The price of anything is determined by the cost of reproduction plus any additional markup. Software is digital information, and digital information has a marginal cost of reproduction of zero because copying digital information with a computer costs nothing.
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero. That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times. No wonder he got so rich, huh?
Among those likely to own an iPhone, we could guess that $5 probably represents somewhere between 1/2 to 1/8 of an hour of work. It's about the same price as a McDonald's lunch, and less than the price of a movie ticket. Those who purchase a game like this are indicating that the entertainment value of this game is worth the indicated price to them. Tell me, is it so outrageous to trade 15 minutes of your workday for a product which may keep you entertained for many hours?
I understand your argument, but you're looking at digital downloads from a purely technical viewpoint. By the same sort of reasoning, someone might determine that vacations are completely pointless because it's a one-time expenditure with absolutely nothing physically gained. There are many criteria by which to determine the value of a product.
I've never understood people who feel the need to rush to complete game content. After paying for a game, I like to take my time and enjoy it. I guess maybe people see it as another way of competing with each other? Or is it just obsession?
Maybe I have a slightly different perspective than most. I'm a game developer, so I guess I'm slightly more aware than most of how much work goes into every single game. It's slightly depressing sometimes, because you've put a year or more of work into a product, and you've still only produced enough content to last a long weekend.
It probably has something to do with the fact that gun ownership is strictly regulated in France. The only categories of firearms that are freely sold are hunting rifles and shotguns, neither of which are designed to kill people.
Actually, it seems like "shotgun" describes this legal technique pretty well.
"Game schools" are a joke. I wouldn't mind a class focusing on the developpement of a game (ie how to manage the whole process, not actually making them) but seriously specialising in a field where things change quickly enough (more if you're into consoles; I'm just talking SDK-wise here) and where the concepts can be figured out by yourself (how many of us did minigames at some point?).
My company has hired quite a few (and will likely continue to hire) graduates from Digipen. Why?
Game development is a highly specialized field of digital art and programming, and a really challenging one at that. We know the curriculum at Digipen covers a lot of basic game development theory and practice that may or may not have been covered with a general-purpose CS degree.
One of the big advantages of coming from Digipen is that students are pretty much guaranteed to have a complete, functional game to show off to prospective employers. I can't tell you how valuable that "first project" experience is. If you come in with a degree but no significant amount of game-related code to show off, you're not going to get very far in the hiring process.
Anyone can start making a computer game. Game development companies are looking for people who can finish one.
University/college is not always the answer. You're wasting time in a class instead of being out on the field working, and you'll get less respect for that wasted time. (Can you show you're able to hold a job if all you've been doing could have been partying while following a joke of a program?)
It's much harder to get into the industry nowadays without a degree of some sort. It's still possible, but having a degree will certainly open up some doors that otherwise would have been closed. If you can get into the industry and can get four years of experience instead of schooling... fantastic. But that's pretty hard to do. More than likely, you'll have to start at smaller, lesser known developers, and work your way up to AAA titles.
Agreed. I recall Sun talking this way about a decade or so ago, about how everyone is going to be using "thin" client computers in the near future, with no local software or storage... just a connection to the network and running Java, of course.
It sounds like a corporate wet dream (everything is a service), and a nightmare for consumers, who may like a smattering of control over their documents and data. Maybe some people don't care. But then again, some people are also known to fall for Nigerian money-laundering scams as well.
Well, reading the article can give a clue as to Digipen's arguments:
However, Claude Comair begs to differ. Comair, who founded the privately owned DigiPen in 1988, is its president and one of its owners. He is also a co-founder of the Nintendo Software Technology Corp., a division of Nintendo of America.
"Our policy, which has been our policy since day one and which is laid out in our student agreement, is very clear -- everything that is done within the school and presented as homework or as a product to be judged by a teacher ends up being the property of the school. IP, code, artwork, everything," says Comair.
