I've worked in the games industry at an independent company for 8 years (all at the same company).
Before that I worked at a startup on EJB apps (and many other odd jobs), and before that I worked at a small company writing and debugging embedded systems software and hardware. All the jobs had their benefits and drawbacks, but if you can find a good game developer to work for (as I feel I have) it's well worth it. Our games have been relatively successful, and profit sharing from those games has resulted in my average compensation to be almost double my salary. I've definitely worked long hours during my time, but when you're working on something you and others around you believe in (as has almost always been the case) it has a completely different feel than the 12-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week periods I was forced to work in my previous job.
The problems are hard, and solving them is fun. The people are incredibly smart, and they're the kind of people I'd want to hang out with outside of work.
You might get paid less than working at a consulting firm, but in my experience the atmosphere and problem space is much more interesting.
I look forward to the days when cars can effectively communicate.
The example of the Mack truck being notified as it was entering the intersection sounds like a convoluted way to pitch the idea as a lifesaving system.
Has this system been in place at the time it seems more likely the truck driver would have seen the alert at precisely the same instant the truck contacted the school bus.
Putting out an album with record label backing is 100% analogous to starting a company with VC funding.
Close, but from what I understand it's actually worse than VC funding.
With record deals, book deals, and videogame deals you actually pay your debt (advances) out of your cut instead of off the top. That means if you get a 25% cut and owe $100,000 you won't see a dollar until the gross surpasses $400,000.
To be clear, I share your sentiment, and feel police should be discouraged from interfering with someone recording them in a public place.
I'm not sure how I could craft a law that satisfied the spirit of that without creating weird loopholes. Would I be able to shield myself from arrest or interference when doing something else simply by whipping out a video camera?
I also agree that destroying the video should be akin to destroying evidence, but how do you prove that it happened? Do all devices record the fact that they're recording? What's to prevent me from pretending to film and then claiming the police destroyed the video?
I've watched that talk before, and while the message is interesting, she casually (and frequently) glosses over the fact that her industry is literally about putting the clothes on people's backs. It should be surprising to no one in the audience that people buy food and clothing more than CDs and DVDs.
If I recall correctly she even talks about how their industry requested and was/denied/ copyright on the ground that clothing/was too important a commodity/ to be regulated as such. It's not that they're a group of "fashion should be free" folk, it's that they're not allowed to stifle a basic good needed for human survival.
I'll emphasize again that the talk has a lot of interesting points about innovation and reuse of ideas, but implying that leisure and luxury industries can adopt similar strategies and see similar results seems specious.
Being a magician and a skeptic often go hand-in-hand, Houdini was well-famed as both. One of his main focuses was people purporting to talk to the spirit world. I believe he even went so far as offer a personal reward for someone who could show proof of someone communicating with the dead.
MCA claimed that Donkey Kong infringed on their "King Kong" trademark, Nintendo won the battle when they showed that MCA had previously argued (and won) that King Kong and its characters were already in the public domain.
The fact that games (which, lets face it, appear to rely on either a) horrible advertising or b) selling your details, because there's no other way they could make it so profitable)
Whoa, slow your roll there. I'm sure lots of apps make money on advertising, but it's unfair to say that their business model is based around violating user privacy.
The biggest games (Zynga games, especially) have proven that people are absolutely willing to engage in microtransactions in exchange for speed-ups and convenience.
They advance you a sum of money, and then you pay them the money back using your 10-30% royalty from sales. They get to keep 90-70% starting at dollar 1, whereas the writer or developer doesn't see anything until their advance is repaid.
You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,
IANAL but isn't it the case that courts never uphold the validity of those kinds of causes in contracts? You can still do all those things, you'll just be in breach of contract (a contract you probably don't care about if you're filing or joining a class-action lawsuit).
People that talk on their cell phones while driving, are obviously distracted and drive like they're retarded. Crashing into stationary objects isn't the only hazard these morons face. Pissing off other motorists and getting your dumb ass shot is also a possibility. I for one have felt this impulse on more that one occasion while following some imbecile, talking on their cell phone while trying to stay between the ditches.
Personally, I am all for imposing very large fines for people using cell phones while driving. This is already the case on all military bases. I think it's time to place new laws to include all other roads as well.
In your case, texting while driving: Your eyes are not on the road; Both hands are doing something else instead of piloting your large conglomeration of steel barreling down the road.
I'm having some difficulty putting a suitable punishment for you, my friend. Any first thoughts I'm having are not good for you.
What about those of us who have been talking/texting while driving for 5/10/15 years with no accidents?
Should we suffer because there are other people who are bad at knowing the right/wrong situations to divide their attention and who are obviously incapable of talking and keeping the wheel straight?
Doesn't the current way of things (punishing those who drive recklessly regardless of whether they're on the phone or not) make more sense?
