Old time devs vs today devs. Is this true?

[moonbits]

Check out this video from Laura Fryer, It answers a bunch of my grievances with games these days.

this is a great channel and everyone who's interested in how things actually work in big companies should listen to Laura.

 

[flamming_python]

I don't believe... I know it's so lol.
View attachment 96550

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.

That's one hell of an essay

And I'd agree with it all. Now I've never worked making video games myself, but I do have observations to make, as a programmer myself, and someone who's been around the block a few times and experienced the evolution of games since the 90s.

Firstly, although developing video games was always 'hard', back 30 years ago it was just a lot less labour intensive, and quicker. And there were less moving parts. Developers wrote their own engines or re-used engines they had made for previous games, even ones from a completely different genre. There were maybe 2-3 artists on the whole team responsible for all the assets. One music guy. A representitive or two from the publishing house who would be a liason. And just a handful of programmers, with everyone participating in the game design and throwing around ideas to some extent even if there were a couple of senior members making the final decisions.

And from there the team sizes just steadily grew, with the rise of various niche roles, the creation of separate art teams, game design teams, etc... in parallel with the actual turnover of games, and the amount of source code that would have to be written and assets that would have to be created. Creating 3D models took a lot more time than 2D pixel art. And licensing game engines was a practice that caught on, particularly by the time of the id Tech 3 (Quake 3) and Unreal engines.

And with that rise in development times and team sizes came the increased financial burdens too and risks. And that necessitated the corporate structures in turn. The video game market itself expanded year on year and so that justified the larger investments into game development that were now required.
The bugs in video games these days I don't think should be blamed too much on lousy higher education courses. You have some very strong programmers engaged in these video game teams too, and they know who to look for when it comes to hiring new staff; whether beginner programmers or more experienced ones. It's rather just an inevitable result of the complexity of games nowadays, with all these open worlds and additional scripting engines and all these other 3rd party frameworks and libraries, etc... These are absolutely massive codebases. The Watch Dogs: Legion source code that was leaked some years back was 558Gb in size. And that was a compressed archive. Even if the vast majority of all of that are assets, even compiling all of it together would be a gargantuan task that you would necessitate a dedicated member of your team to be in charge of.

 

[qw90700]

That's one hell of an essay

This isn't even 1% of my power!!! lolol

That's one hell of an essay

And I'd agree with it all. But I'd also like to add that although developing video games was always 'hard', back 30 years ... decisions.

And from there the team sizes just steadily grew, with the rise of various niche roles, the creation of separate art teams, ... engines.

You are right. As a hobby just for fun I develop 2D and 3D games alike. It does mean also just fun of it developing 2D and 3D assets too. So I can say 3D development is not "hard work" than 2D. I dare say 2D is "harder" but in reality whatever way you use to develop a game naturally is complex and the time it takes just depends!!! In the end actual complexity is what kind of game you developing. So for example developing Metal Gear Solid Rising is way more complex than Watch Dogs. Developing a 2D tennis game like the Tennis game on NES is relatively way more complex than developing a 3D tennis game in which some people may never able to develop such a 2D tennis game lolol.

For example manual 2D sprite creation over 3D model creation + rigging bones for "manual" animation honestly same complexity to me. Just the way to use to do same is complex in its own way!!!

Generally via my own time it takes a month for me to fully develop a 2D game. Honestly the amount of coding doesn't change in core aspect over 3D at all. You just use different ways to program the same!!!

Technically while developing a game you still need same kind of people despite nature of the game changed between 2D and 3D. Still you need artists for visual, musical, SFX and all assets. It's just nature of 3D development became "unnecessarily complex". It means for example at home me alone can develop 3D aspect of games as in models and animation okay but they just increase the complexity and budget by hiring specific teams for it as if they are developing a movie. Naturally a game mostly being developed as if they developing a movie and there is actually relativelly little "video game development" aspect of it. They hire tons of artists for digital lighting as in art direction, environment design, and whatnot visual art and especially cutscene-related stuff. Back then despite games were 3D the video game development wasn't that complex. Perhaps it was more like the development team was made of "jokers" as in "one man army developers", they just divided work task so much most of the budget mostly spent on paying for people anymore lol. Perhaps what increased video game development's load is for a long time tasks are so divided between so many people , so many peoplehave to report a lot between each other on what kind of stage of development they are in and then they all do extra work to put everything into game as they go by adjusting stuff. That's why more people increases development time (what an irony when it should have been the opposite!!! lol)

But I have say about "3D models and textures taking more time to create", dude when you use Blender you create the models so fast if a 2D pixel scene takes like a day for me, within a day I can create 3 characters with their own distinct designed armors in a day thanks to Blender. Model creation did took too long before but relatively in recent years Blender really speeded up the whole process. In the end 3D creation will take way faster than 2D assets if we have to assume 1 person works per 3D and 2D assets development lol.

