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Can Game Developer Unrest Lead to Revolution?
Bakajin writes "Greg Costikyan's blog article A Specter is Haunting Gaming speaks in coarse language about "despair" in the independent game developing community. He says that despite the fact that no Independent Game Festival title "has ever gone on to major publication and success... 10,000 geeks... would just love to do what the IGF guys are doing... work on something you believe in, not churn out the next big-budget piece of crap." I can't help but read that and think that it represents a huge opportunity for a new game machine that lowers the bar for entry and has a unique revenue model. However, is the story of Indrema a prophesy? Is Infinium just vapor? Is there any other solution?"
First reply
Software Testing is not politically Correct.
NEW YORK -- People for Ethical Treatment of Software (PETS) announced today that seven more software companies have been added to the group's watch list of companies that regularly practice software testing.
"There is no need for software to be mistreated in this way so that companies like these can market new products." said Ken Grandola, spokesperson for PETS. "Alternative methods of testing these products are available"
According to PETS, these companies force software to undergo lengthy and arduous tests, often without rest, for hours or days at a time. Employees are assigned to "break" the software by any means necessary, and inside sources report that they often joke about "torturing" the software.
"It's no joke," said Grandola. "Innocent programs, from the day the are compiled, are cooped up in tiny rooms and "crashed" for hours on end. They spend the whole lives on dirty, ill-maintained computers, and are unceremoniously deleted when they're not needed anymore".
Grandola said the software is kept in unsanitary conditions and is infested with bugs.
"We know that alternatives to this horror exist." he said, citing industry giant Microsoft Corporation as a company that has become successful without resorting to software testing.
Two things overthrew that stagnating giant: Microsoft and RMS/Linus.
My God! Not satisfied with prefixing every piece of software under the sun with GNU/ - he now wants people to start their names with RMS/ ! When will the madness end?
Try programming. You might find it entertaining.
You then might decide that you want to make games because it is challenging and fun.
And then you will find that there are 100,000 screaming children at your door about how your games suck, they want a job "playing games all day, and how they want.... blah blah bla blah my-little-feature-that's-stupid in 'their' game that has no chance of being marketable.
And then the process will have gone full circle.
I work in the gaming industry as a network engineer/sysadmin.