[Ocaml-biz] creating a household name

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Brian Hurt wrote:
>
> the CAD/CAM market is way huger than Games can ever dream of being.

I disagree about "can ever dream of being."
http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2004/features/20040326/postcard-sanchez_01.s
html

"Finally, Wright did a projection on the current evolution of budgets
and team sizes in the game development industry. Starting with his first
game, which he coded, did art for, designed, etc. to The Sims (which had
a team size of around 25 people), he projected we will reach a point in
this century where a game will need a team of 2.5 million developers,
and a budget of around 500 billion dollars."

It's a joke, but it does say something about the rate the game industry
budgets are growing at.

> > Open Office or Pro-E, sure, but show me the money for the R&D.
>
> Sure.  Right after you show me the money for games.

http://nebuladevice.cubik.org

> And how long has each of those engines been "the big name
> engine"?  Doom
> was released in 1993.  In the last 10 years we've had 4
> different engines-
> meaning each engine had a life expectancy of 2.5 years.  Maybe 3.3.

You're totally ignoring the fact that Id Software has been a dominant
player the whole time.  There's no point in regarding Quake I, II, III
as different engines.  It's the same company moving the same engine
technology forwards from generation to generation.  If it were an open
source project, they'd all be free.  As it is, Id Software has a
business model.

> > Seattle is one of the world epicenters of game
> > development.
>
> And Minneapolis isn't, which is why I said my sample wasn't
> statistically valid.  Yours isn't either.

'Statistical validity' ain't the name of the game.  *We* are not
statistically valid, this group of people on ocaml-biz.  Statistics is
not what get things done in the world.  Individuals do.

> >No kid writes boring business apps.  13 year olds write games.
>
> Great.  Ocaml: GWBasic for the 21st century.

Why as an adult do you think you're so smart?

At age 11 I was adding and multiplying in base 2.  The other kids were
still on mixed fractions.  They got me a tutor.  I wrote my 1st game at
13, actually my only complete game to date.  It took full advantage of
Atari 800 player missile graphics.  I used cookbook snippets from Antic
magazine to make things go fast.  The main trick of the day was to type
in some crazy string that represented ASM code.  That and retargetting
memory using strings, so you could just manipulate the strings instead
of having to deal with memory.  I taught myself 6502 Assembly and bought
the Macro Assembler, but I never ended up making use of it.

I did this in 1981, an era with no internet for the masses.  Nobody to
help me do anything.  No insightful parents, no encouragement, no access
to university mainframes.  If I had had the support, I'd easily have
been one of the whiz kid multi-millionaires in the 90's.  Some kids got
huge head starts and others didn't.

I'll say again: kids write games, and the Internet makes it pretty easy
to find the ones that can handle OCaml.

I don't know why you worry about OCaml being associated with kids.
OCaml is a 'real' language, it's never going to be associated with kids.
It might become associated with *games*, and that's a good thing.  Games
are a terribly demanding application space.

> > A more famous example of 'loss of strategic discipline' is when the
> > Netscape guys rewrote their browser from scratch.  That's one of the
> > main things that allowed Microsoft to put them under the table.
>
> Shipping IE for free with every new computer had no impact, I presume.

The rewrite put Netscape at least 1.5 years behind schedule, IIRC.

> > Even if they were a MMORPG freak in their spare time, and
> > noticed the
> > complete lack of downtime for some OCaml super-server?
> > Mind you, that's
> > not a space I'm after right now, but it is a possibility.
>
> Would that be chalked up to A) the language used, B) the
> skills of the
> people writting the game, or C) to the perception that
> writting a MMORPG
> server is considered easier by these people than writting a massive
> business logic server?

There's a point at which I feel you're engaging in gratuitous naysaying,
rather than concentrating on how you're going to market to people and
deliver the message *YOU* want to be heard.  There's nothing that
terribly difficult about marketing a huge enterprise MMOG product that
actually works.  It requires a whitepaper and so forth, but it is
serious stuff.

Your general objections are of the tone, "Games aren't serious."  Well,
they are serious.  The bigger titles have huge levels of engineering
behind them.  Are films serious enough for you?  Games aren't far behind
that level, and within 10 years they'll be doing the same things.  Also
there's a Serious Games Summit at the GDC now.
http://www.gdconf.com/conference/seriousgames.htm

I don't know how old you are.  I'm wondering if your objections are
generational?  Most people in their early 30's or younger grew up
playing video and computer games.  They aren't prejudiced against games,
and they haven't given 'em up once they've gotten older either.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.