"And, as a matter of fact, in my opening speech, I tell students that if there is something dear to them, they should not present it as homework."
That policy, Comair explains, isn't a casual one and, he feels, it has helped the school avoid many problems, especially misunderstandings between DigiPen and the games industry.
"We are not here to compete with the games industry," he says. "We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses."
"Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don't know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don't know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited."
"These are just a few of the reasons why we have this policy," he adds, "but the bottom line is that DigiPen has never sold any of its students' games nor do we intend to. Nor have we made any exceptions for students who tried to convince us to do so. They have come to us with so many very creative arguments that I recently had to say to them 'Please don't come anymore. I have your best interests at heart and I want you to go find good jobs after you graduate. But I simply cannot make exceptions.'"
I can understand how students attempting to monetize projects could create a lot of issues for the school. Essentially, the school would take on liability, because the games were created with their software, computers, and resources. They just can't open themselves up like that.
That being said, it's pretty obvious that Digipen is pretty permissive about allowing a company to hire all students, and create a commercial version of a student project. This is exactly what happened with Portal, and it's been a fantastic boon (in terms of publicity) for Digipen. They'd be insane to come down on the wrong side of this issue, as it would negatively affect the employment prospects of its graduates, which would ultimately hurt them.
And you've summed up nicely why I rarely go to theaters anymore.
A 63" TV + extra large subwoofers + my own theater room in my own house > movie theater. Being able to pause the movie to grab a snack or go to the bathroom doesn't hurt either.
I don't know about the US, but most European cities have speed limits of 50 km/h (around 31 mph), so it's not that far of. Actually, I would not mind this type of car getting popular, since it would lower the air and noise pollution in crammed cities quite considerably.
Zero-emissions, true, but I'd watch the videos before claiming this would lower noise pollution. It seemed sort of loud, at least in the video I watched.
Well, speeding causes more deaths in the UK every year than terrorism has in the last decade - roughly 6-12% (depending on the source) of fatal accidents are related to excessive speed, and at around 3000 per year, that gives between 180 and 360 deaths per year.
Everyone in modern society more or less has to accept a certain amount of inevitable risk, such as the well-known risks we all take getting into a car. We do what we can to limit the risks, balanced against reasonable practicality/economics. We have traffic rules that are enforced by law, rules against driving drunk, modern cars have an enormous amount of engineering in them devoted to safety, etc, etc... But even so, everyone understands that there's nothing you can do to prevent a certain number of accidents from occurring. We just learn from mistakes and try to correct anything that's correctable.
Terrorism and other sorts of brutal mass-homicides tend to be particularly horrific because of the senseless nature of such killings. These are deliberate attempts to inflict as much suffering and death upon people as possible. That has a much different effect upon people than a simple car crash. While losing someone to an accident is incredibly painful (most people has lost someone at some time in their lives), I can only imagine the additional pain inflicted with knowing someone killed your loved ones with malicious intent.
I don't think you'll have much luck comparing some random sort of accident statistics with terrorism-related deaths. They don't have the same psychological impact (sort of by design), and therefore the numbers won't mean a damn thing to most people. Human nature, I'm afraid...
I still wonder how the american ego can live with this?
I don't think it would be a big deal to most Americans. For example, you don't hear a huge outcry over the fact that we don't build the most sophisticated robots anymore (according to popular perception at least). We tend to generally admire the Japanese inventiveness and industry. American culture is largely built on competition: political, economic, sporting events, etc. This means that people learn to deal with losing, since it inevitably happens to anyone that competes at anything.
Damn, that's sad. Any bets that kid is going to grow up into a real mess?
I have my own Pirates line story, oddly enough - it was a several hour wait in the hot summer sun. I was a youngster with my family, and a young couple was slowly cutting their way past everyone in line. My dad was the only one who didn't let them pass. After a few minutes, they tried to slip past us *again*. This time, my dad verbally unloaded both barrels on them, and they backed down for good.
