10 things I learned in the Game Industry

Since I’m currently in my latest attempt to quit the game industry, I thought it would be good to make a list of what I learned.

1. Alpha Blending covers over way more sins than you think it will.
2. The best Game design comes just borrowing ideas from other places and iterating. See any game by Blizzard.
3. Ideas are easy, Choices are hard. The easiest 5 words are “Wouldn’t it Be Cool If…”
4. Crunch time exists so that people get tired of saying “Wouldn’t it be cool if?”
5. No matter how good/bad your tech is you will get more out of your visuals by hiring better artists.
6. You will end up hating virtually any 3rd Partly library you use.
7. You need to put one of your best coders on the build system and tools because when they don’t work nobody does.
8. People will always say that graphics isn’t as important as gameplay but with the possible exception of the Wii (Yea! nintendo), they vote differently with their money.
9. Publishers Lie.
10. There was no budget for 10 so we had to cut it.