41–50 of 56 posts
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Which geek did not play for 12 hours one day?
Those who had and did their homework, or wrote code, or tried to do something with computers other than just waste time. Lots of geeks don't play games.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those who had and did their homework, or wrote code, or tried to do something with computers other than just waste time. Lots of geeks don't play games.
I managed to do both :). My statement was a generalization, but I had seen more gamer programmers than not.
I made games for 30+ years and I had this exact question about year 4. I was sitting at home, writing some 6502 I think, and my cousin called. She had to call to tell me about a Commodore 64 game she bought from FisherPrice. She started to describe it to me, an educational game where you controlled a penguin who dropped letters down a chute to form words. I had to interrupt her to explain, I had written that game. Sh…
Jonathan Blow (Braid and Indie Fund) recently gave an amazing presentation on the evolution of Television, and he made an interesting parallel to the evolution of games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AxFzf...
Jonathan Blow is one of my favorite game developers of recent times. Not only is he brilliant technically, he's also an amazing game academic (there are plenty of people on either side, but few manage to be both). The whole of his lectures, talks and writings are heavily recommended!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which geek did not play for 12 hours one day?
Those who had and did their homework, or wrote code, or tried to do something with computers other than just waste time. Lots of geeks don't play games.
We see it a lot here: People talking about how they want to change the world, how they wish they were doing something more meaningful, etc. The reality is that almost no one does work with any sort of profound (positive) impact on humanity or the world around us; the kind of philanthropic work that gets this sort of love just is not that common.
The vast majority of work available, and the similarly vast majority of potentially viable business models, just don't fit this mold. I'm not saying we shouldn't aspire to be and do better, but I am suggesting that the expectation that we should be involved in positive change at all times just isn't reasonable or practical.
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On the flipside: I once worked for a major games vendor (won't say who) and had this terrible experience - worked 60hour-weeks 5 in a row, to get the online multiplayer backend running and able to support more than a few hundred users. Got it up, deployed, rolled out, in use. Come in the next day, the CEO and all the head devs are crowed around the server console, watching the stats after release, this conversation h…
Some of my best memories from around that age involve playing a computer game for close to 12 hours straight. I remember spending at least a month of summer playing through the Bard's Tale on the Spectrum. Indeed, similar things have been a rewarding experience for me for the majority of my life. Last time I did something similar was at the release of WoW: Cataclysm, I think, with my girlfriend. It was a great holida…
Online games aren't all addiction and grinding and no-sunlight, there are an immense amount of social interactions going on. I attribute much of my writing skill to posting on internet forums with people I met playing video games, and chatting in-game.
I made games for 30+ years and I had this exact question about year 4. I was sitting at home, writing some 6502 I think, and my cousin called. She had to call to tell me about a Commodore 64 game she bought from FisherPrice. She started to describe it to me, an educational game where you controlled a penguin who dropped letters down a chute to form words. I had to interrupt her to explain, I had written that game. Sh…
On the flipside: I once worked for a major games vendor (won't say who) and had this terrible experience - worked 60hour-weeks 5 in a row, to get the online multiplayer backend running and able to support more than a few hundred users. Got it up, deployed, rolled out, in use. Come in the next day, the CEO and all the head devs are crowed around the server console, watching the stats after release, this conversation h…
I made several online games, and there are people who addicted to them. I don't feel guilty for it. In each case of such addiction that I've witnessed, the person was in such a situation and such a state of mind that I think they got lucky to get addicted to a game, and not something worse. All of them created relationships and friendships in the game, and when they wanted to quit, quit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jonathan Blow is one of my favorite game developers of recent times. Not only is he brilliant technically, he's also an amazing game academic (there are plenty of people on either side, but few manage to be both). The whole of his lectures, talks and writings are heavily recommended!
If you liked Jonathan Blow's lectures make sure to check out Chris Crawford's. A number of them are on his channel on YouTube. Crawford was more or less the first game developer to combine practical work with academic study of game design (and he's wrote the first-ever book on it). Your might know him as the developer of Balance of the Planet and the founder of the GDC; the latter he then left after the famous "Drago…
An up and coming dev I really like is Andy Hull (from the Spelunky remake fame). He gave an amazing talk at GDC about drawing inspiration from children's toys in game design, and I see much promise in him. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of my best memories from around that age involve playing a computer game for close to 12 hours straight. I remember spending at least a month of summer playing through the Bard's Tale on the Spectrum. Indeed, similar things have been a rewarding experience for me for the majority of my life. Last time I did something similar was at the release of WoW: Cataclysm, I think, with my girlfriend. It was a great holida…
Ditto. All-night LANs at our parents' houses playing Counter-Strike and other Half-Life mods, WC3, Starcraft, Diablo 1 & 2 in the basement. Online games aren't all addiction and grinding and no-sunlight, there are an immense amount of social interactions going on. I attribute much of my writing skill to posting on internet forums with people I met playing video games, and chatting in-game.
I was counting up everything I'd gotten from playing WoW alone the other day, and it included a great relationship, a business that made me $xx,xxx, a whole load of new friends, experience and ideas for managing large groups that I'd never have gotten another way, LUA programming skills, some fantastic memories, and a major film project.
Works for me :)