Pre-release leak of tell-all book on producer's wardrobe

As most of you have certainly read in this week's issue of "The American Journal of Producery", the average producer spends 3.4 hours getting dressed for work every morning.  Most producers reading this (soon to be award winning) blog post will immediately try and figure out the flaw in the metrics that would lead to such a ludicrously low number.  Those who hope to someday quit their tedious jobs as astronauts, cowboys, or international playboys, however, might wonder what goes into that window of time before switching to the glamorous world of Production!  Well, I'm going to tear down the barrier of secrecy and let my millions of loyal female (hi mom) and male (hi intern who I force to read this) fans in on the details.

The Uniform

I'll dive into the process of initiation that leads all producers to this uniform, but I'll just jump to the chase first and let you know what you, as a producer, will be wearing for the rest of your life:

Yep, there it is - The Producer Uniform, at least as it exists in the "ideal form."  A producer's skill is solely measured by how closely he or she can pull-off this look.  No need to ask how well a producer solves problems, motivates, leads, or schedules...a producer's current title is based solely on his or her wardrobe.  Your years of training, dedication, and experience are great, I guess, but the fact of the matter is that the first intern who walks in off the street who better achieves the above results will, and frankly should, get your job.

The Uniform is simple, really.  A dress shirt, a blazer, and jeans.  That's it.  Unfortunately, until a "Producers Shoppe" opens in your town, making it possible to buy pre-configured Uniforms, there is a lot of discretion in the Uniform.  Tie?  Sure, but can you wear a tie with jeans without looking like the "cool" high school science teacher?  Belt?  Cufflinks?  Dress shoes or sneakers?  The options are endless, and when you realize that a single mistake will lead to your security badge being disabled the second the front-entrance producer-uniform-visual-analysis camera sees you, one quickly realizes why producers need 3.4 hours to get dressed every morning.

For instance, Seinfeld certainly met the requirements for a producer's Uniform, but as you can see, his wardrobe certainly would barely qualify him for an unpaid internship working for the super-duper-Executive-Producer pictured above.

"But wait!" you say.  "I work with a producer who dresses completely differently but has the highest ranking title?!  How is this possible?"

To this, I say the following - Stop interrupting my damn blog post with your questions.  

In addition to this, I will add that your producer then falls into one of three categories:

1. You work for a game development company one degree from the arctic circle, and your producer was the only candidate willing to relocate.
2. Your producer was one of the "chosen few" who was able to pass the official producer wardrobe judgement and shame period before being bounced out and forced to wear the wardrobe with the rest of us.
3. I don't have a third category, but I'm too lazy to click on the sentence above to change the text from "three" to "two", regardless of how long it has taken me to write this sentence explaining that I'm too lazy.

"Wait, wait.  What is this 'official producer wardrobe judgement and shame period' you speak of, JabroniReport?"

First, I'd like to point out that if I had any way of tracking who you are, I'd ban you from this blog for interrupting me again.  But since I don't, and you may or may not be real instead of a silly literary device I'm using to advance this blog post's narrative, I shall explain.

The official producer wardrobe judgement and shame period

Once a new producer is hired, most likely based upon the grueling "pictures on a dartboard" process, the judgement period begins.  

• Week one and two.  During this period, it is understood that a new producer will be wearing what they think they should be wearing.  The simple fact is that the new producer is so scared of arbitrarily being fired by an insane producer who, hypothetically, demands that he be referred to as "Mr. Jabroni-san", that the new producer will simply be too afraid to wear what he is comfortable in.
• Week three through eight. The judgement period begins.  At first, the new producer will begin to test his boundaries.  It is important to note these changes, most likely in some sort of bug tracking software, but it is absolutely critical not to reference these items in a negative manner.  If you discourage the new producer during this period, he or she will immediately withdrawal to safe choices, and it will delay his Uniform assignment process by months.  The changes during this period will be subtle, but as long as no negative feedback is given, they will be cumulative.  At first, it might be wearing cufflinks one day.  Enter a Jira ticket, but let them continue.  Next, you may see a particularly striking pair of sneakers.  Again, enter a bug, but if you leave things be, you will soon see the new producer wearing cufflinks and a striking pair of sneakers.
• Week Eight and One day.  The first Monday after the producer's eight week, he or she will wear an example of their full, self chosen producer's wardrobe.  It is on this day that the producer is photographed from all angles, and the council of producers congregates.  After the official ceremony of wardrobe judgement, the team's producers will create a secure video conference connection to the International Brotherhood of Production, so that the judgement passed is swift, fair, and follows the Brotherhood's official guidelines and recommendations regarding production-approved clothing (Rule Revision version 22 or greater).
• Judgement is passed in one of three (for real this time) ways:
• The producer's wardrobe is examined for minimum qualification standards.  If, for instance, the producer is found on this day to be wearing jean shorts, a "hip" dress shirt with skulls on it (tucked in), and a backwards Cleveland Browns hat, the producer is immediately terminated for cause.  In fact, the Cleveland Browns hat is by itself grounds for ejection from Production Society, but I added the other two so you could get a better mental image.
• The producer is scrutinized to see if he or she is one of the "chosen ones of legend."  There are certain producers of such machismo, such passionate style and pure talent, that they may forever eschew the official wardrobe and instead dress as whatever archetype they have chosen.  These producers are rare indeed.  In my career I have spotted a few of them, but only in fleeting glances and whispered voices.  It is said that if one ever looks into the eyes of the chosen producers, they will instantly go insane, forever institutionalized and babbling of "the perfect email inbox management system."  The rumored archetypes are:
• Cool, hipster T-shirt producer.  A producer who wears, and can "pull off wearing" some crazy cool new t-shirt every single day.  You, of course, won't understand the t-shirt at all, because it is most likely a band you've never heard of or an inside joke you just won't get.
• Sports producer.  This wardrobe, expressly prohibited from those working on sports game, is rumored to have been worn only once.  It involves wearing sports related paraphernalia every day, but in a way that is somehow cool and represent a love of sport, and not of a series of sport's teams.  The latter would obviously disqualify a producer from the position immediately.
• Kooky style producer.  This category, while broad, is still as rare as a white whale. This is a category of producers who can "pull off", and maintain, a very unique and stylish look without it becoming a parody.  This can be anything from '1920s swing dancer producer' to 'overly-dressed for any occasion producer' to 'I'm so cool I don't have to care what I wear producer.'  The "I don't care" producer is often the hardest to judge, because the producer in question has to be of such confidence that he really doesn't care, and if you feel like you fall into this category, you are lying, and would not make it past the initial scrutinization.  Do you wear the same thing to work as you wear to a dinner with important clients, the company softball game, meetings with publisher big-wigs, and a date with your far-too-cool-for-you girlfriend?  If so, you might fit this category, but seriously, you don't.  Like, for real.  Not at all.  We all care.
• At this point, once a producer has been ruled out of being one of the "chosen ones", he is brought into the room and beaten with socks filled with security-wiped and checked USB keys.  This may seem harsh, but bear in mind that any gathering with more than two producers begins in this fashion.  At this point, once a producer is found to be alive, but not too alive, he or she is handed the following:
• A blazer, of a quality to be determined based upon the quality of bugs entered during the evaluation stage, not to be deemed less than Target Mossimo in quality, but not to exceed the standard dollar amount of Armani Collezioni.
• A pair of jeans,  of a quality to be determined based upon the quality of bugs entered during the evaluation stage.  For jeans, Levi's is the standard issue for interns or assistant producers, but after that, the quality bar ranges pretty severely, again with Target at the bottom range, and an upper range somewhere between Seven and True Religion.
• A single white gym sock, and two USB keys.  A producer's duration in a company is determined by the color of their gym sock, usually referred to as the "producer sock of swift justice", and the quantity of USB keys, which is usually referred to as "the number of USB keys in the producer's sock of swift justice."  My bosses sock, for instance, is made of pure gold thread, and has the names of his producers embroidered in unicorn hair.  It contains hundreds of 64GB USB keys, such that a single swing of his "sock of swift justice" can instantly make a producer deliver a flawless risk mitigation plan in under two hours.  Or it just really hurts.  Whichever.

