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[Flintty]

It would have been nice if they asked some devs too.

Did I read a different article?

 

[Apt101]

Won't likely happen for a long time when so many other people will do it for the same pay just go get a break in the industry

That seems to be one of the real downsides of the industry. It's a shame. I look at what many developers do, the technical skills and knowledge they possess alongside rare creative talent, and they could be living comfortable lives in other tech sectors. I was shocked when I found out how much many animators and artists make, even those that have to do a lot of programming along with their creative work. It's a real shame. I was making more as just a basic network admin, a job anyone could do with about two years of education and/or experience.

 

[Metfanant]

I'm not one to ever call people lazy, or question whether certain jobs are harder, or more demanding than others...we all have more than our ahare of areas during our own work that could be used more efficiently. Ive always been a procrastinator that worka best under the pressure of an impending deadline, and hell, I'm posting this from work right now, and could be writing up a report or two...

but I have a certain take on this whole "crunch" stuff...

The entire idea of a "crunch" leading up to a game being ready for launch screams poor time management...if you are working on a project, and have a deadline then it is up to you to properly manage your time. If you need to work 80 hour weeks the last 2 months before a project deadline, then you didn't properly spread out the work load over the course of the project.

The one "myth" talks about the shower not being for late hours, but because employees are active and like to exercise or ride bikes..that's great, but guess what? Spend less time riding your bike, or showering at work and you might have less "crunch" time...

If I want to take an extra half hour for lunch, or go to my school's gym and work out for a half hour after lunch nobody is going to say anything to me, but I better have any of my duties completed on time or that's on me.

I could be totally off base, and obviously in many cases there are extenuating circumstances involved..but everyone deals with deadlines, and time management is a major part of that...

 

[Yasae]

Uh, most of these are all things I read on GAF almost daily.

The "game developers are rich" thing might not be as true any more as maybe it once was in the Ion Storm / Digital Anvil era when people were just spending crazy amounts of money on things that never materialized.

Ion Storm, for example, had a minimum salary of $65k... and that was for the receptionist.

But I think it's come back into play a bit because of Call of Duty devs, mobile games and maybe some Star Citizen.

None of these are representative of the industry at large, but the news will report on things like "Everyone bought a Ferrari with their bonuses" and not "Dev successfully makes Honda Accord payment on time."

The point is: ya gotta be ignorant to believe any one of these. The article doesn't even go into the finer points, like how development decisions can come off as lazy but are rarely made because of laziness (more like lack of time or beyond scope or _______).

And DLC may not be evil, but it has great margins and a hell of a lot of it can be defined as a rip-off. I mean, tough shit on that one. It's true.

 

[KampferZeon]

Misconception: “Casual” Games Don’t Matter

Robert Yang, developer of erotic games such as Cobra Club and Hurt Me Plenty, thinks that people underestimate just how important “casual” games actually are:

I can't believe no one disagree with this. This developer is claiming his Android/iOS "Kim Kardashian" game is culturally more important than DOTA2.

Some Kotaku hidden agenda, this shouldnt be in the list.

For the record, I strongly agree with the other 9 items in the list

 

[Pie and Beans]

2 of these beimg misconceptions is being "nice" to game devs that are often fragile flowers.

Laziness is often to be levelled at project managers and producers. Its rarely levelled at grunts in crunch, staring into a bleary dawn for the 200th day. Because producers and managers are not actually drawing up meticulous plans, cast iron budgets, and scheduling, you get shitty crunch, feature creep and so on. They are often lazy in their jobs and so are the other higher ups. Look no further than the recent Destiny shit. You think not checking in on your games story for... 2-3 years(?!) is anything other than abject douchebag laziness?

Game developers are forced to not care about bugs, once again... due to poor scheduling! You cant say its because certain bugs "didnt come up" if youre actually employing a QA department worth a damn. Theres thousands upon thousands of QA stories where the dev team just shot down their input and told them "as intended".

