🚀 go-pugleaf

On Wed, 18 Jun 2014 09:49:47 -0600, "rms"
<rsqui...@MOOflashMOO.net> wrote:

>D.I.C.E. SUMMIT 2004 - JASON RUBIN - TARA REID AND THE FUTURE OF GAME DESIGN
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uhmYENdFZc8


I've written a lot in this NG of the negative impact marketing
douchebags have had on gaming.  Most of what he is saying transcends
the gaming industry and applies to software development in general.

When developers are mistreated, or don't get the respect, recognition
of team members who contributed far less to the end result, or worse
are at times are robbed of even receiving credit for their work, the
old saying is simply "next!".  They simply jump ship to the next
project... next company, the next startup, whatever.

The supply and demand is such that if you're a developer, someone is
always willing to pay you more to come work with them, so you can
pretty much rinse and repeat the project hopping process your entire
career and make a damn good living doing it.  

However nothing good gets produced from that.  It's not what
developers want to do, they want to make great games.  

But there's a point at which they just decide that being a door mat
while some executive marketing douche takes all the credit is not as
appealing as simply striking back, playing tit for tat, and deciding
to turn it into a game of profit maximization that's in the
developer's favor rather than in the favor of the do-nothings that
seek to exploit them.  Hell, I've been doing this for the last 20
years at least.

But at least now you know why there are so many crap titles and so few
good titles, and why you also hear of development leads jumping ship
from one project or company and moving to another before a title is
complete.

I think part of the problem is that the gaming industry tries to treat
developers like the music industry treats musicians or the movie
industry treats actors.  The biggest difference is that developing
games (or any software for a large audience, really) takes not only a
highly creative person but an extraordinary amount of other technical
skills and years of training, which is not always the case with a
singer or player of musical instruments or actor.  Developers do not
grow on trees like the other examples I've listed.  The gaming
industry on the whole hasn't yet figured out that the entire supply
and demand graph is inverted when compared to music or movie
industries.