Why did I take the time to share this invaluable information with you, my millions of near-rabid, stalking Jabroni Report readers?  It is simple, really.  As most of you know, the sole question one ever needs to ask a producer during an interview is "Do you read the Jabroni Report."  I know that many of you find it tedious to take the time to actually ask this question, however.  Therefore, by publishing this blog post, you won't even have to speak to, or make eye contact, with an interview candidate.  You will know, based upon their attire, whether or not they read this blog, and thus whether or not you should hire them to be your boss.

Properly Setting Up a Meeting - A guide for production interns

Properly Setting Up a Meeting - A guide for production interns

Setting up and running a meeting can be a daunting task for a new production intern, since it can involve difficult tasks like clicking a button in Outlook, and actually talking to coworkers.  As such, I thought I'd put together this handy guide on key steps to ensure a proper and productive meeting for all!  While specific NetherRealm "call-outs" are made, this handy guide should be useful to all aspiring production interns out there.

• NEVER actually book a meeting room.  This is a sucker bet.  Given the importance of producers maintaining a near-primal fight for dominance, the appropriate thing to do is to just grab a meeting room five minutes before the top of the hour, and then "stand your ground" when it turns out that the room is booked for a key budget meeting with visiting corporate Vice presidents. In fact, whenever a door opens so much as a crack during a meeting, just start berating the person on the other side with "swears" and personal insults.  In all probability, the person on the other side of the door will respect your position, and politely thank you for informing them of their weight issues before slinking off to find another room.  Again, simple steps like these can really propel you forward in the corporate world.

• Don't take notes.  No matter what anyone says, notes and "next steps" are completely useless, and in fact, not taking notes can represent a potentially massive cost-savings!  Think about the following: Let's say you are at a meeting where the team decides on 15 tasks they want to do to get the game running better, and each of those tasks takes one man-month to do.  If you take notes and properly track these tasks, there is at least a slight chance that some of these things will get done.  If no one can remember what the tasks are, however, because there are no notes, NONE of these tasks will be worked on.  Congratulations, production intern, you've just saved 15 man months of work!!!  That is certainly a substantial money savings, no?

• Never forget, YOU are running the meeting, so YOU get the most say.  Let's say there is an art review meeting for a character model, and you invite the art director, character lead, creative director, and character artists to the meeting.  They are rambling on and on about some boring details about how to make the model look better, but you are of the opinion that the character should be wearing a top hat.  CHIME IN.  This is YOUR meeting after all, and regardless of who is in the meeting, they are really just passing time until you jump-in and start espousing your opinions on the subject.  A producers job isn't to facilitate communication, it is to secretly impose your will to design the game in the way that you feel is right.  Remember this!
• Also, and this is really important, make sure you comment on EVERYTHING, regardless of whether or not you actually have anything valuable to add, just to remind people of how important you are.  Every minute or two, just cut off whomever is speaking to say _something_.  It'll usually be inane and irrelevant, but they will appreciate your input nonetheless, and compliment you for it.

• Timing is everything!  There are times when you should schedule meetings, and times when it is totally inappropriate.  The best time for meetings, typically, is 12:00 Noon on the dot, but only for meetings of 30 minutes or longer.  For shorter meetings, it is usually recommended to schedule them at either the exact start time for the day (say 10am) or the last possible minute in the day (say 7pm).  That said, don't forget that people do love meetings, so feel free to schedule them very early in the morning, late at night, or even on weekends.  

• No matter what the meeting is, add Ed Boon and Steve Beran to the invite list .  Let's say there is a meeting to talk about whether or not a specific C++ function should use "const", go ahead and add them.  The nice thing about people like Ed and Steve is that they don't have a million people trying to use their time, so they will very much appreciate it when they get to your meeting and find out that you were merely being kind enough to want to keep them entertained.  This will go a long way to ensuring a prosperous and fruitful career at NetherRealm.

• Don't bother checking people's availability.  For some reason, Microsoft included a way to see whether or not people have existing meetings for when you try and schedule meetings.  Clearly, this is just to bloat the UI, since no one in their right mind will ever use this.  Go ahead and schedule a meeting at whatever time is convenient for you, since your meeting will be the most important.  The leader of the other meeting will figure out that you scheduled a meeting when no one shows up to his silly "Critical, Urgent Or Game Doesn't Ship Meeting", and instead attends "Why I think we should cut Superman in favor of Detective Chimp in a Cape."

