Jump to content

The Nerds And Game Developing


60 replies to this topic

#1 Inatu Elimor

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Ace Of Spades
  • Ace Of Spades
  • 306 posts
  • Location1.45 meters below sealevel

Posted 04 March 2020 - 09:58 AM

Lets keep it simple.
The programmers are nerds. We are nerds. If you are not a nerd you would not be still playing this game. Or you are stupid, so not being a nerd, playing this game, which makes my assumption invalid Posted Image
So back in the days we had our nerds programming games they themselves liked. MWO, for instance. Or MDK, Duke Nukem, Lands of Lore, Quake, Doom, Wing commander, to name a few. They had no idea how all would turn out, it was just a gamble. It was fun to fiddle with code and seeing what would come out. Or no, it was not a gamble, they just made games they liked to play themselves. But they sniffed the big money, learned to understand what no-nerds really liked, and conformed. Money rolling in. The compliance with the big companies. This resulted in nerd-bad games. What are we going to do about this, O beloved programmer nerds and mech warriors ?? Funding with backers seems to be no solution, see star citizen for example. Or MWO, to be precise.

Edited by Inatu Elimor, 04 March 2020 - 10:11 AM.


#2 FupDup

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Ace Of Spades
  • Ace Of Spades
  • 26,888 posts
  • LocationThe Keeper of Memes

Posted 04 March 2020 - 07:24 PM



#3 FRAGTAST1C

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Fighter
  • The Fighter
  • 2,869 posts
  • LocationIndia

Posted 04 March 2020 - 07:35 PM

Achievements and Money go hand-in-hand. People who scoff at money are equally as bad as the people who only want money.

#4 Davegt27

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Ace Of Spades
  • Ace Of Spades
  • 6,952 posts
  • LocationCO

Posted 05 March 2020 - 01:53 PM

Quote

If you are not a nerd you would not be still playing this game. Or you are stupid,


yeah pretty stupid is probably true

I am looking back to 1980 when my tech school instructor took us to his house to check out his TRS 80
that's when I saw my first PC game

I also remember one of our Tsgts holding up a mag saying this is a big deal
IBM was going to start making PCs, I scoffed but he was right
I spent 30 years working on computerized test stations

ever see compute mag

https://www.commodor...e-1-through-43/

its been a long road that's for sure

#5 VonBruinwald

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Undisputed
  • The Undisputed
  • 3,460 posts
  • LocationRandis IV

Posted 05 March 2020 - 02:02 PM

View PostDavegt27, on 05 March 2020 - 01:53 PM, said:

ever see compute mag

https://www.commodor...e-1-through-43/

its been a long road that's for sure




#6 dervishx5

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Workhorse
  • The Workhorse
  • 3,473 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 12:50 AM

Posted Image

#7 LordNothing

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Ace Of Spades
  • Ace Of Spades
  • 16,731 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 02:19 AM

its simple if they want me to buy games, they need to make good games. right now the industry is failing horribly at it.

#8 PhoenixFire55

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 5,725 posts
  • LocationSt.Petersburg / Outreach

Posted 06 March 2020 - 02:37 AM

View PostLordNothing, on 06 March 2020 - 02:19 AM, said:

its simple if they want me to buy games, they need to make good games. right now the industry is failing horribly at it.

Yep. For starters they need to actually make games first. Not empty shells to be filled with DLCs. That and early access cancer. The whole "hey fund my vision of a game I will never make" thing is killing gaming industry.

#9 GuardDogg

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Fearless
  • The Fearless
  • 1,026 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 04:17 AM

Here, the term "Nerd" is now different from the past and we laugh at it. What ever you do is considered "Nerd, nerdy". So if you are a massive drinker. You are considered a "Nerd Drinker". You like working 24 hours a day. You are considered a "Working Nerd". Scientists, doctors, those who love the stock market, "Nerd" Look at Bill Gates. A nerd in the billions of $$. If I was a nerd then, I sure wouldn't be typing this, and even be here.



#10 Kotzi

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 1,356 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 05:06 AM

I think you are using the word nerd wrong. A nerd is someone who excels in something but lacks almost equally in social skills. Who calls an alcoholic a drinking nerd? And i would doubt, that you can call all software programmers nerd.

BTT: The trend in creating a game nowadays seems to be building something around the ways of monetization. Because, in contrast to the "good old days" games are bigger, there is a lot of money needed to create games and a lot of money can be made. So greedy people will always try to get their share even if it means to cut down the creativity.

