3 ms·

> Even if we did see then (and we mostly didn’t) that small, frequent releases were better in a whole bunch of ways, we couldn’t really do it. It was expensive

> Even if we did see then (and we mostly didn’t) that small, frequent releases were better in a whole bunch of ways, we couldn’t really do it. It was expensive to ship on physical media, and disruptive to our customers to have to do frequent installs. It's still disruptive to customers. As a software engineer I love CD/CI. It makes the entire process much smoother and more efficient. As a customer / end-user, though? Nope. I absolutely hate it. Maybe I'm just getting old but I'm extremely nostalgic for the days where I got to decide if I the upgrade was worth it to me or not. These days things will change and move you on without any notice or opt-in what-so-ever.

LAC-Tech 4y ago
Sometimes when I play a retro game, I'm completely in awe of programmers of that vintage. Games took a year or two to make, on massively constrained hardware, in assembly language, with no engines, all original artwork and music, and no bug fix updates after it was complete. People like to pretend the future is always better and everything is advancing, but surely they had more talent than we do.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  I feel like you're cherry-picking. Games have gotten way bigger content-wise and way more intense in many design aspects. Many retro games had massive teams and utilized earlier frameworks and content to release faster. There are many old school techniques which are amazing and quite a few talented developers, but I wouldn't make a sweeping statement that "they" had more talent than "we" as a whole.
  - gspencley 4y ago
    It's funny, though. Maybe it's just my age and not a comment on the quality of games, but I don't even play newer video games anymore. Every once in a while I'll start a game of Civilization IV (from 2005) if I have a lazy weekend and need a change of pace. I played a lot on the PS3 and then my PS4 was a dust collector. Complete buyers remorse there (and don't get me started on the fact that I needed an Internet connection on first boot to set it up. WTF?!!?!!!) And I'll still sit and play Tetris for hours and hours and hours on my retro NES. The newer versions, not so much. I've had this sense over the decades that as video games have grown in scope and graphics they've gotten less fun to the point where I tell people when they ask me "I don't play video games." It's probably been about ten years since I've paid for one. Now get off my lawn.
  - reaperducer 4y ago
    Many retro games had massive teams and utilized earlier frameworks and content to release faster I think you and the previous commenter have different ideas of what constitutes "retro." The people I knew who worked on retro games usually were in "teams" of one or two, even if they worked for a massive company like Atari. If there were three people working on a video game, it was a huge deal. And "frameworks" weren't even a thing. Each game started from the ground up, with the exception of code clips that you printed out and saved in a binder.
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      You'd still need to name specific examples. All the way from the NES to the current gen, you can name examples of both big teams and small teams / individuals having some form of success. The coding got easier per content unit and the skill floor is lower, yes. But the ceiling is still high, the demands are far higher and you'd need to be far more skilled in various disciplines to deliver the equivalent of a few decades ago. Those hours you gained no longer coding? You better have spent them figuring out how to do VFX, some decent pixel/line art, or make some stellar sound tracks. If not, maybe be able to do marketing or know how to make your game function in multiplayer online. >And "frameworks" weren't even a thing. Using virtually the same frame across a wide variety of processes is the very definition of a framework, even if it isn't a software framework in the modern sense. Many big games on the NES and SNES were built off of one another, you can tell by the similarities between developers and their work. Square being the most notorious.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Maybe. Game that came to mind is Chrono Trigger, released in '95. Took two years to make. Can't think of any modern game - made in that short a time - that is bigger content wise (unless we're just summing up all the pixels).
- dayvid 4y ago
  There's an amazing interview series with Nasir Gebelli, who made some of the first Apple II games, coded the first three Final Fantasy games and a 3d game in assembler, as well as Secret of Mana game for SNES. Highly recommended! https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/episode-3-nasir-gebelli-part-1-of-3/id735180050?i=1000395076662 https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/episode-3-nasir-gebell...
tablespoon 4y ago
> As a customer / end-user, though? Nope. I absolutely hate it. Maybe I'm just getting old but I'm extremely nostalgic for the days where I got to decide if I the upgrade was worth it to me or not. These days things will change and move you on without any notice or opt-in what-so-ever. Yeah, even as someone who works as a developer, it seems that in all but a few cases the development organizations have a massively more control about how things are done than they should (which usually manifests as a veto by saying X is too hard/expensive). The overall effect is to make software crappy and annoying in ways that are less technical, and thus less likely to be fixed. Shipping on physical media put a technical constraint that helped keep that social problem in check.
- gspencley 4y ago
  Yup. In most businesses it seems the path to promotion for a Product Owner is to come up with that killer feature that will garner massive new adoption and launch the company into hyper-growth. This leads to existing end users being the sacrificial guinea pigs in a never ending experiment that place hypothetical (and almost never realized) future users over the immediate interests of those currently paying for the product.
zippergz 4y ago
This is why I turned off auto updates on my phone. I do update stuff periodically, and sometimes I'm forced (and certainly I do OS updates when there is a security issue), but I don't want my apps randomly changing out from under me overnight. Rarely these days are the "bug fixes and performance improvements" actually an improvement for me as the user. I especially hate it when a developer says something like "we update the app as often as possible to make it better for you!" No, updating it "as often as possible" is not better for me. It might be better for YOU, but it's just annoying to me.
dangus 4y ago
I love it as a customer. There's a lot of excitement when new changes come out, and I want them right now! Beyond business software, I can think of the way that indie games are delivered as early releases on Steam. Most recently, I would get excited for every little Valheim update. It extended the life of the game, which probably won't be truly done for many more years. If they were limited to a single boxed physical release, the game would be left with a shorter development cycle limited by the production budget. Now, the game's sales more directly dictate the level of attention the game gets. Concepts are validated earlier and customers get to more frequently provide feedback rather than developers spending years building something and hoping that people like it. That particular developer also did a great job of generally not breaking your world and save game (somewhat unlike similar creative/survival games like Minecraft, where you'd be missing out on a lot of things by not starting fresh for each major update). Sure, frequent updates can break things...but back in the day, there were still plenty of bugs on formally released products, and then you're stuck with those broken things for months or years waiting for the next version to physically ship to you. One of the things that makes CD/CI possible in the first place is that testing has become far more automated and sophisticated. No one would tolerate CI/CD if it didn't have that additional level of automated quality. When I see someone who claims not to like when software gets frequent updates, I ask myself: "Do you even like software? I thought new functionality was supposed to be exciting!" I personally see resistance to change as a generally negative personality trait (obviously, there are limits, not all change is good change), and I think that's why I don't understand the romantic nostalgia for the days when we'd buy a piece of software in a box off of a shelf.
- ghaff 4y ago
  > I ask myself: "Do you even like software? In many cases, no. It's an adequate tool for some task I need to accomplish. And while some updates are genuinely useful and appreciated, others are regressions or just a change that I now have to get used to and which IMO doesn't make the software a better tool for the task at hand.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
grishka 4y ago
I turned off automatic app updates on my phone. It turns out some apps, especially Google ones, do get whiny at you for not updating. Other than that, changes at least happen when I expect them. Nothing can save me from A/B testing though...