• Meetings are about fun!  The conversation should meander whenever possible.  Who knows where the conversation might lead, but the one thing we know is  that, wherever it goes, it'll be more interesting than whatever lame "work oriented" discussion you set up the meeting about.  If people seem to be veering off-track, here's some go-to topics you can interject with:
• iPhone rumors.  Guaranteed to kill any conversation.  If need be, go ahead and make up "something your Uncle at Apple told you" to peak peoples interest.
• Juicy Personnel Gossip.  It is always appropriate, and interesting, for a producer to share deeply personal stories that you are told in confidence.  Go ahead and save these up so you can use them to get a meeting back off-course!

• Finally, Meeting success is based upon length!  For a meeting to be successful, it must consume, at a minimum, 2X the time originally scheduled.  Some, lesser, producers will "pad their numbers" by scheduling a meeting to be much shorter than need be.  Don't fall into this trap!  Using the topics above, you can easily pad a meeting by 2X the time scheduled (again, the baseline) without the personal shame of having a meeting end on-time.  The target for a successful meeting increases by producer title, as well.  An intern only needs 2x the scheduled length, while once one reaches Executive Producer, the length of a meeting must be a full 8x over schedule to be considered successful.  A good career goal is to eventually waste an entire day of all leads in the company with a 15 minute meeting!

Hopefully, these tips will help you succeed as an intern at NetherRealm, or wherever your exciting career in the glamorous world of production takes you (Taco Bell)!

The production translation lexicon

It turns out I had a blog post sitting in my saved folder for over a year - so rather than having to come up with new content, I'll post whatever drivel I was planning at the time!  Begin:

Hello loyal readers (interns I pay to read my blog - and Mom)!

As we were closing out the last minute polish items for E3, it occurred to me that a lot of the members of the team might not be aware of the translation of certain key phrases producers tend to use.  Other producers -or at least producers who attend the mandated, and grueling, industry-wide yearly production month training in Cancun - are taught these techniques during a rigorous break-out session called "Manipulation and Margaritas: Techniques to break your team's spirit - also Margaritas."  With the myriad of JabroniReport knock-off blogs now nipping at my heals, I figured that leaking our secret language would be a great way to get some cheap page views.  With that said, here's some translations for phrases you will often hear your producer say:

• Producer Speak - "No pressure.  I just wanted to see where you were at with this task.  I don't care when it gets done.  I trust you'll get it to me when it is ready."  Translation: "Seriously, dude, you've got like 20 minutes to finish, or we probably will have to cancel the game.  I have one hundred and one puppies in my office, and for every minute you are late, I'm going to bring one to your desk and murder it."
• Producer Speak - "You are doing great!"  Translation: "See that intern behind you.  I'm literally measuring your desk every time you step away to make sure he will be comfortable at it."
• Producer Speak - "I'll take care of it." Translation: "There's probably a 75% chance that the universe will magically make whatever you need happen, and if not, I plan on blaming the fact that it didn't get done on an intern anyway."
• Producer Speak - "I like this diet Dr. Pepper a lot." Translation: "I like the four shots of rum in this diet Dr. Pepper a lot."
• Producer Speak - "That is an awesome idea!  Let me check with marketing."  Translation - "That was literally the worst idea I've ever heard, but I want to gather some friends around so we can all make fun of it together."
• Producer Speak - "How about breaking the job up so it'll fit to run on the SPUs?"  Translation - "I spent two weeks memorizing one single phrase so it kind of looks like I know programming, but I actually utter these words anytime I speak to a programmer on any topic.  That said, I seem to have a 92% success rate at solving technical issues because of this."
• Producer Speak - "Look, I know it seems like a menial task, but localization really is important."  translation - "Given that you just cleaned my car, I literally can't think of anything else I can possibly ask you to do that is important, so just do this, ok?"
• Producer Speak - "According to the schedule, we won't need this done for two weeks." Translation - "Look, let's stop playing games - We both know I never made a schedule, so if you just keep your mouth shut about that, I'll assign your task to someone else and we'll go our separate ways."
• Producer speak - "That's awesome - it reminds me of one of the key features that made World of Warcraft so successful."  Translation -"I'm going to kill whatever feature you just showed me because you kept me from logging in and doing my WOW dailies."
• Producer speak - "We're switching to scrum." Translation - "I just read a book on scrum, and even though everything is going smoothly with our current project methadology, I refuse to have read such a boring book and have it go to waste...so much so that I'm willing to sink this whole thing just so I didn't waste my time."
• Producer speak - "I'm in a good mood today!"  Translation - "Every day of my life reminds me of how much I hate every single one of you.  Today, at least, is one step closer to my death, and thus one step closer to a reprieve from having to speak to any of you."
• Producer speak - "Definitely a lesson learned.  Make sure you put that on the post-mortem!"  Translation - "I've forgotten what we are talking about already, so I'm hopeful that by the time we do a post-mortem, you too will have forgotten."

Browsing the CIA website after watching "Alias"

Tip. Don't watch the first four seasons of Alias and then browse the CIA website (https://www.cia.gov).

You will quickly discover several things, categorized as follows:

A) They use HTTPS. This, in retrospect, seems obvious...but just to check, NASA does not. Nation secure.

B) Out of the dozens of jobs the CIA has, the "cool ones" are filed under Clandestine services, including such titles as Paramilitary Operations Officer/Specialized Skills Officer. You, like I, are not qualified for these positions. You, like I, are more likely to find employment as a Truck Driver or Sign Language Interpreter (really?).

C) Again, it makes sense in retrospect, but it looks like the CIA is the last place on earth that still employs "Cartographer." Seriously, for all of you who went to school hoping to draw maps of areas of the earth that satellites haven't seen for some reason, here's your chance. Mom is proud.

D) Blogging about one's browsing experience on the CIA's website, while initially funny, will most likely seem less so tomorrow morning when I am blacklisted.

