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Anyway, IMHO the reality of making games today is a far cry from the shots he takes in the article. If there is an "us versus them" relationship between marketing and development -- or between any develoment disciple (art and engineering, design and production, production and art, etc), your game's sales, sequel potential, and eventually your career are going to suffer.

I agree. I worked in marketing for a game publisher for 3 1/2 years (no, I do not consider myself a marketdroid; that's why I quit), and quite honestly there was no adversarial relationship whatsoever between us and the development arm of my company. In fact, our developers liked some of our marketing ideas so much that they ended up incorporating them into the games! (I'm sure at least a few of you guys know what that link is really referencing...)

We also worked with outside developers fairly often and in those cases there was often a bit of push-pull. Depending on the contract, sometimes it would end up being a case of "whatever we say goes", sometimes it was the reverse. (A few times we just had to suck it up and do things we knew were idiotic.) Obviously, when two companies that work together have been doing their thing with success individually for a while, both sides are going to think they know best.

But internally, things were always pretty smooth between the marketing and development sides. And even new acquisitions would get along with us pretty well. The fact of the matter is, if there's dissension at one part of any company vs. another part, that dissension is going to eventually end, one way or another. No company can have an internal rebellion going on at one particular division or another; if necessary, heads will roll and there were times at my company when they did.

And as far as the salaries go, the $60K starting figure is a tad high but not completely ridiculous. Salaries are not the problem in the video game industry. It's the working environment and employee treatment that are the problems.

www.degenatron.com has an emulator of the classic Degenatron system, including all 3 games!

After all the Degenatron is way cooler than any old Atari piece of junk. :-)

DEGENATRON*
The arcade comes to your living room!
Only without the creepy guys offering to show you puppies

PLAYS THREE EXCITING GAMES!!!

• DEFENDER OF THE FAITH - "Save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!"
• MONKEY'S PARADISE - "Swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey!"
• PENETRATOR - "Smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square!"

Degenatron on the Web - www.degenatron.com

I can't wait for it to come out on the Degenatron!

And in other news, hook your PS2 up to your vid capture card and make a crime spree divx clip! Rack up as many stars as you can, and show the world!

Why didn't this make it in the list. It was a dismal failure... so much that it never even existed.

At least there is an emulator for it though. People can see what they're missing.

I want MAME to get to work on emulating the degenatron! "Swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey!"

That's what I want MAME to support.