
On Game Development - akbiggs
https://akbiggs.silvrback.com/on-game-development
======
Macsenour
I made games for 30+ years and I had this exact question about year 4. I was
sitting at home, writing some 6502 I think, and my cousin called. She had to
call to tell me about a Commodore 64 game she bought from FisherPrice. She
started to describe it to me, an educational game where you controlled a
penguin who dropped letters down a chute to form words. I had to interrupt her
to explain, I had written that game.

She had no idea I was the author and designer.

She spent the next 45 minutes telling me how it was the only game she and her
daughter played together. She told me that her daughter was motivated to read,
and became an avid reader, after playing my game.

I never felt more rewarded, or that I was doing the right thing with my life
so mach as during that conversation.

Somehow I think it fair to add that the last game I was the producer for,
involved pushing over a port-o-potty, putting wheels on it and then pushing it
down a hill and off a cliff to see how far it would go. Don't laugh, Potty
Racers went to #1 in the App Store...

~~~
fit2rule
On the flipside: I once worked for a major games vendor (won't say who) and
had this terrible experience - worked 60hour-weeks 5 in a row, to get the
online multiplayer backend running and able to support more than a few hundred
users. Got it up, deployed, rolled out, in use.

Come in the next day, the CEO and all the head devs are crowed around the
server console, watching the stats after release, this conversation happens,
verbatim (I still remember every detail):

    
    
        CEO: "Time for my favourite question - How long has the longest 
        player online been playing?"
        HeadDev: "Lets see .. 12 hours since we launched, longest active 
        session is .. 11 hours, 45 minutes.  No pause."
        CEO: "HOORAY!!  CELEBRATION!  WE GOT OUR FIRST ADDICT!!!!"
        HeadDev: "Yay!"
        CEO: "Wait .. how old is he.. ?"
        HeadDev: "Profile says: 12"
        CEO: "YAY, he'll be with us for years!"
        Me: "Isn't that a bit .. unhealthy .. for a 12 year old?  Its summer, 
        schools out, the kid should be .. enjoying some weather?"
        CEO: "We don't like that thinking here .. are you sure you 
        know who you work for?"
    

Oh well, that killed the games industry for me, well and good. Haven't logged
on to a multiplayer game in 12 years.

TL;DR: The people behind the curtain do _not_ have your best interests in
minds, kidz ..

~~~
CmonDev
Which geek did not play for 12 hours one day?

~~~
fit2rule
Those who had and did their homework, or wrote code, or tried to do something
with computers other than just waste time.

Lots of geeks don't play games.

~~~
CmonDev
I managed to do both :). My statement was a generalization, but I had seen
more gamer programmers than not.

~~~
fit2rule
Ah, I'm with you anyway, I did indeed spend hours and hours and hours, at one
point in my life, gaming away .. for me it was Descent2 and Warcraft2, the
good ol' 90's, and well .. it didn't last long. I realized I was better off
writing code than running someone elses. ;)

------
null_ptr
Don't forget the stress relief video games can give. Society managed to make
even sheltered 1st world lives stressful thanks to unrealistic expectations
imposed on a personal and professional level. We're all apes though, despite
all that's expected of us. And these apes love to wonder about their world and
explore its every corner. Video games satiate this desire somewhat - and that
will do, on a fucking Monday night after a long, frustrating day at work.

~~~
voltagex_
Also [http://www.childsplaycharity.org/](http://www.childsplaycharity.org/)

~~~
ojii
almost time for desertbus again. hilarious way to support childs play:
desertbus.org

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DanielRibeiro
Jonathan Blow (Braid and Indie Fund) recently gave an amazing presentation on
the evolution of Television, and he made an interesting parallel to the
evolution of games:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AxFzf...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AxFzf6yIfcc)

~~~
GuiA
Jonathan Blow is one of my favorite game developers of recent times. Not only
is he brilliant technically, he's also an amazing game academic (there are
plenty of people on either side, but few manage to be both). The whole of his
lectures, talks and writings are heavily recommended!

~~~
telephonetemp
If you liked Jonathan Blow's lectures make sure to check out Chris Crawford's.
A number of them are on his channel on YouTube. Crawford was more or less the
first game developer to combine practical work with academic study of game
design (and he's wrote the first-ever book on it). Your might know him as the
developer of Balance of the Planet and the founder of the GDC; the latter he
then left after the famous "Dragon speech", which is probably the first thing
of his you should look up.

