Rock, Paper, Shotgun

05/04/2009 at 21:53 Larry says:

I enjoyed reading “Mothers, Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Game Developers”.

05/04/2009 at 22:06 Adam Hepton says:

It’s even harder to champion indie games that are fucking terrible, like all the ones I’ve tried on 360 have been.

05/04/2009 at 22:11 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:

A lot of the Play This Thing article was actually about the gritty, gossipy side of the controversy itself. The advice to stay away from Digipen or Full Sail was pretty striking, though. Is the IGDA a proper union? You’d think programmers need one, especially considering all the past shenanigans that’ve been going on in the industry.

And, like Jeff Vogel, I do loves me some stat-building and loot-taking.

05/04/2009 at 22:17 Kris says:

This is not an incisive nor witty comment, but Mike Capps sounds like a total B’tard. He might as well say we prey on the dysfunctional people in the industry, who wont even realised they are being screwed. It’s like an exaggeration of Pop Idol, Big Brother, Jerry Springer excuse to laugh and watch the participants because they want to be on tv.

05/04/2009 at 22:46 Baris says:

Wow. Greg Costikyan’s piece was very disheartening, almost depressing. I was hoping to take a course in Software Engineering and Game development next year (yes, I’m embarrassingly younger than everyone else here), but now I’m not so sure.

For anyone that’s already a developer: Does having a degree with ‘Game Development’ in the title give much of an advantage, or would a regular Computer Science degree be the wiser choice?

05/04/2009 at 22:51 Kitt Basch says:

Your games are LYING to you! You are IGNORANT for believing you’re playing them.

I just don’t like the language the author of that Escapist article uses, it’s almost as if he’s angry at games for some reason. It’s like shouting at a puppy for pooping on the carpet.

05/04/2009 at 22:58 Kris says:

The following quote from a post on Soren’s metacritic article struck me – “It’s true that player feedback is not ‘measurable metric’ that you can put into a contract or even a boardroom meeting, but following forums would give decision-makers a much better idea of what players like and what they don’t.”
I assume the poster doesn’t put stock in the idea that gamers can negatively influence sequels through their criticism. Gamers that will engage in forum debates et al regarding particular games or genres’ do not neccessarily represent a broad spectrum of views. Personally I think it can lead to reductivism in a genre, such as the adventure genre (i.e. in the lineage of Maniac Mansion) seems to suffer from. I’ll stop here as I’m sure I’ve read articles that deal with this much more eloquently.

05/04/2009 at 23:11 rob says:

Mo: It’s more of a perception thing I suppose. To me indie implies struggling developers going it alone and sticking it to the man, doing The Right Thing. People like 2D Boy releasing Linux ports is incredibly cheering from a purely idealogical standpoint. It’s obviously ridiculous – these people are businesses like any other developer – but the perception is there just like with music.

…is it “hard to champion an indie game when it’s tied to a company like Apple”?
So far the iPhone, despite being hugely promising, has been limited to some pretty uninspiring shovelware, not to mention the fact that Steve Jobs is even more committed to created closed platforms than Microsoft.

As for the finance stuff, it’s a real shame there’s not something similar to Steam but more open, or instead a service on Steam that would allow any submissions. I think that’s one of the huge failings on digital distribution services at the moment. I can understand they don’t want to take the flak for shoddy games but Steam’s technical support is already non-existent so I can’t really see the issue. The iPhone store only checks that your application isn’t stuffed full of porn or viruses before allowing it, why couldn’t Steam or another distributor provide a similar service?

05/04/2009 at 23:25 Baris says:

@rob: I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying correctly. Is it that you’re asking why Steam won’t let any and all games that apply be on their service? If so, Valve have said they purposefully try to only let games that hold up to a certain standard on Steam. To be honest I appreciate that while browsing in their catalogue of games it’s not often you come across something that obviously has no good qualities, it’s less of a risk to make a purchase without tracking down a review of an obscure game.

05/04/2009 at 23:54 Baris says:

@Larington: The majority of degrees here take 4 years also, so the article is no less relevant because of the American perspective. Overall it was definitely very interesting and helpful. Thanks a lot.

06/04/2009 at 00:13 Wurzel says:

Re: escapist article, I think it misses the point somewhat, at least from how the tone felt to me. It seemed to be all about “games are lying to you when they create involving experiences” while failing to remember that at their core all games which seek to convey a message will place artificial restrictions on the player at some time. I, personally, much prefer battles I only just win than ones I breeze through or that crush me, and if it takes a little behind-the-scenes tinkering to ensure that every player gets that experience that’s absolutely fine by me.

