Don't mean to be offensive (well, maybe just a little). But if I had to spend a friggin hour crossing a map, I'd wind up logging off and never log back on again.
Asheron's call had a large, seamless overhead world (which was pretty cool from a technology standpoint). So, you could literally run across it non-stop. The did, however, have portals scattered across the world at various points for quicker travel. Many people tried running across the world once for the sheer novelty of it.
Lost Odyssey - not the fairly standard Japanese RPG fare that makes up most of the game, but rather the text narrative used for the dreams. Very minimalist - just animated text on an almost static abstract background with a few ambient sounds, but they covered an impressive range of scenarios and even genres. A few were genuinely well-written, even by the standards of non-video-game writing.
That's because an award-winning short story author, Kiyoshi Shigematsu, was hired to pen the stories for that game (known as "A Thousand Years of Dreams"). Honestly, those story flashbacks were probably the best part of the game for me. The rest of the game was not bad, but ultimately somewhat forgettable.
I have to say, I was caught completely by surprise, emotionally speaking, by the first one, Hanna's Departure. It is, in my opinion, an absolutely brilliant presentation of text, music, sound effects, and images. Notice that even the way the words are displayed can convey emotion - Hanna's speech actually conveys a bubbly, girlish charm in the way it's animated on the screen. In the narration of the present, the background remains dark with white text. During happier memories, the background is white with black text. And of course, a somber piano soundtrack - and appropriate silence at a key moment - helps to convey the mood as well.
If I weren't such a manly man, I might even admit I shed a very tiny tear or two (manly tears, of course) when I watched this for the first time.
There are many small and medium sized game development houses who would love an inexpensive motion capture system in order to capture data for things like in-game cut-scenes. And to them, yes, it makes a pretty big difference whether a system cost $1000 vs $100,000. Having to rent a studio by the hour is also pretty damned expensive.
Besides which, it seems foolish to offhandedly dismiss new technology such as this before it's had even a chance to develop into a useful product.
We gamble every time we buy stock, how is this any different than on a poker table.
Here's the primary difference: not every single game is stacked against you. You have a range of safety / potential yield ratios from bonds, mutual funds, blue chip stocks, all the way down to high-risk startups and penny stocks. By managing investments intelligently, you can insulate yourself against catastrophic loss of all principle.
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with some guy at a (rather geeky) birthday party. I asked him about the SLI setup he bought two month ago. He told me that he'll replace it soon because "there are random frame drops when I play a recent game and watch a DVD on the other screen". He was really serious about this. I pretended to be interested for another 3 minutes and left him alone before my urge to punch him in the face became overwhelming;)
So in other words: I believe that there will be a market for such cards as long as there are enough clueless people who earn enough money to barely afford them. In my experience this target group is pretty immune to arguments - there is no reason to assume that they'll ever wise up...
Don't get mad, and don't try to convince them otherwise, for heaven's sake. Guys like that are paying for the R&D costs of the uber-high-end cards that you can I enjoy for $100 a few years later.
And can we please give up this damned missile shield fantasy? At least until somebody comes up with a system that actually passes real-world tests and isn't more dangerous than the weapons its trying to intercept?
Uh, I don't think I want to take part in any "real world tests" of a missile defense shield system. You're welcome to volunteer your neighborhood, though.
which is one of the main reasons why younger generations, who are further apart from their parents and grandparents than perhaps any other generation in recorded history
And interestingly enough, young people of every generation think that, in all the history of the world, their situation is completely unique.
The old people have almost all of the power and money and they almost universally "don't get it"
Old people have all the power and money because they've been working all of their lives. Let me ask you, by what birthright do you claim to deserve instant power and wealth?
Yep, and that lasts a couple of years until you realize that making games isn't anything like playing them, and that working behind the scenes on a product you used to enjoy has killed your enjoyment of them (not that you have time to play games anymore anyway). Seriously, the whole "games are so much more challenging/fun" thing is nonsense made up by people who want to justify being taken advantage of.
