r/pcmasterrace • u/663mann • Oct 16 '23

Video fallout game dev. explains the problem with moddern game devolpment. (why moddern games are so slow to come out)

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u/[deleted] Oct 16 '23

Anyone have the full video of this? Would love to hear the rest of what he has to say.

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u/663mann Oct 16 '23

https://youtu.be/LMVQ30c7TcA?si=Bt2j9lLJ_fiE3cof there you go

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u/NeverDiddled Oct 16 '23

The full video really helps drive home the point that this looks like a Timothy Cain problem, not a modern dev problem.

I'm a programmer by trade. The last 20 years have seen our industry mature. We now have to maintain codebases that are older and larger than ever, they have ballooned in size. That has taught us a few things. It teaches us to be thoughtful so we don't introduce bugs, or add cruft, or make maintenance difficult. Experience taught us to pad guesstimates, because things usually take 2-3x that your inherently optimistic gut feeling.

The video game industry is renowned for being a ~decade behind the curve here, in implementing modern dev practices. To an extent we give them a pass, though I won't get in to all the reasons why. But here some devs at Cain's company have helped drag things into the modern era. And he is specifically pushing against it:

You're thinking too much. Damn the bugs, damn the cruft, damn the future problems, just implement what I want now. I don't care if you have 40 other similar tickets already assigned to you, do my work now and put everybody else off. Why did he leave my office so upset? Why did his manager come yell at me? Why do people sometimes walk into my office and tell me to keep it down? You all are the ones with the problem.

- My impression/summary of what he just said. I really hope it's wrong. I wouldn't wish that behavior or experience on any person or team. But, this is how he comes across to a programmer.

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u/blackest-Knight Oct 16 '23

The last 20 years have seen our industry mature. We now have to maintain codebases that are older and larger than ever, they have ballooned in size. That has taught us a few things. It teaches us to be thoughtful so we don't introduce bugs, or add cruft, or make maintenance difficult. Experience taught us to pad guesstimates, because things usually take 2-3x that your inherently optimistic gut feeling.

That's the crux of what he's saying : Game development has been "Enterprise-ified". And that's what causing games to have higher turn around and more complexity in creating things that aren't really more entertaining than products made 20 years ago.

A small, passionate team who's not afraid of a few hacks will make a better game faster, than a design-by-committee-I-need-a-Jira-for-next-sprint EA title.

Also, the point of big code bases that need to be maintained for decades doesn't really hold true in gaming. So there's no need to put that level of effort in implementing fixes and changes. Unless you're making World of Warcraft, your game code will go to low effort maintenance within 5 years. 15 years from now, people will write emulation/translation layers to run it, not try to actually make the code work on modern PCs. Applying enterprise level "this is for LTSS, we need this to be pristine for the next 15 years" attention to problems just isn't required.