Interesting comment, that I'm sure plenty are thinking. So how does this sentiment reflect on those who hunt for child-porn prosecution purposes? What better place for a predator than to have offensive material sent to them as a "necessary" part of their job?
Ok, yeah. I agree with you there. Any project will have a ramp up of intensity as the final deadline appears. We have worked a few 20+ hour days at my current job to meet deadlines but those are very infrequent. My direct supervisor is a former special forces aviator: he has a special sensitivity about jobs taking you away from family time and takes extra care to make sure we are properly staffed and scheduled to meet deadlines without burning the midnight oil.
I've got to say if a manager can't make reasonable scheduling and staffing decisions how can you trust that person to go to bat for you for a raise if you've done excellent work? When you work for someone there is a two-way trust bridge. If it isn't there in either direction, then the relationship is dysfunctional and is trouble just waiting to happen.
Talking is also suspicious, suspicion is also suspicious. You think maybe we could just lock up the guys naming suspicious things and have a safer world?
In game development, crunches are absolutely inevitable, as are nearly all large-scale project-based projects. There are even some companies that thrive on insane hours as a regular matter of course. I know of at least one company in which everyone regularly puts in 12 to 16 hours a day as a matter of course. They make no apologies for this, and if people go into this voluntarily, more power to them.
I've come to the conclusion that such things are not inevitable it is a sign of terrible management. If the company is forcing 12 to 16 hours a day especially at every stage of the cycle, they have several issues.
1) They don't care about quality. Quality is easy enough to burn without overworking your employees.
2) They aren't really getting the work they think they are. I'm as productive on a 10 hour day as I am a 16-10 hour day. Work past about 10 hours straight ends up being exponentially harder.
3) They have a hiring problem. If a company is forcing their employees to do 16 hour days they really are trying to do all the work with half the people they need.
4) They lose productivity and money from turnover. It costs to lose an employee, it costs to train the new one. I know not everyone is like this but I'm willing to stay in a job with a lower pay rate if I enjoy it. Perpetual crunch-time is not conducive to enjoyment. So at least for some employees it will save money to keep them happy.
Just so you know, there are fun software jobs out there that are not in the gaming industry and will let you work (more) reasonable hours. Some of them even use the exact same skill set. Of course, if you get more satisfaction out of "working on a game" than doing something other than work, then be happy you found your dream job.
That has always bothered me. In fact, I was thinking about it on the way to work this morning. From my experience, I have about 100-150 thousand miles before I have to dump major money into a car for a major repair. I've done the following exercise several times: Take the total price of a car new and divide it by the expected remaining lifespan prior to major repairs, do the same with a late model used car doesn't matter if it is in the paper or sold by a dealership(although the price will be higher for a dealership). I've found in general a used car will already have used up a third to half of its lifespan before being sold as used, but the price will in no way be near 2/3 to a half of what the original price was even taking into account resale value when you get near the end of that lifespan. Maybe it works different for more pricey vehicles than I've ever been able to buy, but the whole drive it off the lot price drop only seems to matter if you rotate cars every few years.
I'm not denying that. What you are saying is that a game studio should go to their publisher and push for porting to another platform that has around 1% market share of desktop operating system. That platform is also an OS that makes it even easier to defeat DRM schemes. All of that because people work to crack software on a more difficult platform to crack?
I'm thinking that the bigger thing standing in the way of that is an open operating system. The fact that anything outside their code might be modified has ramifications for both anti-cheating measures and the bigger profitability hit: DRM. How happy do you think the publishers would be if someone worked around their "protections" by denying the DRM specific system level calls?
Everyone said the same with 3.0 and 3.5. I wouldn't be surprised if the same things were said earlier when it left original D&D, but such things were before my PNP time.
Fortunately the road isn't something I have to deal with too much other than commuting. I love where I live; people just lose their minds when they sit behind the wheel.
Apart from usual things like drivers being too close, our local drivers tend to honk horns and throw items at bicyclists. There is no desire from far too many of our local drivers to share the road with anything slower than their desired speed.
I'm sure I could deal with cold with the proper clothing, but the big issue here is rain (because motorized vehicle drivers don't respect that either) and severe weather which is quite common in my area of the country.
I'd love to ride to work if I could do it safely and had some way to not smell rank when I got here, but the infrastructure is just not here for bicyclists and the motorists don't respect riders. I need an electric vehicle if I'm going to not rely on oil, but they seem to be getting further and further away for us everyday people. Not surprising but none-the-less disappointing.
Double the range and I can make it back and forth to work in it. I've ridden bikes on the roads here while I was in college; that is taking your life in your hands. On top of that you end up arriving to work smelly and sweaty on any day that isn't too cold or the weather isn't too bad to ride. There are plenty of people who are worried about their ability to get to work is dependent on the whims of the oil market. The price of oil that is currently keeping gas prices from bankrupting our ability to get to work are also currently discouraging exploration and thereby tempting higher prices in the future.
