14 January 2014

A First Year's Rant

The following is an archive of a Facebook Post I made following certain unsavory comments.

It has come to my attention that some of us, I won't name names, have been saying that others are "Bad Game Devs" behind their backs.
Not only is this shit-talk, it is BULLshit-talk.
Come now, are any of us truly "good" game devs? Is anyone good at this when they first start? Did Newell and Lombardi know the first thing about developing a game when they founded Valve? Did Romero, Hall, and the two Carmacks know what they were doing when they started id? Bungie founder Alexander Seropian? Gavin and Rubin of Naughty Dog?
No. They got where they are, where their companies are, in this industry through trial, hard work, dedication, and a whole lot of error.
Nobody starts out good. They have to carve their way through.
Now, I consider myself a decent level designer when it comes to Additive-space BSP-based engines. And I should be, since I started doing level design in general at 10 or 3, depending on how you define the practice. Were my scribbled floor plans from when I was 8 any good?
There's a damn good reason I completely restarted my Half-Life mod three times before settling in to it, why those earlier revisions no longer exist in any form. There's a reason I ultimately scrapped it. Even now, settled in to Source as I am, the team I'm on have just gutted two of our areas to restart from scratch. Because we learned from working, from making mistakes in those spots and applying the lessons we learned to the others until the broken parts were too unseemly in comparison.
I have been working with those tools for 7 years and I'm still learning. I'm still improving.
I'm still not up to snuff.

We're all still first years. Are ANY of us ready for a job in the industry? Hell no!
Will those of us who tough it out and stay for the next 4 years be among the best batch of new blood flowing in when we're done? Hell yeah!

But none of us are good game devs yet. Do not presume to be any better than your peers. We are all equals here, so get your heads out of your asses. If the student is willing to learn, should the master turn them away?

And for those of you who have been accused of being below these bloated heads, I present to you a challenge:
Beat them. Prove the worth I know you have. Aim to make your group's GDW game the best of the year.
I know I will. Jeff out.