#11 GuardDogg

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Fearless
  • The Fearless
  • 1,026 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 05:23 AM

View PostKotzi, on 06 March 2020 - 05:06 AM, said:

I think you are using the word nerd wrong. A nerd is someone who excels in something but lacks almost equally in social skills. Who calls an alcoholic a drinking nerd? And i would doubt, that you can call all software programmers nerd.



Recall after work, telling the guys I need a drink. Then the guys would say "What a nerd.", and we all started laughing. "Get these nerds a drink!, I am buying!" Anything we enjoy now a days, we consider "Nerd". I still play the guitar today. "Gosh, what a nerd. Him and his guitars." And some people do have social skills and considered Nerds for doing so. Those who like "Star Wars", "Comics", "Star Trek", "collecting", "Cars", "Music", etc. Nerd.

Edited by GuardDogg, 06 March 2020 - 05:50 AM.


#12 Teenage Mutant Ninja Urbie

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Tip of the Spear
  • The Tip of the Spear
  • 1,678 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 06:00 AM

'nerd / nerdy' is a buzzword today, contrary to what it was a decade or 2/3 ago. it get's overused a lot.

concerning the 'computer gaming industry' and 'nerds' - well no. yeah, programmers are still nerds, sure; the guys in charge are businessmen today, however*
I fear that the almighty dollar comes first, each and every effing time nowadays. aside from small indie studios, there is little hope left for "good games" - there's just a lot of profitable ones.


*or drunk people living on an island ;P

#13 PhoenixFire55

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 5,725 posts
  • LocationSt.Petersburg / Outreach

Posted 06 March 2020 - 08:01 AM

View PostKotzi, on 06 March 2020 - 05:06 AM, said:

Because, in contrast to the "good old days" games are bigger, there is a lot of money needed to create games and a lot of money can be made.

You mean to tell me that it takes more money to create games now, with all the assets, engines and all sorts of developer/programmer tools readily available for free, than it took back in the 90s and 2000s when there was none of it and nearly every game was made from scratch?

LOL.

Do NOT make excuses for bad devs. Bad devs are bad, period.

#14 RickySpanish

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Veteran Founder
  • Veteran Founder
  • 3,510 posts
  • LocationWubbing your comrades

Posted 06 March 2020 - 09:41 AM

View PostPhoenixFire55, on 06 March 2020 - 08:01 AM, said:

You mean to tell me that it takes more money to create games now, with all the assets, engines and all sorts of developer/programmer tools readily available for free, than it took back in the 90s and 2000s when there was none of it and nearly every game was made from scratch?

LOL.

Do NOT make excuses for bad devs. Bad devs are bad, period.


In a word: Yes. In a couple more words: Surely you are trolling. Modern AAA games cost orders of magnitude more to make than they did in the 90s and 2000s. Even smaller indie games were far simpler to make "back in the day". You could practically build an engine just following NeHe tutorials and a third party model loader. Nowadays sure you get the engine for "free", but you also need to produce high quality art and sound assets with high resolution materials, not to mention "season" type support for games where players expect tons of extra content long after your game is released or they will summarily declare your game dead and review bomb it.

Edited by RickySpanish, 06 March 2020 - 09:42 AM.


#15 PhoenixFire55

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 5,725 posts
  • LocationSt.Petersburg / Outreach

Posted 06 March 2020 - 11:11 AM

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 09:41 AM, said:

In a word: Yes. In a couple more words: Surely you are trolling. Modern AAA games cost orders of magnitude more to make than they did in the 90s and 2000s.

Oh please, do tell how about 99 iterations of AAA titles like Call of Duty (which are 99.9% all exactly same) cost more to make ... lol

Its actually both hilarious and disgusting how modern "AAA" devs want to make more and more money on a sub-par (at best) product that not only doesn't change at all, but actually manages to get worse over time. And there are plenty examples, ranging from Paradox strategy games to FIFAs. I guess their games are so bad, they are forced to spend zillions on marketing, that does increase prices.

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 09:41 AM, said:

Even smaller indie games were far simpler to make "back in the day".

Were they? ... Maybe it was because people who made them actually had a clue what they were doing? Because they had to sell a complete game and wouldn't have had a chance to pump out 10GB patches and DLCs for months onward? And because they knew they couldn't sell you empty promises and deliver exactly nothing covering themselves with "BetaTM" and "Early Access"?

