What happens when you get the wrong person for the job

In a new article on the development of Lumines Electronic Symphony (PlayStation Vita) producer James Mielke writes about challenges that arose when someone who "was not a good fit" joined the team. "The game director, who will remain unnamed, was not a good fit for the project," Mielke writes. Lumines Electronic Symphony was developed in collaboration by Q Entertainment in Tokyo and Rocket Studios in Sapporo. The game director, who was initially headhunted for his experience, eventually had to be replaced. "Without consulting the project manager or me, he would make arbitrary decisions like removing some classic elements of the HUD, or other time-proven contributions to the Lumines formula. He would fight over things that weren't important, and then disappear from discussions about things that mattered," Mielke writes. The director had his own vision for the game that clashed with the plan that had been agreed on. He also had trouble agreeing to a workable plan for the game's licensed music tracks. "While it was a noble goal, he was really adamant about getting multi-track data for each song. This was impractical for a lot of reasons," writes Mielke. These reasons included international licensing and artist rights. In contrast, the new director, Ubisoft veteran Ding Dong, came up with an entirely new workflow for the creation of the game's skins, which allowed the team to finish the project on time -- something that had been in danger under previous processes: "One example of how the new style differed from the previous director's style was that the old skins were being designed almost completely in code, requiring us to channel every request through the programming team, which was difficult because they were off-site [in Sapporo]," writes Mielke. The full feature, live now on Gamasutra, has prototype screens and video, and more behind-the-scenes stories from the development of Lumines Electronic Symphony.