Working Nowhere and Everywhere

I'm curious about #2: We Do Daily Builds. What do you define as "end of day" in an environment where the end of one person's day might be mid-morning of someone else's day?

An impressive, short, to-the-point list. Albeit not applicable to every situation, just as you warned at the beginning, I got a lot of insight from the article. Thank you very much!

Lower Labor Costs + Cost of Living Adjustments = Happy Developers

I do not agree on this part. It seems to me that by having a Singapore standard you do NOT pay your employees equally because someone in the UK simply can't buy as many hamburgers from his wage as the Russian developer can. So in the end, you will not get UK devs to join your team. Even worse: the rates you're paying will not be competitive enough to get the best UK devs because they can get a better wage locally. To get the best teammembers you will need to compete with each potential team members' local oportunities.

Or am I not understanding your reasoning?

Very interesting an enjoyable. In a world where everyone seems to be going wireless and virtual, it was only a matter of time before entire businesses started going virtual.

I would certainly like more information about being competitive though. I can't see my business attracting too many U.S. or European developers with Singapore wages...

I've also noticed that Boomzap develops what I would refer to as 'micro' games. This isn't mentioned in the article, but does this contribute to the success that Boomzap has with this sort of management style? Do you think it is extendable to more classic game developers, who are working on games with 50+ hours of gameplay?

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Original post by ernow I do not agree on this part. It seems to me that by having a Singapore standard you do NOT pay your employees equally because someone in the UK simply can't buy as many hamburgers from his wage as the Russian developer can. So in the end, you will not get UK devs to join your team. Even worse: the rates you're paying will not be competitive enough to get the best UK devs because they can get a better wage locally. To get the best teammembers you will need to compete with each potential team members' local oportunities.

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Original post by choffstein I would certainly like more information about being competitive though. I can't see my business attracting too many U.S. or European developers with Singapore wages...

I think you both misunderstood the article - the author clearly stated that this system would not work well for companies hiring in the US and Europe.

Instead, Boomzap is hiring primarily in Asia, and by paying competitive Singapore wages (which are high for the region), they are paying above average in the other countries in which they hire.

I understood that but that contradicts the first point "Access to the Best Developers in the World". It is quite clear that this will only work when you want the best devs from countries that have a lower income standard than the one you are willing to pay. But it is not the whole world.

I don't mind this, you have got to set a limit. It simply invalidates the "whole world" part.

No one has asked the question I am mosr concerned about: how do you deal with the legal requirements for hiring people in so many different countries? Does your company have to be registered with every country that you employ in?

The article dismisses having support staff, but it seems to me that to legally run a multi-national company of any size would require at least one person dedicated to paper-pushing.

Very interesting article!

Another question : how do you handle the threat of one of your developers releasing (intentionally or by accident) the finished game to pirates?

(Allan Simonsen here; I'm Chris' business partner at Boomzap).

Some quick responses to questions:
how do you deal with the legal requirements for hiring people in so many different countries? Does your company have to be registered with every country that you employ in?
No. In Singapore and the US, where we have corporate entities, we hire fulltime staff. In other countries, we hire independent contractors (with contracts that specify exclusivity in terms of commercial game development).

Another question : how do you handle the threat of one of your developers releasing (intentionally or by accident) the finished game to pirates?
The same way we'd handle it if they were all in the office. If it's unintentional, they get chewed out and warned. If it's intentional, you get fired. Not sure if you could really do that differently in a US or UK company, apart from suing them (waste of time) or reporting them to the police.

It is quite clear that this will only work when you want the best devs from countries that have a lower income standard than the one you are willing to pay. But it is not the whole world.
It's a valid point; we're not that attractive to a developer living in San Fransisco. Our salaries are a little higher than most Japanese game companies, for example, and far far above the norm in Philippines, China, India, etc. A side-effect is that many of our staff have been leads before joining us, which makes development a lot more fun.

To be honest, I personally prefer to hire people on somewhat the same timezone as well (+/- 4 hrs); makes it easier to coordinate on teams with >5 people. We had a really great coder that just didn't work out because he'd only come online when everyone else was done for the day. In our case, that still leaves 2.5 billion people.... SOME of them must know how to make games? :)

I've also noticed that Boomzap develops what I would refer to as 'micro' games.
Casual, more like it. It does scale relatively okay up to around 10-12, but I wouldn't want to do this with a Gears of War, or Assassin's Creed style game. Not only are you starting to run into command&control issues, but the strain of moving 10-12GB of data around would start to lag the daily build model. Our teams are usually 3-7 people, plus outsourcing for some Art and Audio (which has minimal impact on our internal control structures, and is a great way to make scalability someone else's problem).


