KOTCL Dev Diaries - Cause for Conflict

While everyone around me (and me as well) is working on a patch with bug-fixes, I’m going to keep telling tales from RedBoon’s historical archive.

I suggest we talk about conflicts inside of the team. We all love conflicts, and by “we” I mean not only our gang, but all of us people. We love conflicts, don’t we?

This question was already brought up once in the video-diaries, but no details were provided. Well, I’ll provide the details—but only for one such case. To cover all the cases I’d have to write a novel, and this is a mere diary log, not a novel. So I’ll pick just one conflict, but a better one.

Make yourselves comfortable! Steam post image

Persival vs. RoboCop

Now we usually don’t have conflicts between departments. Comments and suggestions from other depts are always welcome. You just have to remember that they’re professionals of their craft, and you’re a professional of your own. If you don’t mix that up, there’s no room for conflict. Work inside one department is a different story, though. Here arguments happen all the time.

One time me and the narrative designer were working on an event and got into a serious argument. I claimed that his version didn’t fit Persival’s personality, he said that my version didn’t and his did, and that I had done a poor job outlining Persival’s personality in general. Can you imagine that? Having finished our yelling match, we realised that work wasn’t being done, so we decided to go over an event as if it were not for Persival, but for RoboCop.

Yes, literally for RoboCop—first we sketched his psychological profile and made an event for him, then re-worked it to fit Persival’s personality type. And presto!

What’s the main point of this approach? Well, firstly, RoboCop is an ultimate compromise. Secondly, the choice of the character wasn’t random, although it seems ridiculous. We’re both fans of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop so we easily reached a consensus when profiling him. Thirdly and finally, we managed to maintain the agreement we had reached when we were transferring the event onto Persival, worked well as a team, and were both happy with the result.

Work from Office vs. Remote Work

Very few know or remember that RedBoon was originally conceived as a purely office-based project. All conflicts were meant to be resolved face-to-face, with the spitting of venom at opponents and occasionally relieving tension through joint decision-making, KFC lunches, and Friday bar outings. In short, our team-work was based on the principle of in-person communication (we all visibly winced at the word “team-building”).

And this idea worked wonderfully! There was one rare and rather amusing exception: when someone came back from vacation, they could easily flip out over the fact that the project had undergone massive changes during their absence, all discussed and approved without them, and there was nothing they could do about it. It is what it is, buddy; we missed you—now get back to work.

We usually put out those fires quickly. Our fire suppression system worked just fine. Our armor was solid, our tanks were fast, and our future looked bright… until the thunder struck.

RedBoon vs. COVID

It was a bad time for everyone. I’ll tell you how it went for us. When we were forced to go home and forbidden from going outside, it turned out that we couldn’t resolve conflicts remotely. The team fell apart right before my eyes. Was it inevitable? It seemed so. Was it expected? Not at all—we didn’t expect anything of the sorts.

Be that as it may, our structure came crashing down, leaving only the foundation—BUT! After a good scratch of the head, we decided to carry on. On that very foundation, the new RedBoon was built, and we rose like a Phoenix, but this time with different work principles that still work today. The revived studio became more remote, but it’s still no less romantic than before.

As one of our players put it, we’re a team scattered all around the globe. Stay tuned.

Steam post image Steam post image Steam post image Steam post image