[TRENCHES] Tuesday, June 25, 2013 - Versatility
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Versatility
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/versatility
Making a ship date
AnonymousI was on a PC game that was trying to ship worldwide before the end of a fiscal quarter. For a large, publicly traded game company, getting a game to the retailers before the end of the quarter allowed them to book the sales in that quarter, hit their forecasts, and keep the stock price up. As quarters got near the end, heroic efforts would be made to get a game out to the shelves. At one point, I remember when we shipped the “speech pack” for a game weeks before the main game shipped…
Anyway, for this one game, we were in Final and fixing the last bugs that we were allowed to fix. Every build had the chance for being “the one”, and every build was immediately burned and shipped to Europe so that the disk could be waiting at the manufacturer to be stamped out when the green light was given. The boxes, the manuals, and the other data disks were ready to go, they were just waiting for that last, main install disk.
As the end got closer, merely shipping the game to Europe was not fast enough. We started having to drive to the airport and purchase counter-to-counter from Austin to the U.K. for the disk, which is pretty expensive. But no expense was spared. We did this for a couple of builds, with QA or Production running down to the airport every night.
We still couldn’t finish it. Soon, counter-to-counter was going to be too slow. Someone asked if there was anything faster…the only faster plane was the Concord. We laughed.
The next day, the head of QA asked for volunteers to fly a build to Heathrow on the Concord. This would be a one time flight, you could not leave the airport in London, and you had to take coach all of the way back. But for one glorious trip, you could fly first class, faster than the speed of sound. Needless to say, there were a lot of volunteers. One lucky guy, who was not crucial to the testing, got to go. Build in hand, he went to the airport.
That build had a killer bug.
So, the next day, another volunteer. This guy came from a separate team, since we could not afford to lose expert testers. Again, build in hand, he went to the adventure of his young life.
That build made it. Manufactured lighting fast when the green light was given, it shipped world wide, and made the quarter. The stock remained fine. The Concord trip became legend.
Ironic post script: This title was a marketing SKU, the “Gold” version of a previously released title plus the mission disks and some new content. But in the world of publicly traded companies, the end of the quarter it was important enough to spend tens of thousands of dollars on Concord tickets to ensure that the dollars flowed.
Posts
When the top 10 results were about a crash, I thought this story was going to have a very different ending.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
This made me a bit sad. Not about you, specifically, but the Concorde is a too awesome plane to be forgotten!
The crash was 13 years ago, and the planes were retired 10 years ago. Anyone who's 25 would have been a freshman in high school last time it made headlines. Somebody who's 20 would have been in elementary school. Pretty reasonable to have not heard of it, I think.
I don't understand why they were flying every build, though. It sounds like they were never sure when it was done, so at the end of the shift they'd just fly the most recent build to the publishing site on the off chance they'd be able to hit print on it? Also, if the concord was the only thing fast enough on one day, the next day would simply be too late. There'd be no "two days" of concord.
As for how a second Concorde flight might not have been too late, it's important to look at the entire supply chain. The disc needed to get there as soon as possible to start production of the discs, which then needed to be packaged and shipped out. Now, it's possible that the disc manufacturing and packaging could be "rushed," but that it would cost more, and the additional cost was more than the cost of the flight. Even assuming manufacturing and packaging was fixed, there's still the shipping of the final product to consider. The first Concorde flight maybe would've enabled them to ship ground instead of 2-day air to stores, while the 2nd flight enabled them to ship 2-day instead of overnight to stores. So those two expensive flights for one person/disc allowed them to spare expensive flights for all the finished discs (hypothetically).
Sadly, with a publicly-traded company, it's often more important to look successful than to be successful. You underperform one quarter and your stock plummets, even if you assure investors that you're "good for it" the next quarter. Besides, the company probably already scheduled a release for the next quarter, so that they can keep on reporting consistent revenue.
So..is it even a question? That's so meta.
Talk of "Speech Packs" would suggest this :P I'm guessing sometime around the mid-90s. That's about when they started doing away with "speech packs" and just shipped the games with speech
Also this story is kind of sad. So much money wasted for an arbitrary deadline to prevent stock drop. I seriously have to believe the drop avoidance could not have compensated for what they were spending shipping this thing. Also I don't quite get why they absolutely had to have the disk to the manufacturer the second it was approved. Couldn't you just wait for the approved build and THEN first-class-Concorde it to them? I mean, I don't get what you were saving by having the build already there ahead of time - how far away was this place?
Bat-man: Bruce, Wayne, Tony
Elderly woman: Janet, Betsy
I hope you are like 12
edit - also, for relevance sake, this was a great comic and story
If company shipped near end of quarter it'll round their fiscal sheets up and turn the company profit with the shareholders being happy.
As such, it was worth it to spend money on concord flights to ensure shipping ASAP, assuming the shipping would've net revenue that covers over the flight costs.
Pure mathematical logic.
So why not just do it once? That's what I don't get. Like, how long does a Concorde trip take? Because that is the time you are saving by pre-shipping a disk to the manufacturer (it's the difference between being able to start manufacturing once the build is approved, vs. sending someone to deliver the disk to start manufactoring once the build is approved). Unless this trip takes days, I don't get what a couple hours lead time is going to do to be worth spending that much money shipping disks over and over.
Edit: Oh, so the story says shipping from "Austin to the UK" - so, Texas? (unless there is another Austin). By plane I'm sure that's maybe a 8-10 hour flight or something. But I would assume the Concorde is faster (edit2: Wiki article says it set a record for New York to London in about 2 hours... so add a few hours for Texas + probably not trying to set a speed record, and maybe somewhere around 4?)
My understanding is that they were sending each build to the manufacturer nightly until one of the builds got approved to be used, as every one of these nightly builds was a candidate for the final product.
Total flight time would likely be approximately 6 hours one way given the average trip time of about 3 hours and 20 minutes for the New York to London flight.
1. The first "final" build they Concord'd over had a fatal bug. Meaning that build was bricked. That is why they had to do it again. Time was of the essence.
2. They sent the build to the manufacturer once it arrived out of the coding team. It did not pass QA's certification yet and that would take a couple days in the least - those days were saved by having the build already over at the production waiting for a phone call green-lighting to print&ship it.
3. Having the programmers fix bugs takes working days, too. So does distributing the goods in retail.
4. The end of the quarter was fast approaching. Probably the last month of the quarter. They did not have many days to waste.
5. Concord costs were more than likely deferred onto the next fiscal quarter and as such would've been swallowed and not impact that quarter which, due to the game shipping, would've shown stellar earnings (typical trick used by IPO'd companies).