Management is a PRACTICE, not a PROFESSION

I was recently listening to the Harvard Business IdeaCast podcast series and one particular cast caught my attention and really stuck with me. It was an interview with Dr. Henry Mintzberg, a leading professor/researcher in management (who happens to be at McGill University here in Montreal). He was basically taking a big piss on MBA’s and management degrees. Mintzberg’s one line really hit it home with me, “Management is a practice, not a profession.”

Mintzberg makes excellent points in the podcast, mentioning how most universities are teaching management today, and the seeming flood of “managers” in the workplace who although are business-trained, really have no context or relative industry experience. The end result is a massive glut of “managers” who I would argue have no business being in their positions whatsoever.

Mintzberg makes mention of the need for people to “earn their stripes”, then go for leadership/management training. I’m turning 30 this year and doing my management degree. I can tell you that doing a management degree at 30 is totally different from doing a management degree at 20 years old. A lot of my classmates are doing their management undergrad straight out of high school, never worked professionally and thus have no context of how the real world works. This is evident in the case studies that we do (very popular among management degrees) — many of these 20-somethings argue without any context, work experience or industry experience. They are going to finish with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, get jobs as “managers” and join the ranks of hand-waving managers who “strategize” all day. Great. That’s ok though, it means there will be more Dilbert comics.

I won’t say that a management degree is useless. But I will say that on it’s own it is. I agree with Henry Mintzberg. Management is NOT a profession. Management is something that you DO.

Harvard Business IdeaCast 138: Rethinking the MBA
Managers, not MBAs: Debating the Merits of Business Education
Dr. Henry Mintzberg

dilbert

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I’m a PC and now an Xbox 360

I went out and got an Xbox 360 to develop XNA apps, and I have to say that it rocks. Running XNA programs on the 360 is amazing and easy, but what totally sealed it for me was actually the Windows Media Center which plays photos, music and videos from your PC. All in all, I’m very happy with the 360 and am, in fact, kinda disappointed with the PS3, which I only use for games and nothing else.

So, I was a Mac and a PS3. I’m now a PC and an Xbox 360. I still am an iPhone though.

Btw the “Rookies” campaign from Microsoft is killer:

<a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=533e05d2-9f12-4a86-bdda-efd0455fcd36" target="_new" title="Video: Kylie uses Windows Live Photo Gallery">Video: Kylie uses Windows Live Photo Gallery</a>

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Little Wheel – What a cool little game!

There was once a world of living robots. But one day a bad accident occured in the main power generator. The world fell into a deep sleep. Bring life back to the world!

Little Wheel
Little Wheel

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A case for making 2D games

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about 2D vs 3D games. We seem to have a tendancy to think that 3D is the natural way to go. After all, all the triple A game titles are 3D games, so why not embark on creating a 3D game?

2D games allow you to focus on gameplay, not graphics and complex programming
One of the first things that comes to mind is that 2D games really are that much easier to program, which means that you can focus much more on the game play. It’s interesting that some of the biggest hit titles recently have actually been “2D’ in terms of gameplay, but using all the glorious 3D rendering techniques available. The fact is that when you build a 2D game with 2 dimensional gameplay, you’re really focused on the gameplay dynamics and not off wondering how on earth you’re going to implement it.

Some examples of really good 2D games are:

  • Diner Dash
  • Tetris
  • Bejeweled

Diner DashDiner Dash, an amazingly addictive 2D game. Funnily enough, it is being re-released in “3D” but the basic game view and gameplay is still 2D.

Some examples of 3D games which are actually 2D are:

  • Little Big Planet (arguably you can move backwards and forwards but you are still constrained to a 2D plane of movement)
  • Street Fighter IV

Little Big PlanetLittle Big Planet….3D but um… 2D (most of the time)

Programming in 2D is much easier than 3D
Let’s get one thing very straight — once you go 3D, your complexity goes through the roof. With 2D graphics, you only have to worry about 2 axis, which is fairly straightforward. As soon as you go 3D, you have to deal with a lot of complex mathematics.

The content pipeline for 2D is very simple — usually it’s sprite based. You create in Photoshop (or whatever 2D package) and import the image to use as a sprite in your game. In Flash, it’s even easier because you simply import whatever assets into Flash or create it in Flash. With 3D, you’re suddenly dealing with a plethora of issues ranging from:

  • File formats – OBJ, COLLADA or FBX?
  • Texture processing?
  • Rigs and animation (even the most advanced game engines haven’t really sorted this one out in an elegant way yet)
  • 3D physics
  • Lighting

3D content is REALLY HARD
Programming aside, making 3D content for games is really really hard! You need to be good at many things:

  • Modeling (Poly [Max, Maya, Soft] and Sculpting [Mudbox/Zbrush])
  • Texturing
  • Materials* (in the context of games you need technical assistance here to ensure the materials display in run-time)
  • Lighting* (same as above)
  • Rigging* (same as above)
  • Animation* (same as above)
  • Exporting to runtime* (same as above)

If you look at all the successful game studios out there making 3D games, they employ many artists. It’s not uncommon to find people who specialize — for example, have a character modeler, a character animator, and a TD. But then there’s also the issue of getting everything working in run-time, which means that you need an animation programmer too.

For a 3D game to be successful, it needs to be good in many areas or it fails
The complexity of realtime 3D means that your game needs to look really good in many areas or it fails miserably! If one thing is even off (geometry, shading, animation, etc.), you distract the viewer so much that it goes straight to “FAIL”. That’s not to say that 2D is more forgiving. You still need good artwork, but with so much complexity involved in 3D, you have a much higher chance of failing especially if you don’t have the expertise.

Monkey Island 3D Fail
Image swiped from Chris Evans’ blog

2D games can look really good
It really just comes down to the art. We tend to associate 2D artwork with Flash vector-based casual games (don’t diss them, some play really well!). I’ve seen some strictly 2D games recently (also using Flash) which sport incredibly original and great artwork.

E.g.Machinarium

Machinarium Preview 02 from Amanita Design on Vimeo.

For me, all this means is that I’ll probably make a 2D game and try to make it very good, instead of trying to make a 3D game.

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Finally a Wordpress Theme that works out of the box

Wordpress is amazing. It is wonderful to see how far the software has come, and to think that it’s FREE! I remember actually having to code by hand the content management system for CGSociety (which is still in use btw), and Wordpress simply puts it to shame.

After installing Wordpress, I went to check out the various themes that were available. I’m currently working on a friend’s website also using Wordpress, and had access to some commercial themes but I’m surprised at the amount of tweaking that one has to do to get a blog looking good. After trying out about a dozen different themes, I like the Arclite theme by Digital Nature. It’s free btw. Amazing.

Pic of the day is of my cats Buttercup and Rex.

Buttercup and Rex

Buttercup and Rex

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