> The reason was simple: I did not believe there can be anything interesting or challenging in non-game dev.
Every now and then someone creates new piece of software that just changes things. Twitter as example (I remember saying to myself as I signed up for the bet, "well, that's gonna be not useful at all - who the f needs SMS on the internets?). Another example, in a more software related bubble one could say rails (ruby on rails) was very influential for web development overall.
I find thinking out of the box very challenging.
The jury is still very much out on Twitter's usefulness. Primary engagement is from those who want to be seen and heard. Not sure anyone's listening.
Re:The human toll of Fallout 76’s launch
by andrei_says_ on Thursday June 09, 2022 @10:14PM
(#31689230)
I love Twitter but I follow a bare minimum of focused accounts.
I'm a prolific follower and follow several thousand accounts making it my primary source for getting a heads-up on what people all over the place in those fields that interest me are thinking and doing (IT, politics, gaming, art, business, etc).
That said, I really miss the good old days before 'social media' when there used to be actual forums and blogs and IRC channels for everything under the sun. Thank heavens we still have HN.
It can be useful when all your infrastructure is down, to get the word out. It’s a decent second channel. But I’ll agree I think most tweets seem like shouting at a cloud.
Re:The human toll of Fallout 76’s launch
by stonemetal12 on Thursday June 09, 2022 @12:51PM
(#31683586)
The reporters are. I haven't visited twitter in a couple of years, but I see plenty of news articles that start Musk, Trump, or somebody tweeted something. It seems to be a pretty good press release pipeline.
Also on the other less cynical version of that, reporters are there - always. If there's something happening on the ground, you can get an unfiltered / unedited feed of what's happening around the world. For example I've got a list of 20 or so reporters from different countries on the ground in Ukraine, covering the situation every day. I find it much better than reading the published summaries.
The reason was simple: I did not believe there can be anything interesting or challenging in non-game dev. To my eyes it looked like a choice between making things fly and explode (which was cool and relevant to my peers) and being some "database accountant" writing boring stuff I did not care about.
I was a broke student in my first real job. I didn't even consider being underpaid, because I was making more money than I've ever seen. I took a while before I've learned that my manager was paid literally 3x more than I was.
From the inside, crunch felt like being a hero and shipping on time. I enjoyed coding and was in good health, so it didn't seem problematic to me.
I did not realize how fucked-up game dev business was until I had 3 studios in a row die before releasing their second game.