As an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses.
The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side just aren't long term investments, we produce them at a blazing rate, make our money or not, and move on.
I think social and virtual goods are probably a wider cause for change but then the line between MMO and them is pretty blurry (if it even exists) anyway.
Success is another catalyst ... Tapulous's Tap Tap Revenge probably had horrible code until it turned out they were going to be working with it for a long time.
My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test.
Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.
I think another thing that perhaps affects games more is having zero knowledge of other studios' development approaches unless you or a buddy go and work there. I'm clueless about where the industry is as a whole.
As an indie game developer, I kind of agree with a lot of this article (except I do backup)
When writing a game, I feel like I'm painting a picture, not writing a program. New funcionality is like a sweeping brush stroke. It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to feel right.
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[ 50.7 ms ] story [ 579 ms ] threadAs an indie game developer I am very lax with my code, do only human-testing on it, and eventually don't really care how ugly it gets under the hood because the code is almost always single-use. I fix bugs that surface in the first days and then every now and then I put in whatever companies' branding when I sell licenses.
The games I and other indie developers make and especially on the casual side just aren't long term investments, we produce them at a blazing rate, make our money or not, and move on.
Success is another catalyst ... Tapulous's Tap Tap Revenge probably had horrible code until it turned out they were going to be working with it for a long time.
I suppose there can be many reasons for the code to live longer.
Managing legacy code can be great for encouraging automated testing!
My first job was working on an "AAA" game for several years and I never had a single code review or wrote a single test.
Progress was slow, but everything worked by the time it had to be delivered. I think slotting in to that lack of discipline and perpetuating it was quite harmful to my continuing mindset.
When writing a game, I feel like I'm painting a picture, not writing a program. New funcionality is like a sweeping brush stroke. It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to feel right.