I was pretty impressed with my Dad for standing up for what he thought was the right thing, and not caring if it made a bit of a scene. A few people came up to him later and thanked him (while some others shied well away from him). Honestly, I'll bet most of the people who let them slip by wished they were able to do what my dad did - many likely figured like you did that they were meeting someone.
Re:An example of great game A.I.
on
The State of Game AI
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The problem there is that the two factors you mentioned (accuracy and commands-per-minute) are both things that AI can far exceed humans at, especially if you aren't careful to limit it.
You're correct. I've written AI for a number of commercial games. Some of the most challenging AI is for games in which the players are competing with the AI on what are supposed to be equal terms. An AI can home in on a player's forehead with a sniper rifle with little difficulty. It's a simple mathematical equation. How do you simulate the aiming a player has to do?
The solution I came up with was to put the target's aim point on a set of springs attached to the player. By jumping around and changing direction quickly, the player would tend to throw the bot's aim off (imaging the target bouncing around, attached by the springs). But, stand still or move in the same direction for too long, and the bot would home in on the player. And, of course, just like a human player, the AI would get in a lucky shot every once in a while as the target crossed in front of the player.
You have to come up with creative solutions to make the game "feel" fair. That's not the kind of stuff that's typically taught in college courses. Naturally, formal training doesn't hurt, but there are a lot of challenges unique to game development.
I remember PC gaming being a LOT worse back in the DOS days. Back then, I'd have to create special boot disks optimized for specific games. Just getting your sound card to work was an adventure. One wrong IRQ setting, and your system hard-locked. DirectX, despite a lot of its early crappiness, vastly improved PC gaming.
...just tell me I don't *have* to create, use, or look at one of those retarded-looking avatars.
Other than this, it really feels like the driving force behind this is that they want more space for advertising.
Jerry Johnson insisted that a central tenet of the New Xbox Experience is "serendipitous discovery of content" - in other words, giving you stuff to do rather than expecting you to fire up the box with a plan already in mind - but after a few hours' use it's hard to shake the feeling that, among the more useful rows of panels showcasing the latest and most popular downloads, the new channels are simply a new wave of adverts that push beyond the old dashboard's capacity.
I'm going to throw you a warning, Microsoft, and you can take this from someone who has enjoyed using your consoles so far. You start barraging your best customers with adverts, even more than you're already doing (which is bordering on obnoxious already), and you're going to risk killing the lead you currently enjoy with your online services.
Except portal wasn't developed by valve, it was a senior year project for digipen...
Not exactly. The precursor to Portal (Narbacular Drop) was developed by Digipen students. Valve subsequently hired said students to develop the game commercially using the Source engine, and Portal was born.
Somebody who'd want to program for a real game company would be better off getting a math degree with emphasis on programming rather than a CompSci degree with emphasis in software engineering.
On what basis do you offer this advice? Game development is a very practical endeavor, with a large number of very specialized requirements:
* C/C++ fluency is almost universally required. Other languages such as C#/Lua/Python * Understanding of efficient coding practices and optimization
And, of course, you can then split off into one of many specialized areas: * 3D graphics programming * Audio programming * AI and pathfinding * Animation systems * Cinematics/Machinima systems * Physics programming * Internal tools development * Gameplay programming * Platform-specific specialists * Server/network programming
A math degree is useful for some of these jobs, but not all. Most programming job listings ask for a CS degree or equivalent in industry experience. You could probably get in with a math degree, and it might help you find a specialized programming job such as a physics developer (extremely math-intensive), but I just don't see it being too practical in a general sense.
Honestly, I can think of very few times I've had to call on any of my higher math skills as a game programmer (I specialize in audio, cinematic, and AI programming). Most of the time, basic linear algebra suffices quite nicely.
It's not all like that. I've been a programmer in the video game industry for 11+ years now. The simple fact of the matter is this: if you've got a proven track record as a developer, you'll command a good salary and be in very high demand. It's true that you may not make as much as those with equivalent skills outside the game development industry, but hey, you're making games for a living, which is a pretty cool way to spend your day.
