All Staff Meeting Notes - Feb 26, 2011

[anthony98]

im sure we as a community really really and i mean really need all this. furthermore i wouldnt be suprised if in another 6 months or so we will have a new spiffy staff position(s) re-evaluating the re-evaluaters

[Shotter]

While some of the basic specifics of that meeting demonstrate an understanding of how to move the project forward, it overwhelmingly shouted to me that the mindset of the team is still in the wrong place.

To highlight the beneficial parts of that meeting, the basic idea of the split between Developers and Community Staff, the 'Sprint' idea as well as a sort of 'Feature Lock' (IE we don't plan features half a year in advance) are all good basics, but that's just it, they're simple (basic) yet effective ideas.

The problem this Staff Team has had, and seems to continue to have, is the mindset that the only way to make this project work is to run it like a big company, which is fundamentally incorrect. Over the past year(s) there have been several staff restructures that ultimately proved to do absolutely nothing (Arguably they did more harm than good). In a vain attempt to mimic the professionalism and realism of a business, the team created a 'Board' and Kyle was elected 'President' and there were many titles that made someone or something seem vastly more important or powerful than they truly were. In short, they spent more time appearing professional than being professional. Which is again why this meeting has given me more cause for concern than hope or joy.

The problem is, the Team (Or someone very influential on the team) seems to fear their own project and their own community. There is some falsified belief that it is absolutely compulsory to success for them to become a business, when in fact little could be farther from the truth. At the start of the meeting Oru remarked that this project was different from any other, and in some aspects it is, but fundamentally this emulation project is no different from a mod for any PC game. The downfall here seems to be that he (Or someone else, or all of them) believe its completely different. Because of their irrational fear, they look to business practices to "save" the project, and while as mentioned above some of those practices are good, they're also simple ones that almost every mod project I've ever seen has utilized quickly.

Kyle stated that it would most likely be April before this entire new scheme was implemented (Although he hopes sooner), and all that seems to be to me is a month of wasted time for gain that could have been made without the waste. If they stopped thinking everything was so difficult and took so long to accomplish, it wouldn't be so difficult or take so long to accomplish, because the only ones holding them back are themselves. Arguably, you could probably ask most people in this community (Even if they are trolls, exploiters and drama queens bored at work) to think of a way the entire Staff should be run, and they'd probably be able to tell you a way to run it that would require a day to change and be better than what we've had for the past few years because it isn't actually that hard to fix. Again, the shadow the Staff Team sees is a monster only because they make it out to be a monster. They take out a rocket launcher to kill it, but end up blowing a hole in their house when they could have just walked around the corner and seen that it was their cat, Mittens.

Here's something you could have done easily without the need to look in to Scrum, and without having to restructure the staff as many times as it has been over the past two years, this will include some of the things you've already said you want to do from the meeting.

- Split the developers from the community staff, Developers make the game, Community Staff dictate how they interact with the community

- Have an internal poll to see who should become the Community Lead, Renala or Firehawk (Based off the organization chart that was posted during the meeting), and have an external poll for the community members to decide who they'd want. The external poll serves not as the end-all-be-all, but just as more data.

- Give the EC, GM, and Support leads complete autonomous power.

- If any issue arises between members of different sections, then they get together with one neutral party and talk it out.

- Developers set a goal they want to hit, IE: Something they want to have implemented in 2-4 weeks, then do it. At the end of the 'Sprint', they say if its done or if it isn't.

Those 5 steps could have been done (Excluding however long you wanted the polls to be up) in a day and could have solved an excruciating amount of problems. Other than that, streamlining the Eclipse/Jira process to enable newer developers to jump in is great, but again it didn't need this entire 'presentation' to make it happen.

The Team doesn't need a business, they just need to think. Personally I've been removed from the team without actually being able to face my accusers or even talk with them, in what world and in what mind did that ever seem like the right thing to do? Individually when I've spoken with members of the staff team they've been intelligent and critical, but for some reason when they all get together, they tend not to make the best of decisions.

All in all, this time this restructure might actually do something, and I'll be tremendously glad if it does get the Team back on its feet, but the fact still remains the mindset is still troubling. To end with an analogy, It's kind of like their new idea is an airplane, and they want to take their airplane to get to where they're going, and the airplane is nice, it has Plasma TV's and a mini-bar, but their destination is only a few feet away, and if they would have realized that sooner, many things could have been avoided.

A devils advocate a day keeps the rioters away.