Larian Studios - Making Time to Develop

Swen Vincke released a new post on his blog about finding time to develop games. In-case you missed his GDC Postmortem video this week here is the link again.

I have to fight to find time to breathe these days.

Things are moving so fast now and we’re doing so many things simultaneously that my previous concerns over our growth scaring the hell out of me can now be considered to be a big understatement. Still, I’m having lots of fun and I’m damn proud of what we’re achieving here at Larian. We finally figured out when we’ll start announcing some of our new stuff (around E3) and if things continue to progress as they are, I think we’ll be showing a lot between then and the end of the year.

I’m just back from lovely Quebec City where we’ve been interviewing candidates to join our new team there and I’m quite excited about the talents that’ll be joining us. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a candy store when the person in front of me turns out to be exceptionally gifted in his or her craft and indicates he or she’s willing to work for us. The complementing of our team with extra capacity & talent together with having a cool RPG engine to build our future work on is empowering us and I’m anxious to see all the little building blocks come together. Obviously, since we’re in the business of making RPGs, I’ll have to exert some patience, but from where I’m sitting it’s already clear that this will become something special.

Because we’ve picked E3 as the period to announce our next big thing, I can’t say too much right now (otherwise we won’t get the press coverage we’re hoping for etc…) so for today’s long overdue entry, I figured I might tell you a bit about something that’s been bothering me.

More information.

and that's why these guy succeed. they aren't afraid to admit weaknesses.
they are trying to say what they are feeling, instead of what's right.

that's a true demonstration of power right there.

The best part of his blog post is the end.

Which brings me to the crux of my problem. I “lost” at least two days prepping and doing this GDC talk, meaning that those two days weren’t spent on development. This loss of time was something that occupied my mind as I was making my powerpoint and rehearsing and I really needed to convince myself that giving the GDC talk was a good thing. (In the past I have been known to walk out of a GDC Europe presentation because I needed my time)
You see, the other thing I was working on at the same time was the main beats for our next RPG and in my mind they dwarfed the GDC talk in importance. I have the same problem with updating this blog. Every time I want to start on it, I think of something I should be doing on the game, and so that takes priority. I can’t but help that that’s the better thing to do, but experience obviously taught me that if you don’t do the other part, then your company is doomed.

I guess that in the type of job I do, this tension between selling my company to the public and developing is inevitable, but I keep on struggling with finding the right balance. Right now, the way I fix it is by working harder, but eventually I wil run out of stamina, and so I need to find a better more permanent solution. I’m quite curious how other people in similar situations handle this. My current solution really is to work harder and to focus on the 10% of things that make up 90% of what’s important for Larian, but I can’t help feeling stressed about the other 90% of things I’m not doing.

So is it ok to not reply to people’s mails? Is it ok to refuse things you should feel honoured about because you need time to work on ‘your thing’? Is it ok to be incredibly annoyed when someone sends you a reminder? Can you tell them ? How do people perceive you when you flatly don’t answer them? Do people really understand that you’re too busy? It’s something that preoccupies me these days and I don’t know the right answer. All feedback more than welcome because I’d really like to know the best approach.

His entire post makes sense based on his GDC speech because he seemed very tired and burned out. My advise is take some time off, and delegate his work load.

I want to see what their Quebec City building looks like, the only problem is that the media hasn't reported where it was yet. And yes as a Belgian citizen Swen speaks fluent French so this played in their decision.

Originally Posted by Humanity has risen!
I want to see what their Quebec City building looks like, the only problem is that the media hasn't reported where it was yet. And yes as a Belgian citizen Swen speaks fluent French so this played in their decision.

The media might not have, but it's listed in several business and employment sites. For example, the espresso jobs site lists a few jobs for them and includes their building on google maps. It's a two-storey (plus ground) brick building in Saint-Roch.

That's why i like Larian. Lots of transparency. Swen seems to be on the right track with his company and the success of D:OS gave him a rather nice degree of independance.

Sounds to me like Swen is at this fork in the road where the company has grown to a point he needs to decide whether he wants to remain involved in the day to day development of games or become a full time CEO who armchairs the whole thing.

Not sure why he seems so hesitant to hire a personal assistant. That would be one of his options obviously. As far as I can tell from this post his options come down to:

- Hire a personal assistant who takes care of everything that distracts him from staying involved with the day to day stuff.
- Become a full time CEO and leave the game development to his most trustworthy creative heads (while still reserving the right of "last word", of course)
- Become a full-time creative/project director and hire someone competent to take over as (co-)CEO.
- Leave everything as is, since it seems to actually work, in spite of some obstacles

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Sounds to me like Swen is at this fork in the road where the company has grown to a point he needs to decide whether he wants to remain involved in the day to day development of games or become a full time CEO who armchairs the whole thing.

Not sure why he seems so hesitant to hire a personal assistant. That would be one of his options obviously. As far as I can tell from this post his options come down to:

- Hire a personal assistant who takes care of everything that distracts him from staying involved with the day to day stuff.
- Become a full time CEO and leave the game development to his most trustworthy creative heads (while still reserving the right of "last word", of course)
- Become a full-time creative/project director and hire someone competent to take over as (co-)CEO.
- Leave everything as is, since it seems to actually work, in spite of some obstacles

I Think the last option is the best. why grow? stay small and best. look at blizzard, they were amazing at the start and middle. now they are selling crap. good crap, but souless crap. I am pretty sure he'll take the CEO thing and supervise when he can. which means, less larian'ess in the future.

I think Swen should indeed hire an assistent to offload some of his work. Getting either out of active development or biz dev means giving up control, which doesn't sound like something Swen would do.

Not answering emails cannot be the answer in a professional environment. By doing that he would slowly but surely piss people off.

It's unfortunate when people allow the irrational desire to always grow larger ruin a good thing, which is all but inevitably the outcome, longer term.

It might be fun right now, but it will eventually turn you into something other than an artist.

Unless you're one of the very, very rare people who're actually able to say stop during success - and focus on what you originally got into development to do.