Favorite Quotes (April 25, 2014)

“Can computers think?

Why is time moving so quickly?

Is there life beyond death?

What is the meaning of life?

How much of compassion is just posturing?

Has your greatest fear ever come true?”

 

Communications of the ACM, 12/2012, Vol. 55, No. 12 (cover)

 (Oddly enough, each sentence can relate to each of my game/research ideas. I like this stanza a lot…)

 

 

 

 

 

Deadlines Don’t Exist Anymore…

Well, I came back from that second interview from that game company. I told them I had already made commitments to graduate school, they were really nice about it and agreed I should finish school, and may skip the interview process a bit should I apply again next year. Also gave me some free swag, including their most recent game for PS3 (here’s a hint: it made over a billion dollars within the first few days of its release). Great guys, couldn’t ask for better people or location to work. UPDATE: Although, every other student I talk to says I’m an idiot for not holding out to try to get the job… but they don’t know my plans for indie development, my need for a “break,” my plans to use graduate school research for other means, or that the company agreed I was probably better suited for another position that was already filled. I might be making a huge mistake, but I think I know what I’m doing…

Also thought about game deadlines. One of the reasons I like game development is that there is a set product at the end, a final stage, at which point you ship out the final product, take a break for a few weeks, start fresh on the next project.

Not anymore.

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How Long Does It Take To Make A Good Game?

Video games are difficult and time consuming to make. Every year, we hear of Hollywood films costing hundreds of millions of dollars, and we see credits at the end with thousands of names. Games are more complicated than that: they often require all the narrative, audio and visual prowess that films do today, and also require programming expertise on making these worlds interactive, further adding to the complexity.

But how long does it take to make a game?

“Duke Nukem Forever” reportedly took 15 years of development time. And yet, we see several games from large publishers (“Call of Duty,” “Assassin’s Creed”) get made in under a year. What’s the difference?

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