I never had any illusions that programming games wasn't vastly different than playing them - I was doing this as a hobby long before I was doing it professionally. They're both challenging and fun in very different ways. I've also never been taken advantage of. I left companies that didn't treat me well, and found ones that did. But all the experience I've gained has been valuable both to me and to other prospective employers. I've been working in the game industry for over a decade now, and am enjoying it now as much as I ever have. Many people do get burned out and leave the industry, but I can't speak as to why it happened to them and not me - I only have my own experiences to draw from.
Data is data, and moving it around efficiently is an interesting puzzle to solve whether it's polygons or account information.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way. I also believe that many different jobs can be interesting and rewarding with the right attitude. Still, *my* data is running through a dungeon, swinging a flaming sword and killing monsters...;-)
Part of what makes game development different than other development is the cross collaboration of so many different disciplines. We work with game designers to create a grand vision and design. 3D artists/animators / texture and concept artists bring the world to life. Writers script the story, audio guys and composers bring the soundtrack to life, and others have their specialized roles as well (producers, QA, localization, etc). It all comes to life thanks to the work of the programmers (my job). It's an amazing collaboration of talents, all of whom individually could never achieve the final results without the support of the others.
To me - *that's* what's so fun and unique about game development.
I really should have defined what I meant by "crunch time". I knew it was going to be controversial when I said they were inevitable. But insane death marches are NOT inevitable. I actually agree with you 100%, but I think I need to clarify what I meant a bit.
By "crunch time", I simply mean an intensity of the development pace, not necessarily horrific hours and weekend work. It's the natural climax to a project, when everyone is excited about getting the game spit-polished and out the door. There have been many times when I've stayed weekends or extra hours to finish some unscheduled pet features that we otherwise wouldn't have time for. But mostly, it's just a brief acceleration of work in a final push to make the game as great as it can be in the time you have left. This has happened in every game I've ever worked on. As long as the period is suitable brief, it can be dealt with.
What it definitely is NOT inevitable, however, is 12-16 hour days and weekend work (often mandatory) by panicked management as the game comes down to the wire and it's not looking as good as it should (something that should be caught much earlier than this). And, this can happen for many months, even years at a time. That's a death march to me. I suppose some people consider that "crunch mode", and yeah, when that's happening, it's not healthy.
So, I'm making this mental distinction between these two terms that isn't widely recognized, I supposed. I agree that "crunch time" generally has a bad connotation to it, and that for the typical definition - it shouldn't be inevitable (I hope that came through in the rest of the post a bit). But the point I was trying to make is that it's natural for a project to ramp up in intensity as you draw closer to the alpha, beta, and RTM stages.
At my current employment, I have yet to actually work more than 40 hour weeks for any extended period of time. My employer actually believes in ensuring we produce quality, maintainable code, and that employees working too many hours will produce poor results. You can rest assured I'll be staying with them for a good, long time.
Or, maybe it's "I'd rather not have had someone else's machine (or kid brother, or whatever) scratch up the disc I spent $60 + tax on." Beyond that, it's simply a matter of integrity. If someone else has played the game, it's not a virg... I mean, it's not new anymore.
I suspect this is more of an issue with console games, which are more of a "pop in and play" sort of affair. A lot of PC games have their disks or activation codes in sealed envelops, so it would be harder to get away with that.
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.
Unfortunately, it's all too tempting for some companies to simply use the "inevitable crunch time" as a way to exploit young and naive workers who are often all too willing to give up their lives - especially early on, with no family to think of - for the sake of a fun career - let's face it... we make games for a living, and it's a fun and challenging job (most of the time). Most people I've met in the game biz understand they could probably make quite a bit more money working outside the industry. And, for the most part, we do it becomes we love games, and want to be part of that process.
There's a significant difference between a normal "crunch" (which may not even include significantly extended hours - simply an acceleration of development intensity), and a "death march". I've seen extended crunches that have been brutal enough to cause the virtual disintegration of an entire team when a project was finished. Is any one game worth losing experienced employees over? Many companies used to believe that they could afford high turnovers and low morale caused by these crunches. I've watched many of these companies go out of business over the years as well. Obviously, I can't establish firm causation here, but it makes sense to me that the best developers will tend to migrate to where they're treated well, and a game company that can't retain talent will eventually collapse under their own mediocrity.
