there's always the "outsider muscling in on my territory" angle for the villains. (Side note: Devs, will we ever see an episode focusing on Green Arrow, possibly with the Arrow family? Maybe Count Vertigo for the villains?). If so, we could have something like: Big Story Arc Episode Intro (Danger discovered) Focus Episode Big Story Arc Episode 2 (Combined side may loose) Focus Episode Big Story Arc Episode Finale (Combined side victorious) And there's your year. Just a thought.
I’d suggest dropping the blame game stuff. It’s in no one’s benefit. On Monday reach out to your supervisor (if you haven’t already) and say “I wasn’t able to complete ‘x’ on Friday because ‘y.’ I tried to get in contact with Art/Sales to have it corrected, but did not receive a response before EOD. Going forward, please let me know if you’d like me to do something differently if this situation reoccurs.” You noticed an error, you took action that you thought was appropriate, you asked for guidance on how to adjust/handle if it happens again. It’s easier to blame, but really, you don’t know if Art/Sales was working on something of a higher priority. We usually expect like a 24 hour internal response to any questions in house - barring any unusual circumstances. What’s your company’s expectation?
You’re just making assumptions, connecting two points and saying “this is why…” lol As previously stated, you’ve been complaining about the “quality of content” for years before the pandemic. All of a sudden, remote work is the cause for the drop in “quality of content” in your opinion? Gimme a break…lol You’ll be complaining about the quality of content until the day this game shuts down… PS - the game’s free to play, they’re no longer selling you the “content…”. I am excited to see what kind of directional change they take for the next episode, as I thought they’ve been hinting at moving in a different format, going forward…we’ll see…
False ive already talked about remote work way before, its no secret the quality dropped as soon as they went remote but to continue this remote and not fixxing issues years later shows they cant provide us the same as previously, i dont care if they remote if they were to provide quality as before and also enjoy the empty servers you seem to be happy with its current state sugarcoating over issues is why we are in this situation in the first place.
I’m not sugarcoating anything and to be fair, management may be ok with the productivity of staff. Your expectations may simply differ from the leadership team. Considering that they’re fully free to play now, they no longer gain revenue directly through selling content…so it’s understandable that they focus on revenue generating areas (TCs, BBs - heavier dependency on art team, less on systems). Content’s just good enough to keep people coming back…and emptying their wallets on cosmetics…it’s “this” age in gaming. Here’s hoping the pendulum starts swinging back in the other direction. WFH or in office - it doesn’t, alone, matter - good leadership can succeed in both and poor leadership can fail in both.
Thats totally possible like i said the bar is set low for episodes because as you said they dont need to sell episodes anymore but i would rather pay for episodes and get quality then this f2p nonsense (unironically its more p2win now allthough its called f2p) which is probably why they dont care about balance at all too but looking at population they better rethink their choices this aint cutting it anymore and the complaints just pile up. I also stopped subbing because i dont need the rewards from dailys or whatever, i want to pay for quality gameplay and content this is rushed non engaging and broken unbalanced meta gameplay zero effort in content no balance changes, this is lame.
This situation involves a new client with the potential of this new client becoming a very important major client to our company. This is the first project that we are working on for this new client and the president of my company told us all in our meeting in April that they are a high priority for us. The project as it stands now is in danger of being late. It didn't have to be this way. But if nobody with answer their phones, return a call or reply to an email, there isn't anything I can do about it. All I could do is what I did Friday after bringing attention to the errors in art work versus the data file of 81,000 records with their 84 characters long fields that the new customer has said were mandatory to appear on the reply portion for their customers to respond too and send back to them. I'm not going to take the blame for this one, and I'm not going to be the one in the staff meeting who gets chastised and has to stand up, apologize to the team and explain what I will do next time to make sure that an error like this doesn't happen again. We call it the "Fickle Finger of Blame" at work, and I am not going to let it point at me over this. Oh, the staff meetings do require the work at home people to come in to the office.
Working from home, they should much more free time to work. Surely they see the emails and calls. Kids are at school, husband or wife is also at work or home doing chores. It's life when a woman is at work and knows her boyfriend stays home most the time and she calls and text him and he never answers.
I will check out your podcast later this week PROMISE, wanna jump on the remote work convo. Some people thrive in it and others don't. I had the best 2 years in winning awards in my career during remote work. Something about zero distractions, lack ofwork place coffee talk and working my own little schedule with a nap in the middle of the day. I will say though I worked with fear of remote work taken away. I busted *** just to avoid that rush hour commute plus nap time was nice. Plus logging on and doing work at midnight when I had an inspiring idea was golden. It eventually was taken away, but not due to my effort. Like everything else positive I did see people take advantage of the system and wreck it for others.
Respectfully, I think that everyone speaking might want to consider upgrading their microphones. Unless there's just something about the voice-chat system used here that was lowering clarity. But I found the voice pick-up generally overly fuzzy. The content was fine and well-done. It would also be nice if Daybreak would hire a permanent Community Manager to get back to doing official regular dev chats like this as often as practical -- at least monthly would be good -- and get back to all the other involvement Mepps used to create, including regularly doing in-game public fests of boss drop-ins in public areas and giving special awards, hosting regularly weekly player raids and alerts and, dare I say it, PvP battles, holding Community-Manager hide-and-seek games, and on and on. Those are all much missed. The lack of a real CM for DCUO is hurting the game badly. Daybreak shouldn't be relying on player involvement to take up the slack, however well-done it is; player-created events should be a supplement to official events. Taking advantage of players' willingness to step up on substituting for work that should be done by Daybreak employees is exploitative, however much players may enjoy having their labor and time exploited.
