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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#101

Post by Thaxll »

ReaLNero wrote: post #43
boredemployee wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where I work at, it is completely discouraged to do anything out of what was asked you to do. so I don't judge the workers/slaves. It's not allowed to be creative/careful in most places if it's not harming the bosse's wallets.

In order for a worker to bother with this 1) It has to be alright to make miscellaneous changes like this, and 2) It has to contribute to getting promoted. The second point is IMO why random QoL changes like this are rare in large corporations.

#2: Just do your assigned task well, that's it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#102

Post by azemetre »

Griffinsauce wrote: post #98
azemetre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t trying to blame engineers that wasn’t my intention, but someone needs to own establishing the environment that actively encourages or doesn’t encourage curiosity. Talented people are found everywhere, but hopefully someone with authority over them doesn’t slowly poison the drive out of them.

You are assuming curiosity was the problem instead of a lot of other possible factors like bandwidth.

I wasn't blaming this problem solely existing due to being incurious but more of lamenting how corporate environments don't encourage people to be curious.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#103

Post by s0l1dsnak3123 »

blowski wrote: post #78
azemetre wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn’t trying to blame engineers that wasn’t my intention, but someone needs to own establishing the environment that actively encourages or doesn’t encourage curiosity. Talented people are found everywhere, but hopefully someone with authority over them doesn’t slowly poison the drive out of them.

Why should developers necessarily be trying to cut loading times? Perhaps GTA is phenomenally successful because they have good BAs and POs who are able to identify and convince engineers to work on what matters to the bottom line.

Screw this. Developers should advocate for their craft and for quality, and business metrics should hold an adversarial position to balance things out. We definitely should not be accepting the narrative that developers just do what they are told and don't push back on what we know is good for product - we are in a unique position of power, we should recognise this and use it for the betterment of the industry as a whole. The alternative is we let corporate greed slide our standards of quality into the gutter thereby making the job at hand miserable.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#105

Post by blowski »

dingleberry420 wrote: post #97
blowski wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should developers necessarily be trying to cut loading times? Perhaps GTA is phenomenally successful because they have good BAs and POs who are able to identify and convince engineers to work on what matters to the bottom line.

You've clearly never played it nor read any of the community discussions about the game. The #1 complaint is (or was) loading times. It's why I've personally stopped playing years ago.

I play GTA, am annoyed by those loading screens, and have found those forums while looking for solutions.

Companies are successful not because they delight every customer consistently, but because they do just enough to make the customer spend money with them.

After all, I will still buy the next version.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#106

Post by asveikau »

khalladay wrote: post #46
azemetre wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m starting to slowly realize how terrible it is working in environments where people simply aren’t curious. It’s so hard for me as an individual contributor to decouple this way of thinking. Curiosity is how we find better ways of doing things or finding out hidden flows that can be better. Incurious people are a contagion, but I want to believe you can make people curious. It can’t be innate. Every company talks a…

I'd be careful about painting the developers at Rockstar as "not curious," that feels like an incredibly unfair conclusion to draw from this. Those developers have other pressures, and deadlines to hit. There are a million reasons why this bug wasn't solved by the team there. When a user complains about a bug in software you wrote, is it because you just "weren't curious" enough? Or is the situation more complicated?…

I agree with the sentiment. However, it is a tad surprising when you consider the productivity hit, even just internally speaking, that ~5min of cpu time in strlen() on every start of the app incurs.

How much time did perfectly qualified engineers, who could have attached a profiler at any moment, spend sitting at a loading screen spending most of its time in unnecessary strlen() calls? I understand we see this through 20/20 hindsight, serendipity can work against you, etc., but that's a crazy irony.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#107

Post by r00fus »

asveikau wrote: post #106
khalladay wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be careful about painting the developers at Rockstar as "not curious," that feels like an incredibly unfair conclusion to draw from this. Those developers have other pressures, and deadlines to hit. There are a million reasons why this bug wasn't solved by the team there. When a user complains about a bug in software you wrote, is it because you just "weren't curious" enough? Or is the situation more complicated?…

I agree with the sentiment. However, it is a tad surprising when you consider the productivity hit, even just internally speaking, that ~5min of cpu time in strlen() on every start of the app incurs. How much time did perfectly qualified engineers, who could have attached a profiler at any moment, spend sitting at a loading screen spending most of its time in unnecessary strlen() calls? I understand we see this throu…

A toxic culture resistant to change can obtain these results no matter how brilliant/skilled the people.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#108

Post by [deleted] »

azemetre wrote: post #25
kevinventullo wrote: post #18

There’s an implicit story here which I find quite sad that not a single developer at Rockstar in the prior eight years had the autonomy or bandwidth to discover and fix this themselves.

I’m starting to slowly realize how terrible it is working in environments where people simply aren’t curious. It’s so hard for me as an individual contributor to decouple this way of thinking. Curiosity is how we find better ways of doing things or finding out hidden flows that can be better. Incurious people are a contagion, but I want to believe you can make people curious. It can’t be innate. Every company talks a…

[deleted]

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#109

Post by zerocrates »

bastardoperator wrote: post #61
blablabla987 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know so many people that have stopped playing due to the loading times. Just because a scene is active and alive, doesn't mean it couldn't be even more active and alive with such a minor fix that could be implemented within a day. I am pretty sure they lost >100.000.000$ by that. Just shows how shitty the management over there is that they never tried fixing that problem.

By the time you get to the loading screen they've already profited. The fact that they continue to sell the same game over and over means individuals have likely purchased the game multiple times meaning they don't care about loading times, they just like the game. It's easy to say their management is shitty from the comfort of your computer, but the reality is Rockstar produces great games, and they're making a ton…

The action is, as always, on the margins. Those people who kind of wanted to play but got frustrated at the load times, you want them. In some senses you care more about them, the people you can gain or lose with changes, than your more committed users who are a little bit locked in.

GTA V has sold, and continues to sell, amazingly well. But Online, where this slowdown was exclusive to, is the real moneymaking engine. Any little marginal push to keep people out of Online, from feeling they could just jump in whenever, was significant.

The real baffler to me is just thinking about all the time spent by people internal to Rockstar sitting on that same screen.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#110

Post by glenneroo »

jawarner wrote: post #40
seanp2k2 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about how many human lifetimes worth of extra minutes were wasted from everyone waiting for this x number of players X years this has been a problem. Even if you can’t implement bubble sort on a whiteboard in your sleep, 5+ minute load times should have been setting off alarm bells in many engineers heads. I’m sure this did actually cost R* real money. Bounce rates for websites increase 32% for 1s vs 3s load ti…

If you think about it, those lives actually were saved. People either didn't play the video game, or they spent a moment in the loading screen in quiet contemplation.

To play devil's advocate we should balance those out with the impatient gamers who acted out aggressively (e.g. the 100th time proceeded to kick a PC, smaller family member, throwing a mouse across the room, etc) or consumed more unhealthy snacks/drinks :(

I personally was often frustrated waiting several minutes, thankfully I don't have any violent tendencies, snacks on the other hand... :/

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