The industry is waking up

Quality of life has been a topic of discussion in the gaming industry for some time now. I've made reference to this myself in a previous rant, but I'm glad to see that the industry is showing sings of waking up. I went to an IGDA meeting last night, and they showed a recording of a speech that was given at this year's Game Developers Conference by Steve McConnell. His speech was about efficiency in the software development industry in general, and that's a very relevant topic for game development.

The main idea is that a bit of overhead at early stages of a project will greatly reduce the effort required to deliver the software towards the end of the project. A nice statistic that I kept in mind is that, in the computer industry, roughly 80% of the effort is invested in unplanned rework for poorly organized companies. Sadly, most companies fall into this category, but at least the awareness of the solution is starting to ripple throughout the industry.

I forget where I read this, but I know that another potential problem the gaming industry might face in afew years is an uncontrolled explosion of game costs. Improved efficiency can counter this potential problem as well. Now I'm under the impression that I entered the industry at the right time, since I never got the chance to get used to bad development practices. If I don't learn things right the first time, at least I can grow with the knowledge that what I'm doing can be improved greatly, and if I ever "become somebody", I can start getting things done the right way.