Let's face it - it's not as though you can plan every detail of a game from start to finish. Plans will change - you have to remain flexible enough to ensure your game captures that elusive "fun" aspect. But then again, it's not exactly some magical mystery either. Good planning and scheduling can alleviate most crunch-time woes. If you end up in a severe crunch, and your team has been working hard and competently, then it's a failure of management - either by not scheduling enough time or for not cutting unneeded features or project scope aggressively enough. There's really no other way to look at it.
It's simply an early trend, which may point towards further decreasing sunspot activity. I hope you're not seriously trying to tell us you believe there's no difference between a 90-day sample period and a 1-day sample period.
Also, from the article, please note that scientists are not completely brain-dead:
Pesnell believes sunspot counts should pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013. But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates.
In other words, they're not simply extrapolating the entire year based on a 90-day cycle. Rather, they're looking at how this period fits into a larger trend.
But that provides great lines for the marketing monkeys:
"The map's A MILLION TIMES BIGGER than Oblivion!".
P.S.: Lack of the first coffee has made me write "pam" instead of "map" twice and still, I nailed "Oblivion!". I won't be telling that one to my psichiatrist.
Dutch's law: Any post that mocks bad spelling or grammar will invariably contain original errors of its own.
Usually this occurs when mocking others' errors, but I'm gratified to see the law holds even when mocking your own.;-)
I agree with the sentiment, but it's the *Federal* government has just put every last man, woman, and child in the US on the hook for many additional trillions worth of spending (each of our share is up to $36,000). Ultimately, in a government "by the people", we're actually responsible for covering what our government does (and spends).
Red Dawn. I remember as a kid thinking what an awesome movie it was. I watched it years later, and realized how horrible it was.
Protip: Let pleasant childhood memories remain pleasantly in the past. Drag them kicking and screaming into the present, and they're bound to get a lot uglier.
Localization is also difficult if context isn't properly provided. For instance, if localizing to an Asian language, it makes a huge different what the relative social status of two people speaking to each other are. They also tend to have a slightly larger memory footprint, simply due to the increased font size - an important consideration for console games. Other languages have their own quirks as well. Certain languages will tend to take up more room than the original English strings, such as German or Polish. Some languages will alter words (not just the pronouns) based on the gender of the speaker and/or who you're speaking to (fun if you can choose between male and female avatars, for instance). When recording dialogue, very often the translations must either be lip-synced to the original, or are at least time-constrained to the original language tracks.
It's definitely a lot more challenging / costly to do high quality localization than most people realize.
Yet, nobody seems to mind when Americans bitch and whine about speaking Spanish in America and "protecting" the English language...
It's a slightly different issue. Very few are under the misguided notion that English itself is somehow dying, as it's established itself as a significant international language. I'd say the beef is more about the cost of providing government services in multiple languages more than anything.
I'm curious, do you know what percentage of games actually have specific localizations for fr-CA? A market of 7 million may sound like a lot, but such a market size wouldn't seem to justify the expense of specific localization (unless it's a small game that can be easily localized), especially when you can cover a much broader market with a single international French version. The question is whether the difference in sales between producing a fr-CA version versus an international French version would be worth the added expense. I'm guessing the answer is probably "no", but that's just my supposition.
I don't know if it's anything specific to the game industry - perhaps more to do with long-term versus short-term thinking. You'll notice that nearly all of those items require a good deal of patience in order to realize the benefits of those actions. Each of those elements mentioned likely has a min/max curve that maximizes a company's profit, but no one has a magic formula for that, of course. Naturally, you can't actually pay your employees exorbitant salaries and polish a game forever while still making a profit either. So, managers are more likely to perceive what they see as a "safer" approach to maximizing profits: pay employees as little as possible, work them as long as possible, and push the game out of the door as soon as possible.
