Oswald Rant: Managing the Mod: Part 3

Management of Urban Terror

As mentioned above, Urban Terror evolved in a fairly organic way, with very little in the way of an initial plan. A structure for management of the team evolved as the mod progressed and demands of development forced the team to adapt. One of the first ways the team began to develop the team’s structure was by defining specialized teams within the mod.

It seems to be standard in many mod teams that the code team leads the mod’s development. This is precisely what occurred initially with Urban Terror. Coders tended to determine the features that were implemented because they are in a position to implement that features. This gives the code team an unreasonable amount of control over the direction of the mod, which is not a satisfactory solution.

Coders may be gatekeepers, but that does not mean they have a good overall view of the mod or its direction. Also, promoting the coders above all others tends to de-value the work of other team members. While the code team plays a critical role, it is arguably no more so than any of the other teams. A mod is a team effort, and relies on the integration of all parts into a cohesive whole to attain goals.

Without any formal structure, the team quickly got to a point where there was a certain amount of chaos. For example, new weapon models would be developed for use in the game without any code to support them. In an early version of the game, the team’s animator was working on the player models and defining the animations he felt were important or necessary. Because of a lack of organization, the code did not end up supporting the full range of animations, resulting in a serious waste of time and energy.

In order to address these problems, the team grouped each member into one of six sub-teams, based on their primary skills. The teams were defined as:

• Code team (programming)
• Sound team (sound effects and music)
• 3D Team (player models, weapons models, map objects)
• 2D Team (textures, player skins, weapon skins, user interface, concept art)
• Mapping team (3D environment creation)
• Public relations (relations with media and community)

One member of each team was designated as the group coordinator. The job of the team coordinator was to take an overall view of the group’s work This gave team members a single point of contact to find out where a team’s work was up to. This also allowed the team to distribute the “chasing” work, so that one person did not need to be constantly asking when something was going to be complete. It also enabled the team to set and achieve deadlines because team leaders could distribute work far more efficiently. Overall, this method of team organization has proven to be extremely successful.

One of the things to come out of building this structure was the realization that different team members have different skills and interests: not everyone wants to be a manager. Many team members wanted simply to focus on their technical work. More importantly, however, it also forced the team to come back to a major issue that had always been lurking: who was the overall “”leader?”

The team had a number of interviews in which people wanted to talk with the “team leader”. Team members were reluctant to choose a leader, as everyone felt a degree of ownership, and didn’t want that eclipsed by any one person. Selecting a formal team leader became an increasingly important issue as the mod started needing to present a single unified face to people like Id Software and the game media.

We decided to make the team’s public relations person, Stephen “Oswald” Toumi, the main coordinator. Toumi was a good choice because he had good community contacts (he had been heavily involved in the Action Quake 2 community), and was well liked by the team. He also was also managing the team’s public relations, so he was not bogged down with technical issues.

Toumi’s role was that of coordinator rather than leader. This is an important distinction to make from the team’s perspective. The coordinator is not considered “above” other team members. Development ideas still came from the bottom up: community, team, team leaders, coordinator. The coordinator’s role is to make sure issues converge to a set deadline, also to act as go-between in any dealings with other entities. Team consensus is used to make decisions, but the coordinator acts as an arbiter, and if necessary, the final word for the resolution of otherwise intractable debates. Trust in the coordinator is thus crucial.