Sure, some companies will think nothing of exploiting you as much as they can. This isn't exactly unique to the game development industry. If you find yourself in such a situation, try to at least finish up your current project (important for your resume), but get the hell out of that company. Once you actually get a few years under your belt and a few shipped titles, you become a highly sought-after commodity. Smart employers recognize this, and work to keep you happy and productive.
You don't hear about it as much, but there *are* companies that treat their employees well. I'm very happy with my current employer, as they understand that a healthy work-life balance is important to keeping employees happy over the long haul. I work 40-hour weeks, get five weeks of paid vacation, good health benefits, a fun and exciting working environment, and a good salary.
the average user should be able to accomplish everything they need to do using a 700-800 MHz low-power processor with 256 MB of RAM. they'd not only save on their electric bill, but we'd be creating a more sustainable society.
I don't think a separate line of lower-powered desktop machines is all that practical.
First, you can buy a very capable modern computer for under $500 right now. Most of the cost at this point is going to costs that won't be mitigated by creating a lower powered machine (shipping, manufacturing, the monitor and other bulky hardware, etc).
Second, modern machines can go into low-power sleep mode when not being used. Or, you can just turn the thing off when you're not using it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly why MMO's don't lend themselves well to keeping a historical imprint on society.
Of all the criticisms I've heard of MMOs, I have to admit... that's a new one.
The price of anything is determined by the cost of reproduction plus any additional markup. Software is digital information, and digital information has a marginal cost of reproduction of zero because copying digital information with a computer costs nothing.
You forgot overhead and labor.
And when you really think about it, paying any price for a digital download is simply price gouging anyway, since the cost of reproduction is zero. That means at $5, Trism is marked up 500 times. No wonder he got so rich, huh?
Among those likely to own an iPhone, we could guess that $5 probably represents somewhere between 1/2 to 1/8 of an hour of work. It's about the same price as a McDonald's lunch, and less than the price of a movie ticket. Those who purchase a game like this are indicating that the entertainment value of this game is worth the indicated price to them. Tell me, is it so outrageous to trade 15 minutes of your workday for a product which may keep you entertained for many hours?
I understand your argument, but you're looking at digital downloads from a purely technical viewpoint. By the same sort of reasoning, someone might determine that vacations are completely pointless because it's a one-time expenditure with absolutely nothing physically gained. There are many criteria by which to determine the value of a product.
Shooting stuff into space has been tried already. But it ended badly, with an eye being put out.
I never played Star Control II, so the joke/reference went right over my head. Bad mod should be null and void with this comment.
I've never understood people who feel the need to rush to complete game content. After paying for a game, I like to take my time and enjoy it. I guess maybe people see it as another way of competing with each other? Or is it just obsession?
Maybe I have a slightly different perspective than most. I'm a game developer, so I guess I'm slightly more aware than most of how much work goes into every single game. It's slightly depressing sometimes, because you've put a year or more of work into a product, and you've still only produced enough content to last a long weekend.
It probably has something to do with the fact that gun ownership is strictly regulated in France. The only categories of firearms that are freely sold are hunting rifles and shotguns, neither of which are designed to kill people.
Actually, it seems like "shotgun" describes this legal technique pretty well.
"Game schools" are a joke. I wouldn't mind a class focusing on the developpement of a game (ie how to manage the whole process, not actually making them) but seriously specialising in a field where things change quickly enough (more if you're into consoles; I'm just talking SDK-wise here) and where the concepts can be figured out by yourself (how many of us did minigames at some point?).
My company has hired quite a few (and will likely continue to hire) graduates from Digipen. Why?
Game development is a highly specialized field of digital art and programming, and a really challenging one at that. We know the curriculum at Digipen covers a lot of basic game development theory and practice that may or may not have been covered with a general-purpose CS degree.
