I strongly suspect that given the vast differences in the products and personnel, the same things would not work in both fields.
There are some overarching elements that encompass both.
That is certainly true. I am a hobbyist in game design -- most of my life is spent as a manager in a different industry. In my experience, management is similar in both, and both require a a lot of hands-on attention and consensus building.
In the game industry, small teams of freelancers require different management from large companies of professionals, but it is still a surprising amount of management
No different than in firms that do architectural or electrical engineering projects. In fact, I'd argue it's a helluva lot more difficult to construct a hydroelectric dam than it is to put together a game.
I think that managing and small indie game's development and a hydroelectric dam's construction are probably more different than they are similar. It is surely harder to build a dam than it is to make a game, if for no other reason than because a shovelware game won't result in a catastrophe when it is turned on. But I really don't think the two are comparable. In one field, you are dealing with engineering types and laborers; in the other field, you are dealing with creative types. Everything in my many years of managerial experience and research and training suggests to me that the best course is to manage
the actual person not a generic human being. I manage technical people different from creative people, brain-workers differently from muscle-workers, etc. You can't manage them the same way and expect the same results, any more than you can teach every student the same way, raise every child the same way, cook every piece of meat the same way, drive every car the same way, etc. In any tasks where you want to yield a constant k from fn(x), if "x" changes the function has to change as well. There is only one function that can consistently yield the same result and that is one that destroys the variable. Unless you are Pol Pot, it's not a great strategy.
The problem is that there are multiple different media coinciding and they need to be coordinated.
Again, no different than in any large firm that has anywhere from dozens to hundreds of professionals.
Not so. In some industries (like law or accounting), the various roles on a project are fairly similar. I can't think of many fields where they are as diverse as in game design.
As I've noted in other threads, there are different ways you can incentivize people to work, and in a small, indie team, often a key incentive is (some degree of) creative autonomy for the team members.
This here is the gist of it. You know how people are incentivized in other areas of work? By getting their asses fired.
That's simply not true. At very, very few places are people effectively incentivized by the threat of termination. At the point where that is your primary incentive, you've utterly failed as a manager because if someone can leave he will. Incentives normally include things like pay, quantifiable benefits (e.g., health care), non-quantifiable benefits (e.g., attractive office), social pleasures (e.g., praise from managers, friendship with colleagues), etc. A worker who is only trying to do the bare minimum to avoid being fired is a catastrophe of worker.
'Artists' in general are a bunch of lazy and self-absorbed cunts who have this erroneous belief that their work is somehow more difficult and special just because it can't be quantified. Not calling you or MCA out, just saying that stereotypes exist for a reason. It's the same with sports stars and teachers. All these people get to slide through life because they're never called out on their bullshit, and most of the time enjoy playing the victim.
It's a cute cliche, but it's not really true. Probably something like 99% of the people working as "artists" behave exactly like any other professional. It's just that if you're not going to incentivize people with competitive pay and benefits (and normally indie projects do not), you have to compensate them in some other way. One way you can do that in creative fields is by giving people creativity.
Incidentally, generally speaking sports stars work incredibly hard, far harder than ordinary people do. They behave totally rationally given the value they offer to teams. Generally people respond rationally to incentives. If you started threatening to fire sports stars, they'd just move to other teams that would offer them better job security. The leverage is with the stars, really.
Expecting people to simply execute your fiats without question is not reasonable.
No, it's not - it's called being a responsible adult engaged in a working, professional relationship. Your viewpoint is skewed.
In no job I've ever worked have I managed or been managed by fiat. But YMMV. In any event, I was talking about the specific context of small indie games. There, especially, you are at risk of people quitting because the leverage the project leads have is pretty little.
Anyway, I'm not sure we really disagree that much. You may be right that a sufficiently authoritarian manager could get by with fewer hours of management, but I'm equally sure that MCA has no interest in working with people that way. You might view that as a failing, but I think it fits with his whole "I don't want to do management."