About the programming thing, I would agree that you should avoid specific game design courses. This is because a) a degree in computer science, maths, physics etc will prepare you for a great deal of jobs besides games, and b) the things a studio wants you to do for them is often proprietary, according to their way of doing things, and using different tools, methods and pipelines from what you may have learned in your degree in game development. A degree in a ‘hard’ subject will give you a much better foundation to be trained from than the shallow but broad view given by a Game Design course.

06/04/2009 at 00:54 Kester says:

That Too Human paper gave me rage. She might have had something interesting to say, but it was so wrapped in unreadable, impenetrable bollocks that I never found out what it was. Academia can piss right off.

06/04/2009 at 01:15 drewski says:

Oh, and I want that 6 page feature on everything that’s wrong with Deus Ex, if only to annoy the fanboys.

06/04/2009 at 01:39 windlab says:

Jolly HTML going wrong again.
Anyway, meant to post a link to the question being answered by Thomas Arundel of Introversion: http://forums.introversion.co.uk/multiwinia/viewtopic.php?t=2461

06/04/2009 at 02:12 Alex says:

I can’t believe you guys missed the most interesting/informative interview of the week.

06/04/2009 at 02:40 TheLordHimself says:

@Baris

Just one more thing, often you have the choice of optional modules (usually at least two half year ones per year), if you take normal SoftEng or CS you could pick the more games related ones like on ours there was 3D Modeling for Games using Unreal3 and one other that I forgot the name of.

06/04/2009 at 03:18 Alistair says:

Why Kieron, why? Did I miss a newsbit somewhere?

06/04/2009 at 04:15 Caiman says:

I’d be interested to see if the sales figures on those XBox community games suddenly increases dramatically following what can only be the first piece of publicity they have ever received. Gee, thanks for telling us!

And Kieron, how dare you leave us! We shall hunt you down and make you pay for… well, whatever it is that annoys us.

06/04/2009 at 05:27 cheeba says:

It seems some people might be reading a little too much into a good old leaving-because-I’m-dying-of-silly-illness joke.

06/04/2009 at 05:44 honolululu says:

Maybe if we knew what a ‘suburn’ was… ;)

06/04/2009 at 07:58 Jazmeister says:

Ooh look, my URL has gone weird.

06/04/2009 at 09:30 Jazmeister says:

Shouldn’t God have one of those golden backgrounds too?

06/04/2009 at 09:46 Dinger says:

DigiPen has a 99% graduate placement rate. Mull on that for a second.

If you’re going to get a game design degree, it better be a good one. There are plenty of DeVry Institutes out there that have figured out slackers will pay for something like that.

The two objections:

A. A professional culture of obscene working hours leads to burnout. The same used to be true of all computer jobs in the 80s. Beyond two weeks, “crunch time” produces disastrous results and considerably lower efficiency. Low hours/high efficiency is the only sustainable route.

this is known, the question is what your employer knows.

B. A dedicated games degree limits your options compared to a standard CS degree.
If you want to go into game development, you come out of a games program not only with standard CS skills, but also with a proven portfolio showing four years of game development and experience working on a team. Big software companies are increasingly aware of the talent and capabilities of graduates from these programs (for example, last I heard, Microsoft counts DigiPen among its top ten schools for recruitment).
Will it hamper you in the future? Maybe — it all depends on how your sell yourself. On the bright side, the field of game development is growing, and even in today’s market, you’re seeing Fortune 500 advertise for “game developer” jobs (serious games, anyone?).

Or, get a standard CS degree and develop a kick-ass mod.

06/04/2009 at 12:47 Gap Gen says:

I think XNA uses C#? Anyway, there might be non-game use for general AI programming, for things like automated systems and so on. For military UAVs, automation routines in games may be useful, although possibly something a bit smarter than most game AI might be handy.

06/04/2009 at 13:42 jalf says:

For anyone that’s already a developer: Does having a degree with ‘Game Development’ in the title give much of an advantage, or would a regular Computer Science degree be the wiser choice?

CS definitely. Of course it depends on what you want to do with your degree. Something like Digipen focuses on games, and teaches pretty much anything about games. And the problem with that (apart from the obvious, it limits what you can do *outside* games), it also means that there’s often a heavy focus on what’s hot *now*.

Something like Computer Science is a much more timeless degree. It’s not *about* programming, and certainly not *about* games. But it covers a wide range of stuff that’s useful in both areas. And will still be useful in 10 years time.
A game degree may well teach you programming, and it may even make you a *good* programmer. But it won’t make you a computer scientist.

