A TD that is new to a company is a very different beast than a TD that’s spent the last 6 months ingrained in a pipeline, working with the team and becoming one with the process.  Not only are you loosing talent that is more aware of the pipeline than you are, you’re also throwing away the investment you’ve made over the last 6 months training them.

Rather than letting them go – wouldn’t it be much more beneficial to observe the signs before hand and do your best to correct the issues? ( assuming they are indeed under you’re control, you’re not able relocate family and friends due to homesickness etc. )

It seems to me that a major part of an artists unhappiness can be treated with an honest interest in their Career Path.  Whether it’s the artists manager ( ideal ) or HR ( still better than nothing ) having a better understanding of what the person wants to be doing and what their goals are will better help you as a company place them in a position where they’re achieving their goals.  The benefits are two fold also, by understanding where a team asset wants to be in the future you have a much better chance of forecasting recruiting needs as well as filling roles with those who have proven that they’re ready for a new challenge.

For example, generally junior TD’s are hired into a Render Wrangler position or similar ( data management? ) and even though they’re considered ‘junior’ roles they’re also exposed to some of the more technical aspects of your companies pipeline.  Rather than making their job a reactive one, where a call would go out to a TD when a render breaks – it would be better to make it proactive, giving them the opportunity to debug the issue and try and resolve it themselves.  By doing this you’ve just offered them some of the best on the job training a TD can get – problem solving, and when they’ve advanced in their career and responsible for shots themselves they’ve learnt the skills necessary to debug issues prior to rendering.  ( the added bonus is you’re more experienced TD’s can stay focused on other tasks )

Properly schedule reviews to give team members feedback and offer them an honest critique of their performance with an understanding of their goals.  Be honest, and let them know if you don’t think they’re on the right track or even if their goals aren’t right for them.  Most importantly, make it a part of you’re role to help guide them, junior and senior, through their career.

It’s all in the name of building a sustainable future for your studio.

I’ve been waiting to hear about the success of the legal contracts all being approved by Apple, expecting an email of some sort – it wasn’t until I decided to search the App Store the other night for Tasted that I actually found it! What a nice surprise! I logged onto iTunes Connect ( the front end that an iPhone developer uses to interact with Apple ) and all of the contracts had been approved – excellent!

So head on over to Finger Collision and explore my new world of iPhone applications and games.

I’ve already begun on my second app, and am really excited about revealing it once I’ve met my first deadline and have something to showcase. Until then feel free to purchase Tasted and enjoy some good wines.

I kept it small and simple and spent my time focusing on well engineered code as well as an extremely polished look. I’d like to maintain the same high standard for my applications that Apple ( and it’s customers ) would expect from a developer and felt that jumping in with too bold an application to begin with would have been premature.

I’ve been hard at work putting together the branding and customer support side of things relying on Get Satisfaction as a conduit for users to interact with myself, as the developer, and make feature requests, report bugs and generally discuss the project. Although it may be overkill for such a small app, I’m trying to lay the groundwork for larger projects and truly believe that keeping these lines of communication open is going to be the key to developing even greater applications in the future.

I must commend the folks that built the wonderful Get Satisfaction site, as an independent developer the idea of implementing a support and user interaction system with the same breadth is overwhelming and likely wouldn’t happen. This new forum now offers us the means of addressing customers on a more individual level pulling the wool off our eyes and giving us the ability to really see how an application is being used.

So what is the application you ask? Well, as I’m a superstitious git I’m not going to reveal all the details until it’s been approved and available – but if you have a look here you might gain some insight.

Which leads me into another introduction, Finger Collision, my new “brand” for releasing iPhone/iPod Touch applications and games – I wanted to separate the software I write for these mobile devices from my desktop applications and personal page, I feel the market is slightly different, and rather than trying to accommodate the different markets in one location it would be more appropriate to target each of them individually.

If I can think of anything intelligent to write, I’ll try and share iPhone development stories – until then I can only reveal interesting tidbits starting with Unity for the iPhone. As far as indie game development goes I don’t think I could recommend a product highly enough – not just for the iPhone platform, but general Mac, Windows and Wii games too. Having worked in a large game studio and with a fairly good understanding of what goes into the production of a successful game, the ease of producing and integrating art into the Unity system alone is well worth the the purchase price, and I imagine there will be a release or two from myself taking advantage of this great tool in the not so distant future.