Alathon wrote:
Kholintian Destroying Army wrote:
anyone can come up with some good ideas if left alone for a while.
They can? That sure threatens the market of game designers.
There isn't much of a market in BYOND.
(well, not since the dimes went out the window)
you can't just give them a list of complex ideas and tell them to make it into a game.
You can't?
Not your average joe, no.
I believe that the coders in a BYOND project are the "real deal"- they do all the work, and I think they should be the ones designing the game, and coming up with ideas to fit their level of expertise
Why? What if the people coding don't have very good ideas, but their friend has a load of good ideas but isn't a programmer?
Then, as you state below, DM doesn't need a university course to become competent at it, so the friend should stop being such a lazy fool and learn to code DM.
What if that friend doesn't want to learn to code, but simply provide the ideas for the game? That puts them (amazing!) in a team, one who works the programming aspect and one who works the idea aspect.
I am not regarding DM as a tool that only morons use.
I am regarding it as a tool that A LOT of morons use.
(ahem)
Either way, whatever the level of programming skill, or intelligence of the designers, DM is not designed for professional use in a company- yes, professional programmers, adults, may be a part of the BYOND community, but they don't bring DM back to the professional level and use it to compete on the market.
How did the corporate game market get into this discussion? Who said anything about BYOND games competing on a marketwide level? That has absolutely no relation, at all, to whether pushing programmers into the mindset that "they and they alone" should design their game is a good or bad thing.
The way projects work in BYOND and in the "real world" is very different, as you can see by visiting the ads section of the forum:
So the ads section of the forum, is the extent to which projects have and will ever exist with regards to DM? Nay! I've worked on several projects that were never advertised on the forums, either to get people or to advertise the game itself. I know of several similar projects thusly spawned and advertised away from BYOND. The system is NOT limited to these forums, at all.
The way some people choose to advertise for "team members" is faulty by and large, and thats another matter entirely, again not related to this.
Teams often break down, people don't contact eachother.
This is not how a project would work in the market- these people are being paid, go to work in an office, have full communication.
Again, where did corporate games enter into this? Being paid to do something and doing it of your own free will are two distinctly different things, and they make a world of difference. You are completely overgeneralizing almost everything in the gaming industry, as if it is a static (when it is in fact the opposite: incredibly dynamic and expanding) constant.
With DM, the programmers are going to be the ones spending the lonely nights codingand browsing porn, and I think these people should be given more rights and freedom over how the game goes, not the designers who might, in the case of BYOND games, not have to put much effort in at all.
Thats entirely subjective to the team. Another generalization, that supposedly the designer is someone who wants to "steal" someone else to make a game for them, then claim it as their own. The designer should put as much effort into the game as they wish, likewise coders, likewise icon artists. In a team effort, its up to the team to decide whats needed and whats not.
What might be good enough for them, might not be good enough for you. But then, who are you to judge? Its their team, not yours :)
just there isn't a standard level of competence out there.
This only goes against your point, and its as true to programming as it is everything else in life, including artistic talent and game design skill. All the more reason for those proficient at programming to band together with those proficient at artistic talent, and those proficient at game design.
Every programmer is at a different level, (with a few people like Garthor and Lummox JR at 1,000,000 pl, o' course), and so a designer cannot make such high demands on them- the programmer should come up with the ideas, to fit their skill.
Why can't they? If I have some golden ideas for a game and need someone of a fairly competent level of skill to create my game for me (Simply because, looking at the design aspects, the game requires it), why is that "not allowed" ? And why should a programmer be limited to thinking of ideas that only fit their current level of talent? If this was true, no one would ever be pushing new ground or trying new things. Aim for a goal above you, and even if you don't hit it, you'll probably have gone further up than if you aimed at something you knew you could achieve. As true within this context as it is almost everything else in life.
My point is that you are trying to oversimplify an expanding community of individuals. Lummox may be no more proficient at designing games than my sisters 7 year old child (Granted this is an extreme comparison, and as it just so happens Lummox is a fairly proficient programmer and bright enough to think up some very fun games), likewise while my proficiency within DM may be above that of AverageJoeUnderMe, AverageJoeUnderMe might have some great ideas that I don't, that will produce a much much better game. If what you are saying is true, then the brightest minds in the world would logically be able to make the best (by best meaning most fun) games in existance. That is by far the truth, and so your logic fails on mostly every account.
(may I note that as a programmer learns more about the language, they can see different ways of programming, and so could come up with better ideas, knowing the system better. I don't think a designer could do that, at least on BYOND-scale)
If I know how to create and operate an R-tree, is that going to make my grand idea for an MMORPG better? If I know how A* pathing works, is that going to make the GUI of my game better?
Knowing a language and its limitations allows you to tell if an idea is POSSIBLE or not. That, the game designer may not know. But as for the ideas themselves, the fact that I can manage memory in C sure doesn't spark ideas in my head for a new game :)
There isn't much of a market in BYOND.
(well, not since the dimes went out the window)
Not your average joe, no.
Then, as you state below, DM doesn't need a university course to become competent at it, so the friend should stop being such a lazy fool and learn to code DM.
(and yes, I am aware of my point here, and how it conflicts with what I said above)
I am not regarding DM as a tool that only morons use.
I am regarding it as a tool that A LOT of morons use.
(ahem)
Either way, whatever the level of programming skill, or intelligence of the designers, DM is not designed for professional use in a company- yes, professional programmers, adults, may be a part of the BYOND community, but they don't bring DM back to the professional level and use it to compete on the market.
The way projects work in BYOND and in the "real world" is very different, as you can see by visiting the ads section of the forum:
Teams often break down, people don't contact eachother.
This is not how a project would work in the market- these people are being paid, go to work in an office, have full communication.
With DM, the programmers are going to be the ones spending the lonely nights coding
and browsing porn, and I think these people should be given more rights and freedom over how the game goes, not the designers who might, in the case of BYOND games, not have to put much effort in at all.I think you were missing my point before- I was not trying to make out that DM programmers were idiotic- just there isn't a standard level of competence out there. Every programmer is at a different level, (with a few people like Garthor and Lummox JR at 1,000,000 pl, o' course), and so a designer cannot make such high demands on them- the programmer should come up with the ideas, to fit their skill.
(may I note that as a programmer learns more about the language, they can see different ways of programming, and so could come up with better ideas, knowing the system better. I don't think a designer could do that, at least on BYOND-scale)