Mattnettic leaving KI.

[Oxnhorse]

Players often say that devs need to play their own game in their free time, but it really seems unfair as an expectation to me. You're basically asking them to work on the game for 8 hours a day, then go home and get back on the game they just spent 8 hours staring at. Not only would that create burnout very quickly, but it's also essentially asking them to do more work unpaid in their free time. I'll bet you anything Eric understandably doesn't play the game as much as he used to outside of work since he started working at KI, and I would also bet you that's true of most devs for any game.
Reality is that devs have a very different perspective on their games from players. It's not necessary to be an active player of a game you develop in order to understand it and work on it within the numerous constraints that players are not privy to (many of which likely give players the false perception devs don't understand). Basically, what I'm getting at is that I don't care if new blood actually plays the game in their free time and I think it's ridiculous to expect that, but I do expect them to know how to do their jobs and the people employed at KI definitely have shown that they do, so I'm unworried in that department.

Right now I'm most worried about newer hires being chosen by Gamigo to start shifting toward repeating their history of milking games dry rather than keeping them fun. Unfortunately, it's going to be a long time before we actually know that's where we're headed and will probably be too late by then.

How else would developers understand the bugs that are added into their game if they don't give it a spin.

When I was younger I had experimented with programming and my original major at college was Computer Science. And I took every computer class given at a local trade school.

I even had a TRS-80 and would follow the suggested lines of code to create things, which were never really saved. It was a 400 dollar version of Etch A Sketch.

Programmers and developers are meant to be in a constant cycle of making sure the programs they create work properly, and if it doesn't, they spend time pouring over their work and looking everywhere they can think of, in order to see where the error is being triggered.

I don't know as much as needed to be an edition of KI staff, but I made it as far as Fortran back in the early 90s, before changing majors.

Oxnhorse

[Willowdreamer]

I think that it's important for Devs to play the game they work on. Devs should understand the game from a player's perspective.

I play 15-30 minutes every day. I'm up to the last fight in Lemuria. I've almost finished the Winter Scroll of Fortune and I've finished the previous 9.

Arthur (Gary)

I also think it's nice to see Devs to spend a few minutes checking out comments on fan site.

[JaredSpellFrost]

UPDATE: Matt is now Principal Designer for The Sims at Electronic Arts.

Matt works for EA now? Nooo, not the dark side!

But in all seriousness, I don't blame him. You gotta find work somewhere, and The Sims is a fairly profitable franchise!

[jlegendwielder]

Matt works for EA now? Nooo, not the dark side!

But in all seriousness, I don't blame him. You gotta find work somewhere, and The Sims is a fairly profitable franchise!

"Sims: The Dark Side"....man, that oughta sell a bunch!