I found the second video where the artist made a drawing of Lord British killstealing a noob pretty interesting. And at least they have offices, kinda. Never really understood why the dot coms decided open plan was a good idea for software development, nor why so many other tech companies followed along with that. People whose job requires intense focus should never be immersed in an environment where there are so many constant distractions. Prolly explains why we're getting so much shovelware these days, right there.
Anyway, if these guys are gonna be cranking out 1 hour conference calls all the time, I suggest they liven things up a bit. The dog in video one was a step in the right direction, but I think they should consider belly dancers, instead.
——- edit
Shorter and more interesting Lord British video where his mic isn't even turned on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U07Adn24VKY
Garriott: 'Most game designers really just suck'
Yeah, they do. That's because most of them were hired to write manuals (the infamous Brenda Garno), do map levels(the infamous John Romero), work as QA testers, do webpages, or customer service, all of the later three of which Garriott currently has on staff himself if I'm not mistaken.
They weren't hired as designers. In most cases they were hired because they knew somebody at the company. Often somebody who was previously hired because they knew somebody at the company. So they're doing their low level work for a few years and doing the appropriate amount of brown-nosing and rubbing elbows with the people that are actually making the games, and somebody eventually decides they deserve to be promoted. To what position? They can't do art, and they can't write code. Oh, how about "designer"? And then of course they start feeling like they're real software developers and maybe they don't even need all these programmers, and maybe they don't need management either, maybe they should just start their own company and hire a couple "programmers" right out of school, along with a bunch of "designers" they know from all the other companies they worked at.
So not only do they get their "designer" gig without knowing a damn thing about making games, but in most cases they aren't even particularly bright. They got hired in the first place because they were nice and they knew people and they were willing to work cheap, not because they were creative geniuses.
It's a dysfunction and it exists only on the game side of software development. Producer is another bullshit title that doesn't have any legitimate place in software development. As Richard Garriott says himself, hotshot programmers are the source for hotshot designers. And they don't even need to be called designers, they can be called team leaders like it's done in traditional software development. It's stupid as hell to put people who know nothing about software development in charge of software development projects.
And that's why most designers just suck.