Developer Perspectives 2007

[igame3d]

When did you start developing games?
What are your priorities now?
How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
What do you expect you will be doing in five years?

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?


I was inspired to ask by the off topic branches occuring in
This Thread (http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?p=127301#post127301) and the media link about women in computer science education (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/science/17comp.html?pagewanted=2&8dpc&_r=1).

Rather that distract someone from their dynamic arrays , I figured
the questions above would give opportunity to brag, complain, dream, and discuss releveant links all in one thread.

Step up to the mic.

[AnotherJake]

Great thread man!

- When did you start developing games?

I still haven't technically developed a game since I haven't shared any of them, but like 1983.

- What are your priorities now?

Trying not to be a jerk.

- How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?

Wow, if only I knew then what I know now -- which is to say that I knew nothing then, and I barely know anything now. And people are a lot nicer and a lot smarter if you throw them a little line first.

- What do you expect you will be doing in five years?

Raising a family and chopping wood to stay warm.

- What state was the art of game development in when you started?

Zork, Bedlam, Pac-Man, etc., circa 1983

- What is your opinon of current technology and resources?

Un-effing-believable! It's a new ride baby!

- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?

Blu-Ray wins!!!

[OneSadCookie]

- When did you start developing games?

1991, originally, with HyperCard. My first C/QuickDraw game was 1998 or so I guess, and I moved on to OpenGL (in software!) soon after.

- What are your priorities now?

I'm kinda short on free time, so the game development takes a back seat. What time I do have to devote to it tends to go on more infrastructural stuff, since it's easier to bite off small but useful chunks. I dream that maybe with sufficient infrastructure putting together a game'll become manageable, but I know it's unlikely ;)

Higher priorities are the family and the job.

- How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?

It's been good. I've learned a lot, and I hope I've helped some people along the way.

- What do you expect you will be doing in five years?

Probably the same thing, only I'll be interested in games for five-year-olds :D

- What state was the art of game development in when you started?

In 1991, black-and-white stuff only, I guess... I didn't really know what the people who were seriously doing it were doing, or how the heck they managed to animate so much stuff so fast ;)

In 1998, QuickDraw 3D seemed like the here and now. That really didn't work out :) People were still arguing whether CopyBits or custom blitters were the right thing, and showing off their hand-optimized PowerPC assembly blitters. The hardware-accelerated 3D revolution was obviously coming, though.

When I got my first job in 2001, working on Weatherscape (http://weatherscape.tv/), the 2.4GHz P4 and NVidia GeForce 3 were state of the art. Desktop PCs and consumer 3D acceleration were better than SGIs. CPUs were fast and GPUs were slow; everything was about making the GPU do as little work as possible. How things have changed, even since then.

- What is your opinon of current technology and resources?

It's amazing how far we've come, and even more amazing how far we've still got to go.

- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?

Near-abandonment of attempts at super-realism in games as we further enter the uncanny valley. That'll get picked up in earnest again a little further down the line as the technology to pull us up the other side of the valley becomes feasible. Massive importance of the casual games market, and female gamers in particular, pushing niche titles like FPSs to the sidelines. Three years is a long time in this profession, and I don't think it's unreasonable that things will change this much.

[arekkusu]

-When did you start developing games?
10 PRINT "1983"
20 GOTO 10

-What are your priorities now?
Minimize Leopard OpenGL suckage.

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I need a vacation.

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Still looking forward to a vacation.

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Games were written in assembly. Not just the blitters. Everything.

Kareteka shipped on a 140k floppy disk.

The crack screens pirates added to these games were better written than most software today.

- What is your opinion of current technology and resources?
See ****.
See **** click on the build wizard.
See **** compile Hello World into a ten meg binary.
See **** embed 500 megs of uncompressed TGAs into Hello World. A quarter of them are redundant or unused. Another quarter could be generated algorithmically.
See **** post his 300 meg game demo online.
What a ****.

- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Apple marketshare reaches double digits.

[BeyondCloister]

-When did you start developing games?
1983

-What are your priorities now?
Launching my card game (Symbotica).
Launching my QHSE software.
Find some time to relax (above two not helping this one!)

