Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
blog.chromosundrift.com
Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
1–9 of 9 posts
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#2Interesting read.
As an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses.
The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side just aren't long term investments, we produce them at a blazing rate, make our money or not, and move on.
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#3Interesting read. As an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses. The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side…
That's interesting. Do you see games with longer lifetimes being a thing that the MMO persistent world game categories are causing to change?
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#4Interesting read. As an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses. The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side…
That's interesting. Do you see games with longer lifetimes being a thing that the MMO persistent world game categories are causing to change?
I think social and virtual goods are probably a wider cause for change but then the line between MMO and them is pretty blurry (if it even exists) anyway.
Success is another catalyst ... Tapulous's Tap Tap Revenge probably had horrible code until it turned out they were going to be working with it for a long time.
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#5Insightful article.
My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test.
Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#6Insightful article. My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test. Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.
Do you see this changing?
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting. Do you see games with longer lifetimes being a thing that the MMO persistent world game categories are causing to change?
I think social and virtual goods are probably a wider cause for change but then the line between MMO and them is pretty blurry (if it even exists) anyway. Success is another catalyst ... Tapulous's Tap Tap Revenge probably had horrible code until it turned out they were going to be working with it for a long time.
Success is a good point.
I suppose there can be many reasons for the code to live longer.
Managing legacy code can be great for encouraging automated testing!
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#8Insightful article. My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test. Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.
Do you see this changing?
I think another thing that perhaps affects games more is having zero knowledge of other studios' development approaches unless you or a buddy go and work there. I'm clueless about where the industry is as a whole.
Re: Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?
#9As an indie game developer, I kind of agree with a lot of this article (except I do backup)
When writing a game, I feel like I'm painting a picture, not writing a program. New funcionality is like a sweeping brush stroke. It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to feel right.