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Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

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Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#41

Post by trinsic2 »

taherchhabra wrote: post #32
Justsignedup wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I experience this a lot. My experience is doing a lot of things, and being a force multiplier. However you go to a larger company, and suddenly they're looking for very specific experience doing specific scaling that I never got to do in all my roles, boom, it is terrible for my resume. And many young people see this and just decide that let's just focus on that, and make a great resume, rather than try to be u…

I am in the same boat as you. For generalist,after a point, i feel the only way up is to start something of your own.

This is why I dont work for anyone but my customers. There is no way I would deal with the kind of dissonance we are living through today. I do all my design work, my coding, my deduction for people that hire me directly for individual projects. I don't make as much money as I would working for a company, but you can't put a price on piece of mind.

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#42

Post by proc0 »

I think this is related to how games are increasingly live services, therefore approximating the product development of web and as a result adopting some of the practices of that industry. Even for offline single player games, 'early access' and frequent patches are the norm, and so it's not hard to see how the organization starts solving for these problems at the cost of creative cohesion.

Games require a unique combination and overlap of creative art and software engineering, something that is hard to measure and quantify... and that is why I think it becomes evident when the leadership of a company is blind to the creative element, maximizing short term business value instead of long term creative value (which arguably has more business value, but it requires passion and love for the craft).

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#43

Post by TotalCrackpot »

Justsignedup wrote: post #24
nitwit005 wrote: post #23

The generalist's resume looks worse. They have 2 years experience with (insert role here), compared to the other guy who has 8, because they've worked in multiple roles. Some industries have realized they want some people who have multiple skills, such as the "full stack engineer" roles, but it seems rather more common to prefer someone who precisely fits into the specialist role they defined.

Hell, I experience this a lot. My experience is doing a lot of things, and being a force multiplier. However you go to a larger company, and suddenly they're looking for very specific experience doing specific scaling that I never got to do in all my roles, boom, it is terrible for my resume. And many young people see this and just decide that let's just focus on that, and make a great resume, rather than try to be u…

Maybe try creating or working for worker cooperatives? Given that they are fully worker managed they should be a better place for generalists.

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#44

Post by TotalCrackpot »

trinsic2 wrote: post #41
taherchhabra wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in the same boat as you. For generalist,after a point, i feel the only way up is to start something of your own.

This is why I dont work for anyone but my customers. There is no way I would deal with the kind of dissonance we are living through today. I do all my design work, my coding, my deduction for people that hire me directly for individual projects. I don't make as much money as I would working for a company, but you can't put a price on piece of mind.

Do you have any tips or resources on how to find individual consumers?

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#45

Post by TotalCrackpot »

croes wrote: post #4

Is it even possible nowadays to be a generalist? In science something similar happened. There was a time where some people knew pretty much in every science field, chemistry, physics, biology etc. but the amount of knowledge grew and it become impossible to know enough in every field. Maybe game development isn't any different. You either become an expert in on field or your knowledge is to superficial to actually he…

Look into fields like cognitive science or places like MIT Media Lab - interdisciplinary research is the answer!

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#46

Post by [deleted] »

nitwit005 wrote: post #23

The generalist's resume looks worse. They have 2 years experience with (insert role here), compared to the other guy who has 8, because they've worked in multiple roles. Some industries have realized they want some people who have multiple skills, such as the "full stack engineer" roles, but it seems rather more common to prefer someone who precisely fits into the specialist role they defined.

[deleted]

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#47

Post by somenameforme »

croes wrote: post #4

Is it even possible nowadays to be a generalist? In science something similar happened. There was a time where some people knew pretty much in every science field, chemistry, physics, biology etc. but the amount of knowledge grew and it become impossible to know enough in every field. Maybe game development isn't any different. You either become an expert in on field or your knowledge is to superficial to actually he…

Valheim [1] is one of an ever-increasing number of amazing games made by extremely small teams. It was initially made by one guy in his spare time, who later picked up a former coworker to come join him after getting quite far along. That game is arguably the single most technically challenging type of game to make: seamless and dynamic (time/weather/seasons) open world, player crafting/construction in a pseudo-voxel type system, multiplayer, dynamic skill based combat, and more. Even though I'm sure they've probably grown a bit since then, the overwhelming majority of everything was done by primarily 1 guy. So yeah, it's very possible to be a generalist.

Going in the other direction, the increasingly absurd size of companies is one thing I really just can't wrap my head around at all. The final output just doesn't seem to justify these massive teams and budgets when contrasted against vastly smaller projects, like Valheim.

[1] - https://store.steampowered.com/app/892970/Valheim/

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#48

Post by mlyle »

TheRoque wrote: post #30
mlyle wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it even possible nowadays to be a generalist? Stardew Valley guy did pretty much everything himself. Game design, programming, music, art. Which, it's an indie game... but clearly if he can do the whole project himself, someone on a AAA team can have cross-disciplinary skills and translate.

I'm not sure it's a good example... Stardew Valley as a technical feat is pretty average, there's nothing fancy. In fact the game could have been made 20 years ago with this looks. Comparing it to AAA is really far from the truth, because modern 3D game dev is much much much more complicated.

I explicitly alluded to that: that it's indie and simpler.

> Which, it's an indie game... but clearly if he can do the whole project himself, someone on a AAA team can have cross-disciplinary skills and translate.

But if one man can do 100% of an indie game, surely you can end up with a few people who are generalists on a AAA game team that are deep in one area and basically competent in another couple to act as liasions.

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#49

Post by physicsguy »

softsound wrote: post #11
croes wrote: post #4

Is it even possible nowadays to be a generalist? In science something similar happened. There was a time where some people knew pretty much in every science field, chemistry, physics, biology etc. but the amount of knowledge grew and it become impossible to know enough in every field. Maybe game development isn't any different. You either become an expert in on field or your knowledge is to superficial to actually he…

What do you think most indies are? I'd consider most indies much more generalist. You can't ever know a whole field but you can know pieces of it and once you learn one system it can be easier to know another. I think for example programmers often make very good designers as they will think though problems, handle attention to detail, and work to often find multiple solutions if need be... Wait that sounds like every…

It’s rare that Indie games are the same technical sophistication though.

Nothing wrong with them at all but the scale is just totally different, it’s like running a small bakery shop vs an industrial factory churning out bread for supermarkets

Re: Why decline in generalists leads to disjointed games and harms tool quality

#50

Post by 0dayz »

AFAIK isn't this more because gamedev and general dev has gone separate ways?

Gamedev has become so highly specialized due to the lackluster quality games used to have? (There are plenty of ps1 to ps2 games that handles like garbage despite them being good games).

That has I think resulted in more "quality" of AAA games but everything is at best a very predictable bland grey goop.

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