E) The kids section is AWESOME. It was also the single most terrifying browsing experience of my life, since in my mind the CIA is obviously using this as a recruitment tool. Somewhere in Virginia, a lonely IT guy and a recruiter are staring at the empty traffic of the kids section looking for their first visitor...watching the answers closely.

https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/games/index.html

Seriously...how awesome is this? "Break the code." "Aerial Analysis." "Photo Analysis Challenge." All of these clearly designed to find me. Unfortunately, I clearly failed the "coloring book"...aka the psych evaluation...even though I chose red, white and blue for the helicopter, my usage of brown on the ground was clearly the wrong choice. It should have been green grass.

The end.

On being a game developer with an internet connection...

Another one of those "serious" Jabroni Reports that is inevitably too long for anyone to read...

Warning: It is after midnight and I don't feel like proofreading.

Reading internet forums is, as most of us know, a special form of torture that should be reserved for those with a preexisting, one-way ticket to the netherworld. That isn't to say that the fans as a whole aren't awesome, or that there aren't interesting topics or well formed posts. I don't mean to be ungrateful, I really don't. I appreciate that, good or bad, people care about our industry's products so much that they spend their time discussing it with others. It is simply that the anonymous nature of the internet guarantees that a certain percentage of the populous is going to be...challenging.

For some reason all of us, even though we know that we will fixate on the inevitable negative posts, eventually seem to find ourselves reading the forums for our respective games. Kevin Smith has written far more extensively (and with much less fear) on the nature of the internet, so I'm going to focus this on some of the special hells we get to deal with in the world of video games.

1. The good-intended fans who don't have to deal with the realities of game development.

It is tough to understand what goes into making a video game until you've done it. There are business, technical, artistic, legal, and creative limitations to every decision we make. Even though some ideas sound awesome, it can be incredibly frustrating to read entire threads devoted to demanding features or changes that are simply impossible. Some generic examples:

"Why don't these lasy developers simply hire a dozen animators and do (insert feature here)? They have millions of dollars!"

A few notes, if I may:

• First of all, you can expect that whatever feature you want can't be done by a single discipline in the modern era, even if it _seems_ like it would be the case. Concept artists need to draw the first vision (which will require iterations), artists then make content (which will require iterations), designers need to create the gameplay (which will require iterations), programmers need to code the logic (which will have bugs that need to be fixed), and QA needs to test everything. This doesn't even include the overhead of producers getting in the way with the pesky "budget" and "schedule" or leads ensuring the feature is polished. NOTHING is as simple as it seems.

• Second of all, talent is very, very hard to find. It is also very, very expensive. No matter how nice it would be, it is simply unfeasible to grab a large number of people out of school and expect them to hit your quality bar. It takes MONTHS to train even the most experienced people on the very specific tools that each team has and get them accustomed to the way each team works. Finding the _right_ person for a team is also an art that often takes months of hard work. Even if you could find the people, you'd be amazed at how fast games can eat through their budget.

• Finally, you should read the seminal classic "Mythical Man Month." The fact is, and this is pre-101 producer stuff, adding 2 people to a six month task does not make it a three month task anymore than putting nine women on a pregnancy makes a baby pop out in a month.

"Game X is so lame...they only have like a dozen characters on the screen...they should have 50 and make epic battles! And the battles should all be procedurally generated so they are unique every time. And they should support 16 player co-op, with fully recorded fights you can play back on your iPhone. They should also make it so every object in the world can be broken in a totally unique way. Also, 30fps is so choppy, it should run at 120fps at 1080p."

So, this example might be a slight exaggeration, but you get the point, and to be honest, it isn't _that_ far off from some of the comments I read. Even with the most talented tech team in the industry (and I'm proud to work with them), the fact of the matter is that the hardware can only do so much. There are a lot of technical considerations that most people never even realize that every game team has to live with. I could go off for HOURS on the difficulties, but let's focus on the easiest one, shall we?

• For all the arguments on the internet about how we have BluRay now and we have all the gigabytes of storage in the world for art assets, everyone seems to forget the simple fact that memory on consoles is limited. Very limited. All the fancy HD textures, meshes, high quality audio, and game code you see on your screen (and beyond) need to fit into 512K of memory (I'm simplifying the problem here.) That doesn't even account for the overhead of the operating system and game engine which steals our precious space. It doesn't do us a LICK of good to have all those gigs of space on a BluRay disk if, when we need to show you the cool stuff on screen, it doesn't fit in 512 megs. Sure, we are constantly moving things in and out of memory, but that takes time (quite a bit of time), and if it isn't there when you need it, your game will suddenly run at 0FPS instead of 30 or 60 while it gets there. When you understand how large HD assets are and how complicated game code is, you'll realize the miracle of what you see on the screen.

2. The incorrect fans we simply can't correct.

This one is extremely frustrating. I've seen thread after thread of people TEARING into games for things (in development) that are simply incorrect. I'll "genericize" one example I saw to make a point:

"OMG that move is WAY too easy to pull of and never runs out of power!!! THIS WILL RUIN THE GAME. They need to change this or I will not buy it. How can they be so dumb."

Of course, as is often the case, maybe the meter is just full so we can easily demonstrate it? Or maybe the button combo is super-easy so our poor production team can actually pull off the move while doing an interview with a microphone stuck in their face?

What makes this torture, of course, is that maybe the WAY the meter gets full or the ACTUAL button commands to make a move work are still secret and we can't talk about it? Which leads to 3...

3. FOR THE MOST PART WE CAN'T TALK ABOUT THE GAME, AND WHEN WE CAN, WE ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT SPECIFIC THINGS!

You can't fathom how excited developers tend to be about the games they are working on. And you similarly can't imagine what it is like not being able to share that enthusiasm with the public. Can you imagine working for years on a project and not being able to say anything? How about creating a piece of art that is the single greatest thing you have ever done and not being able to show your friends? It is, in a word, nightmarish. You, dear internet forum member, may post a totally reasonable question on the internet, and a million fans might be confused as to why the development team can't take a simple second to answer it. The reason? Because if we DO answer the question, no matter how "simple" it might seem, PR will sneak into our homes at night and kill us and our families in our sleep. And if that happens, the game never gets finished. You don't want that, do you?