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Mostly good, great amounts of frustration but knowing people around the world are playing my games makes it worthwhile. What makes it even better is knowing that some of them have decided to pay me for those games.

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
As little as possible if all goes to plan :)

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
You expect me to remember that far back?

-What is your opinion of current technology and resources?
Some of it is nice, some of it takes the fun out of it.

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Everyone following Nintendo's example.

[ThemsAllTook]

- When did you start developing games?
Longer ago than I can remember, really. The earliest thing I wrote that could be called a game (or an attempt at one, at least) was probably around 1990, when I was just a wee lad.

- What are your priorities now?
1: Finish and release the image editor I've been writing for the last few years.
2: Deal with current unfinished game projects (either by deciding to abandon them, or finishing and releasing them)
3: Start on exciting new projects.

- How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
One of the most satisfying things I've done with my life.

- What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Hard to say, but probably not much different from what I'm doing today.

- What state was the art of game development in when you started?
I didn't really know at the time. I never connected with other game developers until 2003, when I came to iDevGames and entered the 2003 uDevGames contest.

- What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
No comment.

[Fenris]

+ When did you start developing games?
- Orignally QBasic text adventures back in 1995 or so, mentored by a girl in my class. Moved on to graphics after seeing what some of the older guys did, then onto demo coding and proper game programming around 1999. 2002-2005 saw me working on El Ballo, and since then I've been on and off developing Galder.

+ What are your priorities now?
- Finishing Galder, and then taking a break from game development for a few months to recharge my creativitiy.

+ How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
- Surprisingly inclined to non-technical discoveries: psychology, design, perception, writing, HCI, marketing... I'm not much of a tech guy, so I pick up the Game Programming Gems and steal stuff from them.

+ What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
- I kind of hope that I will be on my way out of the industry, having successfully pulled off the three or four game design docs I have on the back burner. This is a hobby, not what I want to do for a living.

+ What state was the art of game development in when you started?
- The original PlayStation-ish.

+ What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
- A lot more than I will ever need.

+ What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
- DRM will either be ubiquitous or dead and forgotten.

[Zwilnik]

When did you start developing games?
1981 (ish)

What are your priorities now?
Finish the current game, start the next one

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
a wide range from bitter and twisted to elated, depending upon the experience :)

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Finish the current game, start the next one

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
just getting serious in the US and still bedroom coder business in the UK.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Expensive! But still fun :)

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Finish the current game, start the next one :)

[igame3d]

When did you start developing games?
1981 writing Dungeons and Dragons modules in a spiral bound notebook,
followed by hacking BASIC whenever and wherever I could lay hands on a terminal.

What are your priorities now?
Bringing five years of work to the public without blinding them,
finishing college, homeschooling mini-me.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I would do it all over again, oh yes indeed.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
I will be the sensei of my own virtual game dev dojo,
while continuing to do what I'm doing today, only with a focus
on teaching other people rather than trying to figure it all out myself.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Multiplayer gaming required walking to my friends house and
sharing the controller and keyboard between lives and levels
on a Vic-20 or Atari VCS 2600. My first year of color BASIC programming was entirely on black and white TV or monitors.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Everything has reached and/or surpassed nearly thirty years of expectations, almost.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I just watched Shift Happens (http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?autostart=true&token=bcd_1172414254&p=57253&s=1).
I need some time to absorb that before I even start guessing at the future again.

[IBethune]

Been a long time since I posted here, but this look like a real interesting thread:

When did you start developing games?
Just dug up some BBC Basic code dated 1995!

What are your priorities now?
Trying to finish the latest game I'm working on - looks really good but I can only spend short periods of time so progress is slow. Work, family etc. just eats up too much time.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Really happy to have actually shipped a couple of finished games - and to get the odd email and/or paypal donation too...

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Hopefully still enjoying coding and maybe making a bit of money from it besides my day job.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
The hardest decision was whether to use MODE 2 (16 colours, but low res) or trade off number of colours for better resolution!

