Black Element Software

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

Not sure if any has seen this picture in-game?

 

Thats Cherno btw...

 

That company is a real company, url below...

 

http://blackelement.net

 

I'm sure those images look familiar. BES is allegedly a subsidiary of Bohemia Interactive.

 

If you go into the Portfolio>Vehicles section you'll see some interesting pics.

 

Tatanko and I got on this topic a few days ago and figured it was interesting enough to share with y'all. Good day!

[pale1776 375]

Black Element was also the name of the ION PMC in A2 before it was changed.

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

What I want to know is whats it that green enclosure?

[therandomredstone 432]

 

 

'Twas thinking the same thing.

[klesh 2423]

Weird, they're out of Thailand.

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

Weird, they're out of Thailand.

Not when you look at the salary.

 

18,000 BHT to USD is 515.52 and 40k BHT is 1,145.60 USD. I hope thats not an annual salary.  :|

 

Salary (based on skill and experience):

• Junior Artist– 18,000-30,000 Bht

• Artist – 30,000-40,000 Bht

• Senior Artist – 40,000-50,000 Bht

Edited July 26, 2015 by Weyland Yutani

[emuthreat 2837]

Not when you look at the salary.

 

18,000 BHT to USD is 515.52 and 40k BHT is 1,145.60 USD. I hope thats not an annual salary.  :|

 

Salary (based on skill and experience):

• Junior Artist– 18,000-30,000 Bht

• Artist – 30,000-40,000 Bht

• Senior Artist – 40,000-50,000 Bht

That looks pretty fair by US standards, given that the figures are weekly salaries.  Strange topic.

[wacktopia 57]

You need to factor in cost-of-living too.  It might be cheaper to live in Thailand, so salaries might not compare directly to USA....

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

Strange topic.

Strange? I think this forum needs more topics like this instead of: "To The Guy I Killed At Blah Blah", "This Feature Is Broken" , "Devs Are Too Slow", "Dean Took The Money And Ran", "I Can't Find The Lootz",  "I've Lost My Faith", or "Epic No0b Pwnage" type generic topics.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Weyland Yutani

[scriptfactory 620]

That looks pretty fair by US standards, given that the figures are weekly salaries.  Strange topic.

 

Where does it say that those are weekly salaries? That is damned good money, if what you are saying is true.

[werqwrqwerqwr 4]

Could this possibly be one of the smaller studios that BIS bought up to expand the DayZ project? Just a thought, even though it appears they're based in Thailand, it's not impossible?

[St. Jimmy 1631]

They've been partners with BIS for some time. There's nothing weird about that :D

[Dagwood 680]

You need to factor in cost-of-living too. It might be cheaper to live in Thailand, so salaries might not compare directly to USA....

1.) Obtain international economics degree

2.) Work and save $1,000,000

3.) Move to country with low cost-of-living

4.) Become local rich snob

5.) Profit

[Death By Crowbar 1213]

You need to factor in cost-of-living too.  It might be cheaper to live in Thailand, so salaries might not compare directly to USA....

Everything is cheaper there, including boob jobs and sex change operations...

... or so I'm told.

[Baker. 1484]

Jesus people get out of the forums once in a while

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Element_Software

 

"Black Element Software was a computer and console game developer based in Prague, Czech Republic.

 

Black Element Software was a member of IDEA Games, who functions as a publisher and consultant for several independent developers It is one of the development studios owned by Bohemia Interactive Studio. Former Black Element Software works now as a subsidiary of Bohemia Interactive Studio."

[ZomboWTF 527]

Yay the Czech Backpack might come back :D 

[klesh 2423]

Came across this today, it has quite the relevance to the BES discussion.  Torchia giving a talk about his experiences with DayZ.  He talks alot about BES and the troubles they've had outsourcing work to them. There apparently were lots and lots of problems.

 

I've cued this video up to the question portion at the end.  Skip back to about 17 minutes in to hear his Outsourcing 101 discussion.  It seems there was a lot of issues with BI acquiring these smaller studios.  I think you'll find it very informative about what has been going on behind the scenes.

 

https://youtu.be/5qJEBj9mfxg?t=42m43s

 

 

 

Q from Audience: "Outsourcing seems to be super problematic... what was the point?"

 

A from Torchia:  "Yeah, I ask myself that question alot of times."

Edited October 8, 2015 by klesh

[Yuval 221]

Well yeah outsourcing wasn't his choic but BIS management I guess? Anyway without outsourcing the development would be very slow so yeah. Thai-Lord Vespa hehe :). He said that outsourcing is a good thing if its done right which wasn't at that time.. Documentation of things wasn't quite organized so the outsource employees weren't doing their stuff good enough.

These presentations BIS employees do, Torchia and Harton are for "young" game companies. They teach them how to do things right out of the "hard way" experiences they had.

Edited October 8, 2015 by StanleyWasHappy

[VIPEREYE1 17]

Came across this today, it has quite the relevance to the BES discussion.  Torchia giving a talk about his experiences with DayZ.  He talks alot about BES and the troubles they've had outsourcing work to them. There apparently were lots and lots of problems.

 

I've cued this video up to the question portion at the end.  Skip back to about 17 minutes in to hear his Outsourcing 101 discussion.  It seems there was a lot of issues with BI acquiring these smaller studios.  I think you'll find it very informative about what has been going on behind the scenes.

 

https://youtu.be/5qJEBj9mfxg?t=42m43s

The video didn't inspire much confidence, for anyone really.

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

After seeing the ^ video I have to question Torchia's motives. Shining a black light on the project doesn't do anybody much good. Almost looks like he's trying to get fired. Really shocked to hear that sort of content being openly talked about it.