This will likely show immediate gains fiscally, and so can create the illusion of a winning strategy. The game ships on time, overhead remains lower, and thus profits are higher. But the problem is that it's not a sustainable methodology. Sooner or later, your employees will figure out that they can be treated better at other companies, and you lose their valuable experience (not only general experience, but knowledge of internal technology, etc). Or, they simply because so demoralized that they can't compete with others' productivity.
That seems like a vast assumption. You're claiming 9 out of 10 game development companies don't have basic business and developmnent abilities.
I was pretty careful to preface that statement with qualifiers stating that was simply my opinion. And, it was based on my experience of working at a large number of companies, and having many friends who do as well. 9/10 doesn't mean they all fail at each single one. However, in over a decade of working in the industry, my current company is the only one who seem to adhere to these principles, and even they aren't perfect (no one is).
People are blaming the economy whenever layoffs happen now, but the fact is that life as a game developer means working in a highly volatile industry. I've been laid off before, and I've had companies go out of business under me as well. Nearly everyone that's been in the industry for a decade or more has had these experiences as well. I don't necessarily think it's the recession (although it certainly doesn't help matters). But game industry layoffs happen all the time. Small developers go out of business all the time.
I happen to know of a local company that a number of my friends work at that recently had big layoffs. There are two divisions: one is run competently, and one is run by a moron. Guess which division suffered big layoffs...
I also disagree with the notion that games can't make a profit at current price points. Well, game companies may simply need to be a bit more realistic with their budgets, or figure out a way to grab a bigger share of the market so they *are* profitable. It's sort of the nature of capitalism - it's a Darwinian process that tends to weed out less successful companies. It's harsh, but as with nature, it's ultimately healthier for the entire market as it seeks equalibrium.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't mean to be offensive (well, maybe just a little). But if I had to spend a friggin hour crossing a map, I'd wind up logging off and never log back on again.
Asheron's call had a large, seamless overhead world (which was pretty cool from a technology standpoint). So, you could literally run across it non-stop. The did, however, have portals scattered across the world at various points for quicker travel. Many people tried running across the world once for the sheer novelty of it.
There may be a game you would like better than Thief.
Lost Odyssey - not the fairly standard Japanese RPG fare that makes up most of the game, but rather the text narrative used for the dreams. Very minimalist - just animated text on an almost static abstract background with a few ambient sounds, but they covered an impressive range of scenarios and even genres. A few were genuinely well-written, even by the standards of non-video-game writing.
That's because an award-winning short story author, Kiyoshi Shigematsu, was hired to pen the stories for that game (known as "A Thousand Years of Dreams"). Honestly, those story flashbacks were probably the best part of the game for me. The rest of the game was not bad, but ultimately somewhat forgettable.
I have to say, I was caught completely by surprise, emotionally speaking, by the first one, Hanna's Departure. It is, in my opinion, an absolutely brilliant presentation of text, music, sound effects, and images. Notice that even the way the words are displayed can convey emotion - Hanna's speech actually conveys a bubbly, girlish charm in the way it's animated on the screen. In the narration of the present, the background remains dark with white text. During happier memories, the background is white with black text. And of course, a somber piano soundtrack - and appropriate silence at a key moment - helps to convey the mood as well.
If I weren't such a manly man, I might even admit I shed a very tiny tear or two (manly tears, of course) when I watched this for the first time.
In case you'd like to see (be sure to watch in HQ mode so you can read the text):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHM2JUhIwAg
There are many small and medium sized game development houses who would love an inexpensive motion capture system in order to capture data for things like in-game cut-scenes. And to them, yes, it makes a pretty big difference whether a system cost $1000 vs $100,000. Having to rent a studio by the hour is also pretty damned expensive.
Besides which, it seems foolish to offhandedly dismiss new technology such as this before it's had even a chance to develop into a useful product.
I thought Windows 7 didn't change driver models. If that's true, couldn't you use the latest Vista drivers?
We gamble every time we buy stock, how is this any different than on a poker table.
