Come on now, there are very few things that are for everyone...what is the point of this article?
Making things come to life through code is a joyful delight. Writing an entire complex programming at once in a rush, compiling it, running it, and it actually works... first few times, hundredth, thousandth time sometimes it's still amazing. And I'm no expert programmer. I mostly paint.
Based on his writing, I believe this Smith is at risk for burnout.
Some % of programming jobs (probably a fairly high %) is going to be writing the boring crap. So if you want to work as a programmer you have to accept that there is a chance that this is what you end up doing for at least some or maybe all of your career.
Boring crap to you doesn't mean it's boring to everyone. Who are we to impose our value system upon others. Some people just love modeling 3d crates all day and that's their mission in life to create the perfect 3d crate. Other people walk by and wonder why he's wasting his life creating crate after crate. It's not cool to me to rationalize something someone doesn't like doing just because someone has to do it. Let someone who actually likes it do it.
> you have to accept that
Only if you are not in control of your own life. There is no rule which say what you must ultimately do. If your goal is to do x and that requires ultimately doing a lot of y, you can still change what you want to do to z and immediately go for it. So many of my friends are insistently passionate about wanting to work for AAA game companies and I know their glamorous dreams are going to put them through a lot of potential slog, but that's not the only choice. It is their choice to go in that direction and accept the outcome of that direction. There are plenty of other options.
Smith is idealizing coding games and working on programming projects which inspire him. He should go do either of those instead.
Then the rest of the demand is for jobs that people basically only do for money (think TPS report generators or whatever). So ultimately some people end up being allocated to jobs that they would not choose for themselves unless they were being paid.
So you only get a "choice" in so much as there is unsatisfied demand for the thing that you really want to do.
Everything is a choice. The people who refuse to not be smart about business refuse to take what they need - so they get what they get much like people who only work when a job is offered to them. Money is rarely made by accident. It is more likely to be made when you mix choice with opportunity.
Creativity is only the body of material you have to draw from. Your visual or intellectual library of things you have already made a part of yourself through direct exposure. No invention or creation is made independently, it's all made with a clear path from one to another. Anyone can invent or create great things. Anyone can be great. All it takes is choice.
Success favors perseverance. Failure is necessary to reach what works. Those who are unwilling to fail never succeed.
Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great. Though you could argue that we are already all "great" in comparison to the bacteria that we evolved from :)
Any kind of creative person who is great is not born that way. It is not innate ability. Watch and listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnflBERf2zM It is the same with anyone who has "intelligence" - like I said, there is no smart people, only people who are exposed to more and work harder to learn more. Yes, people can be brain damaged with real limits, but even they can be greater than lazy people who waste their potential. Even people with extremely limiting abilities can use what brain tissue they have, expand their mind, and blow away all we thought we knew as impossible.
>Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.
Yes, so, be exposed to as much as possible, and think. That's what I'm saying it takes.
>Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great.
Yeah, no. Wow. This is like saying not everyone can be happy, because we need some unhappy people for the rest of us to have some perspective. Or that we need ugly people to feel good about how good we look. Or that we need gold stars to gloat over how others don't have gold stars. No.
You suggest that willpower is important, which all things being equal innate ability is still important. If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
Nope. It is not that others must suffer for you to have a good life much the same as it not be required for your neighbor to be ugly for you to be beautiful. Much of what you think as really true is not.
>If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.
This is the world you live in: I have a predisposition and I'm going to stick to it and within my natural limits.
This is the world I live in: fuck the rules.
> innate ability is still important
To be the very best that no one ever was? Sure it is, but it is largely inconsequential in the reality we live in! Like I said before: probably no one here can be a NFL quarterback as they are now... but they can still achieve nearly everything within their desires still! The reality is that the majority of people will think like you do are held back by their beliefs, while less innate people blow past them. Even if you think there are limits... they really do not matter. There will always be opportunity for you to have as much success as you choose to have. If you deny this then you will remain one of the many who choose to stay as you are.
As far as the brain goes, the differences in innate ability are so very unimportant compared to choice. A person who is born one way with a healthy brain is not any better or worse in permanence than someone with an equally healthy brain. They both can be great if they through their lives choose to be.
Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern discourse. There is a whole "underground" (mostly online) current of thought called HBD (Human BioDiversity) which means to address this misconception. Google it, but with your attitude you will probably discard it right away.
>think TPS report generators or whatever
Value systems are not universal. You could take the most horrifying job you could think of and someone would take pleasure in it.
> being allocated
No one is ever forcibly allocated. Everyone has a choice to do what they want to do. If the ultimate horror reality of there being too many good games being made and not enough people to buy them all to the point where no one could make a living making games happened then people could still compromise and go down the list of things they genuinely enjoy and do those instead when they find something which can make them money. I don't know enough about Smith, but if he's not doing what he is doing as a temporary stopgap and he believes he is stuck forever doing code he hates then he is absolutely doing it wrong.
In fact I imagine that the majority of people employed in the workforce can think of a whole list of jobs that they would rather do.
