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Angry-Gamer is hosting an article, written by Lead Designer Gully Foyle, in response to the very recent interview / post mortem that Fury Lead Designer and Auran Creative Director, Adam Carpenter, conducted with F13.net. Gully criticizes Adam for numerous reasons gathered from the tell-all article about Fury...
I'm a lead designer at a great developer. It's a role I take very seriously, and one of the most fundamental in game development. I read Adam Carpenter's interview at f13.net and it made me both sad and furious...
I imagine there are people at Auran who think that all designers are wastes of space because of this guys actions. I imagine there are junior designers who are passionate about their field who joined Auran hoping to learn their craft from their leads. To all those people, I say - this is not typical. You can expect more from your lead designer. You MUST expect more from your lead designer.
1. Anonymous Fri, 14 Dec
I read Adam Carpenter's interview. I don't know what's so bad about it?
Mainly that all the things he complains about are things that should be his job to fix. He was the creative director, after all. But then he goes and points the finger at other people for the lack of creative vision and commitment. Just poor behaviour, is all.
It is if your a game developer who actaully wants a life outside work. Also playing blame game is just unprofessional.
I read the article too. It's funny how game developers equate working for below average pay , as well as overtime without compensation (in a lot of cases), as being something you should get up in the morning and be excited about. Having worked in the game industry for fourteen years, the only thing I've seen this achieve is a sporadic burst from employees at the beginning of their career, only to be burnt out by their second or third year and eventual resignation by year five. In most cases. Adam Carpenter needs to grow up.
Has everyone forgotten the 'EA Spouse', incident of a few years ago?
As an artist, almost every professional site that I subscribe to, plus a conference I went to in September conducted by one of the lead animators at Pixar state the following. It is paramount that you have life experience. This allows you to to bring more creativity to your work. Sitting in front of the computer for fourteen hours a day smelling the plastic thats coming off it isn't going to make you better developer. All it does is give you carpel tunnel syndrome an a chip on your shoulder.
This sounds like another spoilt yet incompetent lead designer got burned by his own hubris. Same thing happened on with Harvey Smith who screwed up Blacksite.
Except this time he took down the whole company with him. Shame.
Anonymous 3 I totally concur with your comments. As an extension to those comments I'd say too few young guys fresh out of the new game development courses have enoug general life experience and perhaps enough interests in their lives (which they can also birng to bear on their work) outside games and the industry ergo to much regurgitation takes place.
The true test will be whether or not this experience reels in his horrendous ego problem. You can't be a user hostile game designer.
I played Fury at the Game Connect conference in Melbourne and I must admit I wasn't impressed. Sub par graphics, uninteresting gameplay. There was no way it could be successful in such a competitive market.
Having worked in the industry for three years before going for better prospects else where, I totally agree with Anonymous 3 comments.
they were showing it off and it had framerate issues.
that did more harm then good.