Here's the primary difference: not every single game is stacked against you. You have a range of safety / potential yield ratios from bonds, mutual funds, blue chip stocks, all the way down to high-risk startups and penny stocks. By managing investments intelligently, you can insulate yourself against catastrophic loss of all principle.
This reminds me of a conversation I once had with some guy at a (rather geeky) birthday party. I asked him about the SLI setup he bought two month ago. He told me that he'll replace it soon because "there are random frame drops when I play a recent game and watch a DVD on the other screen". He was really serious about this. I pretended to be interested for another 3 minutes and left him alone before my urge to punch him in the face became overwhelming ;)
So in other words: I believe that there will be a market for such cards as long as there are enough clueless people who earn enough money to barely afford them. In my experience this target group is pretty immune to arguments - there is no reason to assume that they'll ever wise up...
Don't get mad, and don't try to convince them otherwise, for heaven's sake. Guys like that are paying for the R&D costs of the uber-high-end cards that you can I enjoy for $100 a few years later.
And can we please give up this damned missile shield fantasy? At least until somebody comes up with a system that actually passes real-world tests and isn't more dangerous than the weapons its trying to intercept?
Uh, I don't think I want to take part in any "real world tests" of a missile defense shield system. You're welcome to volunteer your neighborhood, though.
which is one of the main reasons why younger generations, who are further apart from their parents and grandparents than perhaps any other generation in recorded history
And interestingly enough, young people of every generation think that, in all the history of the world, their situation is completely unique.
The old people have almost all of the power and money and they almost universally "don't get it"
Old people have all the power and money because they've been working all of their lives. Let me ask you, by what birthright do you claim to deserve instant power and wealth?
This is to allow lifeless 13 year olds plenty of time to tune up and learn tricks so they can utterly pwn hardworking adults.
You'd think I'd have better reflexes than all those teenage zombies. Sucks getting old...
Yep, and that lasts a couple of years until you realize that making games isn't anything like playing them, and that working behind the scenes on a product you used to enjoy has killed your enjoyment of them (not that you have time to play games anymore anyway). Seriously, the whole "games are so much more challenging/fun" thing is nonsense made up by people who want to justify being taken advantage of.
I never had any illusions that programming games wasn't vastly different than playing them - I was doing this as a hobby long before I was doing it professionally. They're both challenging and fun in very different ways. I've also never been taken advantage of. I left companies that didn't treat me well, and found ones that did. But all the experience I've gained has been valuable both to me and to other prospective employers. I've been working in the game industry for over a decade now, and am enjoying it now as much as I ever have. Many people do get burned out and leave the industry, but I can't speak as to why it happened to them and not me - I only have my own experiences to draw from.
Data is data, and moving it around efficiently is an interesting puzzle to solve whether it's polygons or account information.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way. I also believe that many different jobs can be interesting and rewarding with the right attitude. Still, *my* data is running through a dungeon, swinging a flaming sword and killing monsters... ;-)
Part of what makes game development different than other development is the cross collaboration of so many different disciplines. We work with game designers to create a grand vision and design. 3D artists /animators / texture and concept artists bring the world to life. Writers script the story, audio guys and composers bring the soundtrack to life, and others have their specialized roles as well (producers, QA, localization, etc). It all comes to life thanks to the work of the programmers (my job). It's an amazing collaboration of talents, all of whom individually could never achieve the final results without the support of the others.
To me - *that's* what's so fun and unique about game development.
I really should have defined what I meant by "crunch time". I knew it was going to be controversial when I said they were inevitable. But insane death marches are NOT inevitable. I actually agree with you 100%, but I think I need to clarify what I meant a bit.
By "crunch time", I simply mean an intensity of the development pace, not necessarily horrific hours and weekend work. It's the natural climax to a project, when everyone is excited about getting the game spit-polished and out the door. There have been many times when I've stayed weekends or extra hours to finish some unscheduled pet features that we otherwise wouldn't have time for. But mostly, it's just a brief acceleration of work in a final push to make the game as great as it can be in the time you have left. This has happened in every game I've ever worked on. As long as the period is suitable brief, it can be dealt with.
