Even during the PS2 era, games like Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal had 9 month development cycles, with developers working 60+ hours a week. Many games are built with developers essentially sleeping in the office, ordering junk food, gaining weight, neglecting their families, sleeping 4 hours a day for months (nearly killing themselves), etc., because their passion is heavily exploited. While I miss the era of PS2 when many genres were explored and experimented with and games were more of an art form instead of some generic slop to sell microtranscations, season passes, etc., I passionately want game development to do away with abusive, crunch culture.
Adding to the discussion of multiple commenters’ desire for libre game development expressed here, it would be nice if China were to invest in its gaming industry, supporting open source games that can outcompete games made with blood in Amerikkka and the West (and the exploited Global South slave developers especially). To add to my previous comment here, I think China could really take advantage with developing open source games under open source architecture and operating systems which they have been developing. I believe it would be a massive soft power win. If they could make more professionally maintained alternatives to popular games like Minecraft, for example, and I think a lot of people would jump ship as they are fed up with Microsoft’s and other corporations’/studios’ bullshit, though the US pigs would probably ban the games because of tErRoRiSm. It already looks like China’s games, film, and animation production are starting to outcompete the West, though it would be nice to see them create and optimize their games like Black Myth Wukong under their sovereign open source tech and let their gaming industry skyrocket like their AI tech industry has due to open source tech and open collaboration across their provinces.
Even during the PS2 era, games like Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal had 9 month development cycles, with developers working 60+ hours a week. Many games are built with developers essentially sleeping in the office, ordering junk food, gaining weight, neglecting their families, sleeping 4 hours a day for months (nearly killing themselves), etc., because their passion is heavily exploited. While I miss the era of PS2 when many genres were explored and experimented with and games were more of an art form instead of some generic slop to sell microtranscations, season passes, etc., I passionately want game development to do away with abusive, crunch culture.
Adding to the discussion of multiple commenters’ desire for libre game development expressed here, it would be nice if China were to invest in its gaming industry, supporting open source games that can outcompete games made with blood in Amerikkka and the West (and the exploited Global South slave developers especially). To add to my previous comment here, I think China could really take advantage with developing open source games under open source architecture and operating systems which they have been developing. I believe it would be a massive soft power win. If they could make more professionally maintained alternatives to popular games like Minecraft, for example, and I think a lot of people would jump ship as they are fed up with Microsoft’s and other corporations’/studios’ bullshit, though the US pigs would probably ban the games because of tErRoRiSm. It already looks like China’s games, film, and animation production are starting to outcompete the West, though it would be nice to see them create and optimize their games like Black Myth Wukong under their sovereign open source tech and let their gaming industry skyrocket like their AI tech industry has due to open source tech and open collaboration across their provinces.