quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

One of the following three scenarios will describe you. Try to be realistic.

If you''re so sh!t hot that you can write your own ticket and instantly get hired onto whatever team you want at whatever company you choose, then by all means, follow your bliss and go make the game of your dreams.

If you''re good enough to be hired by somebody in the game development business, then make the game you''re paid to make. Maybe through practice and experience you will develop into the ace developer who can call his own shots. In the meanwhile, do your job or be replaced by somebody else who will.

If you aren''t good enough to be hired by anybody in the game industry, then work on your personal projects to improve your skillset and convince somebody that you are in fact worthy of working in the game development industry. In this case, by all means work on something you enjoy.

I''m sorry, but none of those scenarios describe me.

I''m probably not as hot as scenario number one requires.

I''m probably good enough for scenario two, but have little interest working for someone else coding something I don''t want to code and almost certainly making less than I do now.

TCS - I would appreciate it if you refrained from using unnecessary bad language in my forums. While anyone''s opinion is valid, there''s no need to express it in offensive terms.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
Mad Keith the V.

I have to agree with those who say that people should code what they''re paid to code. After all it''s the designer who came up with the idea in the first place. With many of us being in the hobbiest catagory we have the luxery of being designers and programmers at the same time, so we''re just used to always getting our own way.

And as far as the ideas for games, most tend to come from a seed of something that already exists anyway. What''s it matter if you have an idea to create a game around a predecided character (Barbie, Dracula, CatDog, Snoopy) and do a little research from a dozen people to find out what they''d like to see? It isn''t any different, really, than asking people what improvements they''d make to Startcraft. It''s just easier to see that the primamary purpose is to make money. Perhaps a lot of people are tired of seeing absolutly everything mareketed and capitolized on.

I have to agree with those who say that people should code what they''re paid to code.
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Before you can achive that the designers have to know the medium 100% - so as long the industry is changing - the game projects have to rely on programmers to take some part in the design or simply rely of well known (and often old) techniques (sid meyer does the latter - same goes for most new FPS which are based on middleware).

Also the very low level design is of course done by the programmer (just like the artists - designers might say he needs a tree - the artists will then draw tree as i thinks the designer want it).

Professionalism is all about the eye of the beholder.. and the concept is fuzzy.. when it come down to it its more a social status than anything else.

TCS - The people who are as stupis as you make out are rare and don''t use computers. The reason games like Deer Hunter are so populare are because 1) they are fun. I don''t play these games, but I worked on Trophy Hunting: Big Game Edition, and I will admit that these games are fun. 2) They appeal to a new market. The people that would instinctively buy these games have never had a video game made for them before. 3) Most importantly, they sell for half the price of any other game.

Don''t tell me these games sell because the consumer is stupid. The consumer is smarter than you (rhetorical you). Parents will leap at the chance to buy their daughter Barbie Hair Designer because it''s not filled with the graphic sex and violence the kids see on tv or that their son is asking for.

These games are successful because the developers took a chance on something new. Adams is saying that if we beleive we are representative of the target market, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and working our way up. You don''t want to try something new because you''re afraid you''ll like it (again, rhetorical you).

p

No point going into any great detail here: the answer is quite obvious to me.

You said that Ernest said: "to be successful designers need to put aside their distaste for products outside their interest and adopt a more professional attitude."

How do you define successful?

If ''success'' = ''making money'', then yes.
If ''success'' = ''making something you''re proud of'', then no.

Simple as that, in my mind. If I just wanted to make money, I''d still be doing active server pages at my old company, but that, to me, isn''t the way I wish to be successful.

Probably not the point here but...

Just because you wouldn''t buy a side-scrolling game (for instance) who says it wouldn''t be a fun and challenging project. Hopefully you will not be the only person to ever play your game and if other people play it and enjoy it then you have sucessfully done your job as a game developer/writer/programmer etc.

I agree that you should work with what you know and that if you absolutely hate a certain game genre then you probably won''t enjoy (or maybe even be good at) developing that type of game. But don''t limit yourself by saying "I wouldn''t buy that game myself".

Money isn''t everything, but if you are the only person who would buy your game you can go ahead and buy a million copies, you still won''t make a cent.

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Screw you guys! I''m going home.

Sorry MadKeithV !
I''m just getting angry about the fact that crap sells better than games like Half-Life. People spend lots of time and effort to make a great game, and then something as bad as Deer Hunter sells better, it''s sad !

Sorry for using such a hard language ;-))))


Tim

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glvelocity.gamedev.net
www.gamedev.net/hosted/glvelocity

i would put half-life in the crap bin personally..

i know.. it looks gorgeous, and it''s fun to kill people at 80fps with light sourcing galore.. but wolfenstein was cool, doom was better, and with quake, i just lost my stomach for FPS games.. now there are a kazillion of them, and the genre is quite simply boring to me now..

and apparently the rest of the world feels the same way (other then the 14-19 year old male sector) because non fps games (who wants to be a millionare, the sims) all kicked EVERY FPS game''s ass in sales..

i looked this month at the top 10 games..

the best FPS game? Rogue-Spear.. it was 9th..

Hehe... I love FPS games, but only the best. Since Unreal Tournament came out, I haven''t played anything else much. And before that, I played Unreal most of the time. Yes, I''m an Unreal fan, cause I''m a graphiophile (or whatever you would call that). I love graphics.

Hence, I''m doing a 3D engine. But guess what, I''m actually planning on doing an RPG.

The thing is, a lot of people think FPS''s are stupid and that you only need good skills/instincts/etc. I don''t think that''s true. Yeah, I have skills, but at some point that''s just not enough. You need to think, and figure out your opponent''s patterns.

Anyway, the reason I don''t play RPGs is because they''re not what I would like them to be. In fact, the game I always dreamed of might not even really be called and RPG, just something similar. I like immersion. The game I envisioned will make the player believe he is really there, having all these adventures. Therefore, graphics are obviously a crucial part. The game also has to have much much freedom, so the player really chooses his actions. And the game world has to be large. The problem that I''ll have to figure out though, is how to make the player still have some kind of goal, so that the game never gets boring (like real life lol

Of course, I''m 17 (hehe, that 14-19 range, agrimonia so I have to work most of my free time (which is good -- I mean, what would I waste it on, girls or what? Now THAT would be a waste hehe). But I think I am getting somewhere. I''ve looked at the quake 1 and 2 source code as well as the Unreal source, and I think I can handle the graphics. I am going for something new, but I''m still inspired by the olde ideas of FPS''s for graphics, and some ideas of RPG''s for gameplay.

We''ll see how this works out. I don''t plan on giving up anytime soon

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