What it definitely is NOT inevitable, however, is 12-16 hour days and weekend work (often mandatory) by panicked management as the game comes down to the wire and it's not looking as good as it should (something that should be caught much earlier than this). And, this can happen for many months, even years at a time. That's a death march to me. I suppose some people consider that "crunch mode", and yeah, when that's happening, it's not healthy.
So, I'm making this mental distinction between these two terms that isn't widely recognized, I supposed. I agree that "crunch time" generally has a bad connotation to it, and that for the typical definition - it shouldn't be inevitable (I hope that came through in the rest of the post a bit). But the point I was trying to make is that it's natural for a project to ramp up in intensity as you draw closer to the alpha, beta, and RTM stages.
At my current employment, I have yet to actually work more than 40 hour weeks for any extended period of time. My employer actually believes in ensuring we produce quality, maintainable code, and that employees working too many hours will produce poor results. You can rest assured I'll be staying with them for a good, long time.
Or, maybe it's "I'd rather not have had someone else's machine (or kid brother, or whatever) scratch up the disc I spent $60 + tax on." Beyond that, it's simply a matter of integrity. If someone else has played the game, it's not a virg... I mean, it's not new anymore.
I suspect this is more of an issue with console games, which are more of a "pop in and play" sort of affair. A lot of PC games have their disks or activation codes in sealed envelops, so it would be harder to get away with that.
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.
Unfortunately, it's all too tempting for some companies to simply use the "inevitable crunch time" as a way to exploit young and naive workers who are often all too willing to give up their lives - especially early on, with no family to think of - for the sake of a fun career - let's face it... we make games for a living, and it's a fun and challenging job (most of the time). Most people I've met in the game biz understand they could probably make quite a bit more money working outside the industry. And, for the most part, we do it becomes we love games, and want to be part of that process.
There's a significant difference between a normal "crunch" (which may not even include significantly extended hours - simply an acceleration of development intensity), and a "death march". I've seen extended crunches that have been brutal enough to cause the virtual disintegration of an entire team when a project was finished. Is any one game worth losing experienced employees over? Many companies used to believe that they could afford high turnovers and low morale caused by these crunches. I've watched many of these companies go out of business over the years as well. Obviously, I can't establish firm causation here, but it makes sense to me that the best developers will tend to migrate to where they're treated well, and a game company that can't retain talent will eventually collapse under their own mediocrity.
Let's face it - it's not as though you can plan every detail of a game from start to finish. Plans will change - you have to remain flexible enough to ensure your game captures that elusive "fun" aspect. But then again, it's not exactly some magical mystery either. Good planning and scheduling can alleviate most crunch-time woes. If you end up in a severe crunch, and your team has been working hard and competently, then it's a failure of management - either by not scheduling enough time or for not cutting unneeded features or project scope aggressively enough. There's really no other way to look at it.
It's simply an early trend, which may point towards further decreasing sunspot activity. I hope you're not seriously trying to tell us you believe there's no difference between a 90-day sample period and a 1-day sample period.
Also, from the article, please note that scientists are not completely brain-dead:
Pesnell believes sunspot counts should pick up again soon, "possibly by the end of the year," to be followed by a solar maximum of below-average intensity in 2012 or 2013. But like other forecasters, he knows he could be wrong. Bull or bear? Stay tuned for updates.
In other words, they're not simply extrapolating the entire year based on a 90-day cycle. Rather, they're looking at how this period fits into a larger trend.
But that provides great lines for the marketing monkeys:
"The map's A MILLION TIMES BIGGER than Oblivion!".
P.S.: Lack of the first coffee has made me write "pam" instead of "map" twice and still, I nailed "Oblivion!". I won't be telling that one to my psichiatrist.
Dutch's law: Any post that mocks bad spelling or grammar will invariably contain original errors of its own.
Usually this occurs when mocking others' errors, but I'm gratified to see the law holds even when mocking your own. ;-)
I agree with the sentiment, but it's the *Federal* government has just put every last man, woman, and child in the US on the hook for many additional trillions worth of spending (each of our share is up to $36,000). Ultimately, in a government "by the people", we're actually responsible for covering what our government does (and spends).
