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Imagine what the human-species could achieve if we used game-engine-developers for more productive stuff.
by ddorian43 10y ago
Imagine what the human-species could achieve if we used game-engine-developers for more productive stuff.
- sambe 10y agoImagine what how soulless the human species would be if we forced people to engage only in the work judged to be productive by a minority of people.
- djoldman 10y agoWhy stop there? Imagine what we could achieve if we didn't "waste" resources on anything that was purely for entertainment, e.g. most movies, lots of facebooking/instagramming/twittering, restaurants focusing on making food that is more than bare sustenance, etc. Of course, what then is the point?
- ddorian43 10y agoInstagram isnt hard to build compared to game engine. Making food is not the same as highly skilled engineer. Drinking in a bar doesnt make you a scientist.
- dennyabraham 10y agoThey're both hard to build, but require different skillsets. Moreover, game engines are often customized in unhygienic ways by folks early in their career. Maybe it's better these inexperienced folks run into the problems with their own unmaintainable code firsthand before they take on world-critical problems.
- pekk 10y agoWhat if people want to develop game engines? What if people want to play games? What if personal passions are an important part of life? What if it isn't your time to allocate, but theirs? What if throwing a bunch of game developers onto protein folding wouldn't really help with protein folding anyway?
- ddorian43 10y agoI think we throw protein-folding onto young game-developers somehow.
- corysama 10y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit has inspired several "do real science as a game" games.
- kej 10y agoPlenty of people bought graphic cards to play games and use them for protein folding in their spare time, thanks to Folding@Home. Sometimes leisure activities produce practical results.
- ddorian43 10y agoYou're right, but I was talking about game-creators, not players.
- speeder 10y agoI am a game-engine-developer... without any work at the moment. People just rarely want my skills, I work with C, C++, Lua, ASM, blazing-speed well built code that takes a long time to make. People don't even ask me to do interviews, when I see all these posts on HN complaining of interviews I can't relate, I never get invited to them in first place, because I don't know React, Enterprise-Java, Electron and other whatever new very high-level tech designed to speed up dev (at cost of program speed for end user) that is popular.
- ddorian43 10y agoCan you transition to db-engine-developer ? Being on the low-level it should be easier. Example: http://www.scylladb.com/company/careers/#software-developer http://www.scylladb.com/company/careers/#software-developer (they like kernel hacker more, but who doesn't) You can build new features in c++, everything has to be fast/low-level, networking, use Lua to create coprocessors etc. Why not apply/interview with them ?
- pekk 10y agoCan you imagine what humanity would achieve if we stopped developing pointless or redundant new database engines?
- vvanders 10y agoA lot of ex-gamedev(I'm one of them) go into embedded devices and mobile where power/perf still matters or over into financial(more common in eu gamedev) where latency is king. That's the route I took(gamedev->embedded/mobile->bigco), I'd look into those type of companies where a low level native skillset matters.
- Profan 10y ago"if we used"? Did it occur to you that many of these people might not want to do something else and would then actually not accomplish what they'll accomplish in an environment they actually enjoy? People are not something "to be used".
- ddorian43 10y agoCome on man, I know. But, many of these guys started as game-players at a young age (I learned programming to make games, and saw that it was more fun compared to creating, actually transitioned to easier webdev programming). If we could incentivise them somehow at a young age, maybe even just provide more options.
- datalus 10y agoI'm failing to understand how webdev is saving the world more so than games...
- ddorian43 10y agoIt's on my long-term-roadmap to transition. Currently, I'm not smart enough.
- scrollaway 10y agoGood on you. Maybe when you acquire more smarts you'll realize that games are an essential part of how we got to where we are as a species and that "using" all the game devs on "more productive" stuff could regress us. Maybe somewhere in that transition you'll also take note on how many technological advancements originate from the game development field. I'm thankful we don't have managers at the top of the chain, deciding what the human species should and shouldn't spend their professional time on, based on an extremely narrow and stereotypically uninformed world view.
- ddorian43 10y ago
- tcfunk 10y agoDepending on who you ask, the same opinion could be held for developing programs relating to banks, market trading, movies, government...the list goes on.
- ddorian43 10y agoMy statement is a modified one based on the "highly skilled engineers working on advertising, I just think gamedev to be better". Banks,market-trading != movies,games (correct?)
- golergka 10y agoEverybody you know will die. Life is pointless. Go play some videogames.
- derstander 10y agoWhy not a step further? Why allow entertainment of any sort? Surely musicians and artists could best be served pumping gas and digging ditches, as well! \s
- ddorian43 10y ago:) Nah, we can just force the smartest 0.01%, no need for everybody. I like music though. It's like you can feel it more compared to paintings/movies.