Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) General :sigh:

Why do design positions for games like Divinity have to be somewhere like:

.

I enjoyed Divinity, but this game, like many of its siblings in the RPG genre, tend to be missing critical design elements for RPGs. Elements which are routinely missed because the games themselves are designed by programmers and MMO Players rather than real RPers. What's depressing is that gamers, such as myself, which have 20+ years of experience on Pencil/Paper as well as computer oriented RPG design, are either completely ignored because we don't have programming experience, or are unable to apply because the freakin jobs are half-way across the world.

It just makes me want to cry.

I just had to make this post because it is so frustrating for us true gamers to repeatedly hit these brick walls.

Well, even with high bandwidth video conferencing, I don't think the job could be done very well at a distance. Failing to convince Larian to move to your location, if you want a game developer job your most practical options are to be prepared to move or find a closer game company.

I know there may be personal reasons to not want (or be able) to move, and there are tax implications and lots of paperwork (passports, work visas, etc) involved with working in another country, but it is certainly not impossible to do. I'm kind of tempted to look into that myself...

Most jobs I agree with you, however, jobs such as "quest" and "story" construction hardly need personal contact. The job that video gaming companies tend to ignore is really a "proof reader"/"editor" type of job.

A Continuity Watchdog.

100% of the quest bugs in this game alone could've easily been solved by someone taking apart the continuity storyline.

A Continuity Editing and Story Construction job is something that programmers never do. Not that I'm bashing programmers. The reason they never do this is because they've got their own problems to worry about.

A Continuity Editor Story Construction person takes the outline of the listed accomplishments, and places them on a timeline tree for progression, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, making sure that the appropriate responses for NPC A in Position 1 is as accurate as NPC A in Position 2 or Position 4.

This is a job which doesn't require conferencing, just a daily update even in email form. This position would be in direct contact with the status reports from the appropriate programming division, without having to interfere in the programmers.

During the Planning stages, and then during monthly meetings, yeah I can see someone needing to conference to consider the actual storyline for the game. But once that is all fleshed out, there's no real need for further interpersonal contact. It could be done with the same exact efficiency as me talking to you right now on the messageboard.

If so many hundreds of people across the world can construct WC3 RPGS using the Warcraft 3 World Editor, continuity check all their quest continuity just by email or messageboard communication, then why can't major programming companies do the same? I take it back, I do believe that the lead continuity editor for Baldur's Gate did do this.



Anyway, it's just my frustration with the corporate infrastructure. I'm not trying to be nit picky about the game, it's a good game, it just could've used a person serious about continuity/story editing.

You're right that not all of the job would require personal contact, but I think much of it would be easier in person.

I suppose Larian could add a patch creation step to the build process, but there could still be a great deal of data produced between builds, requiring large downloads or mailed CDs/DVDs (that would take a week, at best, from Belgium to North America).

The problems getting many builds of a presumably multi gigabyte game halfway around the world in a timely fashion (so it was always up to date) are not insurmountable, but doing so would introduce some security concerns. I don't think Larian would want to let their code outside their offices until it was fairly close to release.


Collaborating on WC3 RPGs is simplified by the fact that everyone involved has access to the World Editor. Larian is using various proprietary or custom tools. Neglecting security concerns they could provide their own tools to an outside worker, but there may be licensing restrictions on the proprietary tools that could make it impossible, or just more expensive, to install on an outside system. Of course I think a game designer would be working more with high level tools, which would more likely be Larian's programs.

Also, in collaborating online, everyone has the same delays and is working with the same constraints. In this case, everyone at Larian would be working at one speed, whereas an outside worker would be a little bit behind and take longer to provide feedback, etc.


"it just could've used a person serious about continuity/story editing."

Agreed.

