Software Styles (was: Re: [MUD-Dev] Is database access a bottleneck)

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Mike Shaver" <shaver at off.net>

> I think the growth of the amount of "system software" in games is
> also pushing the industry towards hiring-and-compensation sanity.
> MMOGs, especially, have complex software requirements that are
> probably at least as similar to OS and network-server development
> as they are to writing the AI for Perfect Dark.

> Some companies -- though not all that many, based on the number of
> ads that still want explicit game experience for _anything_ -- are
> realizing that there are good software people outside of the game
> industry, and that they can't pay them like interns just because
> it's the candidates first "gaming job".  I had a wonderful
> experience with the Sony Sovereign team along those lines (I have
> no game experience, but I've worked on a lot of software with
> complex interactions and high levels of dynamism) and I took away
> a very good impression of them.  The negotiation fell apart over
> out-of-band issues, but they really do seem to realize that they
> can do well by expanding the field of their search.  Now, it does
> seem that it's a team-by-team thing, so other parts of Sony might
> be less enlightened, and some teams within Evil Places like
> Blizzard or EA might "get it".

Having an ongoing revenue stream rather than living windfall to
windfall makes a big difference in the attitudes of management.
Traditional developers have to low-ball every salary negotiation
because they can never be sure how far the reserves they have in the
bank are going to have to stretch, and even large operators like EA
have built their management cultures around such boom or bust cycles
(as well as tricks like boosting their stock value by firing people
just before the annual reports).

Every month, Camelot makes enough operating profit to pay the team
for a quarter.  Mythic doesn't bind the mouths of the kine who tread
the grain either, I don't quite make as much now as I did back when
I was a client/server and web applications programmer for business
software, but it's close.  EQ makes enough operating profit every
quarter to fund an entire AAA single-player title.  It definitely
changes the psychology of management to have that kind of fiscal
security.

Bigger salaries (and less mercurial management) means that games can
be more attractive to people who already have an established career,
families, etc.  I was fairly old to chuck it all the way I did to
make 1/3 as much money, but my case was somewhat unusual (in
addition to my being single, it involved 3 minutes 18 seconds
without a heartbeat).  Starvation wages at jobs that can vanish
overnight don't look as appealing to someone with kids and a
mortgage.

--Dave


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