Total War: ROME II and Creative Assembly: a dev's statement

[Hveðrungr]

Total War: ROME II and Creative AssemblyâââMy Statement Ten Years On

Ten years ago I was allowed to become a hate figure in the community following the disastrous launch of Total War: ROME II...

medium.com

This is a powerful testimony by a TW:R2 dev on the gross failings of CA's management and its development processes. He was hung out to dry by CA and was persecuted by fans for the horrendous launch of the game. A long read but worthwhile for anyone interested in the games industry's mismanagement.

 

[Pifanjr]

Very interesting read. As a software developer myself, I know exactly how easy it is to get behind on technical debt and you either have to sneak in improvements when implementing new features or you have to convince your managers to set aside time to maintain the code.

Luckily my manager actually listens to me and understands the importance of code maintenance, but even then it only takes a single tight deadline to start running behind on technical debt again and it can take weeks to catch up.

 

[Zloth]

Very interesting read. As a software developer myself, I know exactly how easy it is to get behind on technical debt and you either have to sneak in improvements when implementing new features or you have to convince your managers to set aside time to maintain the code.

Been there, done that, many times. Many MANY times. Some are far too big for that, though. Plus, we're inching toward more formal code review processes. I don't know how long I'll be able to get away with saying "This function has NO references to it, so I yanked it."