One of the big advantages of coming from Digipen is that students are pretty much guaranteed to have a complete, functional game to show off to prospective employers. I can't tell you how valuable that "first project" experience is. If you come in with a degree but no significant amount of game-related code to show off, you're not going to get very far in the hiring process.
Anyone can start making a computer game. Game development companies are looking for people who can finish one.
University/college is not always the answer. You're wasting time in a class instead of being out on the field working, and you'll get less respect for that wasted time. (Can you show you're able to hold a job if all you've been doing could have been partying while following a joke of a program?)
It's much harder to get into the industry nowadays without a degree of some sort. It's still possible, but having a degree will certainly open up some doors that otherwise would have been closed. If you can get into the industry and can get four years of experience instead of schooling... fantastic. But that's pretty hard to do. More than likely, you'll have to start at smaller, lesser known developers, and work your way up to AAA titles.
Agreed. I recall Sun talking this way about a decade or so ago, about how everyone is going to be using "thin" client computers in the near future, with no local software or storage... just a connection to the network and running Java, of course.
It sounds like a corporate wet dream (everything is a service), and a nightmare for consumers, who may like a smattering of control over their documents and data. Maybe some people don't care. But then again, some people are also known to fall for Nigerian money-laundering scams as well.
Well, reading the article can give a clue as to Digipen's arguments:
However, Claude Comair begs to differ. Comair, who founded the privately owned DigiPen in 1988, is its president and one of its owners. He is also a co-founder of the Nintendo Software Technology Corp., a division of Nintendo of America.
"Our policy, which has been our policy since day one and which is laid out in our student agreement, is very clear -- everything that is done within the school and presented as homework or as a product to be judged by a teacher ends up being the property of the school. IP, code, artwork, everything," says Comair.
"And, as a matter of fact, in my opening speech, I tell students that if there is something dear to them, they should not present it as homework."
That policy, Comair explains, isn't a casual one and, he feels, it has helped the school avoid many problems, especially misunderstandings between DigiPen and the games industry.
"We are not here to compete with the games industry," he says. "We are not here for people to come and make a game in a less-expensive manner utilizing equipment and software that has student licenses."
"Just as importantly, we are not equipped to properly firewall our projects in the sense that we really don't know legally speaking how many or which students created which games. We don't know whether they received input from other students who have not been credited."
"These are just a few of the reasons why we have this policy," he adds, "but the bottom line is that DigiPen has never sold any of its students' games nor do we intend to. Nor have we made any exceptions for students who tried to convince us to do so. They have come to us with so many very creative arguments that I recently had to say to them 'Please don't come anymore. I have your best interests at heart and I want you to go find good jobs after you graduate. But I simply cannot make exceptions.'"
I can understand how students attempting to monetize projects could create a lot of issues for the school. Essentially, the school would take on liability, because the games were created with their software, computers, and resources. They just can't open themselves up like that.
That being said, it's pretty obvious that Digipen is pretty permissive about allowing a company to hire all students, and create a commercial version of a student project. This is exactly what happened with Portal, and it's been a fantastic boon (in terms of publicity) for Digipen. They'd be insane to come down on the wrong side of this issue, as it would negatively affect the employment prospects of its graduates, which would ultimately hurt them.
And you've summed up nicely why I rarely go to theaters anymore.
A 63" TV + extra large subwoofers + my own theater room in my own house > movie theater. Being able to pause the movie to grab a snack or go to the bathroom doesn't hurt either.
Thus far, I'm not aware of ANY MMOs failing. Hellgate London probably will, but it'll be the first.
Auto Assault
Sims Online
Space and Beyond
Motor City Online
Asheron's Call 2
Hellgate will certainly not be the first if it shuts down completely.
I don't know about the US, but most European cities have speed limits of 50 km/h (around 31 mph), so it's not that far of.
