It's been a long long road...

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    • It's been a long long road...

      ...22 years years ago today I started my game development career at Origin Systems!

      My first project was a Warren Spector game called Martian Dreams, an Ultima 6 spin-off. It ran on the IBM-XT, shipped on 2 5.25" floppy disks, and was Origin's first project that could run from a hard drive.

      Since then, processor speeds on desktops have increased from 4.77MHz to 3.33GHz, almost 1,000 fold. Memory went from 640Kb to 12Gb, a 2,000 fold increase. Screen sizes went from 320x240 to 1920x1080, nearly 30 times bigger.

      I've seen the industry go from quaint little video and adventure games to huge blockbuster titles costing $100 million to produce, then all the way back to quaint little video games again.

      I've seen tools go from software we took over a year to write ourselves even before we developed a prototype, to off-the-shelf software so good even a first day game developer can get something running, and then push it onto their Android or iPhone as easy as pushing a "Build and Run" button.

      I've seen the triumph of shipping games, and the tragedy of shutting down a company I started.

      But, though it all, I still love it. I love the work, and I love the people who work with me.

      So, does that make me:
      1. A glutton for punishment?
      2. A very patient person?
      3. Insane?
      4. All of the above?
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot

    • All of the above. Definitely.

      I've met two kinds of game developers in my life. The first is someone who thinks it might be cool to make games. They manage to get a job and then find out how much work it is. They tend to last only a few years; maybe five at the most. After that second project and constant death march and lost jobs and friends laid off, they're done, or they go off to casual games (which can be just as bad).

      The second kind of developer is in for the long haul. Games are a calling, and they'll get it done. The longest, hardest cruches are the self-inflicted ones. Ones where you just can't stop, because you believe completely in the project, and so you put your complete self into it. There's a certain level of insanity and masochistic pleasure you have to have to be one of these people.

      By the way, 22 years ago, I was 10 years old. Happy anniversary Mike. ;)

      -Rez

    • Don't ever forget that old age and treachery beats youth and skill any day...
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot

    • 22 years ago I was 1 month old, still suckling on the teet lol. I find it funny when I see some of the games you have worked on kicking around, yet I haven't had the chance to play one, Martian dreams by the way is free to download from GOG.

      Martian Dreams
      PC - Custom Built
      CPU: 3rd Gen. Intel i7 3770 3.4Ghz
      GPU: ATI Radeon HD 7959 3GB
      RAM: 16GB

      Laptop - Alienware M17x
      CPU: 3rd Gen. Intel i7 - Ivy Bridge
      GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - 2GB GDDR5
      RAM: 8GB Dual Channel DDR3 @ 1600mhz

    • Congratulations Mr. Mike.

      Originally posted by rezination
      The second kind of developer is in for the long haul. Games are a calling, and they'll get it done. The longest, hardest cruches are the self-inflicted ones. Ones where you just can't stop, because you believe completely in the project, and so you put your complete self into it. There's a certain level of insanity and masochistic pleasure you have to have to be one of these people.

      -Rez


      I want to work on a project like that. :o

    • Mike,

      You probably have much better stories than the fictional Mike McShaffry who worked on database schemas for oil and gas pipelines for 22 years. Obviously I'm pretty new to this, but I love working on a project that I want to play rather than something boring or unrelated to my interests, so it seems like the game industry would be hard to give up.

      Oh and when I was at my last tech company, we didn't get free beer every other Friday... Go Quicklime/EA!

      Happy anniversary of sorts,
      James

      The post was edited 1 time, last by rickvanprim ().

    • Haha nice post mike..:)

      And congratz for acheiving what you have and lasting as long as you have..:)

      And thank you for giving back to the community all of the insight and knowledge that you have passed on, and ofc the wonderful games that you worked on.

      Theif III is one of my favorites :D I cannot wait for them to get Theif IV out the door..xP Been waiting for that one for a while :)

      Happy 22 years anniversary..

      PS - I still have Theif III installed on my HDD.. I daren't uninstall it incase I cannot get the disc to run again hahaha :D