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There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

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Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#121

Post by pizza234 »

tejohnso wrote: post #4

Quake III Arena was pretty entertaining. Doesn't seem like it came from a company that had been ruined for years. I definitely noticed something around the Doom 3 release many years after Quake III Arena. The new game just didn't seem to have the same industry pushing, genre changing energy. Or maybe I was just older and had moved on, and didn't care as much.

> Quake III Arena was pretty entertaining. Doesn't seem like it came from a company that had been ruined for years.

It's not that the company was ruined, but that it had lost some of its creative direction after Romero left (while retaining technical excellence).

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#122

Post by avaer »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

Also worth considering if there is survivorship bias in this wisdom.

Would Carmack be in a position to give advice on how to make Quake if id slacked itself into shutting down before Quake was finished?

Remember that Carmack also started a rocket company. You probably wouldn't take his advice about how to run successful rocket companies.

(this isn't shade on Carmack, he's my hero)

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#125

Post by Goronmon »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

Though it is interesting how many old-school game developer stories from the employee side can be summarized as "I worked out of college for low pay, long hours and I basically lived at the office with little/no outside personal life."

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#127

Post by tombert »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #81
tombert wrote: post #21

One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I did leave with the impression that John Carmack is an amazingly smart guy, who also has the potential to be a colossal asshole. I was only five when Quake came out, so obviously I couldn't really have worked on it, but I'm pretty sure that (if Masters of Doom is to be believed) I would have probably told Carmack to go fu…

> One of my favorite non-fiction books is Masters of Doom. Loved this book as well. Convinced me more than anything to stay out of game dev. It was also cool getting the inside story on why Ion Storm went belly up. I have huge respect for the games that the Austin office put out and IMO Warren Spector is one of the top game designers of our generation. But it seems like the Daikatana flop was one of those rare career…

I do find it amusing, since I really don't think Daikatana is that bad. It's not great, but at least with the PC version I think there's some fun to be had. It was just way over-budget and overhyped with an extremely questionable marketing campaign. Also, the GBC version is a legitimately pretty decent game.

Deus Ex is of course much better, but to be fair most games fall short of Deus Ex.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#128

Post by jacobgold »

Jare wrote: post #117
jacobgold wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual quote is "It's a little silly to revisit your mistakes like this, as if you could have done anything better." What you're saying sounds very nice and correct, except it isn’t necessarily true. It's extremely easy to draw wrong lessons in retrospect. There are so many variables, including personalities, market conditions, timing, constraints, and accidents of history. You can't recall or even really underst…

> if John Carmack wants to create another breakthrough technology, he might be better off re-creating id Software’s 1995 chaos Chaos is not what made them great. It was definitely part of who they were at the time, and thus part of their greatness. If you try to recreate chaos without recreating everything else within which that chaos happened to work, you will be miserable and also fail. I suspect JC had plenty enou…

I agree with that. You got an old version of my comment before I clarified that, now it says:

"...he might be better off re-creating id Software’s 1995, including the chaos, rather than trying to avoid..."

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#129

Post by pdimitar »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #15
bigmattystyles wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, some people never learn this but for those that do, I wonder if this sort of wisdom only comes with age and/or wealth. It’s easier to be nice/benevolent/decent when your back is not against the wall. When you’re in it, you might not even have your back against the wall but think you do.

I'm of the opinion that people will be more successful if you don't act like their back is against the wall even if it is You can only wring so much out of people with stress and panic. Driving people to burn out is not the answer. Probably an unpopular take here though

Everybody knows this... especially those that gaslight people into working themselves to the bone. They know that people wisen up to this so they hire younger people, before they understood the game.

Classic.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#130

Post by mikeocool »

lokimedes wrote: post #85
mikeocool wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure it’s necessarily a given that what Jobs, Gates, and Carmack created are net-positives when talking on a civilizational scale. Though Carmack certainly gets credit for keeping me entertained for a good portion of my youth. And gates probably gets some civilizational credit for what he’s done with his wealth after he made it.

I’m sitting here in Denmark having been affected by these geeks. They may not have built the Pantheon, but surely they have channeled a group of people’s creativity towards something we have integrated into our society?

Not saying they didn't have an impact -- just that it's worth debating whether the impact is truly a net positive for society on a grand scale, particularly if we're going to give them a pass on less than stellar behavior.

Zuckerberg likely has similar tendencies, should he be given a pass for making social media such a large part of our society?

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