4 ms·

I wonder if game development work culture is different at the engine companies vs the game studios. My hypothesis is that less/no crunch leads to better product

I wonder if game development work culture is different at the engine companies vs the game studios. My hypothesis is that less/no crunch leads to better productivity...

Scuds 11y ago
yeaaaah. I'm guessing they're a lot more in line with a traditional software company. They're building tooling that's meant to stand the test of time instead of a ton of assets and scripts that'll be scrapped come release. We're talking about Xcode or Visual Studio. The team has time to do organized sprints, suites of unit tests, maybe float betas to customers. Lots of goodness.
jim-greer 11y ago
I used to develop games for PC in the 90s (Ultima 7 and Netstorm). The combination of complex products and hard holiday deadlines was just a bitch. Console development still sucks. Mobile and PC with online distribution are much less stressful. If you develop tools ship dates don't matter too much as long as you're consistently improving in ways that your customers care about.
- yolesaber 11y ago
  This is off-topic but I would just like to thank you for your contributions to Ultima 7. It is by far my favorite game.
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    Thanks! Amusing trivia - everyone on the development team got to be an NPC in the game, meaning the character looked like them. I joined late, so every character was taken except for a cyclops named Iskander. So the cyclops looks like me, but with one big eye. http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander
- miketuritzin 11y ago
  Ultima 7 (parts 1 and 2) are also my favorite games ever! I almost have "real" memories from the worlds and plotlines in those games, they were so vivid. Out of curiosity, what was your role on Ultima 7? Do you know of any good articles or resources on the development of that game?
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    I was the lead scripting developer and general content fixer... I helped the world builders and hacked on their tools etc. I was 20 at the time so my title in the credits was "Wonderboy" I haven't seen a lot of writing about that time but man it deserves it.
- whatusername 11y ago
  Netstorm was an underrated Gem. Have you seen much like it since?
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    Thanks! No, it seems to have been its own odd thing with no followers. There's some fans trying to remake it in Unity though. They've got quite a lot of it done: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=294002132 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=29400...
- danschuller 11y ago
  I loved Ultima 7. An amazing feat for the time! The world simulation aspect of it was really cool (and something even now you don't see that often. Like a baker going to through process of baking bread everyday)
- greggman 11y ago
  Interesting. I found PC 100x more frustrating than console. With console there's 1 target. With PC there's infinite targets. No matter what you ship it won't work on someone's GPU, OS version, with XYZ installed. A company I worked at shipped one PC game and swore never again. Their support costs went through the roof relative to console.
  - jim-greer 11y ago
    Yes, I think that was actually easier in the 90s (and I only did 2d games, which were simpler).
- mentos 11y ago
  Wow you know I always knew that Ultima Online had its predecessors in the Ultima series but never really researched them until now. Its blowing my mind right now to see the evolution of the games leading up to UO! Currently been working on my own FPS for 1.5 years in UE4 (hoping to release a trailer soon) and I owe a lot to Ultima for inspiring me to learn game dev at a young age. I know Richard Garriot has been working on what is effectively UO2 with Shroud of the Avatar but sadly have not had the time to check it out.
- poelzi 11y ago
  I loved netstorm. One of the best games ever, thank you :)
frozenfoxx 11y ago
Disclaimer: I work at a game engine company. I wouldn't say it's different but rather improved. There's still a lot of passion and focus on the exciting things rather than reliability and the politics are much more befitting game companies than corporate IT (I've worked at both). That said there's much less crunch and is much more like corporate IT in that there's a regular schedule, more known goals, and more predictability in your paycheck. Personally I love working on a game engine since it means I can help anyone who wants to build a game. At least at my company I'd say that's definitely the prevailing reason why many of us are here. The biggest drawback at a game company by comparison is that when if you have a great idea of how to fix something you're usually under NDA and cannot help any of your friends elsewhere in the industry. At the engine company your tools help thousands of studios do things better, and solving problems for one studio typically means bugfixes for problems other studios may have as well. I dunno, that's just kinda what it's like in comparison.
jdk 11y ago
Epic has a grueling work ethic/culture. They all LOVE what they do, work insane hours, and are compensated very well.
pandaman 11y ago
I work at a game company and over length of my career interacted with quite a few engine companies. The separation is at where you set the bar. If a game company shipped a game in a state that an engine company does it could only fly on PC and would only take a little while before players would realize that this company ships half-done games and stopped buying them immediately after release. I am not putting down the engine companies, it's just the different priorities that both have. A game ships to a consumer who has no way of working around its bugs, an engine ships to a developer who has likely already rewritten half of the engine anyway and, even if not, is able to get back with bugs and request fixes/workarounds. For an engine company's customers it's preferable to get the new features than a 99.99% bug-free build. Game company customers are of opposite preference.

