Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 18, 2020, 08:45:44 AM
Sure, that's a nasty setback (on multiple levels, not all business).  However, WotC has a string of such "managed to pick the wrong company to help" setbacks in tech.  At some point, if you can't ever get it right, it calls into question your judgment on picking your help.

Based on hearing similar development hell stories for software and websites across industries I think it's less a question of judgment and more a question of general competence within the small studio programming development industry.

There's a reason the term "vaporware" exists.

In fact when you go even deeper into rumors about the developer, it's also been suggested the guy hit the breaking point because he wasn't going to be able to meet WotC's deadline and the "unbreakable encryption" was either his way of hiding that it was mostly vaporware or that the rest of the team blamed the lack of a nearly finished product on the guy who was no longer alive to say otherwise.

The saddest part is that's not even the most convoluted story of software development I've heard; though the murder/suicide definitely makes it the most dramatic.

Similar cases with RPGs on Kickstarter turning out to be vaporware are why I'm making sure my writing is finished on my own system before I go to Kickstarter for art/editing/production funding and will have a draft copy of the manuscript as the lowest tier pledge reward just to prove it's not vaporware being pledged on.

Quote from: RandyB on December 18, 2020, 10:35:25 AM

Quote from: moonsweeper on December 17, 2020, 11:55:20 PM

Quote from: RandyB on December 17, 2020, 09:50:41 PM

Because the lone developer thereof died suddenly - and all his work was encrypted and thus could not be carried forward by anyone else.


Intentional outreach to the massive WoW fanbase on the part of WotC. Had the digital tools been completed and available at launch....

So (A) they tried to target a new demographic, without doing some extra work to maintain the old base and (B) were so inept that they set a critical component up with a single point of failure and compounded this by having their single point of failure (one programmer) create another single point of failure (the encryption) inside the first point 

Just between you and me that looks like a failed INT check by most of the marketing team (A) and a fumbled INT check by the development team (B)

...and I thought Paizo had bad project management.

As I heard it, the encryption was the programmer's choice, not WotC's. But they allowed it, by ignorance or inaction. I'd guess ignorance.

Better info upthread.

Doesn't matter, still complete and utter incompetence.  The company is doing a complete overhaul of one of its flagship products and doesn't have a basic backup system in place...

This is why you have downloaded copies in a few locations as you go, at worst you lose a week or less of work...

Quote from: moonsweeper on December 18, 2020, 12:52:02 PM
Doesn't matter, still complete and utter incompetence.  The company is doing a complete overhaul of one of its flagship products and doesn't have a basic backup system in place...

This is why you have downloaded copies in a few locations as you go, at worst you lose a week or less of work...

Backups only help to recover from accidents. They don't help at all against deliberate sabotage.

The project lead would know where all the backups were. If he wanted them gone, he could easily overwrite them all with corrupted data and make sure any prior revision backups were corrupted too.

WotC hired a company to design a series of programs for their digital rollout; programs that can easily take a year (particularly the 3d interactive tabletop). Then a month or so before the launch the project lead in that hired company snaps, destroys all the programs and backups... then MURDERS his wife and kills himself.

But that's WotC's fault in your world?

A hires B.  B fails to deliver.  How much is A's fault?  Who can say?
A hires C.  C also fails to deliver.  Ditto.
A hires D - G with similar results.

A hires H.  H is apparently so small that other developers do not have copies of the source code on their work stations/laptops (for some bizarre reason). I don't know, maybe it was a really bad design with all the real business logic written in database procedures.  Who can say from the outside?  H does the sabotage/murder/suicide thing.

The sabotage/murder/suicide thing is not A's fault.  The track record of failing to hire anyone that can deliver is A's fault.  H is just the most spectacular, recent example of the problem.  Now, A did manage to, finally, do better the next time.  So maybe they do learn, eventually, slowly.  Still wouldn't bet a plug nickel on any tech firm they hired (e.g. WotC hired you to do tech would be a negative on your resume for tech).

Edit, TL,DR:  At some point, the fact that you've got, this time, what for other people would be a good excuse for failure, doesn't change the fact that you've somehow managed to consistently fail.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2020, 01:07:30 PM

Quote from: moonsweeper on December 18, 2020, 12:52:02 PM
Doesn't matter, still complete and utter incompetence.  The company is doing a complete overhaul of one of its flagship products and doesn't have a basic backup system in place...

This is why you have downloaded copies in a few locations as you go, at worst you lose a week or less of work...

Backups only help to recover from accidents. They don't help at all against deliberate sabotage.

The project lead would know where all the backups were. If he wanted them gone, he could easily overwrite them all with corrupted data and make sure any prior revision backups were corrupted too.

