JamieK10 said:
Hello JamieK10,
Thank you for the post.
I would like to expand upon Fawzia's answer a bit.
I would like to help everyone understand what is going on, and what this takes and why, under no circumstances, is it in your best interest to ask for a time-frame.
Please do not take this as anything negative on your part for asking Jamie.
I just want to take this opportunity to educate everyone on what is happening “behind the curtain” so-to-speak.
As the lead in this project and the other projects (mods) like this, you wake up in the morning around 5:30 because you cannot sleep. You grab a cup of coffee and open up the computer and respond to the messages from team members that are in different parts of the world and who are ending their day as you are beginning yours.
You eat, rush to your day job where you are lucky if you only work 9 hours. You come home, say a cursory “Hello!” to your family and then sit down at the computer, take care of the messages that came in for the day while you were working, then start coding for five or six hours. You are lucky get to sleep by midnight and are still wired because of everything you need to do.
You look forward to the weekends as you can put in 18 hours on Saturday and another 12 on Sunday to code, communicate, plan, test, recode, retest, rinse and repeat. You wake up tired, you go to bed exhausted.
You work from a list of Things to Do. You cross off each issue; you get discouraged if more lines are added than you cross off every time you sit down to do work. You have to manage a dozen or more other people who usually have ruffled feathers about some issue with writing, concept, artwork, features, or that another team member is bugging them and they cannot deal with them effectively.
This goes on for months…maybe over a year.
At first, your orientation is open, figuring out what to do. This is the fun and easy part and everyone thinks that to give an idea is all roses and pleasant fragrance. It is free-form brainstorming and nearly all gamers love to get involved at this point.
This is the illusion of game design.
Folks see the ideas and see the results and do not have a clear concept of how it goes from brain to code to finished product. It takes a great deal of knowledge, and even more self discipline.
As time goes by the focus of the coding lead is strictly on one thing… getting it done.
You are keenly aware of Return on investment of your time and effort. The least amount of effort for the most amount of gain.
The main coder gets defensive when anything causes them more time, more effort or more energy that they do not have to spare to deal with new features, what-if scenarios, and what seem to be unnecessary issues.
Once they reach this point, every question of “when is it going to be done?” increases frustration to a person who is usually already at the brink. What happens is that in a moment of fatigue, the lead will give a time frame. As soon as that is posted the expectation to deliver heats up and then the lead coder stops sleeping. This is the point where the coder reaches burnout and makes big mistakes or just gets so fed up with the whole thing that they just “barf it out”, throw out the desire for quality as at this point the only thing on his/her mind is “just make it stop!”
This, dear friends, is why all of the great and respected folks in communities like this eventually leave. I can list many of them here, people whom I greatly respect, provided amazing value to these communities with their knowledge and skill: They are gone.
So, the next time you are looking at any mod, and they are working on it, just give them your support and kind words of encouragement. That is helpful as these words help energize the mod leader and the team members and feel that they are appreciated. It gives them a sense of value for what they are sacrificing their time for.
Do not ask for time frames, do not add any more pressure to the guy or team who is trying their best to finish up a project.
It is this pressure and the perception that the main coder may have that his effort is not appreciated that will make a project fail. You, as community members and beneficiaries of the work of people like this, have direct impact on the success or failure of these projects.
Use this power wisely.
Kindest regards,
Saxondragon