Actually, I would not mind this type of car getting popular, since it would lower the air and noise pollution in crammed cities quite considerably.
Zero-emissions, true, but I'd watch the videos before claiming this would lower noise pollution. It seemed sort of loud, at least in the video I watched.
Well, speeding causes more deaths in the UK every year than terrorism has in the last decade - roughly 6-12% (depending on the source) of fatal accidents are related to excessive speed, and at around 3000 per year, that gives between 180 and 360 deaths per year.
Everyone in modern society more or less has to accept a certain amount of inevitable risk, such as the well-known risks we all take getting into a car. We do what we can to limit the risks, balanced against reasonable practicality/economics. We have traffic rules that are enforced by law, rules against driving drunk, modern cars have an enormous amount of engineering in them devoted to safety, etc, etc... But even so, everyone understands that there's nothing you can do to prevent a certain number of accidents from occurring. We just learn from mistakes and try to correct anything that's correctable.
Terrorism and other sorts of brutal mass-homicides tend to be particularly horrific because of the senseless nature of such killings. These are deliberate attempts to inflict as much suffering and death upon people as possible. That has a much different effect upon people than a simple car crash. While losing someone to an accident is incredibly painful (most people has lost someone at some time in their lives), I can only imagine the additional pain inflicted with knowing someone killed your loved ones with malicious intent.
I don't think you'll have much luck comparing some random sort of accident statistics with terrorism-related deaths. They don't have the same psychological impact (sort of by design), and therefore the numbers won't mean a damn thing to most people. Human nature, I'm afraid...
I still wonder how the american ego can live with this?
I don't think it would be a big deal to most Americans. For example, you don't hear a huge outcry over the fact that we don't build the most sophisticated robots anymore (according to popular perception at least). We tend to generally admire the Japanese inventiveness and industry. American culture is largely built on competition: political, economic, sporting events, etc. This means that people learn to deal with losing, since it inevitably happens to anyone that competes at anything.
Damn, that's sad. Any bets that kid is going to grow up into a real mess?
I have my own Pirates line story, oddly enough - it was a several hour wait in the hot summer sun. I was a youngster with my family, and a young couple was slowly cutting their way past everyone in line. My dad was the only one who didn't let them pass. After a few minutes, they tried to slip past us *again*. This time, my dad verbally unloaded both barrels on them, and they backed down for good.
I was pretty impressed with my Dad for standing up for what he thought was the right thing, and not caring if it made a bit of a scene. A few people came up to him later and thanked him (while some others shied well away from him). Honestly, I'll bet most of the people who let them slip by wished they were able to do what my dad did - many likely figured like you did that they were meeting someone.
The problem there is that the two factors you mentioned (accuracy and commands-per-minute) are both things that AI can far exceed humans at, especially if you aren't careful to limit it.
You're correct. I've written AI for a number of commercial games. Some of the most challenging AI is for games in which the players are competing with the AI on what are supposed to be equal terms. An AI can home in on a player's forehead with a sniper rifle with little difficulty. It's a simple mathematical equation. How do you simulate the aiming a player has to do?
The solution I came up with was to put the target's aim point on a set of springs attached to the player. By jumping around and changing direction quickly, the player would tend to throw the bot's aim off (imaging the target bouncing around, attached by the springs). But, stand still or move in the same direction for too long, and the bot would home in on the player. And, of course, just like a human player, the AI would get in a lucky shot every once in a while as the target crossed in front of the player.
You have to come up with creative solutions to make the game "feel" fair. That's not the kind of stuff that's typically taught in college courses. Naturally, formal training doesn't hurt, but there are a lot of challenges unique to game development.
I remember PC gaming being a LOT worse back in the DOS days. Back then, I'd have to create special boot disks optimized for specific games. Just getting your sound card to work was an adventure. One wrong IRQ setting, and your system hard-locked. DirectX, despite a lot of its early crappiness, vastly improved PC gaming.
