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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

#141

Post by sbarre »

Goronmon wrote: post #125
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."

I think you can say that for any nascent / figuring-it-out industry.

The early days (late 90s / early 00s) of web development and web agencies was pretty much the same thing.

We were all learning as we went, there were very few senior people, and the company owners/leaders certainly didn't know any better than we did.

But we felt lucky to be doing this exciting and cutting edge work, so being at the office working was often the thing we _wanted_ to be doing the most.

The inmates ran the asylum, as they say..

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

#142

Post by yoDogItIswutis »

schmuhblaster wrote: post #112
gtowey wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wisdom is not appreciated in our industry. Everyone in tech with a modicum of status or power thinks they got there because they're smarter than everyone else and there is nothing of value to be learned from others. Thus, our leaders blunder in to the same mistakes everyone else is making over and over again. We never learn.

This somehow resonates with me and I feel this is one of the negative side effects of a CS/Maths dominated culture and mindset that strongly emphasizes intellectual achievement, but hasn’t yet matured enough to appreciate the more messy and irrational parts of our existence.

Given the state of politics all these complaints are not really a young person problem; stubborn judges who refuse to step aside despite cancer in their geriatric years. Reps and Senators sliding into dementia live on TV!

Most of them with law degrees and education in domains far removed from CS/math.

CS/math has nothing to do with this. It's just boring biological self selection. Why would I listen to you of all people?

Your existential dread is for you and your therapist. Not on others to coddle your ego.

The problem is Americans believe(d) all the televised to the spec of network censors propaganda about their exceptionalism. Tens of millions of 50+ year olds really came to believe they are the center of the universe. Nope, just more randos who never had a say in their existence because the messy and irrational aspects of reality don't care you exist.

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

#143

Post by a34729t »

_doctor_love wrote: post #131
schmuhblaster wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This somehow resonates with me and I feel this is one of the negative side effects of a CS/Maths dominated culture and mindset that strongly emphasizes intellectual achievement, but hasn’t yet matured enough to appreciate the more messy and irrational parts of our existence.

I am a great admirer of the late Dr. Richard Hamming and he said basically the same thing. Math and science education is important, but humanities is missing for most engineers to their great detriment. I have a BA in Economics though I am a 20-year software veteran and I can honestly say that this degree has probably helped my career more than any CS knowledge I have. My family was also heavily into the humanities i…

Humanities in academia is just as bad as human factors. The biggest thing that can help is having a shitty low paying job or two early in one's career. And then working formal a stable, normal company where there is real mentorship.

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

#144

Post by BiscuitBadger »

After reading those IdSoft histories, Quake shipped a new client server networking layer, a new quake C scripting engine, the new fully polygonal engine …

This was far too ambitious and bottlenecked everything on Carmack’s graphics work. The rest of the team was left to create Doom II and Ultimate doom while Carmack worked, but even then it wasn’t enough to ease the bottleneck.

doom II could have been a quake C scriptable, client server game that shipped slightly later as a step between Doom engine and Quake engine instead of the four or so year technical delay between Doom and Quake

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

#145

Post by stephc_int13 »

The trajectory of id software is interesting.

The company was successful, had one of the most prestigious brand in the game industry, was early enough to capitalize on the rise of PC gaming, incredible talents and tech.

Yet it didn't transform into a Blizzard or Epic.

And it seems that both the early success and stall were the responsibility of one very talented but somewhat obtuse nerd.

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

#146

Post by lokimedes »

thaw13579 wrote: post #139
lokimedes wrote: post #9

Young energy shouldn’t be apologized. Apparently Bill Gates had that psycho energy too, Jobs and many others too. On a civilizational scale it seems like a net benefit that young, eager and driven people give a bit more than they wanted to in retrospect. It do indeed change things for the rest of us. The patriotic call of armed forces has been driven by this for millennia. At least Carmack and Co. chose their own mis…

That's literally treating people as means to an end, when it's not clear if the "end" even required sacrificing young people's lives. In the grand scheme of things, why not spend an extra year to build at a pace that doesn't burn people out? If you look at the careers of the people who subsequently left, by Sandy's account, they went on to to run their own great game studios, so it's not clear that a grind was necess…

I have not reason to defend these people or their actions, but can we know their future success was not formed by their formative experiences at Id? I think we undervalue hardship and struggle as accelerants.

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

#147

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

Carmack is a godly programmer, but he's largely a technical guy. Everything he releases is a feat of technical engineering ("real 3D!"; "curved surfaces!"; "realistic lighting!"; "the Megatexture!"), not so much artistic achievement. We could really see that after Doom 2 when all of the creatives at Id started jumping ship. The level design that you need to reinforce the technical leaps just wasn't there anymore.

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

#148

Post by jurgenaut23 »

gtowey wrote: post #28
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...

Wisdom is not appreciated in our industry. Everyone in tech with a modicum of status or power thinks they got there because they're smarter than everyone else and there is nothing of value to be learned from others. Thus, our leaders blunder in to the same mistakes everyone else is making over and over again. We never learn.

This is so true. It is a direct result of the American dream and the (misdirected) idea that one’s success is a direct (and inevitable) consequence of hard work, talent and intelligence. Flash news: it is not, and success is massively dependent on luck and initial conditions. Dumb, lazy a$$holes with a rich/powerful dad will beat smart, hard working poor bastards almost every time, barring some black swan events. Now of course lots of people will jump to my throat with tons of counter examples, to which I respond: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

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

#149

Post by _doctor_love »

a34729t wrote: post #143
_doctor_love wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a great admirer of the late Dr. Richard Hamming and he said basically the same thing. Math and science education is important, but humanities is missing for most engineers to their great detriment. I have a BA in Economics though I am a 20-year software veteran and I can honestly say that this degree has probably helped my career more than any CS knowledge I have. My family was also heavily into the humanities i…

Humanities in academia is just as bad as human factors. The biggest thing that can help is having a shitty low paying job or two early in one's career. And then working formal a stable, normal company where there is real mentorship.

When I say humanities, I mean having a humanistic attitude. Looking at the social and environmental dynamics before looking at any specific technical issue in detail. Not necessarily anything to do with academia.

Strong agree that everyone would benefit from having a shitty service job or two when they're young to learn what life is really like for most people. I worked a bunch of different service jobs in high school and college, it's shocking how poorly most people treat someone just because they're standing behind the counter.

In the corporate world I find it's usually very obvious who has real life experience and who doesn't.

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

#150

Post by bluedino »

ID dominated the PC shooter scene for 4.5 generations in a row. Insane.

Wolf, Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake 3 Arena

Dark Forces was great, but that tech was too late so it never went anywhere. Duke3D showed up, and while it was entertaining, it was clearly a level below what ID could do. 3D Realms fumbled that tech, then got caught up with the ultimate vaporware, Prey, and it took Epic stepping in with Unreal that finally dethroned ID.

Sandy talks up the people that left ID during that time, but did anyone (other than him) do anything noteworthy in the gaming industry? Romero was responsible for Daikatana of all things, Michael Abrash was never a 'game programmer', despite having a very successful career in Xbox, VR, etc. No idea about the other guys.

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