Sunday, May 21, 2006
Effective Networking (Don't Badmouth People)
One night, during a Game Developers Conference years ago, I was hanging out in the Fairmont Hotel lobby. This is where all the game developers get together after a long day of sessions and sit around in comfy chairs and drink and schmooze. In other words: a networker's heaven.
I had spotted a guy I knew from the Boston Postmortem. Let's call him Joe.
I said hi to Joe, and we started talking about random things. Eventually, I mention the name of John Romero during this conversation.
"Oh man, Romero?" says Joe. "I fucking hate that guy!"
Joe really runs with his hatred. He goes on. And on. And on. About how much Daikatana sucked. About how he had nothing to do with Doom. About every little thing. I was waiting for him to bust out with a complaint about Dangerous Dave.
Anyway, after five solid minutes, he's still talking smack about Romero, when I notice something.
"Dude," I say.
Joe keeps talking smack.
"DUDE."
Joe stops. "What?"
"He's standing right behind you."
Joe turns around, and there's Romero, kinda looking at him. I honestly forget Romero's expression, but I will forever remember the complete and utter foot-in-mouth etched into Joe's face.
Moral of the story: it's a small industry out there. Don't badmouth people. You might not experience a spectacular failure of cool like my friend Joe did, but it will probably come back around and bite you in the ass one day.
I had spotted a guy I knew from the Boston Postmortem. Let's call him Joe.
I said hi to Joe, and we started talking about random things. Eventually, I mention the name of John Romero during this conversation.
"Oh man, Romero?" says Joe. "I fucking hate that guy!"
Joe really runs with his hatred. He goes on. And on. And on. About how much Daikatana sucked. About how he had nothing to do with Doom. About every little thing. I was waiting for him to bust out with a complaint about Dangerous Dave.
Anyway, after five solid minutes, he's still talking smack about Romero, when I notice something.
"Dude," I say.
Joe keeps talking smack.
"DUDE."
Joe stops. "What?"
"He's standing right behind you."
Joe turns around, and there's Romero, kinda looking at him. I honestly forget Romero's expression, but I will forever remember the complete and utter foot-in-mouth etched into Joe's face.
Moral of the story: it's a small industry out there. Don't badmouth people. You might not experience a spectacular failure of cool like my friend Joe did, but it will probably come back around and bite you in the ass one day.
Labels: networking
# posted by Darius Kazemi @ 5/21/2006 03:02:00 PM 
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I almost fell into that trap my first GDC. I think a lot of this bad mouthing comes from reading negative things about someone without having met them. I had this impression of Cliff Bleszinski that he was a vain glorious FPS monger who offered nothing progressive to the industry. When I met him after the game design challenge, and talked a bit about social gameplay and storytelling and all that jazz, I realized he's actually very interested in progressive design, but he also happens to have a really sweet day-job (which seems to be the case for much of the talent in the industry).
So my answer, if you've got an urge to bad mouth somebody, go meet them, you might find they're really pretty cool. Like Romero, I'm sure he's a really cool guy, even if his design track record isn't exactly sterling.
So my answer, if you've got an urge to bad mouth somebody, go meet them, you might find they're really pretty cool. Like Romero, I'm sure he's a really cool guy, even if his design track record isn't exactly sterling.
Also, it should go without saying, but people should watch how they portray themselves online, including what they say about people.
Game industry people, tech-savvy people that they are, are very adept at finding things people write about them online.
In some ways this can actually be a benefit for networking, as it can lead to interesting ways to start a conversation. Once I had written about someone and he had found my blog entry about him and replied with a comment - I ended up meeting him a few days later and joke with him about the experience.
But writing about someone in the game industry once also nearly got me in trouble when they found what I had written about them. Luckily she had a good sense of humor about it at the time, but I felt really bad that something I had said wasn't nearly as anonymous as I had thought and had nearly hurt someone.
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Game industry people, tech-savvy people that they are, are very adept at finding things people write about them online.
In some ways this can actually be a benefit for networking, as it can lead to interesting ways to start a conversation. Once I had written about someone and he had found my blog entry about him and replied with a comment - I ended up meeting him a few days later and joke with him about the experience.
But writing about someone in the game industry once also nearly got me in trouble when they found what I had written about them. Luckily she had a good sense of humor about it at the time, but I felt really bad that something I had said wasn't nearly as anonymous as I had thought and had nearly hurt someone.
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