I just want to give my opinion regarding outsourcing projects. Many developers and even in the game sector are tempted to outsource their valuable projects as it would cost less, time line schedules, software engineering methodologies...etc. BUT they forget a very important thing about programming, in the end it's coding and you can never separate coders from designers. A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder. Simply put, Just don't do it. It cost more actually, time is valuable, and quality as well. I strongly discourage outsourcing. Don't even trust it. Hire locals to do the jobs. They need the experience, the chance, and the $$$.

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Original post by HugosHoH BUT they forget a very important thing about programming, in the end it's coding and you can never separate coders from designers. A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder. Simply put, Just don't do it. It cost more actually, time is valuable, and quality as well.

Yes you can. Look at the various middleware packages like Havok for example.

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Original post by HugosHoH A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder.

And, unless we're having a semantic misunderstanding, that's not even remotely true. In my studio (of about 300 people) there are maybe 2 designers that know anything about programming. Designers need to understand how systems work, but they don't need to know how to code them.

-me

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Original post by HugosHoH BUT they forget a very important thing about programming, in the end it's coding and you can never separate coders from designers. A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder. Simply put, Just don't do it. It cost more actually, time is valuable, and quality as well.

Just not true.

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Original post by HugosHoH Many developers and even in the game sector are tempted to outsource their valuable projects as it would cost less, time line schedules, software engineering methodologies...etc.

What? I'm very confused as to what "time line schedules" and "software engineering methodologies" are doing in that sentence.

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Original post by HugosHoH BUT they forget a very important thing about programming, in the end it's coding and you can never separate coders from designers. A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder.

As others have pointed out, this is not true. Good programmers must be able to "design" in an engineering sense: they must be able to write elegant solutions to complex problems in code. This is where things like design patterns can come into play. However, designers fulfill a completely different role in game development. They do not necessarily need to know how to code (and often don't), and programmer's don't need to know how to perform the job of a designer (and often don't).

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Original post by HugosHoH It cost more actually

This, I suppose, could be the case if the job you outsourced ended up not getting done or getting done abysmally. Outsourcing can be effective, or it can be ineffective. Care must be taken with it, but this is the case with all things in business.

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Original post by HugosHoH I strongly discourage outsourcing. Don't even trust it. Hire locals to do the jobs. They need the experience, the chance, and the $$$.

What experience do you have which leads you to distrust it? And what about outsourcing art? All you've talked about is programming; is it ok to outsource modeling or texturing, but not coding? Or does every single thing have to be done in house by the developer?

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Original post by HugosHoH A coder is a designer and a designer must be a coder.

Maybe this was true in the beginning of the times, but consider other industries. They are actually saving money/resources by separating design/planning from the actual doing. Possibly in the near future, the programs are turning out so complex that there will be need for several designers for different components / or designers are selecting components from a middle-ware library.

Is that the responsibility of a coder ? Should a coder be responsible for designing user interfaces ? that the program fullfils some obscure safety regulations ? that the project stays in schedule ?

Programming is quite a specific task, and requires already a lot of knowledge.

The door opens both ways, designer should know things about programming as the coder should know about designing.

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Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape. Here, karate, same thing. Either you karate do "yes" or karate do "no." You karate do "guess so," just like grape. Understand?

Understand ?

One-man-armies in commercial game development are mostly dead in the modern gaming world. Productions these days require a large number of individuals, and the game designer is rarely the same person as the programmer.

:makes a note to never outsource anything to Canada:

Wait...that's not what you meant? Oh sorry, I always get confused by trolls.

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Original post by HugosHoH BUT they forget a very important thing about programming, in the end it's coding and you can never separate coders from designers.

Coding is like painting by numbers - you can get anyone with minimal skill to do it given sufficiently precise directions. It's fabrication. Design, on the other hand, is about finding solutions to ultimately human constraints. If you look at any industry that involves creating replicated artifacts on a large-to-massive scale, you will find a separation of design and fabrication specialties, with a greater value attached to design: architects and construction workers, automotive engineers and assembly line workers, software architects and programmer interns, etc.

Outsourcing is a market adjustment to find the most cost effective supplier for the low-competency fabrication aspect. Outsourcing design is stupid and dangerous, particularly because it precludes the organization from owning intellectual property. Outsourcing fabrication, on the other hand, can often be a brilliant design. The only reason that this bifurcation and economies of scale don't reliably apply in software design is not because software is special, but because software development is a young and relatively primitive discipline.

I'm sorry if you feel this devalues you as a programmer, but you're expendable. Transition into a design capacity or a management capacity and you have long-term value; remain at the "programmer" level and you'll be competing for your salary with recent graduates.

Ironically, your post only bolsters my argument. As a programmer, you are so blind to the organizational objectives and true sources/loci of value that you create this whole false rationalization of "coders as designers" (you don't even see how demeaning the term "coder" is - a human encoder).

You have a point, it's never worked as well as using in-house developers for me. The key is always keeping as much contact with them, and discussing the design as much as possible. Designers who don't know how to code should consult with "coders" on areas they are not familir with (esp when dealing with graphics), again just an opinion. Which brings me to my last point.

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Original post by HugosHoH I just want to give my opinion regarding outsourcing projects...

This site is not exactly friendly. Make your opinion known about a subject and your going to get rediculed, called names and rated down, even if for reasonable opinions like yours. But hey, it's stll marginally less condescending than Slashdot... marginally...