I wonder if game development work culture is different at the engine companies vs the game studios. My hypothesis is that less/no crunch leads to better productivity...

Scuds 11y ago

yeaaaah. I'm guessing they're a lot more in line with a traditional software company. They're building tooling that's meant to stand the test of time instead of a ton of assets and scripts that'll be scrapped come release. We're talking about Xcode or Visual Studio. The team has time to do organized sprints, suites of unit tests, maybe float betas to customers. Lots of goodness.

jim-greer 11y ago

I used to develop games for PC in the 90s (Ultima 7 and Netstorm). The combination of complex products and hard holiday deadlines was just a bitch. Console development still sucks. Mobile and PC with online distribution are much less stressful. If you develop tools ship dates don't matter too much as long as you're consistently improving in ways that your customers care about.

yolesaber 11y ago
This is off-topic but I would just like to thank you for your contributions to Ultima 7. It is by far my favorite game.
- jim-greer 11y ago
  Thanks! Amusing trivia - everyone on the development team got to be an NPC in the game, meaning the character looked like them. I joined late, so every character was taken except for a cyclops named Iskander. So the cyclops looks like me, but with one big eye. http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Iskander
miketuritzin 11y ago
Ultima 7 (parts 1 and 2) are also my favorite games ever! I almost have "real" memories from the worlds and plotlines in those games, they were so vivid. Out of curiosity, what was your role on Ultima 7? Do you know of any good articles or resources on the development of that game?
- jim-greer 11y ago
  I was the lead scripting developer and general content fixer... I helped the world builders and hacked on their tools etc. I was 20 at the time so my title in the credits was "Wonderboy" I haven't seen a lot of writing about that time but man it deserves it.
whatusername 11y ago
Netstorm was an underrated Gem. Have you seen much like it since?
- jim-greer 11y ago
  Thanks! No, it seems to have been its own odd thing with no followers. There's some fans trying to remake it in Unity though. They've got quite a lot of it done: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=294002132 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=29400...
danschuller 11y ago
I loved Ultima 7. An amazing feat for the time! The world simulation aspect of it was really cool (and something even now you don't see that often. Like a baker going to through process of baking bread everyday)
greggman 11y ago
Interesting. I found PC 100x more frustrating than console. With console there's 1 target. With PC there's infinite targets. No matter what you ship it won't work on someone's GPU, OS version, with XYZ installed. A company I worked at shipped one PC game and swore never again. Their support costs went through the roof relative to console.
- jim-greer 11y ago
  Yes, I think that was actually easier in the 90s (and I only did 2d games, which were simpler).
mentos 11y ago
Wow you know I always knew that Ultima Online had its predecessors in the Ultima series but never really researched them until now. Its blowing my mind right now to see the evolution of the games leading up to UO! Currently been working on my own FPS for 1.5 years in UE4 (hoping to release a trailer soon) and I owe a lot to Ultima for inspiring me to learn game dev at a young age. I know Richard Garriot has been working on what is effectively UO2 with Shroud of the Avatar but sadly have not had the time to check it out.
poelzi 11y ago
I loved netstorm. One of the best games ever, thank you :)

frozenfoxx 11y ago

Disclaimer: I work at a game engine company. I wouldn't say it's different but rather improved. There's still a lot of passion and focus on the exciting things rather than reliability and the politics are much more befitting game companies than corporate IT (I've worked at both). That said there's much less crunch and is much more like corporate IT in that there's a regular schedule, more known goals, and more predictability in your paycheck. Personally I love working on a game engine since it means I can help anyone who wants to build a game. At least at my company I'd say that's definitely the prevailing reason why many of us are here. The biggest drawback at a game company by comparison is that when if you have a great idea of how to fix something you're usually under NDA and cannot help any of your friends elsewhere in the industry. At the engine company your tools help thousands of studios do things better, and solving problems for one studio typically means bugfixes for problems other studios may have as well. I dunno, that's just kinda what it's like in comparison.

jdk 11y ago

Epic has a grueling work ethic/culture. They all LOVE what they do, work insane hours, and are compensated very well.

pandaman 11y ago

I work at a game company and over length of my career interacted with quite a few engine companies. The separation is at where you set the bar. If a game company shipped a game in a state that an engine company does it could only fly on PC and would only take a little while before players would realize that this company ships half-done games and stopped buying them immediately after release. I am not putting down the engine companies, it's just the different priorities that both have. A game ships to a consumer who has no way of working around its bugs, an engine ships to a developer who has likely already rewritten half of the engine anyway and, even if not, is able to get back with bugs and request fixes/workarounds. For an engine company's customers it's preferable to get the new features than a 99.99% bug-free build. Game company customers are of opposite preference.