Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money...
As a project manager (well sort of, but did IT projects for a while, have multiple friends in the gaming manager): Yes and no.
From my point of view: The problem isn’t the fact that games are art. While games have their creative side they also require good “brick and mortar work” in the back - as many games as went horribly wrong due to a lack of space for creativity went wrong due to a lack of “less than glamorous” brick and mortar work and overcreativity. (Most drastic example would be the reddit dragon MMO story)
This is actually a reason why people who are very invested in the subject matter of the project they manage often are horrible project managers - and vice versa people who have no clue can’t be good PMs either.
Project management has one core component: Knowing when to ask whom. A good PM knows that the dev(or dev team lead) will always know better how long “feature X” will take. Of course I can try to learn how to do things… but that wouldn’t help much as the exact dev or team will still have their individual speeds. But a good PM also will know when to ask someone else who is nore knowledgeable for advice or to confirm things. (I literally had an Dev trying to tell me a small feature would take two weeks. Fair enough. But interestingly enough two other Devs were fairly sure it takes 30min including documentation. Which sounded way more reasonable. Turned out said Dev always tried to pull these stunts with new PMs and his lead being on vacation)
A good PM will also know when to give people space for creativity - and defend this room towards the budget.
Sadly - and this is a problem existing on all sides around PM- in the end it all boils down to a simple thing: Everyone thinks they know better. The PM thinks they know the job of being a Dev(or engineer,etc. etc.) better than the actual people doing the job. And vice versa the Devs think they could do without PMs (they can’t for larger projects it’s impossible, for mid size projects often really inefficient) or know their job better.
Definitely not the best, but still worth a mention is “Stormworks: Build and rescue”. Basically a Lego like “build a ship/plane and do missions on the oceans” game - missions nowadays are also including far more than rescue.
I’ve just broken my left collarbone and for the next couple weeks have left arm in a sling. Thinking about games that are played just with the right hand?...
Btw: There are USB foot keyboards on the soulless online marketing platform of your choice. They can usually be programmed to different keys or combinations. While it is not something I would use for FPS gaming, it can come handy in situations like yours. I have one with three different switches that are programmable which is quite handy.
Cities Skylines 2, Kerbal Space 2, Planet Coaster 2, Frostpunk 2... What Went Wrong? angielski
Last few years I’ve been excitedly waiting for sequels from several small-to-medium sized studios that made highly acclaimed original games—I’m talking about Cities: Skylines, Kerbal Space Program, Planet Coaster, Frostpunk, etc.—yet each sequel was very poorly received to the point I wasn’t willing to risk my money...
What is the best Sea based game out there in your opinion? angielski
I'm talking about things like:...
Suggestions for mouse only games? angielski
I’ve just broken my left collarbone and for the next couple weeks have left arm in a sling. Thinking about games that are played just with the right hand?...
How chaotic gang of British 'geeks' launched one of most lucrative gaming franchises of all time [Grand Theft Auto] (news.sky.com) angielski
I found this mini-article interesting. It talks about the development of GTA from its early days in Scotland, in the UK....