WotC hired a company to design a series of programs for their digital rollout; programs that can easily take a year (particularly the 3d interactive tabletop). Then a month or so before the launch the project lead in that hired company snaps, destroys all the programs and backups... then MURDERS his wife and kills himself.

But that's WotC's fault in your world?

wrong

The program manager in charge of 4e may be able to do that if no one is paying attention...but your software developer, nope.

In order for it not to be WOTC's fault they would have had to have various updates delivered that they could fall back on...if they let a solo developer go without delivering updates on a regular basis it is a failure on their part.

Your timeline only proves my point.

The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

You mean the taking 20 video? The comment section on that is gold.

Quote from: Slambo on December 18, 2020, 03:16:16 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

You mean the taking 20 video? The comment section on that is gold.

That's the one. I saw in my yootoob feed that guy from taking 20 was soliciting a vote on whether to post his video rebuttal to all those slamming him and his players.

The thread on the Paizo  PF2 forums makes my brain hurt.

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:19:04 PM

Quote from: Slambo on December 18, 2020, 03:16:16 PM

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

You mean the taking 20 video? The comment section on that is gold.

That's the one. I saw in my yootoob feed that guy from taking 20 was soliciting a vote on whether to post his video rebuttal to all those slamming him and his players.

The thread on the Paizo  PF2 forums makes my brain hurt.

I bet, i saw a ton of comments basically telling him he cant have a negative opinion on PF vause he has a youtube channel and people might not try it if he does. A few mentioned the game is hurting for players, but im not sure if theyre reliable for the purpose of this thread.

Quote from: JeffB on December 18, 2020, 03:14:54 PM
The monday morning nerd quarterbacking in this thread is hysterical.

I'm guessing none of you have seen the viral ragequit PF2E vid  posted on youtube in recent days (and the dozen(s?) response videos), otherwise the thread would have veered back on topic to trashing that system and it's development and design team.

/intermission

I just watched his video and to be honest I dont really understand what his point was.

He complains that a player chooses to memorise say Fireball and then complains that their character casts Fireball over and over again.

All I can say is, Dude you have played DnD before, right?

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 18, 2020, 01:16:51 PM
Edit, TL,DR:  At some point, the fact that you've got, this time, what for other people would be a good excuse for failure, doesn't change the fact that you've somehow managed to consistently fail.

Do you work in the programming field by chance?

Because my experience of interacting with software/website developers is that 95% of them have a level of "programming" that amounts to modifying some existing platform by swapping out the art (or filling default positions to place art) then adjusting a few settings on a behind the scenes interface that someone with actual talent built in order to "customize" it.

Anyone with real talent gets snagged up by the megacorp companies who charge through the nose for development. And even EA's teams more often than not deliver virtually unplayable buggy messes at launch that only get fixed after the fact if its profitable enough in spite of all the flaws to divert some of the profits into doing so.

If you have a solid IT and/or programming guy or team you're happy with for your work; pay them like kings because they are by far the exception and not the rule in the industry.

Your anecdotal evidence may vary.

Quote from: moonsweeper on December 18, 2020, 01:32:34 PM
wrong

The program manager in charge of 4e may be able to do that if no one is paying attention...but your software developer, nope.

In order for it not to be WOTC's fault they would have had to have various updates delivered that they could fall back on...if they let a solo developer go without delivering updates on a regular basis it is a failure on their part.

Your timeline only proves my point.

You are aware this was going to be a subscription (i.e. user billing information is involved) server-based system (basically a turn-based MMO), right? You understand that WotC/Hasbro doesn't actually own any game platform servers or do ANY in house software development? That they pay hosting services and outside developers for all that stuff; people who ostensibly know what they're doing.

So go grab the launcher for some defunct MMO and try and play the game. I'll wait. The 4E project manager (who writes BOOKS for a living) can have all the client-side updates to show progress that he wants, if the software developer blew up/corrupted/encrypted (same effective difference) the server-side programming and its backups then the client-side program delivered to the 4E team is about as useful as a dead MMO launcher program.

That said, they WERE able, in a matter of that month, to cobble together a functional character builder and a monster builder (two parts NOT directly reliant on the server-based virtual tabletop) in time for launch. So it seems like the primary part lost due to malice was the server-side software portions of what was intended to be an integrated system (if you're familiar with City of Heroes, after it was shuttered, some people were able to cobble together the client-side data to re-create the character builder as an offline program, though you couldn't load into anywhere to play them).

From what I've read of the matter for 4E its basically the same thing; after the encryption/murder/suicide only the tools that resided client-side could be rebuilt in time for launch... and by the time they could start to maybe start over on the server-side features things were going so badly they just scrubbed the whole project.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2020, 03:37:01 PM
You are aware this was going to be a subscription (i.e. user billing information is involved) server-based system (basically a turn-based MMO), right? You understand that WotC/Hasbro doesn't actually own any game platform servers or do ANY in house software development? That they pay hosting services and outside developers for all that stuff; people who ostensibly know what they're doing.