LAC-Tech 4y ago

Sometimes when I play a retro game, I'm completely in awe of programmers of that vintage. Games took a year or two to make, on massively constrained hardware, in assembly language, with no engines, all original artwork and music, and no bug fix updates after it was complete. People like to pretend the future is always better and everything is advancing, but surely they had more talent than we do.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
I feel like you're cherry-picking. Games have gotten way bigger content-wise and way more intense in many design aspects. Many retro games had massive teams and utilized earlier frameworks and content to release faster. There are many old school techniques which are amazing and quite a few talented developers, but I wouldn't make a sweeping statement that "they" had more talent than "we" as a whole.
- gspencley 4y ago
  It's funny, though. Maybe it's just my age and not a comment on the quality of games, but I don't even play newer video games anymore. Every once in a while I'll start a game of Civilization IV (from 2005) if I have a lazy weekend and need a change of pace. I played a lot on the PS3 and then my PS4 was a dust collector. Complete buyers remorse there (and don't get me started on the fact that I needed an Internet connection on first boot to set it up. WTF?!!?!!!) And I'll still sit and play Tetris for hours and hours and hours on my retro NES. The newer versions, not so much. I've had this sense over the decades that as video games have grown in scope and graphics they've gotten less fun to the point where I tell people when they ask me "I don't play video games." It's probably been about ten years since I've paid for one. Now get off my lawn.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  Many retro games had massive teams and utilized earlier frameworks and content to release faster I think you and the previous commenter have different ideas of what constitutes "retro." The people I knew who worked on retro games usually were in "teams" of one or two, even if they worked for a massive company like Atari. If there were three people working on a video game, it was a huge deal. And "frameworks" weren't even a thing. Each game started from the ground up, with the exception of code clips that you printed out and saved in a binder.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    You'd still need to name specific examples. All the way from the NES to the current gen, you can name examples of both big teams and small teams / individuals having some form of success. The coding got easier per content unit and the skill floor is lower, yes. But the ceiling is still high, the demands are far higher and you'd need to be far more skilled in various disciplines to deliver the equivalent of a few decades ago. Those hours you gained no longer coding? You better have spent them figuring out how to do VFX, some decent pixel/line art, or make some stellar sound tracks. If not, maybe be able to do marketing or know how to make your game function in multiplayer online. >And "frameworks" weren't even a thing. Using virtually the same frame across a wide variety of processes is the very definition of a framework, even if it isn't a software framework in the modern sense. Many big games on the NES and SNES were built off of one another, you can tell by the similarities between developers and their work. Square being the most notorious.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Maybe. Game that came to mind is Chrono Trigger, released in '95. Took two years to make. Can't think of any modern game - made in that short a time - that is bigger content wise (unless we're just summing up all the pixels).
dayvid 4y ago
There's an amazing interview series with Nasir Gebelli, who made some of the first Apple II games, coded the first three Final Fantasy games and a 3d game in assembler, as well as Secret of Mana game for SNES. Highly recommended! https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/episode-3-nasir-gebelli-part-1-of-3/id735180050?i=1000395076662 https://podcasts.apple.com/gh/podcast/episode-3-nasir-gebell...