#2: We Do Daily Builds. What do you define as "end of day" in an environment where the end of one person's day might be mid-morning of someone else's day?
One of the coder's on each project is the designated build-master; everyone's responsible for checking in assets by his deadline, and he'll do a build before he's done for the day.

The actual details of when that is depends not so much on timezone as on individual preferences; one of our guys works like a machine from 8.30-5.30 each day, then uploads the build and shuts of his computer. Personally I tend to work for a couple of hours from 9pm-midnight (when my daughter's asleep), and I tend to do the builds around 11pm. If someone works on a different timeline than that, their work just makes it into the next build instead. Artists also tend to do mid-day WIP screenshots of what they're working on, for feedback from the entire team. A big part of this is making the process of producing and uploading a build as painless as possible; in our case it's mostly a single batch-file.

Allan

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Original post by __ODIN__ It is quite clear that this will only work when you want the best devs from countries that have a lower income standard than the one you are willing to pay. But it is not the whole world. It's a valid point; we're not that attractive to a developer living in San Fransisco. Our salaries are a little higher than most Japanese game companies, for example, and far far above the norm in Philippines, China, India, etc. A side-effect is that many of our staff have been leads before joining us, which makes development a lot more fun. Allan

Could you quote some examples of actual salaries for programmers outside US and Singapore? Do you adjust the salaries depending on the local taxes that the developer has to pay on his income? There's also the factor of healthcare expenses ...

I'm asking cause I want to draw a comparison to Croatia to see how competitive your salaries would be. Your business model looks very interesting.

Radan

This is the new development model for small and medium size applications/bussiness. I've seen this pattern not just in software but also in art and other collaborative enterprises. A free form officeless enterprise, low overhead due to their small size and virtual space workplace.

Only works when you have strong management though, that's partly why it doesn't scale, can't keep the strong management as you add additional layers and since their isn't any face to face accountability, normal social dynamics don't work, it's much more business like, where each entity has more accountability (ie expected deliverable within given time frame with specifications ), good and bad in some ways.

-ddn

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Original post by ddn3 Only works when you have strong management though, that's partly why it doesn't scale, can't keep the strong management as you add additional layers and since their isn't any face to face accountability, normal social dynamics don't work, it's much more business like, where each entity has more accountability (ie expected deliverable within given time frame with specifications ), good and bad in some ways.

There's ways to mitigate that, though. As I mentioned above, we tend to hire slightly more senior people than most game companies.. that helps; many of us have wives/husbands and kids (which is a lot easier to manage in a virtual office with Flex-time).

You can also fix part of it by forming smaller teams; while a team of 10-12 starts to get fuzzy in a virtual environment, it's relatively okay to run 3 teams of 5-8 people, each becoming network in their own right.

Finally, you hire good producers, who spend a lot of time playing the game, talking to the guys about the game, and staying directly involved in the development process (yes, that means making levels, testing and tuning.. our producers all do double-duty as designers).

Allan

Among the many excellent points in this article, the most important one is that it's not for everyone. Lots of perfectly capable people simply do not have the personality and work habits to work in this kind of environment.

A related observation of mine is that this business model is effectively "eating the seed corn" of the industry. There are no trainees here; learning the ropes, honing their skills etc.

Individually, that's not a problem. Systemically, if this model were widespread, it would be.

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Original post by ddyer A related observation of mine is that this business model is effectively "eating the seed corn" of the industry. There are no trainees here; learning the ropes, honing their skills etc.

That's actually a truth with modifications; we've got a pretty kick-ass internship program. Part of it is that I teach game-development from time to time, and sit on advisory boards on a couple of universities/research institutes here in Singapore, so I get to deal with some of the smartest and keenest students interested in game development. Seemed a shame to not get them involved.

We offer a contract that's 20 hrs/week part time until graduation (we accept some fluctuation, so a bit less during exam time, a lot more during term break). It's pretty brutal (and only 2 out of 5 interns have actually survived more than a year of this), but it does very good things for their portfolio and experience level. 2 of the games we've made in the last 2 years have actually been based on design ideas posted on the intranet by interns, which I suspect is pretty uncommon :)

Allan

I have seen this model successful with a bigger game but it takes a lot more effort. But I would love to know how to convince publishers about this model. Especially for PC games where there aren't confidentiality issues.

Incredible stuff. I came across this topic via the 37signals blog. What boomzap has achieved is just what I am attempting - but in architecture. I requires you to completely re-evaluate what idea of architecture is relevant to you. I am still working it out!
A summary at 'About' http://su.pr/4qMNdr