All the talk of moving to social media is funny to me - the other day I was contemplating writing up a Facebook post very similar to this thread (where has everyone gone?) about how nobody on my Facebook friend list ever seems to post much anymore and my feed is almost entirely algorithm-chosen content from random advertisers. Except for engagement announcements. Those still seem be a thing.

Geri said:
But there are less forunate reasons as well. The tiktok generation lacks a lot of abilities due to the low quality of modern education. For example, even college students dont understand, what a file system is: https://www.pcgamer.com/students-dont-know-what-files-and-folders-are-professors-say/

That has less to do with education and more to do with post-millennials having cellphones as their primary computing device and relying heavily on search, instead, because filesystems are not ergonomic on mobile. The article you linked explains this, so it is unclear to me why you're going off on this tangent about “smart TVs." It is even less clear to me what connection this has to “distorted morals.”

Geri said:
In contrast, in the 90s you had to be scientifically prepared even to use a computer, because you had to do minimal maintenance on your computer even to be able to turn it on once or twice per week - for example, pushing back an ide cable to the hdd if it fell off, or figure out how to keep your dying floppy disks alive with the help of scandisk.

Overcoming this phase of computing was a Good Thing Actually and I submit that you are wearing nostalgia goggles. I remember ‘90s computers and how annoying they were when you weren’t someone who cared about the physical hardware or operating systems - I just wanted to play video games and maybe make my own, I didn't want to screw around with IDE cables or graphics cards. Not everyone should have to care about the hardware, just as not everyone should be a dietitian to eat well, or a mortgage broker to own a home, either; we go to experts for advice on those things, too.

All of humanity should have access to the gifts that computer science has bequeathed us and we shouldn't demand that our successors suffer as we did, just because we did.

Geri said:
glvertex3f

To be fair, nobody should be using that in 2022. Nobody should have been using it in 2012, either. :P

Geri said:
Are you kiddin with me? Give me that magic wasd model viewer ,,game engine'', because i will not waste five days of my life to learn the basics! Just let my fly in around some random models, and 99% of the game is finished. No one can stop me now (=

Newcomers were always being like this.?

They were just weeded out in greater numbers by the technical challenges involved. Now some of those challenges have been alleviated. This is also a Good Thing Actually as it means people whose creativity and ideas would otherwise be lost to us are sucked into our field more gradually and stay longer - and coupled with the vast resources of the net, we actually end up with more people who want to know about how the engine itself works and learn these things you're complaining kids don't learn anymore. How many subscribers does Handmade Hero alone have?

Don't judge people for not taking the same path into the world of gamedev that you did. Let the kids have fun and learn things. There is much to critique about how internet culture works but you sound angry that different generations form different subcultures from you, instead continuing the exact culture of their parents and mentors. Seems like a futile kind of anger to me.

Kylotan said:
Some of the old crew are still around, occasionally here but also on Discord. We may not post as much, but in many cases that's because we're no longer hobbyists but busy making games professionally, and not only have fewer questions to ask but are less able to talk about what we're working on.

For me it's pretty much been this, though the redesigns and breaking of old content did not help much. I'm not opposed to sites redesigning themselves, but my bookmarks from the early ‘00s were (before I nuked them) all pretty much useless now, because the formatting on those old posts is so broken that they’re almost incomprehensible. Reddit and Discord didn't do that; the site choosing not to migrate old content without breaking it did.

While I don't want to call any poster out in particular, also not helping: the apparent shift toward “articles” that are nothing more than links to a YouTube video and “blogs” that aren't much more than a bullet-point form stream of consciousness made accessible to the public with little-to-no editing, organization, or thought put into making any particular point digestible by said public. I loathe video as a medium for learning ideas that aren't inherently hands-on and while I endorse externalizing one's thoughts via stream of consciousness as a work aid and as raw material for later documentation, I cannot call that raw material a blog post. I certainly cannot call that a blog post I could imagine anyone wanting to read; not without editing into a “narrative” of some kind. And then there's the “articles” that do nothing other than link to an article on another site, essentially using GDNet as an exposure mechanism.

Reddit and Discord didn't cause these things, either; the site's lack of moderation of what goes on the front page and the community not pushing back with critique on such posts did.