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 09:41 AM, said:

You could practically build an engine just following NeHe tutorials and a third party model loader.

Firstly ... no. Second, if we talk about indie games you can do smth similar today just the same, easier in fact.

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 09:41 AM, said:

Nowadays sure you get the engine for "free", but you also need to produce high quality art and sound assets with high resolution materials, not to mention "season" type support for games where players expect tons of extra content long after your game is released or they will summarily declare your game dead and review bomb it.

Laughable. Games in 90s were one-and-done, no DLCs, no additional content of any sort, and yet they engaged you for days and months. In fact most people at least 25-30 years old have plenty of ancient games they could gladly replay over and over, simply coz those are good games. Nowadays "extra content" is most of the time just as shallow as the empty games themselves. But of course, when you spent all your money on crack and booze high resolution art ... ain't nobody got time for actual ... you know ... gameplay. But sure, it looks good, for about 15 minutes.

And you know whats the worst part, what really does kill the industry? ... Its the people like that, who defend developers who do fk nothing yet expect to harvest AAA game revenues at the same time.

#16 RickySpanish

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Veteran Founder
  • Veteran Founder
  • 3,510 posts
  • LocationWubbing your comrades

Posted 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM

View PostPhoenixFire55, on 06 March 2020 - 11:11 AM, said:

Oh please, do tell how about 99 iterations of AAA titles like Call of Duty (which are 99.9% all exactly same) cost more to make ... lol

Its actually both hilarious and disgusting how modern "AAA" devs want to make more and more money on a sub-par (at best) product that not only doesn't change at all, but actually manages to get worse over time. And there are plenty examples, ranging from Paradox strategy games to FIFAs. I guess their games are so bad, they are forced to spend zillions on marketing, that does increase prices.


Here's an article with research on the rising cost of video-games, crucially where possible the writer factored out marketing costs:

https://venturebeat....-cost-of-games/

You can see there that costs have increased hugely. The reasons are many, but pretty much all boil down to consumer demand for higher fidelity graphics, audio, animation and gameplay mechanics.

View PostPhoenixFire55, on 06 March 2020 - 11:11 AM, said:

Were they? ... Maybe it was because people who made them actually had a clue what they were doing? Because they had to sell a complete game and wouldn't have had a chance to pump out 10GB patches and DLCs for months onward? And because they knew they couldn't sell you empty promises and deliver exactly nothing covering themselves with "BetaTM" and "Early Access"?


People back in the 80s were no better at writing performant, reliable code than they are now. Indeed, the ET game of '83 is widely considered to be the vanguard of the great video-game collapse, and that game was a pile of bug ridden rubbish. The history of gaming is littered with poorly written crap, the difference with modern games is that there's an opportunity to fix them... to an extent. When one looks back at games it's easy to remember all the good ones, and to falsely assume that since there are so many bad games coming out now, that the quality of games has decreased. Actually, you are just remembering the classics.

View PostPhoenixFire55, on 06 March 2020 - 11:11 AM, said:

Firstly ... no. Second, if we talk about indie games you can do smth similar today just the same, easier in fact.


Yes. You could. I know this because I did. With more advanced tools come more advanced expectations. At the very beginning of the gaming era in the 80s it was perfectly possible for a single programmer to create an entire game, including art and sound effects. The reason that everyone and their Mum wasn't doing it back then was because games were a newly emerging entertainment medium.

View PostPhoenixFire55, on 06 March 2020 - 11:11 AM, said:

Laughable. Games in 90s were one-and-done, no DLCs, no additional content of any sort, and yet they engaged you for days and months. In fact most people at least 25-30 years old have plenty of ancient games they could gladly replay over and over, simply coz those are good games. Nowadays "extra content" is most of the time just as shallow as the empty games themselves. But of course, when you spent all your money on crack and booze high resolution art ... ain't nobody got time for actual ... you know ... gameplay. But sure, it looks good, for about 15 minutes.

And you know whats the worst part, what really does kill the industry? ... Its the people like that, who defend developers who do fk nothing yet expect to harvest AAA game revenues at the same time.


Again you're remembering only the classics, there were lots of buggy failures released back in the day that simply bombed because they had some game breaking issues that could not be patched.

