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I think this happens when founders make a tonne of money. Small wins don't whet their appetite anymore and the discussions they are having, with friends, investors, peers and agencies, are all about their existing global success and taking it even further--after all no business with that kind of momentum feels "we're big and this is as big we're gonna be".

When in reality, even the best of games in this genre need only a small core of maybe just 3-5 strong and highly motivated game developers.

To their credit, they juiced their one-hit-wonder as much as any company ever could.

> they have been attracting people who are attracted to money, which is never a good sign for sustaining business,

More accurately, it's not a good sign for a business to attract people not driven by it's primary product. Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people. On the other hand, investment banks have been working quite successfully for decades by attracting money-driven people, but then, their main business is money, so...

Have they been successful? They did risky things and pocketed the winnings themselves in good times, with the taxpayer paying the losses when everything came down.

I am not saying banks are not needed, and I am not running around with a tinfoil hat, but saying that investment banks are 'working quite successfully' might be a bit of a stretch.

Up until the most recent crisis, I would say yes. There are a few very old investment firms, e.g. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, that probably haven't required government help many times in the past. This time, it's different, pretty much every big bank required help, as did other big companies (e.g. auto manufacturers), so you can't really say that it was the money-driven people in banks that were the cause of this issue.

>...you can't really say that it was the money-driven people in banks that were the cause of this issue.

Yes you absolutely can. /ot

>...you can't really say that it was the money-driven people in banks that were the cause of this issue.

Yeah...

> It was the money-driven people in general that were the cause of this issue.

there, fixed it ;)

No, not at all. It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen; "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution.

I strongly disagree.

> It was the handful of very greedy politicians that relaxed the laws that allowed this to happen

This breaks down for two reasons. First, politicians relaxed the laws because they were bribed into it by lobbies. That's at least two handfuls of money-driven people at play here.

> "ordinary" traders, quants and managers at big banks had essentially nothing to do with the direction in which the world was headed, they were only there for the execution.

That's people who convinced poor and poorly-educated people to buy houses they couldn't afford. They tampered the accounting books. They outright lied to get more sales, and so on and so forth.

I don't know about you, but I would need to be extremely desperate (as in I can't feed my children) to resort to those tactics in exchange for money. These people were not in great need, and acted in that manner just because they are more money-driven than others who didn't (many of which lost their jobs because of it).

So yes, I honestly think that it was the fault of money-driven people in general from the very top to the street seller.

> Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people

Ugh. This sounds like the excuse a boss at EA would give when forcing his employees to work eighty hour weeks. In the real world Silicon Valley companies have been very successful hiring good employees in part by offering massive amounts of compensation. And then there is the other half of Silicon Valley, which feeds off the overworked and undercompensated twentysomethigs following their "passion".

I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. You don't want "money-driven people" in the sense that all they care about is doing the least amount of work required to get paid. You want people that are "games-driven" in the sense that they care about putting out a quality product and making a fun game; because of that, they will work harder and should be paid accordingly.

You are absolutely correct in that using the "passion" excuse to force 80-hour weeks and/or underpay workers is BS. An employee being passionate makes them more valuable, not less.

How do you find the passionate employees and separate them from those driven by money? If you advertise a high salary and a 40 hour week you will get applications from both types of people and they will both say at the interview that they are "passionate" because they know that will get them the job.

So perhaps the paradox is that you get better employees by offering a lower salary?

Its a hard problem, to be sure. You will never know what their motivations are unless you work with them. The best that once can do seems to be looking at their work experience, at the kind of stuff and places they've worked on before and then... taking a leap of faith in thinking that the person will do well.

Passion is highly overrated, I think, and a lot of people define it differently. For some, it means staying at the office for 12 hours everyday including saturday. For others, it means keeping regular hours and contributing good quality work everyday, yet recognizing that one might need to work more (without overtime) when the job demands it. And the manager should know not to make these kind of situations a regular thing and reward the employees accordingly.

As to the question of attracting the right kind of people, although it can be faked, the curios ones are usually the best. If the person you're looking at is always asking questions, or making suggestions, not to impress you but to get a genuine understanding of what you do and what you want her to do, that is the best sign of a passionate employee.

How do you tell if the person was motivated by passion or by money in their previous jobs? You could look for people who previously worked for low pay and offer them higher pay, but if they worked for low pay in the past then they are probably willing to work for low pay again.

In the games industry is that if you work a 40 hour week then your game will be delayed or have less content or more bugs than your competitors game who's programmers worked for 60 hours and when your programmers burn out they are easily replaced because so many people want to work in games.

You could also ask the reverse - how can I find an employer who will pay me a good salary, without expecting me to be productive all the time. It sounds kind-of ridiculous, doesn't it. In the end, people work for money, sure, you can motivate them better or worse (e.g. I'm motivated by hard, challenging problems - not necessarily some big, scary, new machine learning research, but could be as simple as finding obscure bugs or optimizing a piece of code - and by always having a bit more on my plate than I can reasonably do), but you should pay them a fair salary either way.

But if you can get developers who are cheaper and of higher quality (because your low pay automatically filters out those with a lack of passion) by offering low salaries then this might explain why game studios with low pay produce better games (assuming this is true in the first place).

> Ugh. This sounds like the excuse a boss at EA would give when forcing his employees to work eighty hour weeks

I don' think that's true at all - I think it's reasonable to ask that people who develop games are really into games... That doesn't mean they should be taken advantage of. You still need to pay them well, or they'll go work for your competition, or start their own company.

There are a lot of talented developers who want to develop games, so employers shouldn't have a hard time finding the right people. It's not like run-of-the-mill business admin software. For that, you actually need to pay people more to get them motivated.

> Rovio's product is games, so ideally they would attract games-driven people, not money-driven people.

You can't really call it a games company any more. Rovio's product is Angry Birds and the income comes mostly from non-game products and selling IP licensing rights.

Rovio employs only a few dozen game developers in their in-house studio, most of their game development is outsourced to 3rd party game studios.

I saw Rovios head of marketing, Peter Vesterbacka, give a talk at the finnish startup conference Slush last month. I could not believe my ears when he made the claim that Rovio makes the best games. Period.

I think part of their problem has been shifting focus away from games. Sure it's great that half of their revenue comes from selling merchandise etc., but I think in the long run people won't want your merchandise if your core products, the games, are not great.

> I could not believe my ears when he made the claim that Rovio makes the best games

I have been making games for over two decades and never seen a company, studio or team that does NOT say that kind of stuff: "our games are the best", "we have the best talent", "this is the best team I have ever been part of", etc. Both internally as well as in public-facing events. I'm all for projecting confidence, encouraging excellence and boosting passion and morale, but sometimes the cognitive dissonance is jarring.

Well no one wants to admit that they hire people that are just good enough and that they make do to ship acceptable products. I mean how would you feel if your company said "we're just average and do an acceptable job".

Personally, I would be OK with that. By definition most companies are "average". The ones that recognize that and try to become better are much more realistic than the ones who already think they are the best...

like someone told the truth for once.

Rovio made one game the best, and even that was pretty seriously not a great game if you've played that kind of game before.

They happened to hit the right audience with the rise of iPad and iPhone happening at the same time, for mostly those who have not played games before, so kudos for doing it very well.

At least some ex-rovio people went to another Finnish game company called Seriously: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-06-30-seriously-h...