2D aspect of games takes very long when you added animation to the equation because despite technology advanced to make 2D animations easiers, relatively 3D animations easier and therefore way faster to do. 3D actually makes everything so easy.

However 3D means more hardware requirements therefore more need for optimization and therefore it calls for a careful way to produce model and texture files and if you really screwed up you would need to re-develop the whole 3D assets to fit it for optimization. However when the developer is professional they wouldn't screw up like that because they would be properly educated on that before they start working. What you do is more like you start from the lowest possible "test assets" and you go up as you see the game can handle it. So you use test assets by adjusting them which eventually became the asset of the end result. I actually learned about how Rockstar tested optimization methods for 3D open world gameplay and then they eventually figured they really did a great job so hard they realized they can increase graphics quality. It does mean after "content" aspect of the game is done in context of optimization you left graphics quality last. However for PC games they tend to develop the game without caring about optimization much and leave running the game solely into specific system requirements that actually a reason for buggy games. However this way of development becomes necessary part of the most needed graphical options so users can choose between low and ultra settings that usually only low settings are optimized instead.

And with that ... risks.

Gotta blame the mentality that want to make video games more like a movie which if they had cut movie aspects from games budget will sink back to how it was lol. So if they complain about budget then they should see the error on they wasting millions for cutscenes I don't watch and whole dialogues including voice over, whole scene design to specific animations characters do and all are what I skip them by mostly not listening to them lol. If you had cut all these really development time significantly reduces, so as budget lolol.

In this context, for example for Hideo Kojima it would be a better choice to release Death Stranding as a movie. So many games would be actually a better media if they were develop as a movie. Gameplay is boring and takes too long to conclude so Death Stranding is a waste of rubbish. I can say the same for most Sony games especially released after PS2-era and I'll specifically mention Uncharted series and Last of Us. Interactive story programs and their way of making you "inside of a story" don't matter to me. Me gamer wanna play something fun!!!! But in these games most of the gameplay you literally have to do what you don't wanna do in your real life: Walking, talking, listening to, getting an X item to carry from A to B lol. Point of video games should be about doing something fun that you can't or don't wanna do in real life. I can easily go Death Stranding mode in my real life. Walk in some dangerous part of your city and boom creatures attack you!!! Carry boxes on your back if you want and enjoy the immersion!!!! lolol

The bugs ... courses.

Blame it because their greedy ass uses pre-order customers as a test group to test their shit game. There is no excuse for why a video game has tons of bugs at launch day and why they all require like 5 years of patching for playable state lol. This should be a law that it should be illegal to release a game in such a state. To me it seems like you buy a TV but sometimes it doesn't display a channel and cannot change channels and TV randomly shuts off. "How complex and expensive to develop it" is not my concern and it shouldn't be. Either release the product that deserves money or stop being a company and instead IDK clean the floor at McDonald's lol.

You have some very strong programmers ... of your team to be in charge of.

Well games are massive these years and it does significantly contribute to the likelihood of bugs. No argument to that. However it doesn't justify buggy releases of games that sometimes suffers from significant bugs never fixed. I dare say instead of all the cutscenes and dialogue development they should spend that budget on bug fixing and over all polishing the game lol.

The new problem of the industry is to reduce budget they intentionally hire fresh graduates to pay them less because seniors, experienced people and especially famous ones in their respective fields and/or industries demands higher pay that is not what companies are willing to pay most of the time. That's why companies take an ordinary music composer and make them video game director!!! lolol

In the end only logical complaint they make is "PC platform makes things harder to develop" but still this "harder" aspect is more about it takes longer to develop a stable game for every possible PC, yet in reality a develop can play safe and only use "common safe ground" of what kind of possible hardware and software people may be using to develop a game by avoiding unnessary usage of too new or old technologies in development. System requirement is a thing for a good reason but then sometimes it's about developers relying too much on unstable aspect of how GPUs work due to lazy work, therefore when these aspects changed or fixed via driver update the game may cause problems. Such bad way of development can even make game cannot run due to specific CPUs. In that regard a programmer shouldn't be lazy and shouldn't make codes "work" in a way they don't even understand and they shouldn't fix their code by addiding another code into the equation. Best way to fix is actually properly writing the problematic code again. Otherwise it seems like problem is "doors being opened because of wind" so instead of closing the window they either remove the door or they cover the door with wall or they remove air itself!!!! lolol

Perhaps the last topic must be told in a topic on how hardware and video game console companies negatively effect video game industry but that's another topic for an essay!!! lol

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I don't know if this thread will get locked for one reason or another but daily reminded that Doom is still one of the absolute best PC game ever made and Carmack is a genius of programming.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

I think the best example of this is looking at the history of Sierra Online but it couldn't make it not because of failure to adapt but just losing focus, growing too big and good ol American Tradition of Tax Fraud, (not them but the company that bought them out).

