Radical Entertainment

Organization[edit]

Radical Entertainment practiced open and regular communication between management and employees; the company's president sent an e-mail to all staff on a bi-weekly basis, and staff input on all company facets was sought, ranging from what technologies to adopt to what food was stocked in the kitchen. In addition, the chief financial officer conducted a quarterly seminar to present the company's financial performance, allowing employees to understand where the company was making and spending its revenues. The company also implemented progressive human resource management practices such as core hours, providing a salary top-up to 3-months full pay for maternity leave, and utilizing an intellectual property review process to generate new ideas from among employees.^[29] This review process, named the "Idea Review Senate", was conducted by a team of nine employees headed by creative director Stephen Van Der Mescht. Ideas that were not recommended for development were passed back to the employee, who retained all rights to the property and could develop it independently or sell it to another company.^[30]


Radical Entertainment maintained an in-house research and development team directed by Dave Forsey. In September 1998, the team completed an Industrial Research Assistance Program assignment funded by a $350,000 federal grant. The project entailed several technological advances involving arbitrary topology on hierarchical surfaces, including the development of hierarchical splines in 3D Studio MAX and Autodesk Maya. This development allowed for the creation of localized detail on animated characters, and the release of the commercial graphics software Rodin based on this work.^[31] In March 2000, the team received a renewable $200,000 BC Science Council grant for the development of an internal game engine library and associated tools to streamline library pipelines.^[32] In 2001, Forsey and two of his colleagues in the company were recruited by the University of Calgary to develop and teach an undergraduate-level course in video game programming. The course, considered the first of its kind, was aimed at final-year computer science students and tasked them with designing and implementing a video game prototype.^[33] In the fall of 2001, several other employees taught a similar class at the University of British Columbia as a response to an impending labour crisis in Canada.^[34]