The main focus of the argument is not that "people shouldn't be able to resell their new purchases". The focus is on some of the tactics that our retail channels engage in to convert new sales into higher-margin used sales. Since the margin on a used game sale is huge compared to a new sale, retailers like Gamestop will actively encourage people who bring New copies of a game to the register to purchase the used one instead.
The secondary issue is that a person who purchases a new game for $60 is then willing to turn around and sell it a week or two later for $25 to an entity which clearly values the used title at $55, since that's what they resell it for. I agree that games should cost less money, but as long as a consumer will choose to purchase the "5 dollars cheaper" version and then resell it for 30% of that price a few weeks later it's a strange economic uphill battle.
Game development is already a sort of ghetto; most programmers worth their salt wouldn't touch it with an eleven-foot pole, and that would just make it worse.
*laugh out loud*
Anyone who thinks that game development is the ghetto of programming needs to try to get a job in the game dev industry.
I've worked on web applications as well as embedded systems and game development is easily the toughest job I've ever had.
Building a program with a large team that has to fit in memory as well as run over 30fps no matter what the user does is a massive feat of engineering.
And don't even get started on 'The Sims'. Even if I thought it was a good concept (which it might be -- but it's no Sim City, IMHO) WTF is up with twenty thousand different "expansion" packs? They neglected a great franchise (Sim City) in favor of using the brand name to push a crappy product that they sold in 30 different parts. The Sims is the far and away the best-selling PC game franchise in history. Every year since "The Sims" was released in 2000, a Sims product (sometimes more than one!) has held a top 5 spot in PC sales, and according to Wikipedia it's sold more than 70 million units as of January 2007.
Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.
Not to mention that in the small scale model the piracy percentage would be much lower, as it would be less likely that an unknown compilation album would show up on the major torrent sites.
MS spent billions to DirectX and converting some naive/beginner developers exactly for this reason. To control. Companies/Developers like ID Software, Blizzard spent extra millions as an answer. They are using OpenGL and OpenAL not because "they are 133t", they use it to minimise effects of such crap by MS. They don't want MS dictating users which OS to run using their millions of man hours as excuse.
Not to split hairs, but World of Warcraft uses FMOD, not OpenAL.
Slashdot Mirror
I've worked in the games industry at an independent company for 8 years (all at the same company).
Before that I worked at a startup on EJB apps (and many other odd jobs), and before that I worked at a small company writing and debugging embedded systems software and hardware. All the jobs had their benefits and drawbacks, but if you can find a good game developer to work for (as I feel I have) it's well worth it. Our games have been relatively successful, and profit sharing from those games has resulted in my average compensation to be almost double my salary. I've definitely worked long hours during my time, but when you're working on something you and others around you believe in (as has almost always been the case) it has a completely different feel than the 12-hours-a-day-7-days-a-week periods I was forced to work in my previous job.
The problems are hard, and solving them is fun. The people are incredibly smart, and they're the kind of people I'd want to hang out with outside of work.
You might get paid less than working at a consulting firm, but in my experience the atmosphere and problem space is much more interesting.
I look forward to the days when cars can effectively communicate.
The example of the Mack truck being notified as it was entering the intersection sounds like a convoluted way to pitch the idea as a lifesaving system.
Has this system been in place at the time it seems more likely the truck driver would have seen the alert at precisely the same instant the truck contacted the school bus.
Putting out an album with record label backing is 100% analogous to starting a company with VC funding.
Close, but from what I understand it's actually worse than VC funding.
With record deals, book deals, and videogame deals you actually pay your debt (advances) out of your cut instead of off the top. That means if you get a 25% cut and owe $100,000 you won't see a dollar until the gross surpasses $400,000.
The answer to your rhetorical question is "because EA gives you a cut of the sales".
Just look at Valve's current efforts with "Steam Workshop", where the community is allowed to build items for their more popular titles.
They recently disclosed that at least one of the people who contributes content has already made over $500,000 from sales of their items.
It's difficult to offer a game for $30 from the outset when the console manufacturer takes a flat $10 license fee on each disc sold.
To be clear, I share your sentiment, and feel police should be discouraged from interfering with someone recording them in a public place.
I'm not sure how I could craft a law that satisfied the spirit of that without creating weird loopholes.
Would I be able to shield myself from arrest or interference when doing something else simply by whipping out a video camera?
I also agree that destroying the video should be akin to destroying evidence, but how do you prove that it happened? Do all devices record the fact that they're recording? What's to prevent me from pretending to film and then claiming the police destroyed the video?
Seriously, do we need a Slashdot story about every piece of Kickstarter vaporware that meets its funding goal?
How can it be vaporware if they've already built and distributed fully-operational prototypes to several individuals/companies?
Carmack's been tweeting about specs and improvements he's been making for months now.