Oberon_Command said:
Not everyone should have to care about the hardware, just as not everyone should be a dietitian to eat well, or a mortgage broker to own a home, either; we go to experts for advice on those things, too.

You are wrong on this in the context of gamedev: its a profession. You viewing this issue thrugh the googles of luxury consumerism (i am not saying YOU are a luxury consumer, you just accepted that glass as a legitimate glass). It doesn't matters for me, i will still get my money.

Geri said:
You are wrong on this in the context of gamedev: its a profession. You viewing this issue thrugh the googles of luxury consumerism. It doesn't matters for me, i will still get my money.

It's true in professional gamedev, as well. I am not a graphics programmer and most gamedevs I work with at the AAA level are not graphics programmers, for instance. That task is delegated to dedicated specialists who bring more passion and drive and experience to the topic than the rest of us. I for one have almost no interest in spending my evenings reading academic papers on the finer points of global illumination, as it now seems is necessary to keep up with actual professional graphics devs; I got into this business because I wanted to make things that entertain people. And I do work at a lower level than the Unity and Unreal types; my day job is working on a proprietary AAA engine. Our teams are better off for being structured in such a way that their members can follow their interests at work; they have more focus and less burnout; they are happier. Surely one would not call that a bad thing?

It is also worth noting that video games could be called a “luxury consumer item.” Our industry would not exist without that lens. ?

Geri said:
(i am not saying YOU are a luxury consumer, you just accepted that glass as a legitimate glass).

I don't think internet-enabled tech is a luxury consumer good anymore, at least in the G7. Having a phone hasn't been optional for a young professional for something like ten years at this point. Can you imagine trying to apply for a job in 2022 without an email address? Trying to find a job or a place to rent without the internet? I can't. Certainly not in the major urban areas. Where I live, even the homeless and downtrodden poor tend to have cellphones. That's not because of some “keeping up with the Joneses" thing, it's because modern life in developed nations is very difficult without one. Internet access is an essential service now akin to water and electricity and (as an aside, as this is a whole separate conversation) I wish it were treated as a public utility.

Oberon_Commander: i haven't recommended anyone to spend nights reading scientifical documents of gi, thats the opposite swing of the pendulum, nonsensical expertisation is just as bad as zero knowledge, i am agreeing on that. I also agree that video games are luxury items. Luxury ocean liners are also luxury, but i wouldn't onboard to one which was designed by people who didn't understood hydrostatic pressure and welding.

Geri said:
haven't recommended anyone to spend nights reading scientifical documents of

You haven't, explicitly, but you seem to be griping about how the kids don't build their own tech anymore and therefore they don't know how. Knowing how to build your own graphics tech in 2022 now effectively requires having an eye for the academic portions in order to compete. You may say “well indies don't need to compete graphically” and that is true, or you may say “well newbies don't need to compete graphically” and that is also true, but newbies do not necessarily know that and will want to compete graphically. It is much harder to roll your own competitive graphics tech in 2022 than it was in 2002. If we force them to, few of them will stay, because it is my impression that most new gamedevs are like me and just want to make games.?

But this was, again, just an example of my overarching point, which was that it's unreasonable to expect everyone to know everything about their tech stack in 2022 and so we shouldn't judge others for not meeting that unreasonable standard. There's just too much to learn now and not enough time in a well-balanced lifestyle to learn it all.

Geri said:
Luxury ocean liners are also luxury, but i wouldn't onboard to one which was designed by people who didn't understood hydrostatic pressure and welding.

There's a difference here, though. Video games don't kill people when they have a bug. Video games are just virtual magic shows to entertain people. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to write bugfree code, but we have no need to chase perfection the way “real” engineers do with cruise ships and rockets and plenty of motivation not to in the form of deadline pressure.

I'm in agreement, they're far more complex than generations past.

In the 1970s and 1980s they were created by experts, certainly, but it was a single expert. That single expert knew what was going on in the hardware in the cabinet, or programmed it all in assembly. It took 3-6 months, but was still small enough the entire thing could fit in their brain.

Games grew and grew. As new technology came around in the 1990s specialization wasn't optional, it was essential. Development teams shifted from work-months to work-years, and by the late 1990s game credits were starting to reach work-centuries.