~~~
GuiA
Oh yes, I absolutely love Chris Crawford's work as well- thank you!

An up and coming dev I really like is Andy Hull (from the Spelunky remake
fame). He gave an amazing talk at GDC about drawing inspiration from
children's toys in game design, and I see much promise in him. :)

------
jdk
I used to make MMOs and we'd often question why we were doing it when we'd
read stories about people's relationships falling apart, kids flunking out of
school, or other really negative things that happened when people played too
much and didn't keep a handle on their life.

Then one day we got a letter. It was from a man who suffered a host of
physical ailments, including quadriplegia, and could barely leave his bed,
nevermind his house. In his letter, he wanted to thank us for making our game.
He made friends, lead a successful guild, and could feel powerful and
accomplishment in a way he couldn't in real life.

The stories would repeat themselves over the years, too... I know at least one
very successful HN denizen met his now-wife in our game. Families would stay
in touch and play together, groups of people who didn't know each other would
raise money to help guildmates who needed surgery or had fallen on hard times
and had trouble making ends meet, and so on.

It's for those people that I make games. (Or at least that's what I tell
myself when I'm having moments of doubt and questioning why I spend so much
time pushing bits.)

~~~
LukeWalsh
I'm curious about your experience developing MMOs. Would you mind emailing
me[at]lukewal[dot]sh? I am a student right now and interested in hearing from
someone who knows the full landscape.

------
cgag
I think I'd put games in the same category as music and painting and novels
and all the other pleasures that make us human.

What are we solving all those other problems for if not to make more time for
things like games?

~~~
CmonDev
Yes, it's like saying "you can have sound, you can have pictures, you can have
plays. But god forbid you from mixing them together, because that's like
useless and evil". Why do we even have this conversation? Either all art is
useless or games are not useless.

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reissbaker
It would be a drab, depressing existence to live out your slightly longer life
on a planet where everyone was a doctor and no one a novelist. Kudos for
making beautiful experiences.

------
phektus
I see game developers, especially those one-man indie efforts, to be modern
reincarnations of renaissance artist-cum-technologists. At their core is the
artist that longs to explore unknown world through manipulation of certain
mediums that may or may not lead to useful applications. I see the author as
somebody that takes pride in seeing his work affect people's daily lives. An
artist might not even care if anybody understands his work or if anybody cares
about it at all.

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dirkk0
I'd like to drop this link, which was posted to HN before without any
reaction: [http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-
narrative](http://hitboxteam.com/designing-game-narrative)

Especially after the impact that Minecraft has, my impression is that creating
games is your best bet to create new ways of story telling and user
interactions. My feeling is that we didn't even scratch the surface of what is
possible.

------
splitforce
Nice post Alex, thanks for that.

A lot of people forget how important two particular industries have been in
terms of pushing the envelope when it comes to computer processing and
Internet bandwidth technology: Pornography and gaming.

While porn and games are certainly among the more hedonistic (and certainly
less virtuous) of products, because people care so much about them is in large
part the reason why we have more powerful CPU/GPUs - for example - or faster
connection speeds. (I guess you can thank U.S. military investments for some
of this stuff as well.)

My point is, gaming is important. Like, really important. It might not have
the direct impact on African schoolchildren that Kiva or Doctors Without
Borders does, but one could argue that those organizations would not be able
to leverage the technology that they rely on so much if others hand't paved
the way. Keep doin' the good work, son! ;-)

------
chipsy
I investigated the "why make games" question recently:

[http://ludamix.com/essays/the_answer/index.html](http://ludamix.com/essays/the_answer/index.html)

~~~
braco_alva
Good post!

I specially liked the "Why should people bother playing the game I make?"
part. I keep making myself this question over and over again, and your answer
really clicked with me.

------
10098
While it's true that games don't necessarily have the same impact on people's
lives as other, more "important" work, for me, making a game or studying how a
game works is such a fun process that it's worth doing anyway.

I spent some time trying to make games in my high school years (NeHe's
tutorials helped me a lot)and trying to understand how other games work (I
remember the sense of achievement when I managed to switch textures in some
crappy FPS game).

Today I deeply regret that I didn't put enough effort to study this field
properly... I like my current gig, but I will always look at real game
developers with a sense of envy.

