Old time devs vs today devs. Is this true?

[ThunderBoy]

vs

I remember reading somewhere that this is one of the real problems of the video game industry.

While it's all about formalism, margins, profits... A few years ago, it was all about passion, creativity, and trying to do crazy things in video games.

Do you believe this to be true?

 

[NovumVeritas]

Yes, unfortunately, the bigger the gaming industry got, the more it went with profits over all. It's the reason we have now indie developers. As you see all AAA gaming is now about profits and margins. Just look at the first Tomb Raider, and how much people were actually developing it, and now look at the today's landscape. It's a shame really. Also takings risks today is very expensive and can be all or nothing. It's the reasons a lot of companies just go with established franchises now. It's safer.

 

[Potapota]

AAA has blown way out of proportions but indies still exist. There's nothing really stopping you from being the top pic and making your own game. It's probably easier than ever before actually.

 

[A man on a computer]

Gamers making games they want vs Business men debating what third research group is best for designing flashy imagery for brainwashing to pay for more useless skins.

 

[jon2]

The old: Devs wanted to make a mark in history; when that happens, accolades, awards and money will come pouring in

The new: Devs want to make money; making a record amount of money is their way to make a mark in history

P.S. 150th post!

 

[Vexicrypt]

This is how devs lived in the old days: work, eat, sleep and work some more. All day every day. However when you're young and chasing your passion, all the crunch can be seen as a long sleepover party where you and your homies just working together on projects of your dreams. Companies and studios took students right out of schools to potentially find talented future devs and stuff. It was always corporate to a degree but the work ethic changed a lot. Young people dont get those opportunities anymore (unless they make games solo) and more experienced people have too many responsibilities to take any risks. Investors are more hungry because of how huge the industry became and the preassure is higher than ever. Days of "a bunch of colledge buddies made a generational game between the class" are unfortunately over.

(picture is a panel from some japanese magazine that featured a day in life of FromSoftware during Eternal Ring development, I think)

 

[qw90700]

While it's all about formalism, margins, profits... A few years ago, it was all about passion, creativity, and trying to do crazy things in video games.

Do you believe this to be true?

I don't believe... I know it's so lol.

1) What changed on how video game developers are?

Back then video games developed by people who have high skill to even create computures and thus pinball machines and therefore naturally they got used to writing programs even on assembly. They had fun with what they did therefore the result of some of their fun was developing video games. That's why Before 2000s it's not surprising to find technically very complex games that developer(s) really worked hard and created amazing works.

However especially around 2010 video game industry kinda "fully" shifted to people who is specifically educated on "how to work in video game companies".

Naturally after that point video game developers had "simple" education just to be able to use Unreal Engine and/or Unity, knowing C languages and whatnot higher-level of programming languages in a very "basic" way so they cannot even write "Hello World" on assembly. Industry tried to justify and find a way keep things simple and direct the job market by differanating these people as "video game developer" so naturally they actually lack necessary knowledge on how computer even works therefore the education they are not given result in buggy games that requires 5 years of "fix" because these guys know shit so as they work on a game they have to gain experience to cover up their ignorant education.

However I don't mean to say "old school computer engineering" is necessary for "decent video game development", it's just the way of how "low quality video game developer education" is. They are educated in a way they may develop simple physics based 2D games and have enough grounding for how to develop 3D engine and all but their brain crashes in blue screen of death when you had asked them to develop simple music edit program because their brain has the wrong POV of beliving "video games are a different program" than "other programs", so they don't see how huge aspect of programs share same shit. They don't get what is "different" is just how you use your programming understanding lol.

2) What changed in video game development?

You may see some AAA video game companies throwing excuse of "but video game development got so complex and hard" to justify the budget and why they use AI and all. However no matter the stage of era on video game development it was always complex and hard, what changed is development time and how much data has to be merged so they all can work in great harmony. As technical quality increases development time increases because higher quality of models and textures to more detailed game world calls for many optimization and play testing need.

3) What changed in video game industry?

Naturally industry started by gamers therefore continued by video gamers came together and founded companies to develop games. However especially around 2010 industry shifted into a public acceptance that how this industry is a good way to make money. That's why at that point video game companies became more strictly ordinary companies with "serious" structure and all and that's when even random rich guy who really has no idea what is a video game joined the shareholder wagon. Naturally goal to "play good video games" turned into "just selling something that we made society believe it's a video game".

