3 ms·

I took it as an appeal to management to consider the trade offs they're forcing.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago
That might be the case, but in games development you often have a company (studio) answering to another (publisher), and it's the publisher's management that decides the deadlines and funding. The people managing the engineers would have no control over those. Carmack's company didn't have this problem when they made the games they eventually open-sourced. When they did get bought by a publisher, they no longer open sourced their games as far as I know, so who knows what the engineering practices were like at that point.
- pathartl 4y ago
  Games are this interesting medium of art where they're really not easily replicated, but very easy duplicated. There's practically no equivalent to a cover for a song that exists for a game. You can distribute a ROM, maybe swap some assets, but the code only exists in the binary it was compiled to. It was only up until recently (with decompilations) that a game was effectively set in stone unless it was open-sourced. I don't know. I think it's silly for decades-old-games to run into licensing issues when trying to go open source. The tech is effectively obsolete except in the instance of that specific game.
  - enneff 4y ago
    Look up “video game demake”.
  - pimlottc 4y ago
    I don’t really understand what distinction you’re making between “replicating” and “duplicating”
    - pathartl 4y ago
      Duplicating = copy/paste digital binaries, replicating = reimplementing the codebase.
  - account42 4y ago
    There have been engine reimplementations without decompilation or source releases - OpenMW being perhaps the most complex example. I'm also not sure why you think remakes are that different from cover bands - neither are a 100% identical copy.
- enneff 4y ago
  And let’s not pretend that Doom and Quake didn’t have several point releases after the fact. And that the team at id didn’t pull all-nighters to ship the games. Those games are far simpler (by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two or three) than most of the modern AAA titles. What was the last AAA game Carmack shipped? Rage? Hardly a smashing success, even if it was technically impressive. I have a huge amount of respect for Carmack’s skills and work ethic and track record, but I wonder if he really has a good handle on the sheer amount of work that goes into a modern game. With often dozens of programmers, and hundreds or thousands of contributors, the coordination overhead is just massive. I think that’s why overall quality control is harder to maintain.

That might be the case, but in games development you often have a company (studio) answering to another (publisher), and it's the publisher's management that decides the deadlines and funding. The people managing the engineers would have no control over those. Carmack's company didn't have this problem when they made the games they eventually open-sourced. When they did get bought by a publisher, they no longer open sourced their games as far as I know, so who knows what the engineering practices were like at that point.

pathartl 4y ago
Games are this interesting medium of art where they're really not easily replicated, but very easy duplicated. There's practically no equivalent to a cover for a song that exists for a game. You can distribute a ROM, maybe swap some assets, but the code only exists in the binary it was compiled to. It was only up until recently (with decompilations) that a game was effectively set in stone unless it was open-sourced. I don't know. I think it's silly for decades-old-games to run into licensing issues when trying to go open source. The tech is effectively obsolete except in the instance of that specific game.
- enneff 4y ago
  Look up “video game demake”.
- pimlottc 4y ago
  I don’t really understand what distinction you’re making between “replicating” and “duplicating”
  - pathartl 4y ago
    Duplicating = copy/paste digital binaries, replicating = reimplementing the codebase.
- account42 4y ago
  There have been engine reimplementations without decompilation or source releases - OpenMW being perhaps the most complex example. I'm also not sure why you think remakes are that different from cover bands - neither are a 100% identical copy.
enneff 4y ago
And let’s not pretend that Doom and Quake didn’t have several point releases after the fact. And that the team at id didn’t pull all-nighters to ship the games. Those games are far simpler (by at least an order of magnitude, maybe two or three) than most of the modern AAA titles. What was the last AAA game Carmack shipped? Rage? Hardly a smashing success, even if it was technically impressive. I have a huge amount of respect for Carmack’s skills and work ethic and track record, but I wonder if he really has a good handle on the sheer amount of work that goes into a modern game. With often dozens of programmers, and hundreds or thousands of contributors, the coordination overhead is just massive. I think that’s why overall quality control is harder to maintain.