#17 VonBruinwald

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • The Undisputed
  • The Undisputed
  • 3,460 posts
  • LocationRandis IV

Posted 06 March 2020 - 11:54 AM

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

Again you're remembering only the classics, there were lots of buggy failures released back in the day that simply bombed because they had some game breaking issues that could not be patched.


HOW DARE YOU!

E.T. was an amazing game and don't you dare even think to put a slight on Superman 64!

#18 Prototelis

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Shredder
  • Shredder
  • 4,789 posts

Posted 06 March 2020 - 11:58 AM

Uhm, the workflow in a modern game is easily 10 times bigger than a game from the late 90s or early 2000s.

#19 PhoenixFire55

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 5,725 posts
  • LocationSt.Petersburg / Outreach

Posted 06 March 2020 - 12:31 PM

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

Here's an article with research on the rising cost of video-games, crucially where possible the writer factored out marketing costs:

https://venturebeat....-cost-of-games/

You can see there that costs have increased hugely. The reasons are many, but pretty much all boil down to consumer demand for higher fidelity graphics, audio, animation and gameplay mechanics.

Every article and every research is sponsored by somebody. I have exactly zero reason to believe any of that because it is obvious who has the money to sponsor the research that'll happen to be favorable to them. I also happen to understand a thing or two about programming and have a number of if not friends, but good acquaintances working in the industry, specifically making game-engines. Talking to them over the years I know very well exactly how the industry has changed its approach to various things, including for example said audio and animation. All I'm gonna say is that the exact same things are being done with spending 100-1000 times more money. Feel free to guess yourself were the difference between actual cost and money spent goes.

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

People back in the 80s were no better at writing performant, reliable code than they are now. Indeed, the ET game of '83 is widely considered to be the vanguard of the great video-game collapse, and that game was a pile of bug ridden rubbish.

Load of BS.

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

The history of gaming is littered with poorly written crap, the difference with modern games is that there's an opportunity to fix them... to an extent. When one looks back at games it's easy to remember all the good ones, and to falsely assume that since there are so many bad games coming out now, that the quality of games has decreased. Actually, you are just remembering the classics.

Yeah, right ... lol
So, how happens that even though there are far far more games being made each year now, there is actually less "classics" made per year?

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

Yes. You could. I know this because I did. With more advanced tools come more advanced expectations. At the very beginning of the gaming era in the 80s it was perfectly possible for a single programmer to create an entire game, including art and sound effects. The reason that everyone and their Mum wasn't doing it back then was because games were a newly emerging entertainment medium.

There are brilliant games being made by a single person or a very small groups of people today all the same. The difference is that nowadays everyone and their mum does do it and thus 99% of games made are utter garbage. Not only that, but everyone and their mums actually expect people to pay for their garbage. And whats worse, people do pay for said garbage, or even for empty space where garbage was supposed to be. And there isn't any kind of repercussions for the devs who take money and deliver nothing.

Game devs have shoved this concept where they get paid first and then maybe they'll make a semi-decent game down our throats. It kills the industry plain and simple. The only way to go is to have a developer invest into his game first and then sell it. Because its the only way to ensure there is responsibility for the quality of the product.

View PostRickySpanish, on 06 March 2020 - 11:52 AM, said:

Again you're remembering only the classics, there were lots of buggy failures released back in the day that simply bombed because they had some game breaking issues that could not be patched.

Stop assuming what I'm remembering. There were plenty of bugged games. But not even close percentage wise to how many bugged games are made now, and surely not even close to the amount of games that never progress beyond alpha yet are being sold. Again, back then people wouldn't even dare realease a game in a state, that seems to be normal to be released now. And the amount of games that actually do get patched today is hilariously low. "Be glad we've released smth you've payed us for at all" is a go-to motto.

Edited by PhoenixFire55, 06 March 2020 - 12:33 PM.


#20 RickySpanish

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Veteran Founder
  • Veteran Founder
  • 3,510 posts
  • LocationWubbing your comrades

Posted 06 March 2020 - 12:35 PM

Would you care to back up any of what you said with anything other than your own opinion though? I already answered your wall of text with another wall of text. You could have just replied with "nu-uh!" and saved yourself some trouble. Talking about the relative quality of games over time is unlikely to produce any quantifiable answer, since there are many ways to measure quality and most of those are subjective. What we can say for sure is that games have become far more elaborate, and that the face of modern gaming is very different today.

Edited by RickySpanish, 06 March 2020 - 12:40 PM.






1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users