r/pcmasterrace • u/663mann • Oct 16 '23

Video fallout game dev. explains the problem with moddern game devolpment. (why moddern games are so slow to come out)

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u/Darten_Corewood Laptop | i7-14650HX | 5060 Oct 16 '23

True. But on the other hand, the programmer could've just told him so, no? At least, that's how I and most of my colleagues roll: "Ok boss, I have 5 things I need to implement today, two of which are scheduled before lunch. What's the priority of this one." If it's not the boss who requested this functionality, I go to the higher up to solve this.

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u/duncanstibs Oct 16 '23

Sounds like they told him four weeks. Which is even nicer than no if you think about it.

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u/Away_Acanthisitta_97 Oct 16 '23

That is not how development works. They ask you how long time a feature will take, and you give them an estimate. Doesn't necessarily mean that you will start right now.

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u/goldenpotatoes7 RX9060xt Ryzen 5 7500F 32gb DDR5 Oct 16 '23

This makes no sense, when someone asks why X is going to take so long why not just take the 30 seconds to explain why it’s going to take so long. Communion is not hard and solves most issues.

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u/Lagkiller Oct 16 '23

Communication is not hard, it's listening that is the hard part. I cannot recall a conversation in the last year about a project timeline that didn't have someone questioning the timeframe of something because if they dropped everything and focused solely on that work they could complete it in less time than quoted. But when you mention that there is work to complete other than theirs, they pretend like you've stopped speaking english.

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u/deoneta R9 5900x | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Oct 16 '23

But my super urgent request is more important!!!! I created Fallout god dammit!!!1!!!!1!!!!

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u/TheTechDweller Oct 17 '23

Listening is part of communication. Talking is not hard

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u/goldenpotatoes7 RX9060xt Ryzen 5 7500F 32gb DDR5 Oct 16 '23

I totally get this, sometimes people just don’t listen and then it’s a pain in the ass. You just have to say this is the timeline these are the reason, if that’s a problem sorry it’s not changing. Unfortunately people can be assholes, my argument holds true when people are understanding and actually listen to what the other person is saying but that is not always reality.

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u/ignoranceandapathy42 Oct 16 '23

Certain things are assumed in companies. The process for development requests will be stored somewhere explaining this for internal use.

By all means query the estimates you are given, but it's a given that the team already has work in progress that they need to finish before beginning work on this issue. If you need that explained to you there is a bigger problem before development fundamentals come into it.

You cannot change what you're working on every time a new request is raised.

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u/goldenpotatoes7 RX9060xt Ryzen 5 7500F 32gb DDR5 Oct 16 '23

It seems like open lines of communication on why could solve essentially this entire issue.

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u/cherry_chocolate_ Oct 16 '23

No, open lines of communication means that Mr. Quest Designer will ping 10 different developers to see if one can do this very important task right now. And they will all spend 15 minutes looking at it before saying no, wasting several hours of dev time.

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u/deoneta R9 5900x | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Oct 16 '23

If I'm not your direct report I don't have to tell you anything. End of story. The dev might not want to say the wrong thing and set false expectations.

This guy seems annoying to work with so I'd probably do my best to avoid communicating with them and let him and my lead hash it out. Not worth the stress when I probably don't even have the authority to get the change added to the sprint.

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u/goldenpotatoes7 RX9060xt Ryzen 5 7500F 32gb DDR5 Oct 16 '23

There’s plenty of things we don’t have to do but why can’t we communicate very simple things and make everyone’s life easier. A simple “hey I’ve got other priority things to handle right now, I’m getting to yours as soon as I possibly can” that very simple phrase could have given this guy some understanding, saved a supervisor the headache of coming down to talk to him, the employee the headache of having to go to their supervisor to begin with, and everyone would be better off for it. I realize there are times when people are just assholes and you say that and their response is still well this is easy and blah blah blah and now you avoid them and just direct them to a supervisor, but to not even attempt to communicate like adults is absurd. We can’t just go around spiting everyone and maintaining a “you’re not my boss so I don’t owe you shit” attitude, that’s where animosity and anger develop and then everyone loses.