Just double-checked, $9.25 per adult. I took my wife to see Twilight in November. Admitted my visits are rare, I do make it occasionally. The experiences only reinforce my desire to build a decent home-theater.
Yeah. Our theater charges for the privilege to sit in the over-21 section. It might eliminate some but I'm not going to pay another premium (on top of the cleanliness one I mentioned earlier) to sit in a different section so that maybe an age filter will fix the problem.
That's what cheeses you off? How about I just paid $20 to take my wife out rather than stay in and the guy two rows forward is on his phone the whole time, the teens in the seat next to you are blabbering about how the lead actor is so dreamy, the guy behind you is kicking your seat, and the idiot three rows back is throwing popcorn at someone in front of you and isn't a good shot. And the manager of the "upscale" theater doesn't care any more than the manager of any other theater in town. The only plus is they clean the seats between performances so you aren't sitting in who knows what to save $3.
If that happens they are lucky. What would they do if someone with the market share of Google hired their own reporters? The content the produce wouldn't even be looked at.
$40 for them to maybe get my luggage to me or even better (and less likely) to me during my trip. This is why I always go to great lengths to fit everything into a carry-on.
But looking at the summary what we should be paying is over $360 a title since they are selling at a rate of about 1/6 of what they need to be profitable. Of course that assumes that me, a person who balked at paying for an expensive next gen console for over a year, is going to happily shell out the same amount of cash for a single title at the same rate that I normally buy titles at current market value. Comparing it to other media, games already are more expensive than a season of a television show on DVD and are rapidly approaching the price of an entire series on DVD. This is not a good trend, especially when they are competing for my entertainment dollars in a global financial crisis. Almost every industry in the world is beating off death with a stick and the entertainment industry is whining because its profits are lower than they want them to be.
That is a great idea. There is a much larger set out there than down here. We just need to launch all the lawyers willing to pursue a case like the one in the article into space.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting comment, that I'm sure plenty are thinking. So how does this sentiment reflect on those who hunt for child-porn prosecution purposes? What better place for a predator than to have offensive material sent to them as a "necessary" part of their job?
Ok, yeah. I agree with you there. Any project will have a ramp up of intensity as the final deadline appears. We have worked a few 20+ hour days at my current job to meet deadlines but those are very infrequent. My direct supervisor is a former special forces aviator: he has a special sensitivity about jobs taking you away from family time and takes extra care to make sure we are properly staffed and scheduled to meet deadlines without burning the midnight oil.
I've got to say if a manager can't make reasonable scheduling and staffing decisions how can you trust that person to go to bat for you for a raise if you've done excellent work? When you work for someone there is a two-way trust bridge. If it isn't there in either direction, then the relationship is dysfunctional and is trouble just waiting to happen.
Talking is also suspicious, suspicion is also suspicious. You think maybe we could just lock up the guys naming suspicious things and have a safer world?
In game development, crunches are absolutely inevitable, as are nearly all large-scale project-based projects. There are even some companies that thrive on insane hours as a regular matter of course. I know of at least one company in which everyone regularly puts in 12 to 16 hours a day as a matter of course. They make no apologies for this, and if people go into this voluntarily, more power to them.
I've come to the conclusion that such things are not inevitable it is a sign of terrible management. If the company is forcing 12 to 16 hours a day especially at every stage of the cycle, they have several issues.
1) They don't care about quality. Quality is easy enough to burn without overworking your employees.
2) They aren't really getting the work they think they are. I'm as productive on a 10 hour day as I am a 16-10 hour day. Work past about 10 hours straight ends up being exponentially harder.
3) They have a hiring problem. If a company is forcing their employees to do 16 hour days they really are trying to do all the work with half the people they need.
4) They lose productivity and money from turnover. It costs to lose an employee, it costs to train the new one. I know not everyone is like this but I'm willing to stay in a job with a lower pay rate if I enjoy it. Perpetual crunch-time is not conducive to enjoyment. So at least for some employees it will save money to keep them happy.
Just so you know, there are fun software jobs out there that are not in the gaming industry and will let you work (more) reasonable hours. Some of them even use the exact same skill set. Of course, if you get more satisfaction out of "working on a game" than doing something other than work, then be happy you found your dream job.
There are baby bells left? AT&T sucked back up my local baby bell and my cell-phone provider to boot.