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
All looking good, although I tend to stay with what I'm used to (C++/SDL/OpenGL) rather than try all the cutting edge stuff (Cocoa, Ruby, Lua etc.)

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
If I knew that I wouldn't tell you all (at least not until I'd made my millions).

[Najdorf]

I started making games for passion 3-4 years ago, now passion is a bit faded, I'm more interested in the "making money" side of things. More specifically making money without effort. I need a good business idea...

[igame3d]

I started making games for passion 3-4 years ago, now passion is a bit faded, I'm more interested in the "making money" side of things. More specifically making money without effort. I need a good business idea...

Oh you should stoke that passion up.
My daughter is a big fan of yours, she recognized you while reading this thread.

You are presistantly producing very cool stuff, just keep doing it, discussing it, releasing it, and broadening your exposure, and you'll build a niche for yourself in game dev history, that will lead to profit if you target a commercial audience.

You need a business plan (http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=game+development+business+plan&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8), and the motivation.

I have many ideas and no real "plan", I just do what it looks like
I should be doing when I have enough motivation and
concentration to keep doing it.

I would probably pay for a ragdoll support and demonstrations in iGame3D

[Najdorf]

Thanks dude, I appreciate you telling me. Thank your daughter too ;)

[lightbringer]

-> When did you start developing games?
Back in 2001 I wrote pong for an Apple ][e then sat on my hands for a few years until I discovered OpenGL and decided to learn C.

-> What are your priorities now?
Building a small library of shareware games for the Mac - projects I'd do if I weren't trying to make money but projects that are getting polished and finished because I do.

->How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
The first year with C and GL was tricky as with every step I felt myself getting stuck and constantly asking questions. Luckily for me, people here gave me some much needed help. I'm a result of much of their advice and experience.

->What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
I like! The OpenGL Shading Language has brought quite a bit more control.

->What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
A greater emphasis on game design and a broader acceptence of the industry from the general public.

[Jake]

-When did you start developing games?
2000?

-What are your priorities now?
http://www.microe.rit.edu/ and living with my girlfriend

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Great, I've learned alot about programming and business while earning a decent paycheck for 10-15 hours of work a month

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Fabricating mobile "Core 5 Octos" or finishing my PhD if I'm not sick of school by then. Maybe I'll stop putting out GL Golf updates by then... :-P

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Graphics cards were new and limited my ability to play quake 3.

-What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Growing exponentially with no end in site.

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Robots will do my dishes and vacuum my floor along with other daily tasks... and then kill me

[PowerMacX]

When did you start developing games?
My first game, a simple 2D racing game was made in Logo back in 1994/5 but I didn't really went back to game programming until uDG 2004.

What are your priorities now?
Trying to figure out a way to sleep only 4 hours a day, so I can have some free time.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
First two years of university courses: wasted time, last four: useful, but not as much as I expected. Reading Inside Macintosh and learning all the secrets of the Toolbox & the Memory Manager, and moving to Cocoa a few months later: priceless! :p

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Ha! If you had said five months... I'd still wouldn't have any idea. :blush:

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Prince of Persia? In grayscale. Some F1 game that ran in CGA mode (or was it EGA? 4 colors) Well, that's all I had access to for a while, so it was "state of the art" from my point of view anyway.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
I love how fast hardware is evolving, as for GUIs, I'm not sure more animation (as in Core Animation) is really a step forward. I'd like to see more "sound" based interfaces, basically voice command recognition that actually works, plus voice synthesis in other languages than english. I'd like to go home after work, and ask out loud: "any calls/mails/etc?" and have my Mac answer back, without having to actually go, look at the screen, click-click-click. Yes, I want Apple to finally make the Knowledge Navigator (http://www.billzarchy.com/clips/clips_apple_nav_navigator.htm)! (without the silly avatar...). Not as the main interface, but as an additional interface, some things are inherently visual/easier done on a GUI.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Flashier GUIs!

[Max]

When did you start developing games?
1990s

What are your priorities now?
Finish current McSebi game. Try to remain sane.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Some really bad experiences. Some really good experiences.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Finish current McSebi game. Try to remain sane.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
It was really funny. GW-Basic... hahahaha.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Computer technology good. Console technology disappointing.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Most violent and unoriginal video games ever made. Independent developers becoming gods. ;)

[NCarter]

When did you start developing games?
Early 80s.