tablespoon 4y ago

> As a customer / end-user, though? Nope. I absolutely hate it. Maybe I'm just getting old but I'm extremely nostalgic for the days where I got to decide if I the upgrade was worth it to me or not. These days things will change and move you on without any notice or opt-in what-so-ever. Yeah, even as someone who works as a developer, it seems that in all but a few cases the development organizations have a massively more control about how things are done than they should (which usually manifests as a veto by saying X is too hard/expensive). The overall effect is to make software crappy and annoying in ways that are less technical, and thus less likely to be fixed. Shipping on physical media put a technical constraint that helped keep that social problem in check.

gspencley 4y ago
Yup. In most businesses it seems the path to promotion for a Product Owner is to come up with that killer feature that will garner massive new adoption and launch the company into hyper-growth. This leads to existing end users being the sacrificial guinea pigs in a never ending experiment that place hypothetical (and almost never realized) future users over the immediate interests of those currently paying for the product.

zippergz 4y ago

This is why I turned off auto updates on my phone. I do update stuff periodically, and sometimes I'm forced (and certainly I do OS updates when there is a security issue), but I don't want my apps randomly changing out from under me overnight. Rarely these days are the "bug fixes and performance improvements" actually an improvement for me as the user. I especially hate it when a developer says something like "we update the app as often as possible to make it better for you!" No, updating it "as often as possible" is not better for me. It might be better for YOU, but it's just annoying to me.

dangus 4y ago

I love it as a customer. There's a lot of excitement when new changes come out, and I want them right now! Beyond business software, I can think of the way that indie games are delivered as early releases on Steam. Most recently, I would get excited for every little Valheim update. It extended the life of the game, which probably won't be truly done for many more years. If they were limited to a single boxed physical release, the game would be left with a shorter development cycle limited by the production budget. Now, the game's sales more directly dictate the level of attention the game gets. Concepts are validated earlier and customers get to more frequently provide feedback rather than developers spending years building something and hoping that people like it. That particular developer also did a great job of generally not breaking your world and save game (somewhat unlike similar creative/survival games like Minecraft, where you'd be missing out on a lot of things by not starting fresh for each major update). Sure, frequent updates can break things...but back in the day, there were still plenty of bugs on formally released products, and then you're stuck with those broken things for months or years waiting for the next version to physically ship to you. One of the things that makes CD/CI possible in the first place is that testing has become far more automated and sophisticated. No one would tolerate CI/CD if it didn't have that additional level of automated quality. When I see someone who claims not to like when software gets frequent updates, I ask myself: "Do you even like software? I thought new functionality was supposed to be exciting!" I personally see resistance to change as a generally negative personality trait (obviously, there are limits, not all change is good change), and I think that's why I don't understand the romantic nostalgia for the days when we'd buy a piece of software in a box off of a shelf.

ghaff 4y ago
> I ask myself: "Do you even like software? In many cases, no. It's an adequate tool for some task I need to accomplish. And while some updates are genuinely useful and appreciated, others are regressions or just a change that I now have to get used to and which IMO doesn't make the software a better tool for the task at hand.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

grishka 4y ago

I turned off automatic app updates on my phone. It turns out some apps, especially Google ones, do get whiny at you for not updating. Other than that, changes at least happen when I expect them. Nothing can save me from A/B testing though...