[PD] Creating auidioengines for games using PD

[Andy Farnell]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:49:15 -0500
Chris McCormick <chris at mccormick.cx> wrote:

> They are risk averse and will
> shoot your ideas down with economic figures from years old games (gosh,


Risk aversity in games is an interesting topic in it's own right.
I read somewhere that 86(96??) percent of games are deemed "failures".
What other industry has this profile? Mineral/oil prospecting?!

If this is true

i) You can hardly call games a risk averse business.

ii) The profits on "successful" games must be COLOSSAL!!!!

iii) Something is terribly wrong and development needs re-balancing somehow.

Here's what we are up against....Parts of the equation leading to "same
old same old crap" conservatism (and I'm largely repeating other peoples
voices here...)

Games came from bedroom hackers to multi-billon industry in a decade!
Talk about growing pains. 

A "self cannibalisation" of an inward looking industry. Paranoid
protectionism and consequent lack of skills fluidity and atrophy of 
intellectual impetus... (pretty harsh, but a fair view of games
circa 2004, things have improved since.)

Premature compartmentalisation of roles in a forced top down
design model, eg sound designer vs audio programmer or level designer
vs script writer. Causes inefficiently decoupled teams.

Powerful forces trying to subvert/subsume gaming into the Hollywood linear
narrative (take the games market to sell what amount to interactive films)

A very fickle marketplace.

Hostile societal and political lobbys (viz violence, political
censorship, ideological engineering).

No reliable software metrics for development.

Hardware is a rapidly moving target. Some games are obsolete before 
they get halfway through the dev lifecycle. Hampered by inability to rapidly
redepoly content on new platforms because of proprietary obstacles.

Downstream publishers destroying years of production work by insisting
on encumbrances, alienating users with aggressive copy protection that
makes products unusable.

So, maybe we're crazy trying to advocate disruptive new technology
into that situation, but someone has to do it ;)


















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