Now we use game engines that have been in development for 25 years, longer than young programmers have been alive, and during that time have had many thousand developers working on them. We have engine technology that has more engineering hours inside it than the entire Apollo program taking people to the moon. While it is good to have a general idea of what is going on in the broad architectural sense, there is absolutely no way an individual can stay active and current in the entire architecture.

This is even more true in AAA games. I've been on multiple titles where I'm familiar with perhaps 50 or so of the names in the credits, sometimes among the thousands of people I'll recognize team leaders as people mentioned in discussions. But they're literally work-millennia projects, one person couldn't do it all even in ten or fifty lifetimes.

So frob, what is your point of view on U-engines ? , I have also worked in the past as a graphics engineer , I have developed my engines for fun, I realize that I will never be capable of (re)producing U-engines all by myselfs, 20% of developers are using U-engines, when the ratio will be 100% what will happen ?? there will be no more new blood for developing newer graphics rendering engines.

I wouldn't limit it to “U-engines”, there are plenty of others like Crytech, Frostbite, GMS, the GoldSrc/Quake engine, Id Tech, to name a few.

They represent enormously valuable tools which are less expensive to end users because of their enormous user base. Several are easily trillion dollar creations considering their history. They provide comprehensive libraries, tools, testing platforms, automation platforms, networking systems, and so much more that an individual could not achieve on their own in their lifetime, or in many lifetimes.

The fact that you can use them at no cost to you, or no cost until you're already raking in significant funding and then at that point pay a relatively small cost, that's an amazing benefit that several companies offer.

You also aren't required to use them. You can build something small and unique, and I've worked on several small projects over my career that were single-person creations. DuckGame was probably the best example of those, written by a single person. Flat Red Ball was another tool that grew. MonoGame was a project by an individual, Mono itself was a project by an individual, and quite a few others that I've worked on, they started as single person projects. I've got some friends who made small fortunes — not millionaires but enough to pay for a big chunk of their home — by doing that. Those single-person projects aren't dead, and for someone with a good idea and some elbow grease, and a fair amount of luck, they can create empires.

Programmer71 said:
when the ratio will be 100% what will happen ?? there will be no more new blood for developing newer graphics rendering engines.

I don't agree with that assessment at all.

What will happen is exactly what has been happening, and what has happened for generations.

People will continue to build small systems and tinker will small systems as individuals, sometimes innovating in wild creative ways. Academics will continue to explore and create. Small businesses and studios will continue to build intermediate sized systems and build up specialized technology for their unique needs. Then larger tools and larger engines will buy them up or otherwise incorporate the technology. Eventually the large companies will then integrate what they can, replace segments, and then start to look for additional upstart technologies they can also incorporate.

Even though the large engines represent incomprehensibly huge volumes of work, they're also behemoths that are slow to move and slow to adopt new materials. Eventually they buy and acquire other new and exciting technology, but sooner or later they start to lag behind and an upstart will begin to first join their ranks, then eventually start to replace them as industry leaders as the older ones start to fade away, weighted down by decades of legacy that they cannot escape.

This trend is nothing new. It is clearly visible in technology and computer companies since the 1950s and 1960s through to today. It is common in technology before computers for the past few centuries. And it is common in business and innovation for the entirety of humanity. There will always be something new and shiny to work on, if that's what you want. There will also be old and established and secure, if that's what you want.

@Programmer71

Programmer71 said:

So frob, what is your point of view on U-engines ? , I have also worked in the past as a graphics engineer , I have developed my engines for fun, I realize that I will never be capable of (re)producing U-engines all by myselfs, 20% of developers are using U-engines, when the ratio will be 100% what will happen ?? there will be no more new blood for developing newer graphics rendering engines.

In my (unpopular) opinion, the only real game (which i consider a game) ever made in all of the generic game engines in existence (including unity, cry engine, unreal, irrlicht, ogre3d, …., genesis3d) is Yandere Simulator (this info is based on my personal taste, it makes no sense to debate it). This game looks like a generic opengl 1.0 cell shading tutorial from 1997 combined with shadow and glow tutorials from 1998, but it just needs about a 100x faster gpu to reach 2 fps, crashes with every older nvidia drivers, produces a slide show with integrated video cards, and the game in reality canot be compiled for other platforms, and only unlicensed clones available for other os such as android. There is your billion dollars of expertisation in its finest. If 100% of games will be made in these then i will deny i ever had anything to do with game development to avoid getting lynched.