Sorry your feelings get hurt game devs, but your business is a rickety laughable one in many ways and its gonna take actually wanting to change half of this shit before you stop hearing the same echoes.

 

[BokehKing]

People lose their families trying to make me happy, the consumer?

Man that sucks, I'm not comfortable with people being in situations like that at all, especially for ungrateful people

 

[ito007]

The misconception about games making money I think is particularly interesting. A lot of people like to explain a studio/publisher's logic by saying "well they are trying to make as much money as possible." And don't get me wrong, they need money to sustain themselves, but it's not very often when game businesses expect everything to sell. Sometimes they make games they KNOW won't sell. Many businesses work like that.

 

[mclem]

Sorry your feelings get hurt game devs, but your business is a rickety laughable one in many ways and its gonna take actually wanting to change half of this shit before you stop hearing the same echoes.

Don't think people don't want it to change. It's just hard to figure out a way in which the people who suffer most from it can cause change. I mentioned on the previous page the way there's a detrimental feedback loop; the publisher wants the best ROI possible on any funding they give, the software house needs the publisher to commit to a contract so they can keep in the black, and the individual developers are a resource the software house can push to the limit in order to offer the best possible bang-for-buck to the publisher.

How do you drive a wedge in that? What does the software house need to do in order to ensure their developers are not run ragged?

As I said before, that's why I'm finding crowdfunding so exciting, but it also goes some way to demonstrating the inherent issue; I've seen Kickstarters that fail, come back with a reduced goal, and then succeed - in a sense, that's the same process as a software house pushing harder in order to secure the funding they're desperate to get. I'm not sure any such KS have finished yet (do correct me if I'm wrong), but I'll be interested to see what was axed from the initial scope.

 

[Blueblur1]

So basically "10 Things Anyone Reasonable Would Already Know About Gaming".

Most people aren't reasonable though. Or knowledgeable.

 

[Fantastapotamus]

Do you know how much the writer for a TV show makes for an episode they wrote?

I would imagine that depends on the show, the contract, the writer etc. What's the connection again?

 

[PetriP-TNT]

Most of these seem pretty obvious and any rational thinking person would already know all this.

It's basically a list of what people with a lack of common sense say

 

[DistortionOfReality]

To me Day 1 DLC will always mean that they chose to remove some content from the game in order to sell as DLC.

It's literally right there in the article. The game is often finished and ready to ship weeks/months before the release date. So they start working on the DLC, it's either that or all the devs get invited to a firing party the moment the game is shipped. In some cases they will start work on the DLC before the discs get pressed, hence there being some data already on disc, not that they cut content to drain money from the consumer (in MOST cases at least). If you want your game to have any legs you need to start working on the DLC months in advance of the launch, otherwise your game is gone from the public eye by the time you come to release it, resulting in less interest and less sales. It's all pretty simple and makes sense when you think about it, and I for one am all for devs keeping their jobs after they have put in so much time and effort on a product.

 

[Vilam]

To me Day 1 DLC will always mean that they chose to remove some content from the game in order to sell as DLC.

Yeah, cool - why educate yourself?

"Game Development Is Easy? A Good Idea Is All a Game Needs? All Game Developers Are Rich?"

These are in no way common misconceptions.

These all seem tenuous at best in my opinion. I certainly don't think anyone believes that all developers are rich, nor that realistic visuals make for a better game.

Two examples from just the first page of people sticking their fingers in their ears while screaming "LA-LA-LA can't hear you!" This is all commonly heard loud and clear by anyone working in the industry.

 

[NipplesAndToes23]

Lazy devs is the most oft repeated catch phrase in online gaming forums. And over shit like "I can't believe this beautiful 60fps game occasionally drops frames" or "I can't believe this AAA game runs at sub HD."

Yeah that shit annoying tho and this is applicable to any form or art out there. You don't see that shit in the Indie community threads and you don't see it in the art, photography, writing, or film communities here either.