Funny enough, I know the head of QA for a major game dev irl. Hearing it from him, it's a combination of a rapidly degrading quality of programmer, combined with unrealistic expectations of release windows. Not that I expected him to cop to being the problem, but it seems logical to me.
In my eyes this is compounded further by the realties of Clown World's economy. In which not only are approved products likely to see praise regardless of quality, but the consumer is on average completely retarded and lacking in any taste. So on the one hand why not bilk them out of their money, and on the other hand why bother working hard if only political orthodoxy is rewarded by the people giving out the awards and promotions?
Games is also a notoriously grueling industry. Plenty of people who are good programmers don't want to bust their ass that hard for someone else to make all the money. If you're capable of making a game end to end, or you can form a small group to do so, you can also make indie games, which you have more control over and potentially could keep more of the profits from.
Back in the day one programmer would be responsible for more of a game, too, or even an entire game. AAA titles are too big for that, so you have to have to be able to coordinate and scale development. I get the impression games are not big on the best practices that are applied elsewhere in the software industry. I don't know if games are particularly difficult to test or if game studios are just particularly uninterested in it. Relative to other software, the consequences are pretty low. Nobody gets hurt because your game bugs out. Fuckups in medical device software have killed people.
It was really funny watching the Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary and seeing only one woman with a speaking role and every other person fitting a classic nerd archetype.
And of course that dyke had to complain that "she was the only woman" when the documentary calls out at least 2 others who worked on the game, one being the wife of another programmer who left early due to pregnancy
The OG games devs also didn't go into "game development" as a discipline; they had to forge it themselves. Many of their degrees were largely tangential, such as Miyamoto and his degree in industrial design (and he originally wanted to be a manga artist). He even admits he wouldn't get hired by Nintendo with his credentials today.
Also anybody could get onto Baldur's Gate II and contribute. A 2d engine just isn't that complicated.
But a custom 3d engine is a whole 'nother level of complicated.
Worst part is it doesn't even make it better. BG3 could have been better on Infinity Engine in 2d because it was always about the fantasy world not the graphics.
A 3D engine would actively detract from what Baldur's Gate is. You're playing D&D and a large part of that experience has always been the player's imagination filling in the gaps left by the DM and lack of explicit visual depictions of everything. You bang something out in the Unreal engine and you lose all of that real fucking quick.
Funny enough, I know the head of QA for a major game dev irl. Hearing it from him, it's a combination of a rapidly degrading quality of programmer, combined with unrealistic expectations of release windows. Not that I expected him to cop to being the problem, but it seems logical to me.
In my eyes this is compounded further by the realties of Clown World's economy. In which not only are approved products likely to see praise regardless of quality, but the consumer is on average completely retarded and lacking in any taste. So on the one hand why not bilk them out of their money, and on the other hand why bother working hard if only political orthodoxy is rewarded by the people giving out the awards and promotions?
Games is also a notoriously grueling industry. Plenty of people who are good programmers don't want to bust their ass that hard for someone else to make all the money. If you're capable of making a game end to end, or you can form a small group to do so, you can also make indie games, which you have more control over and potentially could keep more of the profits from.
Back in the day one programmer would be responsible for more of a game, too, or even an entire game. AAA titles are too big for that, so you have to have to be able to coordinate and scale development. I get the impression games are not big on the best practices that are applied elsewhere in the software industry. I don't know if games are particularly difficult to test or if game studios are just particularly uninterested in it. Relative to other software, the consequences are pretty low. Nobody gets hurt because your game bugs out. Fuckups in medical device software have killed people.
It was really funny watching the Half-Life 25th anniversary documentary and seeing only one woman with a speaking role and every other person fitting a classic nerd archetype.
And of course that dyke had to complain that "she was the only woman" when the documentary calls out at least 2 others who worked on the game, one being the wife of another programmer who left early due to pregnancy
The OG games devs also didn't go into "game development" as a discipline; they had to forge it themselves. Many of their degrees were largely tangential, such as Miyamoto and his degree in industrial design (and he originally wanted to be a manga artist). He even admits he wouldn't get hired by Nintendo with his credentials today.
Also anybody could get onto Baldur's Gate II and contribute. A 2d engine just isn't that complicated.
But a custom 3d engine is a whole 'nother level of complicated.
Worst part is it doesn't even make it better. BG3 could have been better on Infinity Engine in 2d because it was always about the fantasy world not the graphics.
A 3D engine would actively detract from what Baldur's Gate is. You're playing D&D and a large part of that experience has always been the player's imagination filling in the gaps left by the DM and lack of explicit visual depictions of everything. You bang something out in the Unreal engine and you lose all of that real fucking quick.