Successfully working without managers in a distributed studio
Veterans from studios like DICE and Crytek formed Scattered Entertainment — but, as its name suggests, many of them worked remotely, all across the globe. After shipping its first game, The Drowning earlier this year, Scattered's senior development director Senta Jakobsen spoke at GDC Europe to share her team's experiences. The original idea she and the team had when they formed in late 2011 was that distributed working would be "really difficult" but working without managers would be "easy-peasy." By and large, the inverse turned out to be true. At the outset, Jakobsen worried about issues such as collaboration, communication, a loss of innovation due to a loss in face-to-face communic…