4. The mean-spirited interview nit picking.

A shout-out to one of my fellow producers, who posted what I consider to be one of the best interviews I have ever seen. I was, frankly, jealous of his performance. And yet, one of the comments was "I would never let someone like that represent my product." I know the internet is anonymous, and I know we will never fix "mean people", but next time someone asks me why I don't often frequent forums, I will cite this example. In summation, dear internet, please be nice to each other.

The Tech Team Party Proposal List

We have these awesome new walls at our building covered in "whiteboard paint", which creates a giant wall-sized writing surface. I'm sure that someday these will be used for algorithms or whatnot, but as we break them in we are primarily using ours to make funny lists on the board.

As such, we (well, mostly me) have decided to enter in a "party war" with the lost-souls wandering aimlessly at a Chicago game-tech outsourcing company. As such, I present the following (cleaned for public consumption) party suggestions:

* The start-up in question has a "Fire and Ice party." We proudly invite you to our "Earth, Wind and Fire Party." That is right, dear readers, we have an entire extra element!
* Strip linear algebra.
* "Drunken Knights Party." 20 adult programmers, enough mead to drown a horse, and an evening at Medieval times!
* "Drunken Redneck Party." Paintball and Coors Light!
* Anything where we roast a pig. Or an intern.
* Revenge of the Nerds Party and Talent Show. Jon will provide the Kaossilator Pro!
* Boston Tea Party. Sam Adams and Freedom!
* Come as your favorite racial stereotype Halloween party.
* MK vs SF3 sales and bonuses comparison party!
* Cinema bug fixing party sponsored by Jack Daniels.
* Pre-Party the intervention we are having for one of our employees who is getting married.
* Jon comes to the Jabroni Report's house and calibrates his HDTV party. No refreshments will be provided.
* Let's Mocap our junk party!
* Deliverence re-enactment and pot luck.

We are currently working out how to merge all of these parties, as well as many more suggestions, into a single, week-long festival of fun.

Let's target our hate correctly, shall we...

"UNICO National, the group representing Italian-Americans upset over the portrayal of Italian gangsters in the recently released Mafia II, have scored a win in their battle against 2K Games' mobster adventure."

- Kotaku

As a proud Italian American, I feel it is my job to help set my friends at UNICO straight. Mob movies, and now games, help present the following stereotype of our peoples:

1. We are attractive. We all look like a young Pacino in the Godfather or a young DeNiro in the Godfather II. This is true.

2. We eat delicious food, and lots of it. Even under the most trying of times. I learned from Goodfellas that when I eventually end up in prison for "telling it like it is", I will be joined by my fellow Italians in a delightful private cell with a fully-stocked pantry filled with the freshest ingredients. How is this bad?

3. We are powerful people not to be trifled with. God forbid we keep this stereotype going and instead focus on, I don't know, our stellar military accomplishments since the Roman Empire?

4. We dress well. We wear excellent suits...and we wear them from the "office" to the "clubs." That's right, even when burying the body of some snitch, an act most cultures would do in jeans and a t-shirt, we still wear suits. That is how important looking good is to us.


5. We are so confident in our sexuality that we wear pinky rings. That is right, we make the single most effeminate piece of jewelery possible look downright masculine.


So, in these trying times, is it the WORST thing for our peoples to be stereotyped as Mobsters? Maybe it is time that we band together and focus on the true enemy of the Italian people. The group so likely to ruin our reputation forever that, despite the fact that they don't share our heritage, they have become the poster-children for our country.

That's right, UNICO, despite the fact that I have never paid my dues, nor have you asked, I feel we should spend our money wisely...by distancing our collective heritage as far from the cast of Jersey Shore as possible.

Thank you.

The Unsung Heroes...

Today I saw our developer support team install a giant television in our hallway. In a company where you literally have to go to the bathroom to escape a television monitor, this is hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is that this TV is connected to some magical folder somewhere in the building where people can drop video clips that will automatically be added to the "loop" that this television displays. The entire tech team is now focused on hacking into this folder to replace the current game clips with more appropriate "wang" clips...but I digress.

Ask yourself, when did IT at your company throw something like this together in their spare time for the pleasure of the company? My experience with IT at other companies has traditionally been a group of people who may or may not fix your outlook inbox after you "accidentally" get it filled with spam for various pills and mail-order partners. I mean this with all sincerity, our game would NOT ship at the quality we have without our awesome IT staff. In fact, we found calling them that to be so inadequate for their duties that we refer to them, justly so, as "developer support."

On top of the lightning fast response time (we are talking minutes) to any issue we may have, I'd like to present a list of the things these guys and girls do that makes a producer's life infinitely easier.

* Today we had a 10 minute meeting to discuss our options for storing priceless game data that we have never dealt with before. 10 minutes...and it is solved. I didn't have to call people, get quotes, follow up...nothing. It is solved. I've had multi-day meetings with people on my own team where we literally can't decide where to go to lunch, let alone build a server infrastructure for huge volumes of data.
* Prior to this game, bug tracking was done in excel and on a twiki. Think of that for a second. Is your mind as blown as mine? Within a week of asking, we literally had a fully working and configured issue system that was personalized for our workflow. Every time we want a new feature or upgrade, it just magically happens. Thanks to this team, we now have an automated way to ignore feature requests from artists...we no longer have to manually delete them from a document.
* We have dozens upon dozens of custom buildbots that check everything from build stability to performance and memory. We have custom scripts for perforce check-ins and reviews. We have websites with charts and graphs for all this stuff. The tech team adds fancy new tools every damn week...and somehow it magically appears the very same day on a server that never dies. God knows we try to make these things explode...can't do it.
* Configuring devkits and updating SDKs is hardly a task for standard IT. Our guys can do it blindfolded. Note: Tomorrow I'm going to make them try this.
* Want a 100% secure remote Perforce depot to China the same day you ask? Our guys have done it. How about running an automated installation and upgrade system for a local "art tool" via the web to some friends in Canada? Done. Are you SO concerned about security that you need a system that uses a one time use key to encrypt data? We've been.

Frankly, this is the "easy stuff." You can't imagine the strange and obscure needs a team full of tech-savvy game developers has. When it is "crunch time" and someone needs a local proxy to some other team's depot, every second can count. Frankly, even though they are on call 24 hours a day, we've never once had to abuse this, since the team always seems to be here when we are...and we work some pretty crazy hours.

