EA acquires Bioware

[Gecko]

Tux Racer!

[Venjenz]

Originally Posted by Wilfan

Can't remember even one open source game that went beyond "cool concept, one day this could be a game people could play". The closest are few flight simulators. It seems it's only programmers who make their day job a hobby.

That's because of what making a good game requires. Take the Doom3 engine mod of the original levels of Doom. That took something like a dozen people over two years to pull off. They had the level maps already, the mob placements and AI, and most of all, they had the engine from id to work with. And it still took 2+ years? Now we all know what kind of team is needed to make a good game, and the majority will be artists if you want the screenshot fapping on Gamespot to help market your game. But you also need a team of reall good programmers who can cover a broad range of disciplines, and they need to be able to devote 40-50 hours a week to the project for at least 2 or 3 years. Pretty sure not too many people are geeked so much that they'll spend that kind of time on something that might not ever see dime one for all their time. So someone has to pay them to be that geeked. When da boss man be payin' da workers, da boss man make da rules ya.

The other reason most indy video game projects don't leave the basement is because of how ruthless and merciless the fan base is with criticism. So add it up - long hours, probably little to no pay, and the least appreciative target audience possible. Not a real big mystery on why we don't have a bigger pool of game designers making good product, or why companies like EA have assimilated their legion of drones.