It is a creative media and to feel uncomfortable in formal clothes is not needed because they work as an organic organisation were casual dressing and relaxed attitudes cause teams to gel better specially in creative media sectors were personalities could clash.
By no means is this a lax attitude to hierarchy within an organisation it just means there are less people for it to be approved by and everyone has access to the work. On long development projects this could shorten the time considerably in terms of 'red tape,' and this means updates to games even expansions to be made quickly and effectivley.
Online communities can also have a dramatic impact on how games are developed as the game will be beta tested after the initial alpha testing has been completed, developers are more inclined to listen to the community rather than sticking to publisher made milestones.
Here are a selection of three games that use this type of management and other types of agile practices.
Diablo III
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo 3 is a game made from a long line of genre defining titles, Diablo 1 and 2 set the bench mark for dungeon crawlers and game like this have been following its recipe to successes to the letter.
The game itself is very moddable, this created many online communites (official and unofficial) that was aimed at guides and mod tutorials to change the games and to allow others to use them. The successes of the game was so influencial to online communites that they gained support rapidly and even the Diablo forums had these sites as affiliates and fansites attached to there own site.
With Diablo 2 in the pipeline after Diablo 1 the developer Blizzard Entertainment then a small company realling from its successes with other games like starcraft, started to listen to communities and fans to what they want and is evident within the next release and even expansions.
The Secret World
The game is not released yet and wont be for another year, but the fact that it has kicked off with a lot of media attention and gaming critic website coverage describes its marketing scheme. The main website when it was first made was a gigantic puzzle that was related to the game and you had to solve the riddles to get a chance at trying the bet. It was really innovative way to get communities involved and this led to speculations over the game as the riddles were religious in some way.
This type of media hype is used all the time to promote games in some way but others like this game shine through because of the community interaction that the developers understand. To get the end user involved before the actual game is to release allows word of mouth (on forums and blogs too) to spread months before a release date is set.
