Jon Shafer joins Stardock to work on elemental

[bryanw1995]

I never stated he only worked on those.. simply that those were his main design duties... as such his main contribution as co-lead designer. Rechecking alexmans post on the subject i realize i forgot to mention the advanced start option. That was his other major contribution to BTS design.

To clarify.. ill quote alexmans post.

Now compare that to my original statement which you argued against...




So yes i forgot to mention the advanced start option(but never stated that those 2 things were his ONLY contribution). My comment was totally based on alexmans comment. So refuting my comment one must refute alexmans. Calling him a liar.

your quote says he was "mainly" responsible for the listed items, clearly implying that he was also involved in other areas. if that was all that jon did alexman would have stated "this is all that jon did".

however, there's no need to argue about this, just log on to the elemental forums and ask jon, or pm alexman here and I'm sure he'd be happy to clarify things for you.

 

[bryanw1995]

Fair enough. I agree with you that Jon Shafer hasn't proven himself to be a great designer yet. Too young and inexperienced in my opinion. He made a lot of rookie designer mistakes. One of them was being too ambitious. (Another one was not anticipating 2K Games would move up the timetable for release so drastically. Curse him for not being a fortune teller. )

However, I do think he has genuine talent. He just needs direction and guidance.
He certainly didn't get that at Firaxis in my opinion. Firaxis is a terribly run company that doesn't have a clue what they are doing.

As I mentioned before, I will be leery of the Jon Shafer co designed game for Stardock. I will do my homework and make sure there is a demo and read a lot of feedback before I spend money on it.
However, I think it'll end up being a quality game. Stardock actually gives a damn.

Anyway, I completely understand where you are coming from. We all feel burnt by the fiasco that happened.

what was their original timetable? I was under that impression that he knew for years what the timetable was.

 

[blind biker]

I agree that some people get promoted for no good reason, some people have life easier than others, some people bite off more than they can chew and fail, some people bite off more than they can chew and succeed. It's not worth getting into the bowels of Chantarism and its fine South American intricacies.

This, more than anything you or the other guy, said, proves to me that you have not even read what I wrote. If you did, you'd at least know my view (with which you don't have to agree, but at least you'd know it) that it does not matter for a chanta whether what he bites off is too big or not - he will always manage to present it as a success, will always float on top, will always survive the possible collapse brought on by his endeavor, will always find a new place, perhaps even a better one, will always find people that will support him, will always be able to charm part or majority of the people that matter.

Even if you look at the most visible cases (the less visible ones are just as blatant), you will notice that, no matter how much an executive screws up a publicly traded company, he or she will always, without any exception, find a new job of equivalent level. For every Warren Buffett there are 10000 chantas. And those are only the more visible cases - and even being so much on the radar, they manage to float around BODs and company chairs, regardless of their performance. But there are chantas at all levels - except that they tend to percolate up the chain of command.

 

[bryanw1995]

biker, man, you grasped the concept of a chanta like nobody else... amazing. It is exactly what you describe. And the same happened to me, many times, and you learn from the experience. I guess many here do not have that much corporate experience, or maybe some choose just to "not see the game", but as soon as you open your eyes, observe better, and compare experiences, the chantas become as visible as the code of the Matrix was to Neo.

JS has ALL, I repeat, ALL the characteristics of a chanta as I learned to recognize them in 20+ years of corporate experience in 3 different countries.

Not only that, he seems to have the best traits of the Masters of Chanterism, only to be found in South America. And believe me, that is a lot, A LOT to say.

how many conversations have you had with jon shafer? how many first person accounts do you have of conversations with him other than a few pre-release civ5 interviews? how much do you like civ5? Any chance that your dislike of the game has colored your views of the lead designer just a bit? It sounds to me like you've been burned by the chanta so many times that you see them everywhere now...

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: and at this point any further exercises in etymology or other linguistic disciplines will leave this thread and find a more suitable place. Stay on-topic, please.

Those are extremely timid arguments. "I don't think...", "He doesn't seem...". Is that the best you got? Here's what I submit to you:

Some of the things a chanta does:
- takes credit for every tiny little bit he does, makes sure his name is prominent (disproportionately to actual contribution)
- gets others to do his work for him
- others leave tired of working for chanta and getting lesser recognition
- chanta gets promoted
- does horrible work, leaves it behind
- publicly describes it as success
- finds new job (horizontal movement), gets higher ups to describe it as a good acquisition/hire

Whom does the above remind you of? You don't have to answer if it causes too much cognitive dissonance. You can continue to disagree. What saddens me a tiny bit is, I bet neither of you have actually read what I wrote, even though I was gracious enough to read Shafer's second interview twice.

More seriously now... You know, that sentence becomes dangerous with time. I mean, yes, in the beginning chantas only destroy a little company, then a little municipality, here a stupid game, there a silly road... people say "oh well, it's just how it is", and things like that.

Two or three generations later, uncontested, they destroy entire countries. I know from experience. They start being the "rarity", and one day you wake up, and the country is overtaken. Now, what happens to a country like this?

The third world happens. You cannot even imagine the destructive power of the chantas when they reach critical mass. One good example: Argentina. In 1930, Argentina was the 5th country in the world in terms of quality of life, exports, GDP, etc. Canada was not even in the top 20 at that point in time. Look now.

A big part of such a destruction of a beautiful and rich country came from the chantas. Believe it or not.

I just reject any resemblance of one because I had to see how they destroy entire societies. Luckily for you (so far), you never saw that happen in your countries. But keep being lenient, and that may change... hopefully not, as I changed SA for NA looking for something else, not the same...

Moderator Action: Thread closed due to massive spamming and ignoring moderatos advice.