On Wed, May 11, 2005 at 01:18:47PM +1000, Helen Faulkner wrote:
> This may be of interest, especially if any of you are in the UK and
> considering doing a degree in computer science.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4530583.stm
>
> I think it's a positive step.
It's not really, because the game industry is majorly fucked up. This
isn't going to accomplish much.
There are two problems with the game industry at present:
1) Developers are considered to be a renewable resource. They are
things which you hire in and work as hard as you can until they
quit. EA is an extreme case, but their attitude *is* the
norm. It's a shitty job to have. When you can no longer work flat
out, they'll just dump you and bring in some new graduates who're
desperate for a paying job.
2) If you are a game developer working for a production house, you
will never have any real influence in the concept or content of
the game, and you will never produce the games you want to
make. Games are invented by executives. Anything you come up with
that goes against their ideas will be liberally tossed out at QA
time.
So, if you want to make games for girls, being a programmer is not the
way to go about it: you will just spend your entire short career
making first person shooters and sporting simulations. What you need
to do is be rich, and get yourself an executive directorship in a game
production company.
The rise of internet commerce in recent years has enabled independent
game developers to reach a sufficiently wide audience to make some
real money. These are usually driven by the developers, so you might
get some results there. But they're no real threat to the major
production houses; they don't have anything like the same degree of
sales. It's not going to change the games you see in a store any time
soon.
--
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