I've been noticing much more lately that there are trends going on specifically in software development of all forms, but specifically one in Game Development which has a large factor in why I have not pushed harder towards finishing and publishing any projects. The trend is simple to understand, but hard to admit when guilty. Heavy hitter established programmers are generating blockades for up and coming programmers who love the craft of programming.
One business development pattern that falls in this is the development shift to use web services. Even though I rather enjoy working in them, I do enjoy networking code far more. What happened to all the companies doing socket work? Well some genius of an individual found it would be easier and just as fast performance wise and way faster development time to use web services. It's a great idea, but it dumbs down the task to a point where most anyone with some programming knowledge can pull it off.
Numerous companies building UI frameworks or other similar systems for dealing with hard to accomplish tasks. Business leaders wouldn't dream of paying their staff for the time it would take to implement these things. So, they just pay for the third party.
Now, to hone in specifically to game development. There are and always will be people out there, myself included, who would aspire to be more like Eskil Steenberg and write an entire game with the use of no third party in straight C!! This man is hardcore, and would not dream of doing it any other way. The problem exists in that investors and business have taken over the industry. Funding a project with this methodology is not probable.
Having a background of being heavy in the modding community through high school and some after I say nearly the entire indie development franchise don't really develop video games. They're glorified modders. I'm not writing this as an assault against anyone who would fall in this category. It's mainly a thought and would aim to remind those of you who are aware of the time when video game industry almost disappeared completely. I'd hope to encourage and inspire those that are not in the "Notch" or Eskil Steenberg personality type to rethink your game plan for development moving forward. Allowing big business and publish over polish to mandate the development of your games will in my opinion lead to another near extinction of Video Games. If you don't really believe that's a possibility, go looking at new releases. Even from the AAA ranks we're getting a lot of weak titles. Look on your phone count how many of the top grossing mobile games are clones of one another. There are definitely a few great games out there, but the market is flooded with clones. Time to innovate and build video games on Radar machines again.
History Repeats Itself
