I just realized: Currently, every single Klei employee can code to a certain degree. In fact, only our Art Director does not have Computer Science degree. Okay, there’s only five of us, but that’s still a funny thing that you can build entire games in this day and age with this kind of make up.

One thing I do believe in is multi-disciplinary talents. I’ve mentioned before that 90% of the art in Eets were created by programmers by trade, and the fact that our Art Director is quite proficient in Action Script is no small benefit. Our make up is something like this:

2 Specialized programmers

1 Artist who can code

1 Designer who can code

1 Programmer who can do art

During the development of Eets, we actually had 2 programmer/artists. I’ve been mulling on this a bit, and I’ve come up with the following reasons why I’m compelled to find as much cross-disciplinary talent as possible:

1) Communication is far better. Time spent explaining how something works on the art side versus the code side becomes minimal, and the final implementation is far cleaner, because both sides understand the needs of the other.

2) You don’t need to waste the specialist’s time doing simple tasks. The designer can script the entire level. The artist can write the script to interact with the GUI. The coder can hook up the art pieces.

3) Your schedule doesn’t go into smoke when one person goes out of commission. There are far more people that can take up the torch and finish the task instead — if you’re using SCRUM, this is especially important.

Interestingly, I’m finding that as middleware improves, there’s less and less reason to hire talent that don’t work well with other people — there’s less emphasis on engine creation, and almost every task requires that you work with someone in another discipline. I’m sure as Klei grows, we will start to hire more talent with less diverse education, but I will definitely push to provide the training and create better bonds between the disciplines. I’ve seen too much work go to waste because of that disconnect.