Despite all of this, they still find time for our "fun" requests to keep morale high like the "Wang TV." The tech team wants to make a podcast. Not content with poor quality audio, and wanting to make us look good, Developer Support is using spare parts, dusty licenses, and duct tape to put together a pro-tools enabled Mac just for us.

In summation: Lupe, Ryan, Steve, Calvin, C-Bass, Jen...Thank you!

Also, Happy Birthday Mom!

The Post in Which I Defend MK DLC...

I'm going to break my traditional "Blog form" and actually talk about Mortal Kombat. Specifically, I'd like to talk about the sometimes downright angry response from a minority of forum dwellers ever since people saw that pesky "DLC" character slot at E3.

The inspiration for this article comes from the response to Ed’s Kotaku interview posted at Kotaku.

Let's start with a couple complaints from the forums, shall we?

"We aren't being offered "extra" characters, we are being offered content that was built into the original cost of development, that is covered by the box purchase, but is yanked from the game and then put into a little side bin, and then sold as "extra" content. "

"You are being charged money to access content on a game that you already bought.

Not content made later as an addition. "

I'm going to try clarifying the DLC issue as it applies to our game. Mortal Kombat has no evil strategy wherein we're going to cut content from the game to ship it as DLC later. None. It has never been discussed. Period. We're going to be polishing all of the content that will be included on the game disk right up until the game is ready to go to store shelves to make sure that the final product is perfect.

What we are trying some strategies on, and this is what Ed alluded to in his article, is a method that once we start working on DLC, we can get it in the hands of all players, whether they purchased the DLC or not. We are still working out if this is possible, but in an ideal world, you'd be able to fight against a DLC character even if you have not purchased it...and that somehow requires us to get the content onto your machine. We're going through a lot of negotiations to see if we can make this happen...it may not be possible, but we are certainly trying to do something we think would be a very cool way to make DLC "seamless" in terms of both those who chose to purchase any new content and those who would prefer not to.

"...I refuse to pay full price for a game not to be able to access all the characters. And then to be teased by characters that I can't access after I payed FULL PRICE for the game?"

"You know how to solve the problem of DLC fracturing the community?

Bung all the characters on the disc - remember, the way things were before - and stop nickel-and-diming us to death"

This opinion, and there are quite a few people out there, just plain confuses me as a video game player and developer. There is no reason for us to make a game if we work on it indefinitely and it never ships. Every single developer would love to literally spend decades working on a game...constantly adding new features, maps, characters, etc. If we did that, though, there would be a great deal of Duke Nukem Forevers still being toiled away on that you would never get to play. At some point, development has to stop and the game has to ship. At that point, the game is 100% complete, and you need to make the decision as to whether what is on the disk is worth your hard earned cash. With the shear volume of content we plan on including in MK, we definitely think it will be an easy choice.

This is why DLC, when done in a non-malicious nature, is so awesome. It lets those of us who really enjoyed a game get even MORE of the game without having to wait years for a sequel. In the case of MK, if we add new characters, for instance, it will literally let players extend their enjoyment of the game by mastering all-new strategies long after the game has been on store shelves. How is this bad, again?

If you don't want the DLC experience, then by all means don't purchase it. You can keep playing the same game you purchased in the store for years. All it means is that the other people who _do_ want some new experiences have the option to do so.

One last point on the idea of DLC characters in MK specifically. If we choose to do these, they are certainly not trivial in terms of the time and manpower required to complete them. Since just a small portion of the press has seen the game, it is tough to judge just how awesome our characters are from screen shots.

Characters in the new Mortal Kombat not only have the exterior model you see, but don't forget we are also modeling the character's skeletons, muscle systems and internal organs. We have to make it so their skin and cloth can be ripped, damaged and bloodied. All of this is character-specific to ensure each character looks and feels unique. For this game they all have unique animations, fighting styles, special moves, particle effects, sound effects and in some cases, unique bits of technology specific to each character. They have X-rays and fatalities. And even after all that is in there is the ridiculously comprehensive period of balancing and tweaking. It is no joke that, even with some of the most talented and efficient artists in the industry, each of the characters in Mortal Kombat takes a VERY, VERY long time to complete.

Why do I mention this? It sort of hearkens back to my original point at the beginning of this overly long post. Specifically, that NetherRealm isn't some evil studio planning to rip people off with DLC, as some of the forum reactions seem to imply. We LOVE the game we are working on, and we think that after you get an opportunity to play it, you will too. All we are saying with the infamous "DLC button" is that we (and hopefully you) will love the game so much that you'll want to continue seeing new, optional content for a long time to come.

The true story behind the Midway Logo in the Trash

The following, as with all posts here, represent the barely legible ramblings of a single person, and in no way reflect any sort of official position by or for any larger organization.

I was reading through the Kotaku comments (http://kotaku.com/5612465/so-long-midway-and-thanks-for-smash-tv) surrounding the “Midway Logo in the trash” picture Hans took, and I was struck at how evocative that single image is in regards to the story of the new NetherRealm studios under WB. I was also surprised how much internal context exists around this image that we take for granted. As such, I thought I’d pull out a few of the comments from the article and give some background for the record. Someday, somehow, someone will write a tell-all book about Midway’s history that will make the more provocative scenes from “Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari” seem like Saturday morning cartoons in comparison. At this point though, I, along with most of the staff at NetherRealm, have only heard these stories 2^nd and 3^rd hand. The comments here are simply some observations about the last days in the old Midway building before starting in our fancy new WB office building.

“i think after the pic it was taken back out of the trash and home somewhere.”

Just so the record is complete, and some poor sap doesn’t go trying to find out where it ended up in 20 years or so, this sign did not in fact find a good home. This poor-quality item was definitely taken out of the trash, but only to be torn and beaten into a pulp.

“Gasp”, you say, “but this is a collector’s item! You folks at NetherRealm have no sense of your own history.” Sadly, we do have a sense of our own history, which is the reason that this sign was one of the items that became the target of years of pent-up frustration. But more on that in a moment, as first I want to calm the fear of collectors and those with a sense of Midway nostalgia.

