
Are video game programmers looked down upon by other kinds of programmers? - programminggeek
http://brianknapp.me/video-game-programmers-looked-down-upon/
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paulrpotts
Having never worked on a modern game, but having been a programmer my whole
career:

On the plus side, I'm impressed by the technical chops of the folks who can
design optimized lighting systems, physics engines, and keep the whole things
modeling and working within their frame rate budgets. That's impressive.

On the minus side, it's a bit depressing how much of a "cheat" game
programming often is -- how game AI is really a series of dumbed-down decision
trees and hacks, how models are faked and simplified to keep up with frame
rates, etc. You get the impression that there is this wonderfully
sophisticated model going on when I think in most cases it is very phony and
shallow. Also, I feel a bit sad when I think of so much engineering talent
going into developing... well, games. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy games, but
I'll always be a "casual gamer" \-- that is, a "serious person," where I think
of the coolest games, designed for "serious gamers" as, basically, enormous
time sinks and money pits that prey on people without enough meaningful things
to do.

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stonemetal
Looked down on? not really. They are given an appropriate amount of crap over
their big egos, and lack of engineering discipline. Game development gives one
a great tool set that is valued by other software engineering segments.

