Everyone is an ideas guy when it comes to money. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, a loose definition might be that an ideas guy is someone who comes up with lots of things to do, but offers nothing towards their implementation. Creative industries attract more ideas guys than most, but there are programmers whose primary output is an opinion, and even coffee shops develop a layer of ‘executive baristas’ who aren’t management but don’t do anything approximating work. Ideas guys are often an object of derision.
We could find worse targets for our scorn, but sometimes the ideas guy is someone who doesn’t know any better. Ideas guy phrasings are off-putting (some variation of “you do all the work, then we split the reward”), but there is a difference between underestimating the work involved (ideas guys overvaluing their contribution) and someone trying to enrich themselves off of someone else’s work (ideas guys correctly valuing their worthless contribution and seeking a patsy). People rarely make this distinction, but it would better to distinguish the lazy from the misinformed. It is a nice thing to do and ensures we receive an education rather than mockery when we make our own mistakes. And we do often make this mistake when it comes to money.
Everyone has some version of the statement “things would be okay if only I had X.” Money enables a lot of things in the world, so money is used as a substitute for X. People find it difficult to disentangle money from the things it gives us access to, and the ability to make this distinction is the dividing line between people who are good with money and the rest. We offer an understanding nod when someone says “things would be okay if only I had X” because everyone knows what it’s like to have wants. A smaller number can have empathy while simultaneously appreciating that substituting money for X is equivalent to saying “if only society were reorganized around my priorities, things would be better.” Individually, this statement has a single adherent, although taken in aggregate we might call this the status quo.
Let us return to the stereotypical ideas guy we make fun of. Does the situation change if they have a lot of money? Some might say yes, because they are now hiring instead of looking for volunteers. Others might say the enterprise is no better off because the idea itself isn’t valuable. Something does seem to change once the story is about hiring, but saying it is now okay implies that the real problem with ideas guys without money is that they are simply not good enough at finding talented amateurs or other people who are looking to contribute something. On the other hand, if the idea really is without value, what stops the rest of the team from going off and enjoying the full rewards of their efforts once they’re assembled?
This example starts to poke at the edges of where the value of the money people lies. The money people can be different groups of people, banks, juries for grants, publishers, investors, but most of these groups are seen as a necessary evil, if not held in outright contempt. This is a shame because they serve a useful function.
Our ideas guy contributed two things: money and organization. It can be tough to find collaborators, but usually people sort organization out on their own. Seeing a collaboration through to something that ships is another matter. The dynamics of volunteer and paid projects are different, but even paying someone is not a guarantee of getting work that is done on time and up to the required standard. Organizing the factors of production is a necessary component in game development. Like many other roles, independent projects often divide this task in an unconventional way, but the work remains essential. The absence of a dedicated role does not make this work go away any more than not having an artist makes art irrelevant. We may doubt the ideas guy’s ability to deliver on this necessary component, but this is not the same as saying that organization is not important.
Suppose instead that the ideas guy’s role was purely financial. Again, there is a necessary function being performed here. Financing a project means assuming a degree of risk. Financing means vetting people who are proposing to work on the project, putting faith in their ability to deliver, and giving people money that could be used to do quite literally anything else with. A self-financed independent’s job is easier, since they know their capabilities and don’t need to convince others of them. All other cases involve some kind of investors, and the situation Embracer is now in shows that this work is not trivial and can have catastrophic consequences when it goes wrong. Again, doing it yourself does not mean the work itself is not important or is without value.
None of these details are meant to deflect legitimate criticism. The stereotype of the rapacious capitalist exists for a reason, and even specialists can make mistakes or be bad at their jobs. But it is easy to feel like an expert when it is someone else’s money. A player telling a developer how to design a game better would be met with a sneering quote tweet that reverberates through indie social networks. The same non-expert opinion with regards to financing or organization also would be repeated, but favourably and usually attached to the words “late stage capitalism.”
It is not a coincidence that these two factors in game development are the ones that most likely contribute to a project’s failure. It is better to see these as necessary disciplines that need to be incorporated into a project, even if they’re handled in an unconventional way. These roles must be understood and respected, even if we criticize them. Otherwise, we’re just ideas guys with a sympathetic audience.
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