Things are better now, though certain elements are still present. There's a lot of code churn in games - once a project is finished, unless you're making an imm

Things are better now, though certain elements are still present. There's a lot of code churn in games - once a project is finished, unless you're making an immediate sequal it's not uncommon for almost the entire code-base to be thrown out and to start again for the next project. Most games are rather fire-and-forget affairs (with maybe a couple of DLC/patches) so maintainability isn't as high a priority as with a lot of other software. Also the performance constraints make a lot of modern techniques difficult or impossible to use - so you do get a lot of hand-rolled code for things that could be library functions, just because it's a bit faster in a critical game loop. The timelines of game development do lead to things being a bit rushed, and with how much a game can change during development the programmers are often forced to cut corners. On the projects I've worked with I always here at least a few programmers at the end saying "I wish I had time to do this properly, I worked out a great plan for the system, but we didn't have time". That said, engineering practices and management are definitely better - Code reviews are pretty standard now, most studios are better at training and documenting.