Brian Hicks on self-criticism
From PAX Online 2020 - Survival of the Fittest w/ Dean Hall & Brian Hicks · · RocketWerkz
“When you left DayZ, you commented that you felt the game was fundamentally flawed. I think a big part of growing as a developer is being able to be a critic of yourself to avoid repeating past mistakes.”
On , Brian Hicks, Senior Vice President of Product Management & Operations at PC CONNECTION INC, spoke about self-criticism during PAX Online 2020 - Survival of the Fittest w/ Dean Hall & Brian Hicks on RocketWerkz.
About Brian Hicks
Brian Hicks, known for his work as creative director on *DayZ* and executive producer on *Icarus* at Rocketwerks, has discussed the challenges and design philosophy of survival games. In a September 2020 PAX Online panel with Dean Hall, Hicks stated that a major trap for survival games is scaling, and emphasized the importance of clearly defining a game's pillars and experience. He noted that *Icarus* aimed to give "real treatment to those core survival mechanics" and that the team had been "tracking really well" by sticking to milestones and testing assumptions. Hicks also reflected on *DayZ*'s development, saying that "it wasn't just about throwing money at the problem" but about getting experienced people, and that he considered being able to say "Thanks, I hate it" to identify mistakes as his most important role on a project. In earlier appearances, Hicks discussed technical and community aspects of game development. At a 2019 Elm conference, he gave a talk on designing good APIs for user interfaces, recommending a "with-star" pattern for view code. In a 2018 interview, he expressed regret over starting *DayZ*'s status reports, calling them stressful and demoralizing for contributors. He also stated that he would not remove third-person gameplay from *DayZ*, as it was "not our right to remove it," and suggested that starting every player with a radio and battery would improve player interaction. At E3 2015, Hicks announced plans for a single-player *DayZ* option and the public release of server-hosting tools upon the game's beta.