...just tell me I don't *have* to create, use, or look at one of those retarded-looking avatars.
Other than this, it really feels like the driving force behind this is that they want more space for advertising.
Jerry Johnson insisted that a central tenet of the New Xbox Experience is "serendipitous discovery of content" - in other words, giving you stuff to do rather than expecting you to fire up the box with a plan already in mind - but after a few hours' use it's hard to shake the feeling that, among the more useful rows of panels showcasing the latest and most popular downloads, the new channels are simply a new wave of adverts that push beyond the old dashboard's capacity.
I'm going to throw you a warning, Microsoft, and you can take this from someone who has enjoyed using your consoles so far. You start barraging your best customers with adverts, even more than you're already doing (which is bordering on obnoxious already), and you're going to risk killing the lead you currently enjoy with your online services.
Except portal wasn't developed by valve, it was a senior year project for digipen...
Not exactly. The precursor to Portal (Narbacular Drop) was developed by Digipen students. Valve subsequently hired said students to develop the game commercially using the Source engine, and Portal was born.
With the possible exception of skiing through a revolving door.
I can envision a solution for very small values of ski lengths. Or for high values of speed.
Somebody who'd want to program for a real game company would be better off getting a math degree with emphasis on programming rather than a CompSci degree with emphasis in software engineering.
On what basis do you offer this advice? Game development is a very practical endeavor, with a large number of very specialized requirements:
* C/C++ fluency is almost universally required. Other languages such as C#/Lua/Python
* Understanding of efficient coding practices and optimization
And, of course, you can then split off into one of many specialized areas:
* 3D graphics programming
* Audio programming
* AI and pathfinding
* Animation systems
* Cinematics/Machinima systems
* Physics programming
* Internal tools development
* Gameplay programming
* Platform-specific specialists
* Server/network programming
A math degree is useful for some of these jobs, but not all. Most programming job listings ask for a CS degree or equivalent in industry experience. You could probably get in with a math degree, and it might help you find a specialized programming job such as a physics developer (extremely math-intensive), but I just don't see it being too practical in a general sense.
Honestly, I can think of very few times I've had to call on any of my higher math skills as a game programmer (I specialize in audio, cinematic, and AI programming). Most of the time, basic linear algebra suffices quite nicely.
It's not all like that. I've been a programmer in the video game industry for 11+ years now. The simple fact of the matter is this: if you've got a proven track record as a developer, you'll command a good salary and be in very high demand. It's true that you may not make as much as those with equivalent skills outside the game development industry, but hey, you're making games for a living, which is a pretty cool way to spend your day.
Sure, some companies will think nothing of exploiting you as much as they can. This isn't exactly unique to the game development industry. If you find yourself in such a situation, try to at least finish up your current project (important for your resume), but get the hell out of that company. Once you actually get a few years under your belt and a few shipped titles, you become a highly sought-after commodity. Smart employers recognize this, and work to keep you happy and productive.
You don't hear about it as much, but there *are* companies that treat their employees well. I'm very happy with my current employer, as they understand that a healthy work-life balance is important to keeping employees happy over the long haul. I work 40-hour weeks, get five weeks of paid vacation, good health benefits, a fun and exciting working environment, and a good salary.
Honestly, I can't imagine doing anything else.
the average user should be able to accomplish everything they need to do using a 700-800 MHz low-power processor with 256 MB of RAM. they'd not only save on their electric bill, but we'd be creating a more sustainable society.
I don't think a separate line of lower-powered desktop machines is all that practical.
First, you can buy a very capable modern computer for under $500 right now. Most of the cost at this point is going to costs that won't be mitigated by creating a lower powered machine (shipping, manufacturing, the monitor and other bulky hardware, etc).
Second, modern machines can go into low-power sleep mode when not being used. Or, you can just turn the thing off when you're not using it.
The easy solution is make sure that Windows defaults to suspend/hibernate rather than shut down
Vista's power button defaults to sleep, incidentally.