 

[iamthemilkman]

How'd we go from Mass Effect 1-3 in 5 years, Bioshock 1-Infinite in 6 years, but now Bioware can't even release a game, Cloud Chamber's Bioshock's in dev hell after 10 years, Ken Levine's Judas has no release date after 10 years, etc.?

Studios have become a lot more incompetent than they once were.

 

[qw90700]

How'd we go from Mass Effect 1-3 in 5 years, Bioshock 1-Infinite in 6 years, but now Bioware can't even release a game, Cloud Chamber's Bioshock's in dev hell after 10 years, Ken Levine's Judas has no release date after 10 years, etc.?

Studios have become a lot more incompetent than they once were.

People are asking for more payment and they don't wanna work for the same video game for even half a decade and then this budget and increased development time is not what companies wanna deal with so they dilly-dally with remakes and whatnot until they figure out how to implement AIs for video game development fully lolol.

So what these people get? Overwork, company BS and they risk being fired as soon their job on developing the game ended so it make people wanna extend the development as much as they can which is the reason why games are released so buggy it takes 10 years to fix so these poor people won't be fired!!! The industry is so BS people would rather prefer developing the same game until they are retired starting from fresh out of college just so they can have a stable job when who cares what they actually developing right? lolol

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

It is ABSOLUTELY true -- just look at the people behind the original "juggernauts" of the videogame industry: fans messing about on the Commodore 64s, college students believing they had a shot at buying a dev kit and get to work, D&D players looking to self-publish on a magazine; even lovers willing to fund an enterprise as a "back-up" plan for their growing families. That is all gone now, at least on the purest sense of the world.

Things like the devs behind the Spyro the Dragon series nearly getting sued because they had started their careers without checking if their chosen name wasn't taken? It all belongs to the past now... And we are all poorer for it.

 

[Mopeybloke]

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

Ya know...

 

[petran79]

This isn't even 1% of my power!!! lolol


You are right. As a hobby just for fun I develop 2D and 3D games alike. It does mean also just fun of it developing 2D and 3D assets too. So I can say 3D development is not "hard work" than 2D. I dare say 2D is "harder" but in reality whatever way you use to develop a game naturally is complex and the time it takes just depends!!! In the end actual complexity is what kind of game you developing. So for example developing Metal Gear Solid Rising is way more complex than Watch Dogs. Developing a 2D tennis game like the Tennis game on NES is relatively way more complex than developing a 3D tennis game in which some people may never able to develop such a 2D tennis game lolol.

For example manual 2D sprite creation over 3D model creation + rigging bones for "manual" animation honestly same complexity to me. Just the way to use to do same is complex in its own way!!!

Generally via my own time it takes a month for me to fully develop a 2D game. Honestly the amount of coding doesn't change in core aspect over 3D at all. You just use different ways to program the same!!!

Technically while developing a game you still need same kind of people despite nature of the game changed between 2D and 3D. Still you need artists for visual, musical, SFX and all assets. It's just nature of 3D development became "unnecessarily complex". It means for example at home me alone can develop 3D aspect of games as in models and animation okay but they just increase the complexity and budget by hiring specific teams for it as if they are developing a movie. Naturally a game mostly being developed as if they developing a movie and there is actually relativelly little "video game development" aspect of it. They hire tons of artists for digital lighting as in art direction, environment design, and whatnot visual art and especially cutscene-related stuff. Back then despite games were 3D the video game development wasn't that complex. Perhaps it was more like the development team was made of "jokers" as in "one man army developers", they just divided work task so much most of the budget mostly spent on paying for people anymore lol. Perhaps what increased video game development's load is for a long time tasks are so divided between so many people , so many peoplehave to report a lot between each other on what kind of stage of development they are in and then they all do extra work to put everything into game as they go by adjusting stuff. That's why more people increases development time (what an irony when it should have been the opposite!!! lol)

But I have say about "3D models and textures taking more time to create", dude when you use Blender you create the models so fast if a 2D pixel scene takes like a day for me, within a day I can create 3 characters with their own distinct designed armors in a day thanks to Blender. Model creation did took too long before but relatively in recent years Blender really speeded up the whole process. In the end 3D creation will take way faster than 2D assets if we have to assume 1 person works per 3D and 2D assets development lol.

2D aspect of games takes very long when you added animation to the equation because despite technology advanced to make 2D animations easiers, relatively 3D animations easier and therefore way faster to do. 3D actually makes everything so easy.