Otherwise we would have a huge oversupply of porn stars and rock stars but nobody to collect the trash.
Yes, absolutely, and so many people lack willpower to do greater things. That's not because they are not good enough people forever unable to summon the willpower to do it, but simply because they don't know the knowledge necessary. So many people believe so many absurd things which hold them back from what is possible.
>You can't have an economy
Sure you can. How long before the majority of all manual labor, all service jobs are done by computers and robots? Jobs which humans can do, but don't have to do. All of that uninspiring, boring drudge work which doesn't require any creativity or real problem solving. When those jobs are left we trend toward more of a gift economy where the value you have is what you do for others, what you inspire in them, what you delight them with. Some people already do things which do these things, others collect the trash. People are not forced to pick up your trash, and everyone could decide to refuse to take up that job, and yet people choose to still. Eventually it won't be a choice to put anyone's trash because it will all be automated.
It's simply a fact that the most desirable jobs are always the most competitive so you are far more likely to have to a take a job that you would not necessarily choose.
The choice is not between taking out the trash and being a rock star, the choice is usually between taking out the trash, working some other low wage job or being unemployed and unable to support yourself financially.
So, if you decide to train in some particular area, it is worth thinking about the whole spectrum of jobs that might entail. I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.
Or doing your own thing on your own on your own terms following the rules you make up. Hey, stop waiting for people to tell you what to do and create your own opportunity!
My alternate future where robots do everything absolutely no one wants to do (I wouldn't believe for a second that there are absolutely no people who love their job picking up trash) is more likely to become reality than your future where it's impossible to make money making games because too many people are making too many amazing games so no one wants to pay for them.
>I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.
Yeah, same with wanting to work for a random AAA game company. Unfortunately most people don't appreciate wisdom until they have already failed (reality check when someone is doing work they hate at their "dream job" - if they hate it then they made a mistake), and some people never learn from their mistakes.
It's capped by the amount of money people have available to spend on games. So that money necessarily has to come from other parts of the economy. So when other parts of the economy suffer there is less money to pay for games. Games are going to be a fairly elastic good, in that as much as I might love video games I'm not going to spend money on them if I'm struggling to afford food and rent. So in a bad market either games have to either become cheaper, or there will be less titles on the market.
Thus the demand for game developers either goes down or they will make less money each and the wages can only go so low before they will be forced to defect to other industries because their game salary won't make the rent.
Other jobs like trash collection will have a more steady supply/demand because even in a bad economy someone needs to take the crap away. I'm sure there are people who love trash collecting, but they are probably a minority of the workforce vs people who would prefer to get a trash collection salary for watching TV or playing video games.
The problem with telling people to "create opportunity" is that starting a business (as I have learned myself) is something that requires more capital than you think it does even if you are frugal. So unless you happen to be independently wealthy you are going to need to take that capital by either working at some other job or persuading an investor that your business will generate them a return.
So you have to find something that is the best compromise between "what I like to do" and "what do I think will make money" and usually the second one becomes the dominant factor.
I think realistic management of expectations is important, the world simply doesn't work in the way you suggest it does though I agree it would be preferable if it did.
The reason for this is the tools we made -- game engine for rendering & AI, level editors, resource packers, art post processors, etc, this is how the game really is put together. You don't make a game, you make a series of tools that help other people (game designers, artists, writers, AI scriptors) make a game. Now it is a blast making a work of collaborative art -- because writing and art are awesome -- but making a tool for a game is VERY similar to making an office suite or a complex website. It is all just data and interfaces. All the same usability/complexity tradeoffs apply.
I guess what I'm saying is the author's attitude made sense to me, and I know for sure that I'm not not at risk for burnout -- I love this shit. I love making games, but really it is because I love to program. Stories and art and gameplay are all bonuses, but if I didn't love the code it would still be terrible. That makes me wonder if coding is for everyone. I would love for it to be, but I'm really not sure.
Lastly, I recently taught someone to code from the ground up and the biggest single lesson was this: You will spend most of your day not knowing the answer. You will think and think and wonder and wonder. Is there even an answer to find? Is rails just too slow or are my queries crap? Can the iOS animation engine handle what you are doing or did you just add too many quartz-level effects and that is why it is super slow? You won't know the answer, you will doubt yourself, but over time you will actually become comfortable with not knowing. And even then, you will still be surprised (and pleased) when you figure it out. It is unending and I think it takes a special someone to enjoy that sort of life.
tl;dr Changing your life isn't always the answer. Coding is hard, doubt is hard, and games aren't as fun to write as you would think.
>The fun part (gameplay, game balance, story-telling, level creation) all happen near the end.
Then you are doing it wrong. There are so many tools available which allow you to skip so much of the technical parts and get to the parts you like. You can choose to use them, or you can choose to build your own.
>You don't make a game, you make a series of tools
That's a choice, and a huge thing newbies to game development are cautioned against. Don't make tools - make games! The tools are already made, don't reinvent the wheel. Yet so many insist on doing just that, and I have no sympathy for them.