"If you want to reward the staff for working quickly, you can’t make 'hours worked' a constant, because then only quality and quantity remain variable. In a traditional situation where 'hours worked' is a constant, the reward for working quickly and efficiently is just getting more work."

If only my current employer understood this.

"I hope I am not the first person to tell you this, but nobody reads design documents. In fact, when working at larger studios, I made a habit of inserting the line “I will pay $5 to anyone who reads this sentence” into the center of any document over 50 pages. In 10 years of development nobody ever asked for their money."

I knew it!

"There is no point in tying up your best resources with work that could be done perfectly well by more junior staff, or work that could be done faster or better by specialists[...] So what we do is keep senior generalists on staff to create the structure and core design of the game, and then we outsource the bulk asset production to specialists and managed studios that we hire on task-based contracts."

I imagine this could get time-consuming for whoever finds and hires all these temporary task-based contractors -- but as an employee it certainly sounds appealing to be able to focus on the higher level while the lower level is quickly and expertly handled elsewhere.

Their games don't seem to be all that good: http://www.boomzap.com/

Their games don't seem to be your kind of games. They've been in business for 4 years so somebody likes their games.

I wonder if it would even be possible for a Valve or Bungie level studio to emerge out of a distributed workplace.

Their games does not appeal to hardcore gamers.

But these are a tiny fraction of all players anyway.

You are correct. There are game developers who innovate and there are ones who get the job done. These guys fall into the latter category. They are the pulp novelists of the game industry. There is a place for them and they know their role.

I'm not sure that's terribly exciting to anyone here, though. Few on HN, I presume, would start up a game studio in order to be the next Realtime Associates, even though they have been around for 23 years.

Cannot access the server...

How dare you question "Frogs in Love"? Perhaps you should set foot on a romantic adventure and bathe in the enchanting waters of distant lands while you meet and befriend other characters who will guide you on this quest and prepare you for the ultimate romance by challenging you with exciting and fun mini games.