Unanticipated Time\Money Investment of Community Interaction

[ReverendTed]

Watching DF Oliver (not to mention DF Nathan) post and reply in the Programming Update thread (as well as other team members here and there), I'm struck by the amount of time already invested in community interaction.

It seems like having 2PP film The Sausage takes some of the pressure off of the developers to communicate what's happening behind the scenes, but I'm curious if the budgeting of time and money has been undertaken with any consideration for the impact of community Interaction (or as I'll call it, The Adventure) on other development tasks.

The Publisher question would be "Are you paying these guys to chat on messageboards? How much time are you allowing them to spend doing this?"

[patla073]

Probably this:

[ReverendTed]

Probably this:

Ha! I was going to make that exact reference, but then I thought "well someone's going to point out that Oliver's code probably isn't taking too long to compile at this point." Well met, good sir.

[Vagrant Gamer]

Probably this:

/thread

Seriously though, it is apparent that Double Fine is plenty busy in between their sharing of delicious knowledge with us.

[gsm]

On the other hand, if a publisher was around, DF would have to show a tech demo, meet external milestones and forced to make changes based on the publisher's feedback.

We are essentially saying "tell us whatever you want", which is a sweet deal.

[Krzysztof]

I think it goes both ways:

a) For every 1000 lines of code/1 minute of sound effects/1 piece of artwork you are entitled to make 1 (namely: one) post in the forum;

b) If you fail to meet the quota for the day you are obliged to interact with the backers for 1 hour in a certain thread.

[DaEvil1]

eh...

Writing 1000 lines of code is easy, writing 1000 good lines of code is very hard. Having a quota like that is just counter-intuitive in any way. Same goes for sound effects and artwork and whathaveyounot. No, let the people at DoubleFine interact as much as they like with the fans. And if there is a problem with someone spending so much time on the forum that they're not getting much done, the problem obviously comes from somewhere else, usually from the tasks being unmotivating or not suitable for the person doing the job.

[hymrr]

Am I the only one that read the Thread title in a robot voice?

"Unanticipated Time\Money Investment of Community Interaction"

I think the time spend on telling us what's new will be less than the time they would otherwise have to spend on communicating progress updates to a publisher on top of that it should be less stressful and there is no chance of us changing the budget.

There is no way Double Fine will finish this project and end up saying it would have been a better game if only we didn't have the backers interference and their constant demand for nailing down the red dots. TELL ME WHERE THESE DOTS WILL BE TIM, FLOATING DOTS = NO MONEY.

[Morpha]

Well if Double Fine are worried about that they should ask Mojang for pointers. They seem to be able to respond to fans quite frequently and still get stuff done.

[slagathor]

Probably this:

Replace "Compiling" with "Rendering" and that's my professional life!

[kad136]

It's inefficient to never take small breaks from work. I'm happier and do more/better work when I have a boss who doesn't care if I take quick breaks to check something online or get up and stretch my legs. In fact, I refuse to work for people who don't give me this freedom.