“ Seriously? You're going to throw away the logo? I've got a friend of mine that kept the sign to a place he used to work at when it closed down…”

“Aw, why trash it? It's a perfectly good memorabilia item!”

Trust me, anything of any real collector’s value from Midway’s history is either long-gone in the homes of the “old time” former employees, auctioned off in bulk as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, packed up and coming with us to our new building, or locked safely away in some Warner vault in Burbank.

While very few employees at NetherRealm were around for Midway’s “glory days” in the arcade, we all share the same sense of Nostalgia that most video game fans have for arcade gaming. On a daily basis over the past several weeks emails would go out about random posters, props, t-shirts, and other miscellaneous “collectors stuff” that people could take before it was thrown in the trash as part of the clean-up process. Frankly, if your office wasn’t in close proximity to the cafeteria where they laid this stuff out, there was virtually no chance of grabbing anything remotely “collectable” before someone snatched it for safe-keeping. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was more disheartening than watching one of your colleagues walk off with some awesome piece of arcade art as you arrive to pick through the tattered “Hour of Victory” posters that had been hanging on the walls throughout the building.

So, before we get back to that logo in the trash, I want to assure the video game community that all the cool Midway stuff that may have been left in the building, and there honestly was very little at this point, is safe.

Now back to the now-deceased logo.

“What a sad day for all of us. RIP Midway.”

There is one key point of context to keep in mind about Midway. The “Midway” name as you know it has been officially dead for over a year, and the Midway of the arcade era had been dead far longer than that.

The NetherRealm team working on the new Mortal Kombat game, while largely consisting of former Midway employees, has been very happily part of WB Games for most of our current project, and we haven’t looked back for a second since the buyout.

The sign in the trash is just us shedding our last tie to Midway…the horrific building we’ve been stuck in for decades. From the annual “sewage flood” that required evacuation of the sports building, to the buckets permanently affixed to the ceiling to catch the leaks, to the non-functioning heating and air conditioning that would leave us sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter, to the ad-hoc nature of building construction that led to a maze that made it literally impossible to find someone if they weren’t in their office, there is no love for the environment the team has somehow managed to overcome to create games.

There had been meetings and talks of getting a new building for years under Midway. It was a topic of conversation at nearly every “all hands” conference call. It had been promised and taken away so many times that it became a popular running joke. Within a year of our purchase by Warner Brothers, we are finally moving into a brand new, cutting-edge facility custom created based upon our present and future needs.

That sign that had been hanging on some interior wall represented a building that had nearly killed one of our engineers when a 10 gallon bucket filled with water came crashing through the ceiling right behind his desk.

That sign represented a building where every morning we had to walk by walls that had strange brown stains on them that were so deeply baked-in that they couldn’t be cleaned.

That sign was hung in a building where people literally had to evacuate their work areas because sewage water was shooting out of toilets and drinking fountains.

For this, and so many more reasons, that sign had to die so that we could start anew.

“They really shouldn't have gotten rid of the Midway name. Just because Warner Bros. owns them now, they could still exist as Midway.”

A lot of us at NetherRealm debated this point even before Midway went bankrupt, but frankly, outside of Mortal Kombat and a few other titles, Midway had really never managed to successfully transition to home consoles. The company did go bankrupt, after all, and luckily Warner Brothers identified a very talented group of people who somehow managed to create quality products under less-than ideal conditions. Like I mentioned earlier, I can’t think of a single person in the building who wanted to still exist as Midway, even if it was an option. Most of us desperately wanted a fresh start. But even more pragmatic than that, the Midway name had been driven so far into the ground in the past decade or so that we’d be insane to want to keep it. There were a lot of horrible console titles released by Midway, and the NetherRealm staff that was picked-up by Warner Brothers has very little connection to those projects or Midway corporate policy as a whole. Why start out on our new life with all the baggage of other projects we didn’t really work on created in a company that made poor decisions we weren’t part of?

I don’t want to beleaguer the point here, but let’s just say that much of working at Midway during the modern era would hardly be considered pleasant. Before the ink was dry on the acquisition by Warner Brothers, we all started referring to ourselves as “WB Chicago” until we picked the NetherRealm name. Despite some distinctly great memories, a lot of people “suffered” greatly under Midway, from horrific hours to underfunded games to questionable mandates we were powerless to stop. We were excited to get the opportunity to make the great games we had been trying to make with a publisher who would empower us to do so. I’m confident you’ll see the passion of the team finally freed from the shackles of the “Modern-era Midway” translated to the games the new NetherRealm studio will release. Unfortunately for the Midway sign, there had to be some casualties to get us there.

Let's get srz bzness for a moment...

Warning: Unfunny post upcoming.

I'm always looking for words of advice to give budding producers and managers out there, mostly because I'm the sort of guy who wants to be a guy who gives advice. As such, I'm going to throw up a trial balloon with one very rarely mentioned gem that has little to do with neither production nor management....

LEARN TO USE PHOTOSHOP

Why, you ask, do I need to learn a graphic's package usually reserved for the more sensitive and talented? First of all, the ability to quickly mock-up silly pictures to include in emails is a skill everyone should have. Secondly, and more seriously, I can't tell you how fast your ideas/notes/improvements will be shot down if you send an email or describe it in words. You could literally be the modern embodiment of a love-child between F.Scott and Jane, but no one will be able to visualize what you are saying. No one. That is even assuming they read your two lines of text in an email, which I guarantee they won't.

On the other hand, let us say there is some pesky UI problem that you just know is going to fail you in certification. Snag a screenshot, Photoshop in your change as a starting point for discussion and, boom, people will suddenly start brainstorming. With Photoshop and a bookmark to Google Images, you can create mock-up UI screens and screen flows, make clear suggestions for content issues, throw together a first-draft marketing idea, create a convincing looking web page, do side-by-side comparisons of bugs...you name it, you can do it, and it WILL come in handy.

Sure, your stuff will look like crap compared to a real artist, but the point here is not to actually create content, but to create a mock-up that can communicate your ideas to those with the true talent.

Other "non-textbook" Software Producers Should Know How To Use:

* Perforce or whatever source control your team uses. Seriously, if you need to ask a programmer for help every time you want to see a build, you'll lose -50DKP respect points.