[St. Jimmy 1631]

Well the problem was the team was expanded and they had to take the BES also with them. Like he answers later that better plan likely would've been that the new guys had been dealt with first and then integrate BES but that wasn't a choice.

 

They doubled the team + they needed to take BES at the same time AND the documentation wasn't good so no wonder if there has been some problems. But things are getting dealt and are likely rolling well now. He's just saying what the reality was back then.

 

If someone could lighten me what are the +/- of external vs outsourcing it would be nice. They can't take too many people internal or they need another office so likely external/outsource was the only choice. Also the BES team had already been doing something with BIS so that easens the cap.

 

It's not BES's fault that they were put to work in DayZ at the same time as the DayZ team had doubled internally.

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

They doubled the team + they needed to take BES at the same time AND the documentation wasn't good so no wonder if there has been some problems. But things are getting dealt and are likely rolling well now. He's just saying what the reality was back then.

What problems? We never saw them from his department, thats my point. So why bring it up?

 

A big complaint from people that don't know the most basic concept of game development is: fix the game instead of adding new pants.

 

We're always getting a lot of new 3D assets, to the point that people complain that we're getting to much of them and that the team should focus on core-mechanics. I fail to see the logic in kicking the suits dick in the dirt over something that never appeared to be a problem in the first place.

 

All this talk does is make the entire team look like a bunch of schmucks which they're not. Improvisation is a key element in a project like this and it's worked. DayZ SA was a series of accidents that led to massive popularity and there was absolutely no way in retrospect that they could have been better prepared for it.

 

Torchia's motives...unknown. He complains about all the work he's doing on Twitter...well, I don't see it. He posts every now and then and rarely engages the community. I've sent him a dozen tweets about the new tree models he said they were working on months ago and haven't gotten a tweet back about it once. Like new tree models are classified project-breaking intel. Its like a joke at this point where I send him a monthly tweet about the new tree's.

[q.S Sachiel 470]

I don't think he was overly critical of BI or BES in this video, and i don't think there were many criticisms at all really.  Despite his presentation style i think he was more enlightening as to the pitfalls of too great a pace of growth and the restrictions and issues that a team manager may face in this specific scenario... i think you're kind of twisting the reality here a little bit.  Even when he talked about BES at the question at the end, he could have been more diplomatic (read: corporate) but he said basically that continuing down the path they did, despite his reluctance and failure to see reason in it, was essentially an order from higher up rather than being an option.  I see honesty not without sarcasm, criticism or hidden knives.

 

Also, don't you think it's a bit weird to be regularly emailing someone about 3D tree assets? maybe he thinks you're some weird internet guy?

 

If the context of his talk was for the sake of providing assistance to smaller / younger companies than i think it was a generally relevant talk, and again, i failed to pick up on any hidden daggers like you seem to be alluding to... :S

 

And if you watch the whole video, he's not pointing the finger (as such) or making people look like schmucks.  He almost actually said that it's not their (BES et al) fault that things didn't progress, there were several coinciding issues such as time zone differences, rapid growth and lack of opportunity to integrate the new team members and create an inclusive work enironment, and LACK OF DOCUMENTATION meaning no clear direction from the client/parent company as to the direction of work required and then went on to mention several people that were instrumental in providing assistance and a fresh outlook to restructure and put in place organisational mechanics to improve productivity.

Edited October 9, 2015 by q.S Sachiel

[slippery gypsy 107]

What problems? We never saw them from his department, thats my point. So why bring it up?

 

A big complaint from people that don't know the most basic concept of game development is: fix the game instead of adding new pants.

 

We're always getting a lot of new 3D assets, to the point that people complain that we're getting to much of them and that the team should focus on core-mechanics. I fail to see the logic in kicking the suits dick in the dirt over something that never appeared to be a problem in the first place.

 

All this talk does is make the entire team look like a bunch of schmucks which they're not. Improvisation is a key element in a project like this and it's worked. DayZ SA was a series of accidents that led to massive popularity and there was absolutely no way in retrospect that they could have been better prepared for it.

 

Torchia's motives...unknown. He complains about all the work he's doing on Twitter...well, I don't see it. He posts every now and then and rarely engages the community. I've sent him a dozen tweets about the new tree models he said they were working on months ago and haven't gotten a tweet back about it once. Like new tree models are classified project-breaking intel. Its like a joke at this point where I send him a monthly tweet about the new tree's.

What is your colony aside from youtube videos ...just out of interest ?

[Weyland Yutani (DayZ) 1159]

What is your colony aside from youtube videos ...just out of interest ?

Our project DayZ Colony has 3 servers in the US since private shards became available. US-1 is more PvP, US-2 is mostly RP, and US-3 is PvE/Event Server. US-1 was ranked #1 for a few months until we got DDoS'd 2x in a month. We got back to #4 until this last patch. MPGS all of a sudden doesn't have an auto-restart function, so being stuck on a 24 hour cycle dropped us to #20 due to inconsistency in server restarts.

 

http://www.insidedayzstandalone.com/

 

Thanks for the heads up, I thought I changed the clickable content from my youtube account to our main site. I've now edited that.  :beans:

 

Also, don't you think it's a bit weird to be regularly emailing someone about 3D tree assets? maybe he thinks you're some weird internet guy?

 

Twitter is not email. Email is a mail delivery system, whereas twitter is short two sentence messages. Twitter isn't for peoples private lives like having an email is. Twitter is meant for public consumption.

 

I've tweeted Hicks and Harton on server related issues, demo information, etc and get responses back.

 

As for the rest of your post, I disagree. Nothing positive can come from that presentation. I mean, look at the amount of questions he got at the end...1. Kind of speaks for itself.

Edited October 9, 2015 by Weyland Yutani