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I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

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Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#111

Post by asveikau »

r00fus wrote: post #107
asveikau wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's true, but also, you can get this result with a competent team and good culture, curious people, etc. You could just have bad luck and nobody happened to check it.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#112

Post by asdff »

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…

Curiosity has to come from the top and fall all the way down. As others and you have noted in other comments, its the environment for the workers that sets up whether or not they will even be able to pursue curious things, and that's on the managers to create that environent. However, the managers themselves have bossess too, so that has to trickle up, to their bosses bosses all the way up the chain.

In short, every job needs to be able to have autonomy to enact on the ground solutions for what their immediate team needs. You shouldn't be penalized for going off the reservation and coming back with a creative solution. The problem is corporate structure for the past few decades has been about rooting out this autonomy and anything opaque about job responsibilities. There is a lot that's been done that would need undoing to change those environments, and imo you are better off finding another workplace than bringing about the monumental change required. A mature corporation is like a boulder tumbling down a mountainside; you can hardly change its course much less stop it short of where its heading.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#113

Post by sreekotay »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103
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.

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 w…

Very much agree with this.

That said given the quality of what they have put out, I'd surmise the issue here is morelikely they don't feel the same pain on load times?

Bandwidth too good, rigs too powerful, dev envs overpowered, etc. to enable developer velocity can often also mask real world problems.

Hell, even hot reload can mean you don't see load as often and are able to easily rationalize as "not that big a deal" - I wouldn't necessarily take it as a sign they are not deeply invested in their craft.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#114

Post by asdff »

alach11 wrote: post #37
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…

Sadly at Rockstar it's likely that employees are curious, but are under so much pressure for deadlines, and working such long hours, that they don't have time to follow their curiosity.

Why are they working so hard on an 8 year old game? Aren't they just basically producing content packs now? Doesn't even seem like the playerbase cares when there are gamebreaking bugs ongoing for months.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#115

Post by asdff »

blibble wrote: post #10

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

Probably nothing. Loading times in rockstar games on consoles have always been this bad. GTA4 was just as bad too.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#116

Post by zionic »

blibble wrote: post #10

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

The same thing happened to me. GTAO earns billions/year, crazy that "fix the insane loading times" didn't bubble up to their top-priority.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#117

Post by asdff »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #39
blibble wrote: post #10

I tried playing GTA online once and actually gave up due to the loading times (on a top end gaming rig) I can't believe I'm alone, I wonder how much this cost rockstar

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…

We are in the era where its impossible to be bored. In the elevator? Phone out on instagram. Loading screen? Same thing. Instant dopamine the minute you need a drip. The playerbase clearly doesn't care. To be honest, these loading screen times are as bad as they've always been for console games (especially considering it was only a generation ago that they ran off a disc).

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#118

Post by blowski »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103
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.

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 w…

Sounds like an extremely false dichotomy. There is also the solution that you set up your own company, or convince your manager your time is best spent on this.

I’ve worked around too many startups ruled by developers. They’re being run into the ground because those developers think technical NFRs as defined by them are the be all and end all. They’re not. Those same developers will happily spend months fiddling with the system without making any actual improvements and call it “paying down technical debt”.

Give me a PM (or good engineer) that understands the bigger picture every time.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#119

Post by heretogetout »

s0l1dsnak3123 wrote: post #103
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.

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 w…

This is why I try to hold developers accountable for actions their software performs or allows, like auto-banning accounts or not supporting billing limits.

Re: I cut GTA Online loading times (2021)

#120

Post by [deleted] »

azemetre wrote: post #54
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't blame the people, blame the environment. People might start off curious but eventually they keep running into political roadblocks and other nonsense, which slowly beats the interest out of them. If those are the kinds of people that continue surviving then those are the kinds of people which your environment cultivates.

That’s totally fair, I honestly meant to blame the environment and not people. It just sucks to see the pattern of curiosity get stamped out of people due to environmental changes that aren’t obvious.

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