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| Pollyanna 2868th Post
 
Platinum Carpet V.I.P- Board Master
    
    
    
    
     
|  "Re(4):I'm not dead" , posted Sat 27 Feb 06:50
quote:
Speaking of games, has anyone here actually managed to do anything within the industry, indy or otherwise?
I've done some contract work in the past. Writing and game design. Nothing got published, though. My impression of the industry is that there is generally some idiot in charge that doesn't understand the creative process at all, makes unreasonable demands, undoes ideas that everyone else agrees on, and fires sensible people to replace them with less sensible people who have no idea what's going on. I think a lot of companies are run like that, though.
The thing that irritates me the most about the whole situation is that these companies wasted so much money on me and other employees, and neither of us have anything to show for our work. It didn't hinder my general love for games, though...
青春謳歌 弱肉強食
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| karasu99 299th Post
Copper Customer
| "Re(4):I'm not dead" , posted Sat 27 Feb 09:28
quote:
Speaking of games, has anyone here actually managed to do anything within the industry, indy or otherwise?
I program what a lot of people call 'casual games'-- games for movie, toys, and tv shows, etc., even though I think of casual games as being things like Sonic 2 on the Genesis. Every once in a while though, I throw something into a game that references a favorite of mine (think sound effects). No one ever notices, not even my coworkers (most of whom either never play games or only play older PC games like Civilization).
I can't say it's made me play games any less as a result, although it has made me wonder a little bit more why I play games. It's also made me want to make actual fun, creative games one day.
EDIT: Took out the complaining parts that made me sound like a lunatic.
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| Spoon 1901th Post
Gold Carpet V.I.P- Platinum Executive
| "Re(6):I'm not dead" , posted Sat 27 Feb 12:19
quote:
That's called "investor", and it's a being who's only in job qualification is having money.
Something to think about on this topic:
EA's stock has fallen from nearly $60 a share a few years ago to about $16 a share now. People I know have lost their jobs at EA in the restructuring that has been going on the past while.
EA has been steadily rising in terms of game quality, though whether they've been rising in terms of user opinion I don't know. If they want to see that value go up, though, it's going to take more than just some high-value acquisitions (e.g. BioWare, Playfish, etc.) The slow rebuild of their reputation as a quality name rather than just the house of Madden 'XX, soul-crushing sweatshops, and the evil empire that eats good developers and then spits out cud that resembles the games those good developers used to make.
You'd think that investors would understand the concepts of building brand value and customer loyalty, but I'm not certain how many people understand just how long that takes. One analyst said that John Riccitello has been ruining the business and that EA were fools not to listen to said analyst when he called for a massive restructuring with a total focus on direct-to-consumer. But I think that EA is simply too big to make that big of a change that quickly, especially when they still haven't gotten industry-leading expertise on how to run that kind of operation. Valve's biggest, greatest thing is Steam. They don't even need to make Half-Life games anymore. It was a bold step that they made with Steam, and for years there was considerable resistance to and distrust of it, but they stuck with it, and now are the industry leaders in the West in that regard.
Navigating this business is a challenging thing. One of my dreams is to be an independent developer (or part of one), but it's SCARY. I've done a year at EA, and I won't lie: it's no walk in the park. There are long, tough hours where the insides of you will beg for freedom while you try to fix code that was written by some guy 6 years ago who's no longer working at EA. But being a part of something that big has its plusses: you have stable income, you have lots of people around you to help you, you probably aren't worrying about business-ruining failure, etc.
In the end, the best thing is to be extremely rich: that way you can do whatever you want.
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"I'm not dead" , posted Thu 25 Feb 08:37
who follow the path of a warrior
"Re(1):I'm not dead" , posted Thu 25 Feb 12:01
"Re(5):I'm not dead" , posted Sat 27 Feb 10:32