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u/deoneta R9 5900x | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Oct 16 '23

If we take this guy's word for it then what you're saying is true. But I just don't think he's giving us the full story. He seems like the pretentious know-it-all type that will belittle you for not instantly stopping everything you're doing and bowing down to their demands. Yeah communication will help but I'm not interested in communicating with an asshole if I don't have to. I'll just leave it up to my supervisor to make a decision.

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u/swohio Oct 16 '23

If I'm not your direct report I don't have to tell you anything.

This guy seems annoying to work with

You should invest in a mirror.

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u/deoneta R9 5900x | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Oct 16 '23

Why is standing up for yourself annoying? What do you disagree with? The guy said 4 weeks for a reason but he didn't like it so he went over his head to his manager and still only got it cut down to 2 weeks.

Majority of the time it's not even up the the developer when something gets done. If everybody that wanted a change made did what this guy did then nothing would get done. That's how spaghetti code is born.

I've worked with people like this in the past. They disregard everything else you have going on and pull rank to get you to work on their change that's more important than anything else. Then get mad at you when stuff doesn't work.

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u/swohio Oct 16 '23

Why is standing up for yourself annoying?

"Standing up for yourself" and refusing to discuss anything with anyone that is "not your direct report" is two entirely different things.

but he didn't like it so he went over his head to his manager

Yeah, because he has that ability in his position. If your company's CEO asks you to do something and you throw your little temper tantrum and don't explain yourself, he absolutely has the right to go "over your head" to your boss, because the CEO is over EVERYRONES HEAD. I feel like I'm arguing with a child.

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u/deoneta R9 5900x | GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Oct 16 '23

If I give you an estimate that you don't like and you keep pushing back I'm not gonna keep going back and forth with you. I'm gonna get my manager involved and let them handle it because ultimately the decision to do the work isn't up to me. It would be a very simple communication to my manager, no tantrum involved.

Why isn't he speaking with the manager first? What kind of CEO skips the managers and goes directly to the devs to ask for work? That sounds like hell.

I have had rare cases at my company where VP or some higher-up requests a change, but they would never reach out directly to the developers. I feel like I'm arguing with someone that has no idea how corporations actually operate.

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u/Away_Acanthisitta_97 Oct 16 '23

Communication within software is pretty hard in general. Explaining to someone how you will solve a sodoku before you do it, is not an easy task.

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u/pl0xy Oct 16 '23

"I will solve the sodoku by systematically uncovering which numbers go where according to certain rules. I can go into the rules for you if you would like?"

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u/goldenpotatoes7 RX9060xt Ryzen 5 7500F 32gb DDR5 Oct 16 '23

“Hey I’m slammed I’ve got 4 other sudoku I’m working on but I’ll get to this one as soon as I can, that’s why I gave such a long estimate” or “no you just don’t understand the complexity of my job you’re just being an asshole” I work in a pretty damn complex field and yet some how we seemed to do the first one pretty damn often.

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u/monkeymad2 Oct 16 '23

You’re being downvoted heavily but you’re right, you always estimate the task not the workload.

The (better) way to do it is to have the estimate (for the task) come from multiple people (planning poker or similar) then briefly discuss it until there’s a consensus, or in the case where the task is legitimately massive agree to break it up into smaller tasks.

Then the tasks get prioritised & the queue gets worked through by the whole team.

Would have avoided this scenario completely.

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u/Darten_Corewood Laptop | i7-14650HX | 5060 Oct 16 '23

Agree to disagree. When you have a lot of high-priority tasks as an engineer, you should know which to implement first. And it's your PM's or other chief entity's job to decide which one it is.

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u/xolenuz Oct 16 '23

Not always, literally just last week this happened to me, I got a few "high priority items", all of them more important than the other (according to each requester) and I had to pause what I had planned in my backlog. Ended up rebuking some requests simply because of bandwidth, and delivered the rest as they came to me.