~~~
saraid216
> games don't necessarily have the same impact on people's lives as other,
> more "important" work

This is honestly more for lack of trying than because it just doesn't. Some
people are trying, but game development has the disadvantage of coming into
its own _after_ the ascent of capitalism and thus most people have been
introduced to it as a cash cow rather than as an artistic medium.

~~~
EvanKelly
That's an interesting thought. How different would the interactive games
landscape be if it was around during the renaissance. If game designers had
sponsors that supported their lifestyle.

As I write this, I think this is the utopian vision of crowd sourcing.
Creating a new class of patrons of the arts.

------
doctorpangloss
Fortunately it's been rare that someone has condescended to me that games are
pointless, cruel, evil or mere diversions in general. Games bring joy.
Although the same could probably be said of pornography, and yet porno isn't
getting any more mainstream of an art form…

Just being entertaining, I think, doesn't legitimize games.

Surely earning lots of money has something to do with gaming as a legitimate
full-time culture-making pursuit. A coworker taught a General Assembly class
whose attention immediately rose when he pointed out that Clash of Clans earns
more than $1 million a day selling virtual goods. But I don't think the
creative folks behind that game are necessarily proud of its making money—I
know I'm not exactly proud of making a slots game. And I don't think
casinos—the highest revenue game in town—are all that respected.

Being a growth industry probably doesn't legitimize games either, it seems.

The challenge though: that's why I make games. I think it's bigger than
breadth & depth of computer science. In one scientist's words, a game
developer rewires people's brains without reading any scientific literature.
Little could be as thrilling. And I know I look at guys like Brian Reynolds
and Will Wright as inspiration—smart cultural observers whose technical
wizardry turned into real social commentary.

------
bladedtoys
Why write them? Because games are play which is the most vital activity
humans, indeed mammals, engage in. Without it, not only would I not have this
very alphabet I'm writing in (which descends from drawings), but I and
everyone reading this would still be sitting in a bush very practically
gathering as many berries as we can to survive.

And as the gaming population becomes older, gaming will account for a larger
and larger percent of human play.

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kayoone
Games are entertainment, leisure time, fun and ignite creativity. If your game
can provide that to people, its probably doing alot more good to them than
many of the "life-changing" social apps out there.

Apart from that it poses many interesting technical challenges and will make
your a better programmer.

------
mildtrepidation
I wonder if the idea that what we're doing can and/or should be important or
world-changing is particularly strong in our industry, if it's something more
widely shared, or if it's more narrow (e.g. an HN thing).

We see it a lot here: People talking about how they want to change the world,
how they wish they were doing something more meaningful, etc. The reality is
that _almost no one_ does work with any sort of profound (positive) impact on
humanity or the world around us; the kind of philanthropic work that gets this
sort of love just is not that common.

The vast majority of work available, and the similarly vast majority of
potentially viable business models, just don't fit this mold. I'm not saying
we shouldn't aspire to be and do better, but I am suggesting that the
expectation that we should be involved in positive change at all times just
isn't reasonable or practical.

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pippy
I started making games when I was 5, and I love doing it. From flash to 3D
applications I've probably given it stab.

I've came to the conclusion that making games is far more constructive than
watching TV or playing games, but untimely you're wasting your players time.
Creating content now isn't novel, you're competing for users time which is
already saturated with other games (plus other mediums such as TV).

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CmonDev
"Is what I am doing actually important?" \- well it beats Facebook in terms of
usefulness.

------
otikik
Also, think of all the potential Hitlers that will be just playing your games
instead of doing anything mischievous. The more time you make those people
waste, the better.