What are your priorities now?
I'm working with Unity now, so I have a greater focus on gameplay and visuals than on programming the OS compatibility end of things. I'm more interested in the end result than the process of making the game.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I feel like I've learnt a lot of things which weren't very useful in the long run. For example, QuickDraw 3D, Carbon and so on. It has probably all been helpful in terms of broadening my experience as a programmer, though..

My success in two uDevGames contests went a long way to giving me the confidence to stick with game development. Even though it takes me forever to get anything done, I can look back at those games and think "this is what I can do if I try hard enough".

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
My vision doesn't really stretch that far. I'm just thinking more of the same. Hopefully I'll have completed some games by then, and I'll have more sophisticated ones in the pipeline.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
The Commodore 64 and Sinclair Spectrum, followed by the Amiga. Assembly language all the way... shame I didn't learn assembly language back at that point in time. There was only so much you could do with Basic on an 8 bit machine.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
I don't know... I don't pay much attention to the cutting edge. Current computer hardware can already handle most of the things I want to do.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I'd really like to see more development of convincing character AI and dynamic story generation in games. I can't really see that happening before the end of the decade, but you never know.

[KittyMac]

When did you start developing games?
mid-90's. First shareware release was Thrones around '98.

What are your priorities now?
Family, consulting, game coding, and teaching; roughly in that order.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Very good. I keep the day job to provide the cake, use games to provide the icing, and participate in uDG-like contests as an excuse to try out new fun things (whether that be technologies or game genres).

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
More of the same. I've found a comfy little niche to live in, and a little stability will help my family more than a new job or more money would.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus was the bible, Castles: Siege and Conquest was inspirational.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
The more a technology becomes easily available and used by everyone else, the more important is it for us to differentiate our games from everyone else.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
Apple will become more draconian in their business practices. I love them, but it seems to be the inevitable fate of any business as they get bigger and more bloated.

[Shunter]

-When did you start developing games?
2002

-What are your priorities now?
School.... :(

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Helped me ace my programming design courses, definately not a bad thing :)

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Not School....?

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
uDevGames2002

-What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Somebody threw Moore's law out the window....

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
.NET will become usefull? The next version of windows will have been promised to come out three times already... And my iPhone will have a Quad Xeon and 50 hours of full battery life.

[backslash]

- When did you start developing games?
Around 1990, when I wrote a hangman game in Amstrad CPC Basic. I started lots of games back then, but usually got stuck after the main menu / define controls bits. After losing the Amstrad, I didn't know how to go about learning programming for Windows (my Dad's platform of choice, sadly) so I was reduced to trying to make the Quake engine do things it wasn't intended for. After learning C at uni in 2001 or so I gradually drifted back into programming.

- What are your priorities now?
Still trying to finish a project for a change. And beer.

- How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
After a lot of time spent trying to achieve things that should be easy, I'm starting to find some frameworks that I can get on with, so I'm feeling a lot more positive now. Finally abandoning Carbon and learning Objective-C/Cocoa was an epiphany.

- What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Wondering where the last five years went. And wishing my employers had never invested in Windows Vista (I know I'll lose that fight eventually)

- What state was the art of game development in when you started?
The border flashed while you loaded your game off tape, and the first two minutes of the process were taken up by loading a fancy full-screen image, which would draw one pixel at a time. And the the loading process would fail and you'd have to try again.

- What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Amazing. My G4 Mac Mini is going to be so jealous when I upgrade. And the border of my screen no longer flashes when I'm loading software. We are running out of oil though.

- What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
With a bit of luck I might have finished my current project. Apple will probably have deprecated my base code by then though.

[JustinFic]

When did you start developing games?
Started with Hypercard in the early 90's, picked up OpenGL around 1999-2000, and my first release (Kill Dr. Cote) was in 2004.

