6 ms·

if you'd ever worked on a call of duty you'd realize how foolish a statement this is.

by Kapura 4y ago

neatze 4y ago
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Seems like you're speaking out of turn, and trying to pile in on some sort of weird meritless gatekeeping without doing any basic research first: https://github.com/ablakey https://github.com/ablakey
  - neatze 4y ago
    The reason I said this is because of "implementing a well-defined blueprint" it just compelled me to say something, I am not expert developer by any means,but it is like saying to a degree; paintings are all same because most of them use same colors, arguably writing prototype code is simple, but fixing bugs and tuning everything so game is fun and fluid is where hard part is.
dahart 4y ago
Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a million and one people have worked on it, some doing more mechanical port work than others. There’s truth in there; the games industry is tough, and it’s relevant that some studios that (for example) demand lots of overtime haven’t seen any large exodus, or sometimes there is high turnover and the studio still survives, to parent’s point. There’s a higher level layer to this, that from a publisher’s point of view, there are a lot of smaller studios that are easily replaceable, and I’d speculate studios go out of business over contracts lost to other studios far more often than over employee walkouts (which of course fuels the need for overtime to be competitive). This is true for games and for VFX production in the US, enough people want these jobs that high turnover doesn’t seem to slow the business.
- Kapura 4y ago
  - dahart 4y ago
    > Stop perpetuating shit you read on some gamer forum Whoa brother, maybe cool your jets and don’t make hasty assumptions. I was a lead game dev for a decade. I didn’t work on Call of Duty, but I did work on some large titles, and I did put in two decades of work hours in one decade. The studio I worked at was always perpetually on the edge of closing, and that was used to push people to work harder. I also worked another decade in VFX too, and saw the same things. In the mean time, both studios actually did suffer closures for the reasons I cited, and they were both replaced by other studios. If you have experience to share and not just logic, I’d love to hear more about it. Otherwise, I’d encourage being careful about making assumptions. The business world is already tricky and exploitative, tearing people down who point it out doesn’t solve much.
    - echelon 4y ago
      I would love to read a write-up of your experiences if you have written them down somewhere or plan to do so in the future.
      - dahart 4y ago
        Hey thanks! I actually never even thought of writing it up outside of here, I’ll have to let that thought steep for a while. I give talks to college game dev and CS classes every now and then, and there are quite a few tidbits over the years I’ve added in comments here on HN. Maybe someday I could smoosh it together into something coherent. I’m just not sure it wouldn’t be crushingly boring. :P
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  It's particularly ironic that you mention CoD as an example of how you can treat gamedevs as replaceable cogs. Here's the history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895
rasz 4y ago
you mean like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered? or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from 2019 not to be confused with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from 2007?

if you'd ever worked on a call of duty you'd realize how foolish a statement this is.

by Kapura 4y ago

if you'd ever worked on a call of duty you'd realize how foolish a statement this is.

neatze 4y ago

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
Seems like you're speaking out of turn, and trying to pile in on some sort of weird meritless gatekeeping without doing any basic research first: https://github.com/ablakey https://github.com/ablakey
- neatze 4y ago
  The reason I said this is because of "implementing a well-defined blueprint" it just compelled me to say something, I am not expert developer by any means,but it is like saying to a degree; paintings are all same because most of them use same colors, arguably writing prototype code is simple, but fixing bugs and tuning everything so game is fun and fluid is where hard part is.

dahart 4y ago

Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a million and one people have worked on it, some doing more mechanical port work than others. There’s truth in there; the games industry is tough, and it’s relevant that some studios that (for example) demand lots of overtime haven’t seen any large exodus, or sometimes there is high turnover and the studio still survives, to parent’s point. There’s a higher level layer to this, that from a publisher’s point of view, there are a lot of smaller studios that are easily replaceable, and I’d speculate studios go out of business over contracts lost to other studios far more often than over employee walkouts (which of course fuels the need for overtime to be competitive). This is true for games and for VFX production in the US, enough people want these jobs that high turnover doesn’t seem to slow the business.

Kapura 4y ago
- dahart 4y ago
  > Stop perpetuating shit you read on some gamer forum Whoa brother, maybe cool your jets and don’t make hasty assumptions. I was a lead game dev for a decade. I didn’t work on Call of Duty, but I did work on some large titles, and I did put in two decades of work hours in one decade. The studio I worked at was always perpetually on the edge of closing, and that was used to push people to work harder. I also worked another decade in VFX too, and saw the same things. In the mean time, both studios actually did suffer closures for the reasons I cited, and they were both replaced by other studios. If you have experience to share and not just logic, I’d love to hear more about it. Otherwise, I’d encourage being careful about making assumptions. The business world is already tricky and exploitative, tearing people down who point it out doesn’t solve much.
  - echelon 4y ago
    I would love to read a write-up of your experiences if you have written them down somewhere or plan to do so in the future.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Hey thanks! I actually never even thought of writing it up outside of here, I’ll have to let that thought steep for a while. I give talks to college game dev and CS classes every now and then, and there are quite a few tidbits over the years I’ve added in comments here on HN. Maybe someday I could smoosh it together into something coherent. I’m just not sure it wouldn’t be crushingly boring. :P
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
It's particularly ironic that you mention CoD as an example of how you can treat gamedevs as replaceable cogs. Here's the history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895

rasz 4y ago

you mean like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered? or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from 2019 not to be confused with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare from 2007?