Stress Management?

[Psisis]

I'm on my first game and did quite well. I started with a founder, then a marketer, and now I have quite a nice office and 100 000 000 USD.

But I'm quite confused by my staff and their stress. I've divided into four Teams, Alpha, Beta, Delta and Epsilon. I made some changes but right now Alpha is my founder and most designers, Beta: pure coders, Delta: Artists and Designers, Epsilon: pure coders. My marketers are in Beta.

All teams have leaders, and my office is quite decorated with plants and paintings, and each room has a coffee machine, vending machine and water cooler. But stress is still a big problem. Most prominent in the coder teams. At the end of the shift many workers stop working because they're negatively affected by the environment. My # of employees range in the fifties. With Beta and Epsilon having more workers than the other teams (and also, maybe not coincidentally, most affected by stress)

What should I think about and do to solve my issues?

[LatN's Strategy]

I create teams to manage one specific application, OS team, 2D team, 3D team, Game Eng, Games team, Marketing am/pm, Support am/pm. You can make the 2D/am, 3D/pm and use the same room as long as you do not assign PCs'. Each team includes Design, Artist and Programmers specific to the application. Make sure they have a high compatibility of over 200/300%.

This works great for training as I immediately send my designers to training once they finish designing an App. Same for artist since they do not do debugging. Then programmers to training.

My Artist, Design and Programmers are low salary.
Marketing and leaders are Medium salary.

Large teams working on too many projects at once will always bring you issues. If you hire employees with more than average stress; they will always bring trouble. Small focused teams the size required for the job works best all around!

Tip: Look to your support teams for high base skill values after a few years provided they have a leader and regular training.

[Psisis]

Alright. Thanks for your reply. I'll think about those things. Right now, since I've categorized the teams into roles, my coder teams get ALL the support jobs. I read somewhere else too that many tasks stress them out, but does that also apply to a really big team? Shouldn't more workers handle more jobs unrelated to the structures of the teams?

But then teams structured for different types of programs, as you suggested, sounds pretty good. And then an OS could be developed by all the teams since it's a big and diverse project.

And another question is, does it matter if the offices of the teams are far from each other? Like in separate buildings? Considering the rooms still are exclusive to that team and each office has its own leader assigned.

[LatN's Strategy]

Large teams will always have stress; it's the old adage"Too many Cooks Spoil the Soup"

Not sure about the different buildings. I keep my teams in one building.

I also build just One OS Dev. team for PC and another OS team for Console. If you add them up; they are more stream lined and less employees. A well trained team of nine will produce much higher design and code than the required twelve with no training or low skills. My first OS scored 9.5% with outstanding quality!!

Set your minimum specializations to 80% when selecting your teams, spend the money and be selective. I also add a high paid four star programmer or designer if the application requires more of a specific skill. The highly skilled person will train others.

See my guilds in the guilds page for more info. and tips. Happy Gaming!!

[Psisis]

Thanks I'll make sure I read your guide. Another thing I unfortunately left out was stocks. Now one stock of my company is priced at 66 million USD ! >.<

[LatN's Strategy]

I always train and do contracts in the beginning and if possible purchase my stocks before my first release or as soon as I get my first successful application. I like to own the whole company as soon as I can!

[LatN's Strategy]

They are in the game. It's the game's way of keeping your company private or public. It all depends on your choice. It's a game; you want to keep it private and prevent others from taking over you purchase your stocks.

I think in it's present state there is no AI that would purchase your shares so it's just part of the story; you purchase them as a way of having complete ownership.

If it were to go multiplayer if you don't you take a chance of losing it or if the AI is programmed to purchase stock.