I don't think anyone works just at work anymore. Propriatary or not, if someone is intent on trying to sell company secrets (such as a game engine), it wouldn't be that hard for them to leave the office with a 20gb flash drive. So, while I have no doubt that many companies use that argument (not just Larian, I'm talking about the entire corporate mentality many game people have towards videogames), it's just not that great of an argument to justify the current infrastructure. Laws against Corporate Espionage (which is what you're discussing, the theft of secret corporate data), are very real and carry very heavy sentences. I believe it's the laws about Corporate Espionage which are the real security measure here, not being at a specific work place.


But, let's put that debate aside, a continuity/story editor really does not need to "playtest" That function comes after the primary implementation of all the quests. A Lead Continuity/Story Editor just makes sure that the daily reports of "what was done" "what module was implemented" that stuff is all paperwork that is just fact checked against the Continuity Tree.

See I think the big problem here is the Continuity/Story Editory is constantly being delegated between multiple people, these people pay very little attention to it because they have "a real job" that deals with "heavy aspects of the game implementation." Because of this they don't have the time or energy or whatever to sit through pages of daily or reports, double checking the timeline progression, and then going back to say: "Hey, bud, you need to double check the initialization of this area. Make sure that this door is open after X Meeting. or Make sure that response Y is still available after event X."

It's not a "Heavy Duty" job, that's why so few companies actually advertise for it. It's just paperwork! It's "grading" the progress of the programming! It's got nothing to do with anything on the computer! It's not even classifiable as "data entry". Because of this seemingly worthless, least important job, companies routinely produce games with "unforseen" loopholes or "bugs" or "oops I got screwed out of the ending because somebody forgot to make sure that the programmers didn't get rid of X line of text!"



For instance, right now I need to figure out how to either get back into Corima's (sp?) basement, or get the herb item from a past save game because someone forgot to remind the programmer to either:

A. make it impossible for the player to accidently drop items in the basement.
or
B. make sure the player could go BACK into the basement if they accidently dropped a game important item.

A simple fact checking editor would've been able to catch it long before that particular section of the programming module was finalized.



:sigh: anyway. It's not just Larian which has had this problem. Many, many other games have had this problem, and I believe it's because nobody thinks that particular job is of any importance.

Companies need to take a hint from the Movie Industry. The Movie Industry actually has Continuity Editors to sit beside regular editors to make sure they don't splice the wrong frame of film with another frame of film despite how much cooler it may look.


edit: btw I fixed my corinna problem ^_^

I think continuity editing is also something people tend to leave till the end of development, rather than have to keep going over the same stuff each time changes are made, etc. Since development invariably runs late, it may not get done properly.

There are a couple places in the game that you can not get back to (by normal means) once you leave (Corinna's basement, the bee/wasp garden...). Malcolm's house in Verdistis gets reset on completing that quest, with no check as to whether the player has stored anything in the chest there (as a couple people did). Hopefully Larian is taking continuity seriously with DD2.

Raze -- yeah, I think that is true about people waiting till the last few months.

It's not just Larian, it's other companies too. One of the biggest issues I've had with continuity editing totally ruining a game was Myst 3. Nobody bothered to check the continuity of their actual puzzle solutions. It was so bad, that even their in game hints and the hint booklet were wrong about 3 major puzzles I could not figure out. Even after consulting the hint book, I had to figure them out on my own because my book was messed up!

oh well.

I think they may just be comfortable with somebody they can meet and sit with and drink coffee and chat. There's a lot to be said for interaction, especially when you're counting on them to do a very important job. They may not be willing to risk a distant stranger turning out to be a goof off, drunk, or quitter. Remember that Larian is a small studio and they each have a lot do do pre-release (so I read) and they can't just tell one to pick up another's slack.
However, I would like to get in on the beta testing next time if I could.

Hiring someone you can sit down, drink coffee and chat with, has contributed to broken quests trees and poor continuity.

It's clear that style of hiring has been proven by many companies to be a comple failure.

Hiring should be done based on quantifiable work, portfolios or examples of work style.