3 ms·

when i was in high school and college i wanted to get into game development. but stories about multi-month 'crunch times' eventually turned me away. in fact t

by tokipin 18y ago

when i was in high school and college i wanted to get into game development. but stories about multi-month 'crunch times' eventually turned me away. in fact the games industry was renown for them. it was likely through a combination of poor planning and wishful hoping. it's quite sad, because not having me is about the biggest loss the videogame industry ever suffered http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php (download requires account, but page has few stats)

Tamerlin 18y ago
That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school. One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast majority of them despise Microsoft for producing such low-quality products, but follow exactly the same microserf development model that lead Microsoft to doing that. A lot of the developers working there left as soon as their options vested, and for years MS has been paying the price in terms of maintenance overhead and a plethora of security holes and bugs in released software, which has lead to a reputation for having software that's full of security holes on top of everything else. Joel Spolsky has also commented on the value of encouraging developers to work sane hours rather than sweatshop hours, though I don't know which of his articles it was in.
derefr 18y ago
Game developers can't help it--basically, every title is a race to make the best use of the newest (to the point that anyone other than a game developer would call it "alpha") graphics technology. There's also almost never maitenance: 1.0 is final for console games, and usually final for anything else (no new features are ever added, only bug fixes.) The only things that don't fit this model are MMOs (RPGs or FPSes) because their clients are dependably net-connected on large lines, the content is on the server under the company's control, and many people will still be "coming into" the game long after it is released, and continuing to pay money for the game, basically keeping it alive. I imagine Blizzard must think of WoW as relaxing and elegant work compared to their other titles.

by tokipin 18y ago

Tamerlin 18y ago

That's the main reason that I also stayed out of the games industry, even though playing games is what lead me into programming during high school. One thing that always makes me wonder about the perpetual crisis mode folks is that the vast majority of them despise Microsoft for producing such low-quality products, but follow exactly the same microserf development model that lead Microsoft to doing that. A lot of the developers working there left as soon as their options vested, and for years MS has been paying the price in terms of maintenance overhead and a plethora of security holes and bugs in released software, which has lead to a reputation for having software that's full of security holes on top of everything else. Joel Spolsky has also commented on the value of encouraging developers to work sane hours rather than sweatshop hours, though I don't know which of his articles it was in.

derefr 18y ago

Game developers can't help it--basically, every title is a race to make the best use of the newest (to the point that anyone other than a game developer would call it "alpha") graphics technology. There's also almost never maitenance: 1.0 is final for console games, and usually final for anything else (no new features are ever added, only bug fixes.) The only things that don't fit this model are MMOs (RPGs or FPSes) because their clients are dependably net-connected on large lines, the content is on the server under the company's control, and many people will still be "coming into" the game long after it is released, and continuing to pay money for the game, basically keeping it alive. I imagine Blizzard must think of WoW as relaxing and elegant work compared to their other titles.