PD inneficiency - a case of Japanese developers

[TurismoBad]

I stumbled across an interesting thread on neogaf. Certain points very much resembles PD and their modus operandi.

Here's the OT but I advise to go and read the whole discussion - it's worth it.

" From what I have heard from various people who spent good time in Japan but have a Western background is they talk about,"There is nothing like Japanese inefficiency" which is at odds with German efficiency (I find this great that two of the former Axis powers who have emerged as more advanced that the rest of the world by way of their reconstruction and quirks end up on two different poles on efficiency)

By that I mean that there are ways that traditional Japanese culture has put in too many layers in how they solve problems. It's something they have always done, from their beginning, they find something wrong they would normally add a new role to fix that problem and leave the old position and problem still there.

It also works in how they are inflexible in their way of doing things. It's always by the book. There is also their tendency to always have meeting to discuss how things should move forward for the simplest of changes. There are also redundant positions in a company. (For example they have 6 programmers working on the same piece of code, when 1 or 2 can work on it and the other people can work. They have the tendency to over complicate things. There is also the idea that a person works for a company their whole life and are stuck in that position not making them feel free to be more creative in some instances and that has the side effect that the old out of touch guard keep running a company (Nintendo anyone?) "

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=871592

 

[VBR]

Sound's like PD alright. Add in the fact that they're only working on one game & it all becomes clear, as @BSD200 said;

It can be dangerous for an organization to only focus on one thing because you might end up as:

• Path dependant; you choose the same solutions time after time, even when the world have moved on and it exists better ways.
• Bug blindness: because you see the same thing over and over, this have happend to me several times. I have been working for a long time on a feature, and have polished it perfectly, then a colleague looks for it for 2 minutes and says something like "...this will not work because..." and sees something I got blind to.
• Endless polish on the wrong thing: you can end up using a lot of time making something that basically the users don´t want but you have so much time on your hands and only working on one project.

Source.

 

[Kurei]

It does, I also -personally- see it as a honor-code thing of the Japanese, they can't let themselves admit they got things wrong. To do so would be a worse 'dishonor', so they all agree on a "let's just keep quiet about everything" mentality.

Things like:
-The VGT glitch going weeks without a patch, rendering 'micro-transactions' useless to the majority.
-Missing the deadline for Redbull content, then saying it was a 'typo' ()
-Announcing a bunch of features & content, then delivering very little of it (Zahara/Course Maker anyone ?)

I could keep going on, but I'll stop here, tl;dr - PD needs to get their 🤬 together (server issues, for example.)

 

[MXH]

Surely, PD fits into the description but I can't comment on Japanese culture or inneficiency as I don't have any experience with neither or know anything about them. But it is no newsflash that they're extremely slow adopters to certain things. I also believe that it has a lot more to do with Kaz's own vision than Japanese inneficiency per se.

 

[Imari]

I'm entertained every time someone tries to peg Polyphony's shortcomings on some external factor.

Yes, there are certain things that a lot of Japanese businesses have in common. Yes, sometimes they can be negative. But Japanese CEOs aren't any dumber than CEOs in any other country. They do those things because they work, or they're bad CEOs and would be bad CEOs in any country.

Polyphony is inefficient because they're badly run. There's potentially an argument to be made on the basis that Japanese tend to promote more based on seniority than merit, but I've seen enough exceptions to know that it's not a hard and fast rule, and there are ways of shipping out promotees that can't handle the jandal. It's no worse than the promotions based on political infighting that take place in so many Western companies.

Every country and culture has it's foibles. When they're on it, a Japanese company is the match of any other company in the world. They didn't become an automotive superpower by accident. When they're not, they're just as bad as a company of any other nation.


Having worked for both German and Japanese companies, I find them to be cut from the same cloth. When it works, the efficiency is frightening. When it doesn't, they trip themselves up with red tape and anal retentiveness. A good German company and a good Japanese company probably have a lot in common, as do the ways bad German and bad Japanese companies fail.

 

[Dave_87]

I've never been to Japan, however I read a lot written by Western people living in Japan. Most of it is based around the Japanese car culture and one thing that always seems to come up is that if you take a car to a Tuning company, often you will wait for a long time to get it back. Even simpler jobs which would be done elsewhere within a few days can sometimes takes months. They have traditions and routines and they like to spend a lot of time on one thing or one detail and forget everything else, and often it can make them inefficient and slow. As I say, I've never been there, but that issue seems to come up a LOT.

 

[Imari]

I've never been to Japan, however I read a lot written by Western people living in Japan. Most of it is based around the Japanese car culture and one thing that always seems to come up is that if you take a car to a Tuning company, often you will wait for a long time to get it back. Even simpler jobs which would be done elsewhere within a few days can sometimes takes months. They have traditions and routines and they like to spend a lot of time on one thing or one detail and forget everything else, and often it can make them inefficient and slow. As I say, I've never been there, but that issue seems to come up a LOT.

That issue comes up a lot in Australia too. It's not a Japanese thing, or a traditions and routines thing. It's a busy, specialist business thing.

If you think that doesn't happen all over the world, you're wrong. Hell, I took my car to have the slave cylinder replaced a couple of months ago. It would have taken me a couple of hours, but I figured it'd take a shop less than an hour and I was happy to pay for the convenience because I was really busy at work.

Three weeks later I got my car back.

That's not even tuning, that's just replacing a part. Tuning is far more complex, and I know plenty of people who have had their cars stuck in the shop for months waiting for work to be finished.