What are your priorities now?
My main priority now is getting back into the indie scene with enough money to stay there. I also am part of The Best Damn Podcast Ever (http://www.bestdamnpodcastever.com), which has also been a lot of fun. Aside from that, getting my damn website redesigned and back up.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
uDevGames 2004 was probably the most creative 3-month adrenaline rush of my life. After that the experiences have been a mixed bag, but each one of them necessary. Since uDG, I've been on a tour-de-force of the industry, from publishing to full-time job to independent contractor. From all that I've been trying to figure out where exactly my place in this industry is.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Rocking the indie scene, and rocking it hard. The streets will flow with the blood of the unbeliever!

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
When I started with Hypercard, the SNES was the machine putting stars in my eyes, which I guess I would call the golden age of 2D games. On the Mac side, Marathon was rocking my face.

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Unbelievable. The amount and quality of libraries, engines, middleware, etc. out there is amazing.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I still think the whole next-gen thing will hit a plateau, and we'll see improvements start to focus on other areas of game development. Things like XBLA will become more popular, both for players who want a quick gaming fix and for developers, who will enjoy the low development costs and time, which allow for more original/experimental ideas. And finally, one of my games just might cause a small part of the internet to explode.

[MattDiamond]

When did you start developing games?
1982-ish, on my family's Apple ][. Wrote two levels of an unmemorable game called Bomb-Run, never finished. But in '84 I was reading about this new thing called Macintosh that would be available soon, and I doodled a design for a game that would use the nifty high-res, black-on-white graphics, and the mouse. I consider it to be my first real game. Started work on it using Apple Pascal on a 128K Mac. Little did I know the game wouldn't actually be done until 1992 (3D Brick Bash).

What are your priorities now?
Full-time job, family.

How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
I've been very fortunate, won a number of prizes, even gotten paid for one of my games. Heck, the fact that I've finished so many games is something to be proud of. And yet, sometimes instead of enjoying the ride I wonder why I feel so small-time. Somehow I've not been willing to do whatever it takes to market and sell myself to the next level. Too tired, too old, too attached to the comforts of having a stable job in a different industry? Or maybe my definition of success is too rigid- game development is not my primary job, my games don't earn money, I am not particularly well-known. Which of those things do I want, if any? I'm still not sure.

What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Recalling my best game (either Pawns or A Tack) and waxing nostalgic about when I was in my prime. Or, celebrating the recent release of my best game ever. Not sure which.

What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Apple ][, BASIC, 6502 assembly, sprites. It led to surprisingly palletable games but the sound except for the abysmal sound. (Which is one reason I suppose I loved Infocom text adventures so much.)

What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
Great. Lots of free and inexpensive software to take the drudgery out of it. The barriers to entry are very low. (Remember when you had to license Mac OpenGL from a 3rd party? Or, how much basic API documentation used to cost?) Artists are much more directly plugged into the process. And the machines have power that often allows the game developer can save time and/or money by working at a higher level. I only wish I had time to learn and use more of what's out there.

What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
I'm just trying to get through this year (turning 40.)

[monteboyd]

-When did you start developing games?
My first efforts were using SEUCK on the C64. From there to AMOS and Blitz Basic on the Amiga and from there to C on Macs.

-What are your priorities now?
Spending time with my wife. Surviving the crazy world of London and continuing to build my career as a senior digital designer. Seeing more of the UK (just got back from a glorious week in Devon/Cornwall). Game development - down the list but still occupying an important space in my head.

-How do you feel about the experiences you've had so far?
Slope Rider was a great experience, everything else felt like good background work towards that. Since then I've fluctuated between highly motivated and just too busy with other things to even think about games.

-What do you expect you will be doing in five years?
Hopefully still doing game development as a hobby with smaller scale projects. Hopefully still picking up Flash game work in my professional life.

-What state was the art of game development in when you started?
Games were often created by one person, doing design, art and code. Those were the glory days. ;)

-What is your opinon of current technology and resources?
More resources than ever before for Mac so that's good news. There is some trend to push the extraordinary possibilites of current technology to focus on fun, freash ideas which is good, but there could be more.

-What do you foresee happening by the end of this decade?
More graphical enhancements and a few gems of real playability.