---"I didn't fire him, or any of the other early hires. From a purely business perspective, this was crazy. It was the wrong thing to do. I didn't care – I coul

---"I didn't fire him, or any of the other early hires. From a purely business perspective, this was crazy. It was the wrong thing to do. I didn't care – I could have made more money, but I made enough. I trained every last one of them to the best of their ability. The Designer in question changed jobs rapidly, from Coder to Sound Tech and eventually landing into a Director position about two years later with stats in the hundreds where he had begun with barely 30 in each."--- This post was surprisingly uplifting considering it was about a mobile game. I can't help but think game devs have it tough compared to devs in other sectors; their market seems to brook only a few winners, and everyone else just labors for a shot at the big leagues. It's easy to lose your way like the programmer who "chased software development contracts outside the games industry for meager and ever-diminishing rewards until he no longer had enough to pay his staff." (He happens to be a friend of mine, but I think the story is instructive on its own.)