Management within games industry

I was really lucky with my freelancing gig for natural selection 2. I'm not sure if I could ever work in a high profile "suit based" game studio. Gooseman contacted me (Mr. Counter-Strike!) but things changed so he refereed me to flayra to work on NS2. And my Art producer, and infact everyone is really cool to talk with and know what they are doing for the most part. This is how I want to work indefinitely, I love making games but I don't want to move from where I live. So if this ends I'm likely going to go back to doing this as a hobby unless a super sweet deal arrives. All the studios I went to interview at were not particularly amazing towards me and put me off wanting to relocate for my first ever game dev gig. Not to mention the stories I had already heard of what game studios were like so I was feeling a bit downtrodden after the whole experience. Yay freelance! Have I gone offtopic a bit?

Quote from alecmoody

I totally agree about how frustrating managers who aren't developers can be.

Ugh, I'm getting that right now with a client for one of my freelance gigs. He doesn't really understand the process of building a model and keeps asking for changes upon changes upon changes. Sometimes those changes affect another part of the model, then I end up having to changed that, or he asks for a change, then changes his mind, etc. So frustrating. Never worked with someone as picky or difficult as that =0.

I think this just comes with freelancing and you have to accept it as part of the job. If you are so high profile that you can drop a client and always have another one lined up then that's great but not the position most of us are in. My experience is that often people request changes without thinking about how much time it will take because there usually isn't a personal relationship at stake and they don't have to look you in the face when they take a bunch more of your time without added compensation. Anyway, get your contracts written with some sort of reasonable number of revisions section and ideally something that says no unreasonable changes to the design after a certain point.

it's a good point with the revision numbers and no-further-changes point; i think those are perhaps the most important point for any freelance (apart from the payment). also i was not saying that you should ditch each and every client that wants changes done, but there is a point where the money does not become worth the effort; and it's at that point you should put your foot down. i understand that some clients can even realize this themselves.

Quote from deceiver

Ugh, I'm getting that right now with a client for one of my freelance gigs. He doesn't really understand the process of building a model and keeps asking for changes upon changes upon changes. Sometimes those changes affect another part of the model, then I end up having to changed that, or he asks for a change, then changes his mind, etc. So frustrating. Never worked with someone as picky or difficult as that =0.

lol I had a boss like that for 2 years. My solution was to go to school for a programming degree. I had way to many clients like that.

I think severely curbing my freelance art work (and working at places with people above you like that) has had a very positive effect on my soul and sanity.

Programming is arguably even worse in thatrespect. All you can do is explain to your boss/client that changes take time and money. You can have a mix of quality, speed and cheapness, but not all three things at the same time. Every time someone changes the plan/requirements, they need to understand the ramifications in terms of the amount of hours required to make those changes.

I figured as much

Job security would be another reason I switched.

That's life, I guess :F