That has always bothered me. In fact, I was thinking about it on the way to work this morning. From my experience, I have about 100-150 thousand miles before I have to dump major money into a car for a major repair. I've done the following exercise several times: Take the total price of a car new and divide it by the expected remaining lifespan prior to major repairs, do the same with a late model used car doesn't matter if it is in the paper or sold by a dealership(although the price will be higher for a dealership). I've found in general a used car will already have used up a third to half of its lifespan before being sold as used, but the price will in no way be near 2/3 to a half of what the original price was even taking into account resale value when you get near the end of that lifespan. Maybe it works different for more pricey vehicles than I've ever been able to buy, but the whole drive it off the lot price drop only seems to matter if you rotate cars every few years.
Oh wait, by multiple they mean two...
Here is what we were told: Save the trees.
Here is what was actually happening: Plastic bags are cheaper for the store than paper.
Great idea. No more atrophy after you wake up from your coma. I'm performing a service to you by letting you do all my heavy lifting.
I'm not denying that. What you are saying is that a game studio should go to their publisher and push for porting to another platform that has around 1% market share of desktop operating system. That platform is also an OS that makes it even easier to defeat DRM schemes. All of that because people work to crack software on a more difficult platform to crack?
I'm thinking that the bigger thing standing in the way of that is an open operating system. The fact that anything outside their code might be modified has ramifications for both anti-cheating measures and the bigger profitability hit: DRM. How happy do you think the publishers would be if someone worked around their "protections" by denying the DRM specific system level calls?
Everyone said the same with 3.0 and 3.5. I wouldn't be surprised if the same things were said earlier when it left original D&D, but such things were before my PNP time.
"Some sort of physical DRM for printed copies?"
This is Bruno. He comes free with your purchase. Don't make him mad. He is non-refundable.
Fortunately the road isn't something I have to deal with too much other than commuting. I love where I live; people just lose their minds when they sit behind the wheel.
Apart from usual things like drivers being too close, our local drivers tend to honk horns and throw items at bicyclists. There is no desire from far too many of our local drivers to share the road with anything slower than their desired speed. I'm sure I could deal with cold with the proper clothing, but the big issue here is rain (because motorized vehicle drivers don't respect that either) and severe weather which is quite common in my area of the country. I'd love to ride to work if I could do it safely and had some way to not smell rank when I got here, but the infrastructure is just not here for bicyclists and the motorists don't respect riders. I need an electric vehicle if I'm going to not rely on oil, but they seem to be getting further and further away for us everyday people. Not surprising but none-the-less disappointing.
Double the range and I can make it back and forth to work in it. I've ridden bikes on the roads here while I was in college; that is taking your life in your hands. On top of that you end up arriving to work smelly and sweaty on any day that isn't too cold or the weather isn't too bad to ride. There are plenty of people who are worried about their ability to get to work is dependent on the whims of the oil market. The price of oil that is currently keeping gas prices from bankrupting our ability to get to work are also currently discouraging exploration and thereby tempting higher prices in the future.
how many achievements do I need to unlock the ACOG scope?
Just double-checked, $9.25 per adult. I took my wife to see Twilight in November. Admitted my visits are rare, I do make it occasionally. The experiences only reinforce my desire to build a decent home-theater.
Yeah. Our theater charges for the privilege to sit in the over-21 section. It might eliminate some but I'm not going to pay another premium (on top of the cleanliness one I mentioned earlier) to sit in a different section so that maybe an age filter will fix the problem.
That's what cheeses you off? How about I just paid $20 to take my wife out rather than stay in and the guy two rows forward is on his phone the whole time, the teens in the seat next to you are blabbering about how the lead actor is so dreamy, the guy behind you is kicking your seat, and the idiot three rows back is throwing popcorn at someone in front of you and isn't a good shot. And the manager of the "upscale" theater doesn't care any more than the manager of any other theater in town. The only plus is they clean the seats between performances so you aren't sitting in who knows what to save $3.
If that happens they are lucky. What would they do if someone with the market share of Google hired their own reporters? The content the produce wouldn't even be looked at.
$40 for them to maybe get my luggage to me or even better (and less likely) to me during my trip. This is why I always go to great lengths to fit everything into a carry-on.
But looking at the summary what we should be paying is over $360 a title since they are selling at a rate of about 1/6 of what they need to be profitable. Of course that assumes that me, a person who balked at paying for an expensive next gen console for over a year, is going to happily shell out the same amount of cash for a single title at the same rate that I normally buy titles at current market value. Comparing it to other media, games already are more expensive than a season of a television show on DVD and are rapidly approaching the price of an entire series on DVD. This is not a good trend, especially when they are competing for my entertainment dollars in a global financial crisis. Almost every industry in the world is beating off death with a stick and the entertainment industry is whining because its profits are lower than they want them to be.
That is a great idea. There is a much larger set out there than down here. We just need to launch all the lawyers willing to pursue a case like the one in the article into space.