So naturally company for example notices Netflix is very popular and it make them develop "game" that's more like Netflix stuff. They don't care about gaming and gamers, they will turn "video game" industry into just an interractable digital story program and that will be all about it.

4) What is the future of video game industry?

Countries will start their own video game industry. Whole industry will be divided into AAA and indie that will mean to play Netflix-like rubbish programs you'll buy from AAA video game companies but if you really wanna play a video game you'll buy from indie developers. It'll get hard for companies to produce a real video game and make money because most people are not a gamer, and that's why companies targets non-gamers to sell "games". Perhaps eventually the industry will be divided fully into "interractive movie programs" and then "real deal video games" lolol.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

^thats a lot of words.
Uhhh....old good new bad!

 

[Advil Lavs]

It's mostly true. Good thing indie devs exist to keep the good intensions alive.

 

[bjork]

While it's all about formalism, margins, profits... A few years ago, it was all about passion, creativity, and trying to do crazy things in video games.

Do you believe this to be true?

I believe it is a misconception that one day, big money got involved and altered gaming forever. This simply isn't the case. Atari sold to Warner in 1976. Sega sold to Gulf & Western in 1969. There's always been big money involved. What happened is the world changed along the way, and as each of us has grown up, we've had our individual inflection points where we go, "oh. this is how the world works, unfortunately."

The developers continue to have their passion, but are all individual cases that may or may not be restricted by their employment. Talk to a dev off the record sometime, and you'll see. An indie can do whatever and roll the dice, while someone under a corporate umbrella may have imaginative ideas but are at the mercy of the publisher's whims, whether that's focus tests or chasing market trends. But this notion that anyone who works on a game at a big company is somehow a talentless ape, is really reductive and a bit insulting. Surely there are some, but that's any job anywhere. People gotta eat, regardless of their profession, and sometimes circumstances don't let you just up and quit to go make the next Vampire Survivors or whatever.

 

[fake-kun]

Game development was so much better without those pesky women and non-white people! /s

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

^thats a lot of words.
Uhhh....old good new bad!

But sadly true and interesting to read through . He hit the nail on the head , how videogames become more netflix-movie-slop from tripple AAA and indies are the only bastion of gaming which you can actually play the game .

 

[Dyne]

Game development was so much better without those pesky women and non-white people! /s

That was not his point and literally nobody is implying that.
Geez dude... get a grip

 

[PlainnameWTF]

I missed the old time devs. They used put a lot of effort to make the old games more fun and interesting than the newer ones. We always learn something new on what they left on those games that we took us long enough to notice some unique easter eggs. The devs of today lost that spark. Now it's just boring, unplayable, incomplete, etc. and some of them a ruining the some of our beloved franchise over greed and politics and some old companies took some of those path. Just look at Ubisoft, they used to make good games. And now their ruining and got a lot of heat on their backs. They even offended Japan when making Racist's Greed Shadows. We only have indie devs that are doing what the gaming industry is meant to be. AAA devs doesn't seem to care about what they're doing.

 

[Russianbias]

Partially correct. I blame '00 and rise of corporate AAA segment. Pre '00 whole dev scene was closer to modern indy scene ( but not identical ). So yeah, if you want creativity, its better not to look for it in EA, Ubi, Take2 or other similar corporations products.

 

[Michael Frank]

vs

I remember reading somewhere that this is one of the real problems of the video game industry.

While it's all about formalism, margins, profits... A few years ago, it was all about passion, creativity, and trying to do crazy things in video games.

Do you believe this to be true?

Corporate brings creativity barriers, games before didn't had the creative limits that modern games have, that's why a fresh concept was always brought to the table by the devs, the indie scene has this advantage because it doesn't have the constrains of AAA devs, meaning time and creativity constrains.

 

[Boularingos29]

The point is that the devs back then were gamers, the devs today they haven't play a game in their life. And no, mobile games are NOT games:)

 

[fake-kun]

That was not his point and literally nobody is implying that.
Geez dude... get a grip

Nobody's implying that HERE. I've seen way too many people use the "old devs good, new devs bad" cliché as a bigoted dog whistle in other places.