Clint Hocking Speaks Out Against “Viking” Development Culture
Clint Hocking (LucasArts creative director and the man behind Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory) is, to my mind, one of the most intelligent guys working in videogames at the moment. So when he speaks you can bet your britches that I listen, intently – even when, as he has in a recent article over at Edge, he compares game development studios to Viking longships.
I have isolated a few choice extracts from said article below for your reading pleasure – enjoy:
“Minus the literal rape and killing, of course, modern game development has a number of things in common with the Viking expansion. Specifically, game development studios and their teams are largely staffed in the same way that Viking longships were crewed. Consequently, the culture is overflowing with beer and pent-up aggression, and a very significant portion of our overall cultural output is fart jokes. I think we can do better.”
“I’m not suggesting that we stop making violent, fart-joke-infused, aggression-release-valve games for the aspirational Vikings among us. If we ever hope to make high-profile titles that are something besides that, however, we need to behave a little more each day as though we’re seated at the family dinner table, rather than rowing the longship.”
As much as I dislike sending people away from the site I heartily recommend giving the full article a read as it raises some interesting points and with its myriad of Viking related analogies it makes an rather entertaining read.
Behind the hyperbole he does have a very good point, the more different types of people making games the better games we are going to get and one of the best ways to get this diversity is to get more women working in game development.
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