* Visual C++. This is for bonus credit, but it is invaluable to be able to see/use the actual code that your game is running. (Note: Araxis Merge for true pros.) At the very least, you should be able to follow instructions to compile your game and run it on at least one console.

* Maya/3DS Max/"The Content Creation Editor". Much like the compiler, it is invaluable to know and be able to "use" the toolchain that artists use. If you have even a rudimentary understanding of the tools involved, you'll better be able to understand the work that goes into content creation. You should never be in a situation where you ask people to perform work that you think is "magic."

* Wiki creation software. Chances are your team uses it...so should you. In fact, you should probably have a decent grasp of HTML in general.

Like I said, you should never be expected to create content of anywhere near the caliber of truly gifted artists and programmers, otherwise you should probably still be one of those things, and will inevitably end up not doing your real job and at some point be sucked into creating content. It is sometimes difficult, especially if you once were an artist or programmer, but remember that your position exists for a reason, and that getting "sucked back in" always ends up hurting the team more than helping.

The post in which I recycle content...

So...since I've been a little "dry" on content recently, I decided to dig through my archives (Yahoo spam filter) to find content to steal from myself. As such, I discovered this piece from my on and off stint writing for game and tech magazines. It is worth noting that my specialty consisted of shoddily "researched" articles with little or no actual literary value. As such, please enjoy:

The Problems with Online Gaming
An Opinion Piece by Adam (Some Last Name)
Originally Published in PC Game World, Circa 2003

The future is online, or at least that’s what the guy at (Ed: Unfunny Joke Deleted). The problem is, and I’m trying to be kind about this, I deeply and truly despise online gaming from the very darkest, charred corners of my black, black soul. Today, lucky reader, I present you with my three arguments as to why multiplayer gaming should be abolished and why we should all return to the world of single player fun. Next week, if you are lucky, I’ll make the same case for my social life…

Online Problem 1 or “When I was a kid we had to walk uphill in the snow to get to school, all the while fending off attacks from slimy, now-extinct predators looking to snatch our women-folk.”

When I was a kid, multiplayer meant waiting until your friend either passed away or was shipped off with the army so he’d finally take his hands off the darned joystick. We would sit and longingly dream of the days when we could play games simultaneously with two, gasp, even three people. Imagine a world, we thought, where we could pit our skills against people not just in the same room, but perhaps as far away as the house next door! I have been told that the world has progressed to the point, using some sort of an ‘internet’, that these far fetched dreams are now possible. I have learned something from my experience with this ‘internet’, something many of us have come to realize, I suck at video games. It’s not through lack of effort, of course. I spent hundreds of hours training at arcades in my youth. I can think of at least one potentially meaningful relationship destroyed by that dashingly handsome Mario. I can’t tell you the names of a single person in my college fraternity, but I can remember each ones distinctly dirty Goldeneye screen name and their preferred weapon-location combination. I can now officially say that this time was wasted. No matter how hard I try I cannot, I repeat cannot, take two steps in a level of Counterstrike without dying, I will need a very good therapist just to help me deal with all my repressed memories of failure dealing with Unreal Tournament and I may be the only person whose online Sim went ahead and committed suicide while I was away. I am so utterly incompetent at online games that I now look for “ONLY FOR ONE PLAYER” as an important feature on the back of boxes. I’m too scared to even download patches and updates, because I just know some ten year old kid is going to pop up around the corner and make fun of my connection speed.
If you managed to slog through the above paragraph I’m going to reward you with the meaning of it all. If I, your heroic writer, as a lifelong game player still in the lucrative target demographic can’t enjoy online games, how are the casual players and new recruits ever going to derive enjoyment from the experience when twenty-hour-a-day snipers are waiting on every sever just to make the uninitiated cry?


Online Problem 2 or “Why having to choose between Sprint and MCI forced me to choose never to talk to another human being as long as I live.”

Multiplayer online gaming is all about freedom. In theory, I think the freedom available in modern games is amazing and altogether awesome. In practice, however, it turns out that the more choices you give me in a game the more likely I’m going to choose to get in my car and do something else. The real world gives me an infinite variety of choices, so many in fact that I usually end up cowering in a corner crying like a child. I can barely decide what sort of undergarments, if any, to put on in the morning, so how am I supposed to choose whether I want to kill the fairy princess, befriend her and ask her to conjure me a potion or simply start making out with her? I have enough problems finding the point in what I do for work without having to find the point in a game I’m supposed to be enjoying. Video games, even linear ones, ask a lot out of us in terms of our time commitment. The recent crop of MMORPGs, for example, simply provide too much content and not enough direction for anyone, such as yours truly, who needs to balance his precious game-time with his more precious sweet-sweet-lady-luvin’ time.

Online Problem 3 or “Why I miss the day patches were for sailors and guys on shirt packages.”

How many of you remember the world of computer games before Windows 95? A world where we all spent more time trying to cram our device drivers, video drivers and game executable into 640k than we did actually playing any sort of game. Luckily for single player gamers, that world is long gone. Multiplayer gamers, however, are just now entering a whole new world of hurt. As I write this I’m downloading my seventh required update for Battlefield 1942 yet I still refuse to believe the game consists of anything more than a title screen. The title screen is nice, I admit, but is it worth the $39.99 I paid for it? I, of course, say it is, but I have a feeling the rest of the world might disagree. I spent a summer working for Cisco systems, the good people who pretty much invented all forms of communication ever used on this planet, yet I still can’t tell you why my Cable modem is blocked by a firewall, why my router simply won’t talk to any of my devices (insert innuendo here) or what in God’s name a “ping” is and why this “ping” allows other players to kill me six times then enjoy a pleasant dinner in the same time it takes me to press the forward key! I’ll give you a second to catch your breath, since I’m sure you are enjoying this article so much that you’ve decided to invite your neighbors over and read it aloud to them. The point, you ask? Configuring network games is still a pain. Longhorn promises, and Xbox Live has shown, the potential to remove these problems, so there is hope yet. I just pray that Microsoft will be kind enough to send someone to my house to explain what this “ping” is and hopefully how I can get rid of it, if that is indeed something someone would wish to do with a “ping.”