Because I was always just talking about management. Why would I talk about what the foot soldiers could do in terms of saving the company? That's not their job to decide and they are in no position to enforce it. Maybe if they had a union, the union might have made suggestions, but in the end, it's the management's decision to make. I am not saying anything contrary to what I said before, the only issue is that (a) I did not make it explicit enough that I was only talking about management
And i was not talking exclusively about management. That's something you wheeled yourself in and then proclaim you were
always talking about it when you clearly read i was not referring to that whatsoever.
and (b) you continue to misread it as something targeting regular employees.
I am not misreading anything, what you are talking about is some pie-in-the-sky scenario on what they
could have done, which has no basis in reality since the studio is bunk. What you are doing now, is using the Captain Hindsight argument, and listing things they
could have done.
I was consistently and exclusively discussing management decisions and their practicability (so regular employees do play a role, but only in terms of whether the proposed task could have been carried out in a reasonable time frame). I was not talking about insubordination at all. Regular employees can make suggestions, but I am in no place to say whether they did that, so I won't discuss that.
It seems you are taking my own hypothetical scenario too literally. To be clear, i was saying that in jest. And in everything, it feels like you have not yet read the Verge article. The big man was management itself. And producer, and director, and sound engineer, aka a guy of multiple hats. There was no standing up against that, unless you were willing to leave the company, and some did, silently.
Then we are just talking about different things though. I was talking about management failures and whether the correct decisions (from my perspective) would have been feasible, which they were.
You made it about talking about management failures when i was not doing that in the first place. I was not talking about the feasability of your possible scenarios, so i have no idea why you have to re-affirm for yourself with the bolded that they were
feasible scenario's, when i was not referencing that in the first place. I was talking about the reality of the situation, you were bringing up a
what if scenario that has no basis in reality.
Sorry, we are talking professionial programmers here, with a university degree in cs, and with Unity we are talking a very approachable engine with many standardised design decisions in the background.
Your hypothetical scenario involved an engine change in a timeframe where Unity was significantly different from what it is today, which is one thing. The other is that we can't assume that everyone on board would have a
knack for re-adjusting to the new tech. This is all assuming that, by the timeframe, the now ex-ceo would be gone already.
Good programmers shouldn't require a year of training to make the switch, especially considering the very limited nature of Telltale games.
You don't know. You don't know if what runs under the hood can easily be replaced or transplanted over to new tech. Just because the games are limited in freedom, does not mean the background processes are. For all we know you might have certain gameplay systems or even bugs be
hardcoded into the engine, so much that you get the infamous
bug becomes a feature. This is for example true of Id Tech 1.
Engine changes in general slow things down significantly. At best, you can retain some of the systems you made, at worst, you will have to scrap everything because what you have made so far. Telltale Tool was made in Lua, so if you would want to transplant that stuff over to Unity, you will already need a Lua plugin for that, since stock Unity does not do that. (And fortunately, there is just that).
Then you need importers/exporters of your models/textures and what not. You can't safely assume Unity has that covered, so you might need to write extra tools just to import your assets across.
And i am just skirting at the edges of the potential issues that one may encounter with an engine change. We don't know how much capacity was dedicated to engine maintenance, or even, if the original creators of said tech were still around (I believe the ex-CEO created the tech.) All i can say is that the engine was improved by Brodie Andersen, among others as highlighted in
this interview.
And, again, keep in mind the staggered change. One team finishes a season, begins work on the new engine and by the time the next team would make the change to Unity, they could be schooled by the team that started on Unity a couple months back already.
Great! But this has nothing to do with the harsh reality. Again, the way you are speaking of this makes it
sound like it would be a cakewalk to implement in your
what if scenario. Disregarding that this isn't what the actual situation is, even in your hypothetical scenario,
you simply do not know what you will face. This is why i am against your simplified hypothetical
what if theory, not only because its irrelevant to the actual scenario at play here, but because it flagrantly disregards all the issues that one may face with such a change. In the end, it feels like a simplified assumption on your part, generalizing the situation of the actual programmers at TellTale.