Do you have any examples of Managers who at one time were bad and then eventually became good managers? Or is it hard for an old dog to learn new tricks in this industry?
That's a good question. Let me give it some thought. The problem is, good managers seemed to be good managers before they ever worked at Black Isle or Obsidian (ex: Brandon Adler and Matt Singh seemed to know production far better than the owners, so the thought the owners might train them made me sad inside - if anything, they should have been mentoring the owners, not the other way around).
I'll be honest, the only thing that comes to mind related to managing was how there were very good managers at Black Isle (Torment's art lead, Tim Donley) who rather than sidelining artists, actively took ones other projects didn't like or had cast aside, mentored and trained them (a shocker for a lead, I know, but it was that kind of place at the time), then turning them into an effective team that were very, very productive. I learned a lot from Tim, I thought he was ahead of Interplay's awareness of what a good manager should be (and Obsidian's), and he inspired (rightfully) support and hard work from the people reporting to him. And this was while the other senior artists at Black Isle were busy hosting Quake servers in the middle of the day and letting
Stonekeep 2 burn (which Colin McComb and I would write haikus to each other about, since it was symptomatic of how Black Isle Studios was run - the privileged could goof off all day, get "milestone bonuses" that no one else got, but the people actively making games and making progress didn't get or request the same treatment). Colin writes amazing haikus, btw. They're deadly. Also, I was one of the ones who, when learning that BIS's SK2 lead producer was hired at Obsidian, we all got a cold shiver in our stomachs (part of the reason was he, again, Feargus's friend).
I did make the mistake of asking Tim to come back and work with the ex-BIS crew (Obsidian) - if I could go back in time, I'd order my younger self to spare Tim the agony. He tried to educate, and it wasn't well-received.
give us a list of your failings on descent to undermountain
That's also a long answer. In short: some level designs (of mine) used too many polygons and were way too intricate, Khelben Blackstaff's script (which was stiff and really, pretty terrible). While I did the best I could with the design, I was new to the process, I wasn't very good, and arguably, one of our other designers, Rob Hanz (who Feargus didn't care for) had smarter approaches to the process b/c he was more savvy with games (when Bethesda's
Terminator FPS game came out, Rob instantly saw that mouselook was a far superior UI, but it was very new to everyone else). The good news is to all reports, Rob is happy at future endeavors (although I think he had to work on the port of
Armored Warfare for Sony).