from Hacker News

Are Game Developers 15 Years Behind The Rest of Us?

by christo_ on 4/5/11, 12:06 AM with 8 comments

  • by benologist on 4/5/11, 12:31 AM

    Interesting read.

    As an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses.

    The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side just aren't long term investments, we produce them at a blazing rate, make our money or not, and move on.

  • by frou_dh on 4/5/11, 1:17 AM

    Insightful article.

    My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test.

    Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.

  • by dpcan on 4/5/11, 7:15 AM

    As an indie game developer, I kind of agree with a lot of this article (except I do backup)

    When writing a game, I feel like I'm painting a picture, not writing a program. New funcionality is like a sweeping brush stroke. It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to feel right.