“Man, when is this guy gonna stop bitching about work?” is probably what you’re likely to say at the end of this post. But I bitch because I need a place to vent, and this is as good a place as any.

I’m sure it’s something that’s common in any job, in any field, under any circumstances. But having good ideas, and then getting them shot down, I don’t think, ever becomes any less disappointing to anyone. Particularly when you see someone who you think is … well, incompetent might be too strong a word. Let’s just say, “useless” instead, having their ideas promoted by the person in charge. Why? I can’t say. I simply don’t understand it.

Thing is, a friend of mine is on the design team this year, and there’s at least one major sort of system-idea that he liked, and promoted to the team. It apparently got killed because it was “too complex.” From a design standpoint? It requires tuning basically one more variable per interaction, which is one *less* variable per interaction than there were two years ago. From an implementation standpoint, given that I’m the person who deals with implementing stuff like this, *I* could implement it *by myself* in less than a month. Probably get the basic workings up in less than two weeks.

I think the thing that’s really frustrating is getting the idea tanked on the notion of complexity, by people who have no FUCKING CLUE how complex it is to implement something like this. Similarly, the designers are talking about dealing with music in the game, and they’re *not talking to the audio people* and proposing what I think are really pretty idiotic, stripped down versions of what’s possible, because again, of some notion of complexity that they’re NOT WILLING TO TALK TO EXPERTS ABOUT.

Argh. This is literally about as frustrating as work has ever been. The hardest problems we had to deal with in the code were *nothing* compared to how irritated I’m getting by people talking about certain aspects of the design even remotely within earshot. It’s like listening to a bunch of people with bags over their heads, talking about how fucking great the view is.

Yes, I realize there are probably aspects to the design of these things I’m not understanding. Maybe. I dunno – I was in a meeting the other day to vet the complexity of a given idea (which was really fucking weird, because that particular concept fell totally out of anything I ever deal with), and it really just seemed like it was an issue of, “Well… that *seems* difficult…” and not, “Hey, you know what you’re talking about. Can we do this?”

If you’re a designer, maybe I’m just fucking crazy, but part of your job is to get expert opinions. Understand what can and can’t be done, and fucking *push the envelope* given the resources you have. Can you do something interesting that might be a touch risky, but have a backup plan as well? Or should we just scrap the whole goddamn idea and do the trivially easy thing which is boring as fuck?

Maybe it’s the 10 month dev cycle, maybe it’s just a lack of vision that’s driving the “let’s be lameasses” approach, but it’s fucking frustrating, given that the *potential* for some really good, really systematic tweaks that are possible only now, that the designers are letting slip by for good.

Driving me fucking bonkers.