Red Dawn. I remember as a kid thinking what an awesome movie it was. I watched it years later, and realized how horrible it was.
Protip: Let pleasant childhood memories remain pleasantly in the past. Drag them kicking and screaming into the present, and they're bound to get a lot uglier.
Localization is also difficult if context isn't properly provided. For instance, if localizing to an Asian language, it makes a huge different what the relative social status of two people speaking to each other are. They also tend to have a slightly larger memory footprint, simply due to the increased font size - an important consideration for console games. Other languages have their own quirks as well. Certain languages will tend to take up more room than the original English strings, such as German or Polish. Some languages will alter words (not just the pronouns) based on the gender of the speaker and/or who you're speaking to (fun if you can choose between male and female avatars, for instance). When recording dialogue, very often the translations must either be lip-synced to the original, or are at least time-constrained to the original language tracks.
It's definitely a lot more challenging / costly to do high quality localization than most people realize.
Yet, nobody seems to mind when Americans bitch and whine about speaking Spanish in America and "protecting" the English language...
It's a slightly different issue. Very few are under the misguided notion that English itself is somehow dying, as it's established itself as a significant international language. I'd say the beef is more about the cost of providing government services in multiple languages more than anything.
I'm curious, do you know what percentage of games actually have specific localizations for fr-CA? A market of 7 million may sound like a lot, but such a market size wouldn't seem to justify the expense of specific localization (unless it's a small game that can be easily localized), especially when you can cover a much broader market with a single international French version. The question is whether the difference in sales between producing a fr-CA version versus an international French version would be worth the added expense. I'm guessing the answer is probably "no", but that's just my supposition.
Lalalalalalala... can't hear you!
-The USA
I don't know if it's anything specific to the game industry - perhaps more to do with long-term versus short-term thinking. You'll notice that nearly all of those items require a good deal of patience in order to realize the benefits of those actions. Each of those elements mentioned likely has a min/max curve that maximizes a company's profit, but no one has a magic formula for that, of course. Naturally, you can't actually pay your employees exorbitant salaries and polish a game forever while still making a profit either. So, managers are more likely to perceive what they see as a "safer" approach to maximizing profits: pay employees as little as possible, work them as long as possible, and push the game out of the door as soon as possible.
This will likely show immediate gains fiscally, and so can create the illusion of a winning strategy. The game ships on time, overhead remains lower, and thus profits are higher. But the problem is that it's not a sustainable methodology. Sooner or later, your employees will figure out that they can be treated better at other companies, and you lose their valuable experience (not only general experience, but knowledge of internal technology, etc). Or, they simply because so demoralized that they can't compete with others' productivity.
That seems like a vast assumption. You're claiming 9 out of 10 game development companies don't have basic business and developmnent abilities.
I was pretty careful to preface that statement with qualifiers stating that was simply my opinion. And, it was based on my experience of working at a large number of companies, and having many friends who do as well. 9/10 doesn't mean they all fail at each single one. However, in over a decade of working in the industry, my current company is the only one who seem to adhere to these principles, and even they aren't perfect (no one is).
People are blaming the economy whenever layoffs happen now, but the fact is that life as a game developer means working in a highly volatile industry. I've been laid off before, and I've had companies go out of business under me as well. Nearly everyone that's been in the industry for a decade or more has had these experiences as well. I don't necessarily think it's the recession (although it certainly doesn't help matters). But game industry layoffs happen all the time. Small developers go out of business all the time.
I happen to know of a local company that a number of my friends work at that recently had big layoffs. There are two divisions: one is run competently, and one is run by a moron. Guess which division suffered big layoffs...
I also disagree with the notion that games can't make a profit at current price points. Well, game companies may simply need to be a bit more realistic with their budgets, or figure out a way to grab a bigger share of the market so they *are* profitable. It's sort of the nature of capitalism - it's a Darwinian process that tends to weed out less successful companies. It's harsh, but as with nature, it's ultimately healthier for the entire market as it seeks equalibrium.