Squilliam on 01 July 2008
Sure, totally fair on both points. I'm actually looking at this less on technical accuracy and more as a general problem with the industry. Yeah he did make some errors. But, theres a general problem brewing in the industry that he possibly inadvertently points out, where difficult beat my skull against the wall consoles with limited support are creating issues.
Maybe this is just in the USA, but I'm noticing many trends here. The obvious are previously mentioned things like skyrocketing budgets. Less obvious are constantly missed deadlines and their consequences. Not noticed by many is whats happening internally at many studios. I'm seeing more and more juniors, less and less veterans. I'm seeing people who've been coding games for 10 years burn out and exit the industry totally. I'm hearing grumblings of people tired of having to sleep at work or not see their spouse for weeks on end just to meet a milestone. I'm seeing people devote their lives to ship a game on both platforms by crunching 12-16 hours days for weeks on end, only to all get laid off right after the project ships.
To a certain extent, this has always happened in the industry. But it now seems to be getting more frequent. People exiting the business is becoming as frequent as people entering it. Expectations are becoming unrealistic. Quality of life is severely down. In some ways his blog to me was a way to say that overly complex platforms are not welcome anymore, when it's clear that things can be done in a simpler manner with a similar result. 360 was a step in the right direction to me not because it was done by Microsoft, but because it helped the industry from a quality of life perspective. For perhaps the first time ever, the developper got great tools and support from day one. PS3 to me is trying to pull things back in the other direction where the developer is basically cattle and expected to sacrifice himself to the mighty mother ship. That's just antiquated to me now.
I recall an event that happened in the last crunch where we were trying solve an issue on PS3 and one of the coders I was with told me he had missed his daughters first words because he was crunching. Sounds silly and mellow dramatic, but that kind of thing just gets one thinking. At the time, which was actually just before my now ill fated charalatan post, it got me thinking why in the hell should we be struggling like this to get basics working when this was all so easy on 360? Why do we tolerate this? Well, from the amount of people exiting the industry, it would appear that less and less are.
He may not have intended any of this with his blog, but thats partly how I read it. Help us out, don't treat us like a cog in the machine. Give us a balanced machine, and support us. I like the direction 360 took the industry. I do not like the PS3 pulling us back. It doesn't need to be this way. Worse yet, I can't help but wonder how long it can continue on this way. As the people playing games have aged, so have the people creating them. People want to see their kids and families and will be less and less tolerant of sacrificing them to meet milestone 3b.
Maybe this is just in the USA, but I'm noticing many trends here. The obvious are previously mentioned things like skyrocketing budgets. Less obvious are constantly missed deadlines and their consequences. Not noticed by many is whats happening internally at many studios. I'm seeing more and more juniors, less and less veterans. I'm seeing people who've been coding games for 10 years burn out and exit the industry totally. I'm hearing grumblings of people tired of having to sleep at work or not see their spouse for weeks on end just to meet a milestone. I'm seeing people devote their lives to ship a game on both platforms by crunching 12-16 hours days for weeks on end, only to all get laid off right after the project ships.
To a certain extent, this has always happened in the industry. But it now seems to be getting more frequent. People exiting the business is becoming as frequent as people entering it. Expectations are becoming unrealistic. Quality of life is severely down. In some ways his blog to me was a way to say that overly complex platforms are not welcome anymore, when it's clear that things can be done in a simpler manner with a similar result. 360 was a step in the right direction to me not because it was done by Microsoft, but because it helped the industry from a quality of life perspective. For perhaps the first time ever, the developper got great tools and support from day one. PS3 to me is trying to pull things back in the other direction where the developer is basically cattle and expected to sacrifice himself to the mighty mother ship. That's just antiquated to me now.
I recall an event that happened in the last crunch where we were trying solve an issue on PS3 and one of the coders I was with told me he had missed his daughters first words because he was crunching. Sounds silly and mellow dramatic, but that kind of thing just gets one thinking. At the time, which was actually just before my now ill fated charalatan post, it got me thinking why in the hell should we be struggling like this to get basics working when this was all so easy on 360? Why do we tolerate this? Well, from the amount of people exiting the industry, it would appear that less and less are.
He may not have intended any of this with his blog, but thats partly how I read it. Help us out, don't treat us like a cog in the machine. Give us a balanced machine, and support us. I like the direction 360 took the industry. I do not like the PS3 pulling us back. It doesn't need to be this way. Worse yet, I can't help but wonder how long it can continue on this way. As the people playing games have aged, so have the people creating them. People want to see their kids and families and will be less and less tolerant of sacrificing them to meet milestone 3b.
Main point is the way the games developers are being worked not the comparisons between Xbox360 and PS3 because I have no idea where this came from or if this is the whole story. My guess is a developer on beyond3d though.
I think that the way game developers are being worked and treated is often reflected in the things that annoy us in the industry such as bugs and delays to anticipated games. So for the reasons above I suggest people refrain from the words "lazy" when it comes to developers. They work 60-120 hour weeks, lets see YOU try that and have someone call YOU lazy.
Tease.
