
What I Learned at Activision - jasim
http://c0de517e.blogspot.com/2019/03/what-i-learned-at-activision.html
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gallerdude
_> What’s interesting about this particular bunch of smart people, is that
they are also what actors call “grounded”. There is little bullshit going
around. Tech is not made for tech’s sake. We don’t even have an engine, in a
time where even if you really just have a game, one game, one codebase, you
would call silly codenames each library and each little bit of tech, and maybe
put some big splash screens before your main titles. Made with.. xyz.

This is actually a lesson that originates from the early days of Call of Duty
at IW. From what I’m told, IW never named their engine, because any time you
name something it becomes a bit more of a thing, and you start working for it.
And they were a studio making games, the game is the thing. Nothing else._

This taps into a really interesting idea that I've been thinking about a lot.
In high school, when I first started making games, this is exactly what I'd
do. I would have Unity open on two monitors, and post to my snapchat story of
how excited I was to be an indie developer.

I had a similar thought when I watched the making of documentary for The Last
Jedi, everyone was so excited that they were making a Star Wars movie. But in
1977, I'm sure George Lucas was just thrilled to be able to make what he
wanted to make.

I think this is what PG meant when he described playing house[1]. I think
there's a lower local maximum for imitating what your heroes did or innovating
for the sake of innovating than the global maximum of trying to make something
really good. There's nothing wrong with getting excited about what you're
created, but if you have any way to direct that excitement, direct it towards
making something that people will love. (Not something that you'll love
making).

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/before.html](http://paulgraham.com/before.html)

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cwyers
I don't know. I've played games where the engine had no name, and games where
the studio-made engine had a name, and games where they licensed an engine and
made it work. And I don't think there has been any kind of a trend in what
games I've enjoyed more, or even which ones had better rendering. This sounds
like one of those things that doesn't really matter, but if you've gotten used
to doing it one way, you think it's the right way.

~~~
magicalist
Many enjoyable games also came together in extended crunch time. Doesn't mean
that's a good way to get to the end result.

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schleppy_oc
I think my time ended shortly before Angelo’s began, but my experience with
Central Tech (worked mostly with Steve L. and Guarav) was that they were
_very_ talented generalists. They were the team you dropped in to work on C++
game code, Lua UI code, Erlang server code, or Python scripts. They were a
resource to work on anything you needed and you could give them a task knowing
it would be done well.

The director of development at BeachHead studios originally applied for
Central Tech.

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pezo1919
How do independent R&D teams know if something is already solved or not? There
are so many papers out there, how can they focus obtaining the new information
but try their own solutions as well for a commercial purpose? Maybe its a n00b
question and it only means I have 0 R&D xp, but things I am thinking about is
always found in a paper with tons of references.

That is why I not decided to choose a similar position, because what I feel
I'd do is asking permission from my boss to check "all the necessary
information out there" to make sure I am aware of existing technology not to
reinvent or miss things. Would take infinite time obviously. :D

~~~
c0de517e
Author here - we are specialists who know their field. More or less, of course
you can't know all, we also collaborate with each other, but keeping up with
published research is not that tough. Also, not that useful, it is useful,
yes, but in practice even a problem that is "solved" in the literature means
only that you have some ideas of where to start. Dropping things to the
specifics of production always implies a lot more R&D, even if the solution in
the literature is actually, realistic, stable, fast etc...

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Impossible
Although I only worked indirectly with Angelo during my time at Activision
(Sledgehammer games on Danny Chan's team) he was a big influence on my career
at the time. He gave a talk at the Activision summit that originally got me
interested in machine learning. His weekly Friday links helped me greatly
level up in rendering knowledge, and I liked them so much I continued the
practice for almost two years at Funomena while I was there. Definitely
interested to see where he ends up. The end of his goodbye hints that he's
starting a startup or going indie rather than joining another big game company
or FANG. Looking forward to his talk at GDC.

~~~
c0de517e
That was my worst talk! Thanks for the kind words.

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pbwolf
Nice summary of all the experiences at different studios. Added points for
being in multiple studios in Vancouver. ;)

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nikentic
Really reflects how I feel at King as well. Spot on!

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aliswe
Your english made me feel you are french but you name sounds like arabic
(jasim)?

~~~
ido
It doesn't matter to the subject at hand, but there are plenty of immigrants
in French speaking countries as well as French speakers in countries with a
lot of non-ethnic-French people (for example I have an older relative who was
born in Morocco and speak French as her first language).

Regardless, as their first job was in Italy I'd sooner assume they are
Italian.

