Job stability is another thing that is lacking in the computer games field. It seems to be a common practice in small development companies to lay off the entire development team upon completion of a project. Usually this is because a small development company can only afford to pay salaries while a project is actually being funded by an outside source. It takes a long time to negotiate such a contract, and often the previous product finishes before the negotiations are complete. As a result, the development company has no choice but to unburden itself of workers who aren't producing any revenue. As a result of this high turnover rate, development companies are unable to maintain a solid body of institutional knowledge. Worse, it inclucates a sense of futility in the engineering staff. As one worker put it: "If you ship, you'll be fired." Don't get me wrong. I still like games. But the games industry isn't games.

I'm not advocating that the sources of funding should simply dry up. But I wish that investors and project planners would be more careful. Firstly, because I'm ethically offended by the idea of wasting other people's money. And secondly, because I'm sick of spending a year of my life working on a beautiful project, only to watch it go down in flames (And yes, I admit that there were times when the fault was my own...but not most of the time.)

I think that we'd all be happier if fewer games were actually produced. In my opinion, the primary result of this would be a higher percentage of good games on the market. Of course, there wouldn't be quite as many jobs, but I can tell you that there are a lot of fun, exciting jobs out there that have nothing to do with the games industry. For example, I recently I took a job at an e-commerce company. Now, I have absolutely no interest in e-commerce per se. But I found to my surprise that there are a lot of things about this job that are really fun:

I get to do real research, to tinker around with new concepts
I'm living on "internet time": Product cycles are in weeks, not years
My experience and knowledge are highly respected.
People look to me for help and answers, not to grind away code in silence
Schedules are reasonable and flexible
I'm learning a lot of new technologies
I'm getting a chance to do something different for a change.
The gender balance is a lot closer to 50%
They appreciate and exploit my multiple skills and game-designer sensibilities.
I get to think about social issues as well as technical ones
The people are excited and enthusiastic rather than feeling burnt out.
The pay is better

Of course, I still have a lot of game ideas I want to do... I'm not going to follow the example of Chris Crawford, and say "Farewell forever, games industry!" This isn't the first time I've taken a break away from games to do other work (for example, in 1987 I wrote a professional music sequencer, Music-X.)

But these days I'm far less interested in broadcasting my own ideas and stories (the "Death From Above" content distribution model), than I am in empowering the end-users to be able to realize their own ideas and fantasies. If I chose to do another game, it would have to be on very specific terms: An R&D project up front to eliminate the major risks, solid commitment to sound engineering principles, a rational schedule (or better yet, no schedule at all), and a project premise that involved a high level of social consciousness. "Community is King" is my motto now.

Alternatively, I think I'd enjoy just develop games as a hobby, completely open-sourced, and make money some other way. I've found that being an amateur game creator is more emotionally rewarding than being a After all, I'm in this for the fun, and for the chance to express myself creatively. If I wasn't, I'd be selling insurance or something.

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Talin (also known as "David Joiner", but not as readily), is currently based in San Francisco, in the Twin Peaks area. He has done a lot of different kinds of programming, everything from compiler design to MIDI drivers to word processors to games, and a lot more. He once wrote a FORTH interpreter for the Exidy Sorcerer in hex code, since there was no assembler for the Exidy at that time. Nowadays, He's now interested in o bject-oriented design and software architectural techniques, such as those described in the Design Patterns book, and in ways of understanding complex systems, such as the Unified Modeling Language, while remaining notorious for his skepticsm of object-oriented dogma, and his insistance that OOP is only one of many valid methods of structuring a system. He is currently interested in "Community Engineering", the study of how communities work, and the ability to design social environments which foster certain desired behaviors. He can be reached at Talin@ACM.org, http://www.sylvantech.com/~talin, or http://www.hackertourist.com/talin.

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