Both degrees can probably land you a job in game development (although I believe most companies would prefer a good CS graduate if given the choice)

But of course, studying CS means that you’ll have to show some initiative if you want to make games. A Digipen graduate ends up with a portfolio of a few games. A CS graduate likely doesn’t. Unless he makes them himself.
Another factor may be who you meet. At something like Digipen, you’re pretty much guaranteed to meet a lot of people with a burning interest in game development. That may boost motivation, may make it easier to find people to work with on hobby projects, and it may give you a network to draw on after you graduate.

CS is a much more mixed crowd. There are certainly wannabe game developers at any decent CS college, but there are *also* people who don’t give a damn about it. And again, I’d argue that may be an advantage. One of the problems with the games industry is that it feels so “special”. It is cutting edge when it comes to graphics rendering, and decades behind on everything else, pretty much. There is a lot to learn, about programming practices, about project management, about physics simulation, about using, or creating, the right programming languages for the job, about a lot of things that there’s simply no room for at Digipen. But all stuff that a CS graduate will have gotten some exposure to.

Rather than saying that one course offers breadth of knowledge, and the other offers depth, I think it’d be more accurate to say they both offer breadth, but along different axes. Digipen teaches “everything about games”. CS teaches “everything about writing good software”.
There is a certain overlap that they both teach, but for the most part, they are distinct. But just because CS isn’t directly “about games” doesn’t mean the rest of it won’t be *useful* in games.

Finally, of course, there’s the reputation factor. A lot of companies are still skeptical about the quality of the “games only” schools. Your employer will often, even in the games industry, be more impressed by a CS degree than a Full Sail diploma, whether or not it’s justified.

06/04/2009 at 14:39 Ben Abraham says:

When I thought Kieron Gillen was leaving RPS, I was honestly truly very sad. In my heart. Very sad.

So, er, never leave. Ever.

06/04/2009 at 14:43 Markoff Chaney says:

*Err or just keep the tongue firmly planted in your cheek for those of us too dense to miss obvious attempts at humor and for whom it is an all together too early Monday morning with too little caffeine in our bloodstream*

06/04/2009 at 14:59 pepper says:

God, maybe, just maybe he will see the piano falling, as in; “Why is that humongous crane swinging a piano above my head” kind. Just saying…

06/04/2009 at 15:20 Tei says:

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. Why make TF3 when you can keep patching and updating TF2 for years and years?”

Programs are like persons. Get older. And die of lots of different problems.

Speacking of this… the removal of crits is something to make the game less fun, but better has a e-sport.

06/04/2009 at 17:25 wiper says:

I actually found that Escapist article really interesting, but not for what it said, so much. Rather, it was interesting to compare to ancient literary criticism (bear with me here).

The talk of games ‘lying’ to us by trying to convince us that there is more freedom on offer than they actually simulate is very, very similar to the ancient problem of literature ‘lying’ to us by trying to convince us of the reality of their fiction. These days, we talk about the ability of literature to help us ‘suspend our disbelief’ – we accept that while fiction is, well, fictional, it works best when it convinces us, albeit temporarily, of its ‘truthfulness’. This doesn’t bother us at all, but in early literary criticism it was a /huge/ stumbling block to get over; there simply wasn’t a culture of literature in place to allow critics to accept that while lying was bad, the ‘lies’ of fiction were an altogether different kettle of fish.

It would seem that games criticism is currently at that stage, where the ‘lies’ of games in their attempt to immerse gamers more fully are still seen as troublesome, and not simply accepted. I wonder how long it’ll take us to get over the problem? (It took the Greeks a few hundred years, by comparison)

07/04/2009 at 00:36 sinister agent says:

And the MGS4 corridor sequence? Please. It was complete and utter bullshit. The points where Snake were zapped were so obviously scripted the only emotional response I got out of it was a frown that deepened every time.

Thank you. I literally can’t think of a more instantly, laughably obvious scripted scene in a game. You run in a straight line along an empty corridor. It would take even a rubbish player an epileptic fit to accidentally walk off the path, and the game is 90% scripted throughout, so who would ever be fooled?
It’s a terrible example.

Something like the ‘dock’ end of Kane & Lynch (rubbish game, yes, but that’s irrelevent) would have been much better – it’s only obvious that it’s scripted the second time – the first time, you’ll just think you screwed up.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with games cheating a bit with semi-scripted scenes to manufacture an experience in a supposedly open-ended game, but the problem is in the vast majority of cases it’s very obvious when they’re doing it. And even with hours of careful tweaking, I can’t imagine it’ll ever be remotely easy to disguise it.