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.

 

[Mork]

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

 

[Pinballbuzzbro]

The top image is just what the average indie dev team looks like today.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

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

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.

You're the one who assumed that.

The devs at id Software were a bunch of nerds who liked metal and TTRPG so by definition of the 90's they were technically a marginalised group from the standard of that time.

And even in in the bottom pic there are women and a black guy that doesn't remove the fact that they're fundamentally just businessmen thinking in sales number and are seeing video games as mere products rather than a passion project full of soul and love, gender and skin colour have 0 causality in there.


PS: Old Japanese video games were made by asians and there were also female devs, composers and graphic artists so the point makes no sense either.

 

[fake-kun]

The devs at id Software were a bunch of nerds who liked metal and TTRPG so by definition of the 90's they were technically a marginalised group from the standard of that time.

Imagine thinking nerds were marginalized in the '90s because people mocked their hobbies. Must be nice not to know what actual marginalization looks like.

 

[qw90700]

The developers continue to have their passion

Sure. Look at Hideo Kojima for example. He is finally free to develop rubbish games like Death Stranding just like he always wanted!!! lolol

And this topic comes to the duality of some devs needing a company to direct them so they can produce decent games without wasting budget and time, some cannot produce decent games within the limitations of a company. It all depends.

In the end, "old devs" were not good really. They were skilled in their own expertise yet they were not good at actually developing a video game. They basically lacked "what would be a decent game" knowledge but they wanted it anyway. Sometimes they really did produce fun games but I can say it was just a random good occurrence lol. In this context huge difference between old devs and new devs is old devs wanted to develop good games, but new devs are just doing it for a job. When people do a job in entertaintment industry what they do may be a professional work but it lacks quality to entertain. When a person doesn't do it as a job then they will do it for their own self-satisfaction. Then the person will really produce high quality entertaintment or their amature decisions will drop the quality in unacceptable way. That's why indie devs are not necessarily good. At least professionals are educated enough to develop "decent games" that would sell to cover the costs. However the hinderence of industry is in the way how shareholders and whatnot pester on what kind of game company should develop and what should be changed in the game. Things can be even like normally a game designed to be TPS changed into FPS because the most influencer shareholder says "IDK about games but my kid loves Valorant so make this game more like Valorant, I'm sure it would sell more" lolol.

Technically new devs are superior especially because they have tons of decades of knowledge on video game history to learn and therefore they use their knowledge to make money despite they don't play video games lol. They do make money but honestly they cannot satisfy my gamer wishes, they only satisfy non-gamer types because that's how most people are. In the end non-gamer professional devs are expert at selling their "games" to non-gamer audience.

So the topic is not about "new devs can't", it's "they won't" because decent games takes more time and therefore budget to make when they just wanna use AI and whatever to shorten time and budget.

That's why the future of gaming is in AI but I don't mean to say as "it is a good thing", I mean it as the impending doom for the future. Everything will have an AI and thus they will normalize AI usage and then everything will be generated by AI. In the end not many people will care if whatever media they wanna waste time for fun is generated by AI. AI will turn real life into an automated way. Imagine whole news channel will be run by one AI that automaticaly finds news to air. And then it will be usual thing to be fan of AIs that will be fully integrated as "companies" in digital space we can call "cyberspace". Imagine a company has no "CEO" or "employee", it will be just made of an AI that produces digital stuff that it will only have real people as financial supporters. So future of gaming will be like buying a game as a "lore" that player adjust the details in the game to their liking. So imagine buying "AI RPG" game that has generic content so you as player just tell the AI what you want in the context of what kind of content is available to you to play the game you want and it will adjust itself. AI integration to anything is really an inescapable reality for the future. People will even stop talking, they will just choose a topic on their smartphone and AI will talk for them in the way people wanna respond something like how in Fallout 4 you just choose "sarcasm" option and your character says the whatever line designated for it lol. And then people will stop even walking, they will just sit on a chair that hovers around lolol. Imagine the guy will sit in their house and will just say "AI feed me" and house's AI system will feed its user!!!! The person will just open their mouth and robotic hands will feed the user!!! lolol

In the end last stage of the future of humanity before humanity stop existing is connecting everyone into something like Matrix and have their life totally become virtual reality when their automated systems as an AI will work for humans to keep them alive physically as their whole life became digital and another responsibility for AIs is managing this Matrix life. "Why suffer in meatspace when you can upload your mind to Heaven 2.0. Don't worry, you don't have to die to go to heaven anymore just for $99,999!!!" lololol

 

[PSPMan3000]

Yeah this is where the AAA Industry has gone, if you want that same early industry passion you gotta look at today's indie devs

 

[bjork]

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:)

This is false, though.