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Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

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Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#351

Post by somat »

ptx wrote: post #242
ryandvm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs in…

How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.

In the devils advocate position. The union is a club you join with dues paid every month, in the sort of vague hope this will get you greater bargaining power with the employer. And it mostly works but there are downsides. If there is any meritocracy left in the corporation it is sucked out, replaced by seniority, that is, the only people that get ahead are those too stupid to leave. You have to maintain a bunch of useless leeches in the union administration. and when the company does poorly it tends to implode violently under the labor burden rather than be able to scale down. (everybody loses their job rather than just a few)

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#352

Post by WithinReason »

lynndotpy wrote: post #26
Catloafdev wrote: post #9

RIP to the end of an era. Was IdTech used outside of Id? Or was it just a Doom series thing as of recently?

Absolutely, the first versions until idTech 5 were open source and a number of important engines, like Source, derive from it. Wikipedia actually has a family tree that's broader than I remembered: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Quake_-_... The CoD series, Source games (Half Life, Portal, Left 4 Dead), Titanfall, etc.

It's also missing games, like American McGee's Alice.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#353

Post by jambalaya8 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #109
londons_explore wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

Why is that? Companies still need employees, and ai makes it more obvious than ever that workers need to organize together for their rights.

Unions work when there is a shortage in skilled potential employees and a long learning ramp-up period. Unions work not very well when there is a glut of skilled people, or there are enough people with lower skills willing to take a lower pay rate (or where that lower pay rate is considered well-paid). There is no shortage of people who want to work in the game industry. There is a sorta shortage in people who know game engines in and out, and people who don't need to refer constantly to API references... people who put in 35-40 hour work weeks competing with people willing to put in 45 hour work weeks are generally at a disadvantage.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#354

Post by Refreeze5224 »

wnevets wrote: post #67
ndiddy wrote: post #19

I think we'll see stuff like this continue to happen over time. As a game company, having your own engine means that you have to be able to cultivate internal expertise in your tooling. Your employees will know this and could do bad things like ask for more money because they know that replacing them would significantly hurt productivity. Meanwhile, laying off your whole engine team and switching to UE5 means that yo…

> It lets you treat your employees as a replaceable commodity This has been the objective of the tech industry for years

It is a fundamental feature of capitalism. There is an inherent tension between employers and workers, in that workers represent a cost center that can never be totally eliminated, and has a lot of undesirable features, such as: being alive, having opinions, being able to talk/whistle-blow, requiring bathrooms, bathroom breaks, and safe working conditions, banding together to increase their collective power and reduce exploitation, and worst of all, necessary; you can't ever get rid of them all!

The history of capitalism is the history of grappling with this inherent tension, and companies finding novel ways to deal with it. Gig work, union-busting, "right-to-work", non-competes, NDAs, return to office, employee tracking software, automation, robotics, AI, etc. The most effective trick though, was convincing the workers that they definitely don't ever need to band together, and you as an individual are definitely better off negotiating alone versus entire corporations.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#356

Post by officeplant »

deadbabe wrote: post #175
Lerc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of argument has been made since the days of renderware. I have seen a number of projects go from 'We're building our own engine' To 'we should have just gone with $engine_of_the_day' To 'We were so lucky we chose to make our own engine' If you want to make a game like fortnight, the Unreal is your pick. If you want to try something that hasn't been done before you could do worse than rolling your own engine…

This “flavor” at the engine level doesn’t always make it back up to the end user, and even if it does, it is likely something that could have been replicated by existing engines, if developers cared enough to do it right. There are very few games where the engine is what made all the difference. Maybe something like Half Life 2 with the source engine is the exception, but ultimately, what makes a game good are traits…

>There are very few games where the engine is what made all the difference.

Maybe if you ignore the entirety of the retro gaming scene where people are using old engines and modified old engines because they bring along a lot of the feel and expected behavior.

The average modern Unreal and Unity game feels like shit, but some dev's can pull off making new engines behave like old ones we love. It requires a lot of work. Just look at New Bloods catalog of games that pulled it off. DUSK (unity), Amid Evil (UE4), Ultrakill (Unity). Each one of those games had a lot of passion behind them driving for gameplay perfection in the style of a retro game and/or engine.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#357

Post by archagon »

ryandvm wrote: post #186
londons_explore wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the current trajectory of AI, I see unionisation efforts dead in the water.

Yup. I was one of the self-taught software "engineers" from the 90s. I enjoyed making more money than I deserved for my special interest and for the duration of my career I was very much against software engineering unionization as it seemed to mostly be gatekeeping for a lucrative and enjoyable line of work. Now I'm 40+ years old and my job has morphed from designing systems and writing code to sweet-talking LLMs in…

I don't understand. Why can't you just... change your mind and push for unionization now? Don't wallow; act.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#358

Post by sowbug »

markus_zhang wrote: post #275
neko_ranger wrote: post #222

Either John or John should buy back the Id Software name

I don’t think they are interested or have the $$$. It probably worths like a billion?

Probably a good way to become a millionaire, in the Branson sense of the word.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#359

Post by BikiniPrince »

solatic wrote: post #316
munificent wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is true and has been true for decades in the game industry. The other side of this seesaw is: Games are fundamentally in the novelty business. Players like some amount of familiarity, but they want new experiences. Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel. The flat-ish shading and floaty physics of Unity is a particularly visible example of…

You're right, but idTech is almost by definition that "novelty" kind of engine. And it did help id to sell more games. It's just apparently not enough.

Id made games to demo their engine. No one is going to buy an engine without any games. They don’t even sell idTech anymore. It’s used for their games which are not making any money. No game sales doesn’t support the reasoning they should keep the engine around.

Re: Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software

#360

Post by maxsilver »

RajT88 wrote: post #342
superxpro12 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can pick out a creation engine game from a mile away. Engine "Grain" is a real phenomenon. Same for UE5. There's just something about the lighting and the FPS 'feel' that is a dead giveaway.

Can you pick it out of films and TV shows? (Not being snarky - legit question)

Sometimes yes absolutely.

Netflix shows often have a "house look" to them, because they enforce specific camera requirements and have a standardized / commonly-reused lighting setup -

https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/articles/360...

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a61878509/netflix-s...

---

Marvel movies often reuse a particular pattern of color grading, that can give them a sort of 'similar grain' (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpWYtXtmEFQ )

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