However 3D means more hardware requirements therefore more need for optimization and therefore it calls for a careful way to produce model and texture files and if you really screwed up you would need to re-develop the whole 3D assets to fit it for optimization. However when the developer is professional they wouldn't screw up like that because they would be properly educated on that before they start working. What you do is more like you start from the lowest possible "test assets" and you go up as you see the game can handle it. So you use test assets by adjusting them which eventually became the asset of the end result. I actually learned about how Rockstar tested optimization methods for 3D open world gameplay and then they eventually figured they really did a great job so hard they realized they can increase graphics quality. It does mean after "content" aspect of the game is done in context of optimization you left graphics quality last. However for PC games they tend to develop the game without caring about optimization much and leave running the game solely into specific system requirements that actually a reason for buggy games. However this way of development becomes necessary part of the most needed graphical options so users can choose between low and ultra settings that usually only low settings are optimized instead.


Gotta blame the mentality that want to make video games more like a movie which if they had cut movie aspects from games budget will sink back to how it was lol. So if they complain about budget then they should see the error on they wasting millions for cutscenes I don't watch and whole dialogues including voice over, whole scene design to specific animations characters do and all are what I skip them by mostly not listening to them lol. If you had cut all these really development time significantly reduces, so as budget lolol.

In this context, for example for Hideo Kojima it would be a better choice to release Death Stranding as a movie. So many games would be actually a better media if they were develop as a movie. Gameplay is boring and takes too long to conclude so Death Stranding is a waste of rubbish. I can say the same for most Sony games especially released after PS2-era and I'll specifically mention Uncharted series and Last of Us. Interactive story programs and their way of making you "inside of a story" don't matter to me. Me gamer wanna play something fun!!!! But in these games most of the gameplay you literally have to do what you don't wanna do in your real life: Walking, talking, listening to, getting an X item to carry from A to B lol. Point of video games should be about doing something fun that you can't or don't wanna do in real life. I can easily go Death Stranding mode in my real life. Walk in some dangerous part of your city and boom creatures attack you!!! Carry boxes on your back if you want and enjoy the immersion!!!! lolol

Blame it because their greedy ass uses pre-order customers as a test group to test their shit game. There is no excuse for why a video game has tons of bugs at launch day and why they all require like 5 years of patching for playable state lol. This should be a law that it should be illegal to release a game in such a state. To me it seems like you buy a TV but sometimes it doesn't display a channel and cannot change channels and TV randomly shuts off. "How complex and expensive to develop it" is not my concern and it shouldn't be. Either release the product that deserves money or stop being a company and instead IDK clean the floor at McDonald's lol.

Well games are massive these years and it does significantly contribute to the likelihood of bugs. No argument to that. However it doesn't justify buggy releases of games that sometimes suffers from significant bugs never fixed. I dare say instead of all the cutscenes and dialogue development they should spend that budget on bug fixing and over all polishing the game lol.

The new problem of the industry is to reduce budget they intentionally hire fresh graduates to pay them less because seniors, experienced people and especially famous ones in their respective fields and/or industries demands higher pay that is not what companies are willing to pay most of the time. That's why companies take an ordinary music composer and make them video game director!!! lolol

In the end only logical complaint they make is "PC platform makes things harder to develop" but still this "harder" aspect is more about it takes longer to develop a stable game for every possible PC, yet in reality a develop can play safe and only use "common safe ground" of what kind of possible hardware and software people may be using to develop a game by avoiding unnessary usage of too new or old technologies in development. System requirement is a thing for a good reason but then sometimes it's about developers relying too much on unstable aspect of how GPUs work due to lazy work, therefore when these aspects changed or fixed via driver update the game may cause problems. Such bad way of development can even make game cannot run due to specific CPUs. In that regard a programmer shouldn't be lazy and shouldn't make codes "work" in a way they don't even understand and they shouldn't fix their code by addiding another code into the equation. Best way to fix is actually properly writing the problematic code again. Otherwise it seems like problem is "doors being opened because of wind" so instead of closing the window they either remove the door or they cover the door with wall or they remove air itself!!!! lolol

Perhaps the last topic must be told in a topic on how hardware and video game console companies negatively effect video game industry but that's another topic for an essay!!! lol

Add also that in many cases, one person in his spare time can fix or mod a pc port of an aa-aaa game, eg Durante.

 

[qw90700]

Add also that in many cases, one person in his spare time can fix or mod a pc port of an aa-aaa game, eg Durante.

Yep. That's why fans will do a better job even than the creator themselves!!!! lol

In that regard it would be wise for companies to gather fans to develop games. Some of them only cared about gathering fans for play testing and asking for ideas that 99% of them never used lol but what I mean is real dead development army made of fans. Then gotta say it would benefit, for example, Sega and Nintendo a lot than they can imagine + some fans would even work for free so it has economical gain for the company too!!!! lolol

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

It's sad that people have to rely on mods...