{"id":19543,"date":"2013-04-30T01:04:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T06:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19543"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T16:53:12","slug":"diecast-11-dont-starve-thief-troubles-ea-layoffs-and-koticks-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=19543","title":{"rendered":"Diecast #11: Don&#8217;t Starve, Thief Troubles, EA Layoffs, and Kotick&#8217;s Millions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table   class=\"\" cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/splash_diecast.jpg' class='insetimage'   alt='splash_diecast.jpg' title='splash_diecast.jpg'\/><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>For various reasons, we had to move our recording to Saturday night this week, which meant Ruts couldn&#8217;t make it. Jarenth was nice enough to step in and act as the guy that never gets a word in edgewise. Thanks Jarenth!<\/p>\n<p><!--remove original podcast link<audio controls height='50' width='300'><source src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast11.mp3' type='audio\/mpeg' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><source src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast11.ogg' type='audio\/ogg' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><embed height='50' width='300' src='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast11.mp3' autoplay='false' autostart='false'><\/audio><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast11.mp3'>Direct download<\/a> (MP3)<\/small><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/diecast\/diecast11.ogg'>Direct download<\/a> (ogg Vorbis)<\/small><br \/><small><a href='http:\/\/mbafford-static.s3.amazonaws.com\/diecast.xml'>Podcast RSS feed.<\/a><\/small><br \/>--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/embed\/3xJAxbCK#mfkHCkbfyEWGTAOC0UhV0hWJSxAhxza1T_MwTzHf0ME!1v1c\" width=\"711\" height=\"144\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/3xJAxbCK#mfkHCkbfyEWGTAOC0UhV0hWJSxAhxza1T_MwTzHf0ME\">Download MP3 File<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/mega.nz\/file\/y9gXATyD#64VyLBubkyMosMChI9DTZvg2gWB1lIWWAelICr0_IJM\">Download Ogg Vorbis File<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Show notes:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><strong>00:40<\/strong> What&#8217;s everyone playing?<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px;\">\n<p>Josh is playing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.surgeonsimulator2013.com\/\">Surgeon Simulator 2013<\/a>, The Witcher, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pocketwatchgames.com\/Monaco\/\">Monaco<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crusaderkings.com\/\">Crusader Kings II<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/ionfx.com\/product_pc_Miasmata.php\">Miasmata<\/a>.Jarenth is playing Don&#8217;t Starve. You can see <a href=\"http:\/\/bluescreenofawesome.com\/2013\/04\/29\/indie-wonderland-dont-starve\/\">his full write-up<\/a> &#8211; with gameplay and screenshots &#8211; over on <a href=\"http:\/\/bluescreenofawesome.com\/\">Blue Screen of Awesome<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Chris is playing Civilization V, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telltalegames.com\/pokernight2\/\">Poker Night 2<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Lvj4HRUPRjQ\">Dyad<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/videogames.lego.com\/en-us\/city-undercover\/about\/screenshots\/mixed\/\">Lego City Undercover<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.injustice.com\/en\">Injustice: Gods Among Us<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Shamus is playing&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>12:40<\/strong> Don&#8217;t Starve<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px;\">For those that are new-ish, here are <a href=\"?page_id=16458\">the programming projects I mentioned<\/a>. Here is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dontstarvegame.com\/\">the official Don&#8217;t Starve<\/a> site, and if you get the game it might be best to know about the <a href=\"http:\/\/dont-starve-game.wikia.com\/wiki\/Don%27t_Starve_Game_Wiki\">Don&#8217;t Starve Wiki<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p><strong>28:30<\/strong> Bad SimCity news of the week. YES, THE NIGHTMARE IS NEVER-ENDING.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pcgamesn.com\/simcity\/simcity-players-revolt-after-20-patch-leaves-cities-overflowing-bugs-and-faeces\">The problem this week<\/a> is that the latest patch: A) Finally got the multiplayer stuff working more or less, so now everyone can see that the big multiplayer features are shallow, uninteresting, and inconsequential. B) Broke a ton of stuff that had worked. Now the simulation &#8211; such as it is &#8211; is dysfunctional and broken. For example: Tiny towns producing the pollution and sewage of a large city, crashes, and <a href=\" http:\/\/i.imgur.com\/9jAbOrv.jpg\">TAXI CITY<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p><strong>33:40<\/strong> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.polygon.com\/2013\/4\/26\/4269912\/thief-reboot-impeded-by-office-politics-high-level-departures\">Thief has a troubled development cycle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>46:15<\/strong> <a href=\" http:\/\/kotaku.com\/layoffs-at-ea-today-481149396\">EA lays off hundreds of people<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>59:00<\/strong> <em>Bobby Kotick got (or gave himself) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/2013-04-26\/activision-ceo-s-64-9-million-puts-him-in-top-ranks-of-pay-1-.html\">an 8-fold raise<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 50px;\">\n<p>I&#8217;m always wary of taking about executive salaries because the topic inevitably leads to arguments over politics and (by proxy, even if people don&#8217;t realize it) debates between Austrian and Keynesian economics. It&#8217;s a natural an inescapable outcome. The idea that &#8220;it doesn&#8217;t make sense to pay anyone more than X dollars&#8221; leads very quickly to &#8220;there should be a law to prevent it&#8221;. And then suddenly it gets prickly, since we&#8217;re no longer talking about how things should work but about how things must be made to work. The two sides have drastically assumptions about how people behave and about how they should relate to one another. It&#8217;s a lot like the gun control debate: Two groups with different ideas about the effect of the laws and <em>also<\/em> different ideas on the right of society to make such laws in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to avoid this as much as possible. Let&#8217;s stick to salaries as they relate to the games industry, and see if we can&#8217;t steer clear of politics. We all know that that argument turns out.<\/p>\n<p>And because I&#8217;m being careful: When I was talking about &#8220;getting the incentives pointing the right way&#8221;, I think I muddled what I was saying. I think a better analogy is this: You pay your bodyguard more than your cook. You do this not because being a guard is more physically demanding (guards stand around) requires more training (your cook has a master&#8217;s degree in culinary arts) or because of seniority (your cook has been with you longer) or personal need (your cook has a family and your guards are mostly single guys) or any other difference between the two jobs. You pay the guards more because it&#8217;s personally dangerous if they turn on you and you want to ensure their loyalty.<\/p>\n<p>Now, is it worth it to Activision to pay Kotick the budget of an entire AAA game every year? I suppose that&#8217;s where the discussion is. I&#8217;d love to see the business case for it. In any case, if Kotick was an exceptional leader I wouldn&#8217;t be griping about how much he makes. But <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/columns\/experienced-points\/8169-Age-of-Kotick\">he&#8217;s not<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>ALSO &#8211; and I realize I&#8217;m really perverting the idea of &#8220;show notes&#8221; here by writing an entire article worth of footnotes &#8211; Chris brought up the Moneyball movie. I want to point out that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moneyball\">the book<\/a> had a huge impact on my perception of how business worked. The book set in motion a lot of ideas that led to my current writings on EA. I realized that it was possible for large groups of well-compensated and well-educated business people to be absolutely wrong about something for a very long time. I realized that the dispassionate, detached, and analytic eye of an engineer could be just as useful in business as it was in software engineering. Or even <a href=\"?p=13695\">fast food<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For various reasons, we had to move our recording to Saturday night this week, which meant Ruts couldn&#8217;t make it. Jarenth was nice enough to step in and act as the guy that never gets a word in edgewise. Thanks Jarenth! Download MP3 File Download Ogg Vorbis File Show notes:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diecast-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19543"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58979,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19543\/revisions\/58979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}