If it's any consolation, that organizational "failure" produced a masterpiece of gaming art.
@niclasbelrra
It's funny and appropriate that a game that touches class struggle was made this way.
@secretchefcollective444
Personally (and from experience) I think that virtually everyone whos worked on any sort of large scale project intuitively knows that the hierarchy of people actually doing stuff is required and (again, almost) noone has a problem with that. As you say, the definitive answer from a lead, or the ability to on-board people at a junior level just makes sense. The problems in all cases I've observed is when hierarchies form among *people who organize people*, and somehow they wind up being more important than the people actually doing the work.
@koalabrownie
Valve is allegedly flat hierarchy, but if that's the case why hasn't a puddle of employees made Half Life 3 yet? There must be someone saying no.
@billdestroyerofworlds
If you read Polybius, it's clear he thinks that the reason the Romans were able to conquer the entire Mediterranean is due to how well-organized and hierarchical not only their military was, but the whole rest of their society.
@DxAxxxTyriel
Hi Tim, Valve is famously a flat heirarchy company, and they've been doing it for a while now. They released a PDF outlining how this flat system works, no idea if you have seen that or not. Do you think they faced the same issues that you have faced? Or did they do some things that in the right way that made it work? From our side (the players/consumers), we see the benefits of this system (if a dev is passionate about something, they can spend more time than they need to on something and make it very good/crafted with love) but we also see the cons of this. Famously, projects/features get neglected despite having a large playerbase. Team Fortress 2 for example has been in the Top 10 most played games on steam for a long time, yet has bugs, riddled with bots, stopped receiving official content, and may have either 1 or 2 devs working on it (or 0). Because their devs can work on whichever project they want, but every dev also feels like working on the next "big" thing at their office. Were there any benefits that you enjoyed from having a flat hierarchy at Troika that made the game better for the players or was it overall a negative thing?
@DoobieDoctor5000
It sounds like ego was the focus on this experiment, which could have been its downfall. Instead of a flat hierarchy, it could have been a collective. Roles could have been filled appropriately while money was distributed evenly.
@Razalhague
I think being under financial stress is a particularly bad time to try a flat structure and probably contributed a fair bit to the failure.
@leroygardner8529
the owners did not get paid the same, you and Leonard spoke about how the Owners got paid LESS due to this flat hierachy
@davidcolby167
There's a reason why anarchists say no
@addcoding8150
I think two words got confused here: Role and Rank.
@alexpetrovich85
Thanks for sharing Tim. There are hybrid models that integrates vertical with horizontal organizational structures; ultimately you do need a nucleus to act as a brain center for decision making within the cellular structure of an organism/organization.
@sandwich2473
I know that with Valve, their flat hierarchy is supposedly a nightmare where roles still exist but now they're all unknown and hidden and it's complex social structures and cliques
@pongod5751
I swear that "ego" is a learned experience for people who want to work in the entertainment industry. Being the best specialist you can be is reward enough when you yield consistently great results and you understand what it means to be an integral member of a team.
@tonyhua6231
I used to work on a modding team where everything was decided by "consensus," which no one on the team could tell you what it is short of everyone agreeing on something. As you could imagine, things got caught up in gridlock a lot, and people's motivation and effort would slowly peter out until the only people who were making decisions were the ones who were stubborn enough to keep attending meetings.
@GypsumGeneration
Thanks for sharing Tim, this is especially useful in light of Valve's continued success and famously flat hierarchy. There are rumors that Gabe personally stepped back from day to day development because of the inability of team members to see him as equal, instead they treated his word as divine and final ultimately sidelining any attempt at feedback for a person who is heavily invested in the flat arrangement. While I'm sure it is possible to be successful long term with a flat hierarchy, I can't help but think it would only be at the hands of a very special group of people, and who would be just as or more successful under a different circumstance.
@anarchohelenism
This is fascinating and a great look into how flat hierarchies function within indie studios and how they could be improved in the future. Your knowledge is invaluable Tim!
@PugFury
Pay on a flat hierarchy, manage with a hierarchy. In the lean years everyone would take a hit in pay evenly, but would make bank in the fat years and it would have that organization needed. But hindsight is 20/20. Like in everything.
@AlexKolakowski
I agree with this take %100. I've worked in flat hierarchies before and it's a real challenge to get firm decisions made and move forward towards the game vison.
@ZeMalta
"from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
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