So go grab the launcher for some defunct MMO and try and play the game. I'll wait. The 4E project manager (who writes BOOKS for a living) can have all the client-side updates to show progress that he wants, if the software developer blew up/corrupted/encrypted (same effective difference) the server-side programming and its backups then the client-side program delivered to the 4E team is about as useful as a dead MMO launcher program.

AS far as I am aware the 4e character creation program that WotC did eventually release can be downloaded to your computer.  Not that I would promote anyone doing such a thing illegally.

But lets be fair, your game should stand on its own merits without relying on 3rd party support tools.

Quote from: Chris24601 on December 18, 2020, 03:37:01 PM
Do you work in the programming field by chance?

Because my experience of interacting with software/website developers is that 95% of them have a level of "programming" that amounts to modifying some existing platform by swapping out the art (or filling default positions to place art) then adjusting a few settings on a behind the scenes interface that someone with actual talent built in order to "customize" it.

Anyone with real talent gets snagged up by the megacorp companies who charge through the nose for development. And even EA's teams more often than not deliver virtually unplayable buggy messes at launch that only get fixed after the fact if its profitable enough in spite of all the flaws to divert some of the profits into doing so.

If you have a solid IT and/or programming guy or team you're happy with for your work; pay them like kings because they are by far the exception and not the rule in the industry.

Your anecdotal evidence may vary.

I do work in the field, and I have evidence that is a bit more than anecdotal (though I've got plenty of that, too).  I had an almost 10-year stretch where one could justifiably say that my entire salary was paid by providing working code to people that had hired the kind of types you mentioned.  It's happened off an on at other times during my professional career, too, which is considerably longer than that decade (3x and counting).  I've worked tiny and megacorp and things in between, supporting different client industries.

The big things I've learned about that particular issue, though, are:

A. There are a lot of solid, non-spectacular, developers out there.  You wouldn't want them to freelance your solution, but given the proper team and management, they can do some good work.  Most organizations bigger than about 3 people can't afford to tolerate no performance for long.  Substandard but still contributing can run a long time, especially in a bureaucracy with some others pulling the weight, but even then there are limits.

B. It is not rare at all for a client organization to make a bad choice when hiring tech.  It is extremely rare for a client organization to repeatedly make the same bad choice more than 2 or 3 times.

Note that certain fields are notorious for deviating from what I said above, though.  Game development is notorious for drinking the blood out of developers that turn into superstars (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger) or whither away.  Banking development is known for being so cut and dried and lacking in all skill enhancing opportunities that it will eat your soul if you stay with it too long.  (It used to be a good route in a bad economy.  Work 2 years in a banking software development job to get experience on your resume, then move on and never go back.)  But I've only got indirect exposure to those, so maybe that is exaggerated. 

Tying this back to the main topic, I'll just say again that WotC's ineptness in contracting with tech is not in any way normal. Yes, ineptness is normal, but not to that extreme degree.  It would be analogous to a kid touching a hot stove.  That happens all the time.  It is a normal part of the human experience.  WotC is the equivalent of the kid that has to touch the hot stove 5 or 6 times before saying, "Hey, I just realized that touching the hot stove is maybe not the best plan!  Not sure exactly why.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong.  But it is clearly not working for me the way I'm doing it now." 

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on December 18, 2020, 04:21:01 PM
Tying this back to the main topic, I'll just say again that WotC's ineptness in contracting with tech is not in any way normal. Yes, ineptness is normal, but not to that extreme degree.  It would be analogous to a kid touching a hot stove.  That happens all the time.  It is a normal part of the human experience.  WotC is the equivalent of the kid that has to touch the hot stove 5 or 6 times before saying, "Hey, I just realized that touching the hot stove is maybe not the best plan!  Not sure exactly why.  Maybe I'm doing it wrong.  But it is clearly not working for me the way I'm doing it now."

For TSR/WotC I wonder if part of there issue was just leadership churn leading to a lot of people repeating the same mistakes because, just like coding, a lot of business documentation is crap.

One of my newer clients recently bought out their company from the previous owner and found themselves struggling just to make it run because the owner never actually wrote any of his procedures down so it was basically a building, tools and a stock of parts then customers starting calling in orders and they had to basically reinvent the wheel to fulfill them.

There was a while there where D&D seemed to be going through heads the way the USSR went through Premiers in the 80's. It just makes me wonder how much was the same people making bad decisions again and again... and how much was new people making the same bad decision because no one bothered to leave behind a proper guidebook.

The video's description of Pathfinder 2 reminds me a lot of my experience of playing 4e.

By the way.  I'm assuming this is the video:



There really needs to be an AI that takes youtube bloviating down to less then 100 words.