I've watched that talk before, and while the message is interesting, she casually (and frequently) glosses over the fact that her industry is literally about putting the clothes on people's backs. It should be surprising to no one in the audience that people buy food and clothing more than CDs and DVDs.
If I recall correctly she even talks about how their industry requested and was /denied/ copyright on the ground that clothing /was too important a commodity/ to be regulated as such. It's not that they're a group of "fashion should be free" folk, it's that they're not allowed to stifle a basic good needed for human survival.
I'll emphasize again that the talk has a lot of interesting points about innovation and reuse of ideas, but implying that leisure and luxury industries can adopt similar strategies and see similar results seems specious.
Being a magician and a skeptic often go hand-in-hand, Houdini was well-famed as both. One of his main focuses was people purporting to talk to the spirit world. I believe he even went so far as offer a personal reward for someone who could show proof of someone communicating with the dead.
This strangely echoes the fight between MCA and Nintendo over the name "Donkey Kong".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Nintendo_Co.,_Ltd.
MCA claimed that Donkey Kong infringed on their "King Kong" trademark, Nintendo won the battle when they showed that MCA had previously argued (and won) that King Kong and its characters were already in the public domain.
Open Source != Crowd Source
My math must be wrong then.
1962 + 50 = ...?
The fact that games (which, lets face it, appear to rely on either a) horrible advertising or b) selling your details, because there's no other way they could make it so profitable)
Whoa, slow your roll there. I'm sure lots of apps make money on advertising, but it's unfair to say that their business model is based around violating user privacy.
The biggest games (Zynga games, especially) have proven that people are absolutely willing to engage in microtransactions in exchange for speed-ups and convenience.
and the book publishing industry too.
They advance you a sum of money, and then you pay them the money back using your 10-30% royalty from sales. They get to keep 90-70% starting at dollar 1, whereas the writer or developer doesn't see anything until their advance is repaid.
Such a shame.
The terms of use are also very slimy
You waive your right to sue, to join others in a class action or other collective lawsuit, to filing an injunction,
IANAL but isn't it the case that courts never uphold the validity of those kinds of causes in contracts? You can still do all those things, you'll just be in breach of contract (a contract you probably don't care about if you're filing or joining a class-action lawsuit).
People that talk on their cell phones while driving, are obviously distracted and drive like they're retarded. Crashing into stationary objects isn't the only hazard these morons face. Pissing off other motorists and getting your dumb ass shot is also a possibility. I for one have felt this impulse on more that one occasion while following some imbecile, talking on their cell phone while trying to stay between the ditches.
Personally, I am all for imposing very large fines for people using cell phones while driving. This is already the case on all military bases. I think it's time to place new laws to include all other roads as well.
In your case, texting while driving: Your eyes are not on the road; Both hands are doing something else instead of piloting your large conglomeration of steel barreling down the road. I'm having some difficulty putting a suitable punishment for you, my friend. Any first thoughts I'm having are not good for you.
What about those of us who have been talking/texting while driving for 5/10/15 years with no accidents?
Should we suffer because there are other people who are bad at knowing the right/wrong situations to divide their attention and who are obviously incapable of talking and keeping the wheel straight?
Doesn't the current way of things (punishing those who drive recklessly regardless of whether they're on the phone or not) make more sense?
The main focus of the argument is not that "people shouldn't be able to resell their new purchases". The focus is on some of the tactics that our retail channels engage in to convert new sales into higher-margin used sales. Since the margin on a used game sale is huge compared to a new sale, retailers like Gamestop will actively encourage people who bring New copies of a game to the register to purchase the used one instead. The secondary issue is that a person who purchases a new game for $60 is then willing to turn around and sell it a week or two later for $25 to an entity which clearly values the used title at $55, since that's what they resell it for. I agree that games should cost less money, but as long as a consumer will choose to purchase the "5 dollars cheaper" version and then resell it for 30% of that price a few weeks later it's a strange economic uphill battle.
Game development is already a sort of ghetto; most programmers worth their salt wouldn't touch it with an eleven-foot pole, and that would just make it worse.
*laugh out loud* Anyone who thinks that game development is the ghetto of programming needs to try to get a job in the game dev industry. I've worked on web applications as well as embedded systems and game development is easily the toughest job I've ever had. Building a program with a large team that has to fit in memory as well as run over 30fps no matter what the user does is a massive feat of engineering.
No, they're talking about the pattern of several red (brown) dots that appear in film frames in random parts of the movie.
Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.
Not to mention that in the small scale model the piracy percentage would be much lower, as it would be less likely that an unknown compilation album would show up on the major torrent sites.
Not to split hairs, but World of Warcraft uses FMOD, not OpenAL.
And to think, my company decided creating and maintaining an open-source product was too much work...