Transformation from gaming players to programmers

Greg costikyan wrote an essay entitled "welcome comrade !" (Comrade, welcome !), We call on amateurs engaged in game development to arm themselves:

In those days, I was able to develop a game like "warrior destruction. It took only a few weeks to create the 3rd-generation "Destroyer" (man-weeks ). However, the cost of game development is constantly rising. For example, in 1992, it usually costs $0.2 million to create a computer game. But now, just buy a single subject is about $10 million.

Doom is a shooting game launched by id software in October 1993. As one of the greatest main visual shooting games in PC history, "Destroyer" is a new history in the game industry. After the 3rd S, the game was moved to the screen by global film and television companies, reaching the peak of popularity and popularity. -- Translator's note

With soaring costs, game publishers are increasingly conservative about investment, because no one is willing to pay 10 million US dollars to easily get involved. They do everything they can to reduce risks. Nowadays, they have become reluctant to take a small risk, unless they are a licensed subject, a game authorized based on a certain movie, or a type of game they can easily sell, otherwise, don't let them pay for it!

Nowadays, games like myst, civilization, and Sim City are favored by investors.

Comrades, if we do not want to break the shackles on US (Raph Koster calls it the "Moore's wall"), we will always suffer from such crimes and never turn over.

Fortunately, we still have hope. As in the film and music industries, we should also conduct independent sports in the gaming industry. By launching a self-sufficiency "independent game" campaign, people can experiment with some weird and creative games at a lower cost and at a lower risk-create an atmosphere and encourage everyone to play games through exposure, promote Innovation Through vivid design and enjoy everyone through multilateral exchanges.

Greg's game declaration website (www.manifestogames.com) is committed to this goal and creates an ideal atmosphere for supporting amateur developers.

In the article "riseand fall of hobbyist game programmer", James hgou also described that the world has undergone profound changes over the past 30 years, this has greatly affected potential game developers.

There is always a small number of hot people who have been calling on everyone not just to play games, but to create games. Of course, this sounds crazy, because even if you play a great game, but this passion is like spending 20 hours in the basement trying to figure out why a Level Initialization function always fails once every 10 calls. However, some people stick to it and those people have promoted the development of the game industry in the early stages.

I still remember markturmell's story (there are other people, but I forgot their names ). I don't know where they came from. I designed my own games one after another, and I worked hard to make them and let them play together. Those amazing feats also let people start to relish: "computer games are a new form of art"-a person, a vision, six months later, it will become a popular work-a pure creation! Those who want to become novelist may wish to try their best in game creation.

Midway launched a basketball game named NBA Jam in 1993. Its main programmer and designer is Mark.
Turmell. -- Translator's note

Even in the age of 32-bit processors and 3D accelerators, people still have this dream. However, after so many years, the reality has quietly changed, but few people have stood and watched and noticed these changes.

In 1981, personal computers were at the peak of 8-bit processors. The sought-after 8-bit 6502-a processor with only one primary register and no multiplication instructions-although it operates at a speed below 2 MHz, however, it is more than enough to write basic games. Don't get me wrong. Basic is an abused language (which is still the case so far), but it is bound to all the second-generation Apple Computers and Atari
In 800, for programmers in their infancy, basic is a natural choice.

This may be another reason why Visual Studio express should be released along with Windows Vista. Or directly provide the. NET 2.0 command line compiler with notepad, which may be more reliable. As for how the game programming world has changed since those early years, I strongly recommend that you read the book halcyon days published by James hgger in 1997: interviews with classic computer and video gameprogrammers ).

Perhaps in the mobile computing field, the imagination of switching from game players to programmers will be a little larger. Lightworks gaming companies are doing this-two people with dreams set up a company to develop games for pocket-sized computers. They first made a small clone of "cavemen"-"lemmings", which is very cute.

Lemmings is a Super classic PC game that appeared in 1992. The purpose of the game is to use various methods to guide the cute ROVs to their destination. -- Translator's note

Microsoft's xnagame studio is also interesting! It provides a way for amateurs to develop non-commercial games running on Xbox 360. Public opinion believes that some of the best non-commercial games can eventually enter the Xbox Live market, and the amateur developers of those games can establish small companies to continue to develop their business. Considering the huge inventory of game machines and the ease of developing software for a standard game platform, the prospect is very exciting!

Is this dream of switching from a game player to a game developer realistic today?In any case, I become a programmer.