Ask Lemmy

I've been a game programmer for >10 years and I would be fucking miserable if I spent most of my free time with video games as well. Isn't that what we call work/life balance? And from my experience, most game devs either stop being "gamers" at a certain point, or they burn out and quit the video game industry.

That being said, almost everyone I know from gamedev is really excited about video games, and they have a ton of experience, even if they are not playing games in their free time anymore. It could be because I've only worked for indie projects and small publishers.

I'm not sure what kind of role you had in the industry, but I'm not sure what you're saying is entirely accurate... although there are some bits in there I agree with:

Lots of programmers and artists don't really care about the final game, they only care about their little part.

Accurate. And that's ok. A programmer whose job it is to optimize the physics of bullet ricochet against thirteen different kind of materials can go really deep on that, and they don't need to (or have time to) zoom out and care about the entire game. That's fine. They have a job that is often highly specialized, has been given to them by production and they have to deliver on time and at quality. Why is that a problem? You use the corrolary of film, and nobody cares if the gaffer understands the subtext of the Act 3 arc.... it's not their job.

Game designers and UX designers are often clueless and lacking in gaming experience. Some of the mistakes they make could be avoided by asking literaly anyone who play games.

Which one? A game designer lacking in gaming experience likely wouldn't get hired anywhere that has an ounce of standard. A UX designer without gaming experience might get hired, but UX is about communication, intuition and flow. A UX designer who worked on surgical software tooling could still be an effective member of a game dev team if their fundamentals are strong.

Investors and publishers often know very little to almost nothing about gameplay and technology and will rely purely on aesthetic and story.

Again, which one? Investors probably don't know much about the specifics of gameplay or game design because they don't need to, they need to understand ROI, a studio's ability to deliver on time, at budget and quality, and the likely total obtainable market based on genre and fit.

Publishers -- depending on whether you are talking about mobile or console/box model -- will usually be intimately familiar with how to position a product for market, what KPIs (key performance indicators) to target and how to optimize within the available budget.

This is why you have some indie devs kicking big studio butts with sometime less than 1% the ressources.

This has happened. I'm not sure it's an actual trend. There are lots of misses in the game industry. Making successful products is hard -- it's hard at the indie level, it's hard at the AAA level. I would estimate there are a thousand failed Indies for every one you call out as 'kicking a big studio's butt.' Lots of failed AAA titles too. It's just how it goes.

The same, by the way, is true of film, TV, books and music. A lot of misses go into making a hit. Cultural products are hard to make, and nobody has the formula for success. Most teams try, fail, then try again. Sometimes, they succeed.

you expect the director, producers and distributors to have a decent level of knowledge of the challenges of making a movie.

But not about the source material.

Adaptations nowadays suck ass because there's no fans in charge.

I 100% believe this. It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad work, but the way you phrased it makes a dozen or so instances of "something feeling weird" make sense. Sometimes it's just a mismatch between the intensity of the fans fanaticism and the developer having to go to work every day and do a job.

I think game developers can harness this by embracing their modding communities. I'm currently waiting to see what Cities Skylines 2 is like. It has to be hard for a bunch of devs who seem like normies to develop a game for a bunch of nerds, some of whom know more about civil engineering and traffic planning than real engineers. :D The original was well-modded and it feels like the game was a collaboration between the community and the developers. To me, this kind of bridges the developer/gamer gap.

Game designer here. I'd say there are degrees in these. Most game designers I know love to play game, but which type of game that they love? Well train designer should be able to design anything, you might say that, but most people have a thing that they keen more than the other thing.

So, they may be very well verse on some genre and might not so much on some. Now, getting a job in the right company that making the right game that you are keen of might not be that easy.

I've seen some young to old designers who only play certain type of games and be clueless on other type and some who can adapt their design skills to many types of games.

But game development can't be without testing if they design something wrong, it should show up on test...

Still, sometimes you got the best devs and the test results came out surprised you.

It's easy to point what is wrong looking from the end product pov but when the design starts with a clean drawing board it's also very easy to miss things.

Game dev is hard man...

Idk but I really like Valve, I believe they care about the stuff they push out.

It was a thing I noticed regarding Ubisoft games that upper management seems to wish to make movies rather than games. It struck me home when the knife fight with Buck Hugues in Far Cry 3 was just a long chain of quicktime events like it was Dragon's Lair from the 1980s; disappointing because Far Cry 2 was all about game mechanics telling the story rather than cutscenes. (Which was, admittedly at cross purposes. It's a game about violence in a failed state in Africa with the futility of violence as a running theme. But it did that very well.)

Do you think this occurs equally across all big budget games?

A lot of the same things you mention about game development are also apparent in open source software which is why it is usually so terrible. Someone that can program some complicated visuals for a 3D modeling program does not mean that same person actually does 3D modeling, which is why the interface for so many open source programs are abysmal.

This is probably true of many many other industries. I work in automotive and while a lot of us care about delivering a quality product, the majority are not "car people" and have never changed a part on their car.