Hardcore developer position



  • Only vaguely amusing, but I'm bored so what the hell...

    I was browsing SO's job board and came across a .NET developer position that included the following:

    Work Conditions:

    • Significant computer work, which may require repetitive motion, prolonged periods of sitting, and sustained visual and mental applications and demands
    It looked like a nice position, but this stuff is a dealbreaker



  •  I never do any of that, so, yeah.



  •  I thought noxious jobs like this would all be done by machines by now...



  • @DOA said:

    Work Conditions:

    • Significant computer work, which may require
    repetitive motion, prolonged periods of sitting, and sustained visual
    and mental applications and demands

    Looks like there's a vacancy at Aperture Science. If you like developing the newest high-tech shower curtains, or support the take-a-wish foundation, and if you're no stranger to artificial intelligence, you should give it a shot.



  •  Portal 2 is totally a buy.

      Also bout time for HL2 EP3 to stop being %$#@! vaporware real quicklike.



  • @dhromed said:

     Portal 2 is totally a buy.

    It's pre-ordered from Amazon. They attach a free skin for the co-op robots \o/



  • @dhromed said:

    Portal 2 is totally a buy.

    For $45? Only if it has 3 times the content of the original, or is packed along with a few other games (ala Orange Box.)

    @dhromed said:

    Also bout time for HL2 EP3 to stop being %$#@! vaporware real quicklike.

    I'm still fucking pissed at them for lying about HL2, delaying it for a fucking YEAR (I got a free copy with a ATI video card purchase... by the time the game actually came out I'd already replaced the card... they totally fucked over ATI.) And then when it came out I couldn't play for 3 days anyway because Steam was so fucked at the time. Fucking Valve. I hold grudges.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    For $45?
     

    Fuck no.

    $25? Maybe. That's like €19, so, good price.

    No really, game makers, yank $10-15 from the price of a game and watch the money burst in through your door. That shit is price-elastic as hell.

     

    Edit: WTF price difference?

    [img]http://www.pliv.com/things/asscreed_money.png[/img]

     

     



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    For $45?
     

    Fuck no.

    $25? Maybe. That's like €19, so, good price.

    I wasn't making up $45. That's what they're selling it at.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    For $45?
     

    Fuck no.

    $25? Maybe. That's like €19, so, good price.

    I wasn't making up $45. That's what they're selling it at.

     

    Pff. I've seen the World of Warcraft in retail here for €30. Per add-on.



  • @PSWorx said:

    Pff. I've seen the World of Warcraft in retail here for €30. Per add-on.

    I don't know where "here" is, but the base game is $20 on Battle.net, and I assume the expansions are similarly/lesser priced. (You apparently can't see the price of the expansions until you buy the base game... so I don't know what they cost.)



  • @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    For $45?
     

    Fuck no.

    $25? Maybe. That's like €19, so, good price.

    Remember you're not talking US Dollars. It's Steam Dollars. Steam Dollars translate to Steam Euros 1:1. Also not making this up.

    Also, Portal 2 is 70€ on Amazon for consoles, 50€ for PC (which actually equals to the Steam price, they just have some bonus discount thing going on).

    To my knowledge, this is due to licensing fees they have to pay for consoles (or the opportunity to rip people of because they think licensing fees are the issue).



  • @derula said:

    50€ for PC
    Do they know how much it costs on The Pirate Bay?



  • @DOA said:

    @derula said:
    50€ for PC
    Do they know how much it costs on The Pirate Bay?
    How much is it?



  • @derula said:

    @DOA said:
    @derula said:
    50€ for PC
    Do they know how much it costs on The Pirate Bay?
    How much is it?
     

    Probbly fewer than $8 dollars.



  • I preordered Portal 2. It was well worth the price I paid. In fact, I would even pay more.



  • @Ben L. said:

    I preordered
     

    @Ben L. said:

    It was

    ERROR

     



  • Thanks for sharing your account name with us so we know who to hack.



  • @dhromed said:

    @Ben L. said:

    I preordered
     

    @Ben L. said:

    It was

    Makes sense.

     



  • @derula said:

    Thanks for sharing your account name with us so we know who to hack.
    Yeah, good luck guessing my Steam password and my email password.



  •  @dhromed said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    For $45?
     

    Fuck no.

    $25? Maybe. That's like €19, so, good price.

    No really, game makers, yank $10-15 from the price of a game and watch the money burst in through your door. That shit is price-elastic as hell.

     

    Edit: WTF price difference?


     

     

    It's probably because Microsoft and Sony charge them a ridiculous license fee.



  • @immibis said:

    It's probably because Microsoft and Sony charge them a ridiculous license fee.

    And yet they still sell 20 times more console versions than Windows versions. It's a miracle anybody other than the indies does Windows ports at all.



  • @immibis said:

    It's probably because Microsoft and Sony charge them a ridiculous license fee.
    License fee for what?  Forgive my ignorance -- I know absolutely nothing about video game development.  Are you saying that if I want to write some software that will run on a PS3 or Xbox I have to pay a licensing fee to Sony or Microsoft?



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @immibis said:
    It's probably because Microsoft and Sony charge them a ridiculous license fee.
    License fee for what?

    I can't speak for Sony.

    In Microsoft's case, they do a ton of QA on third-party games, since it's in Microsoft's best interest to ensure game releases are bug-free, and that games don't have security bugs that allow players to (for example) edit data files on the system, or impersonate someone else on Xbox Live, or what-not. They also do a ton of network testing, each game is tested for amount of bandwidth used, amount of dropped packets it can tolerate, various different combinations of different brands of household routers, etc. They also do a lot of fuzz-testing on every title.

    Basically, Microsoft has a long list of requirements to publish a game on their system, and they do a long and intense QA process to ensure their requirements are met. (Sadly, they missed a few things-- for example Assassin's Creed was released with no subtitles, which is almost criminal and an unfortunate oversight on Microsoft's part.)

    In exchange the developer gets tons of "free" marketing from Microsoft and their partners, and of course the "free" use of all services provided by the Xbox dashboard/OS and Xbox Live.

    The general goal here is to avoid the glut of expensive, shitty games that basically killed the US console gaming industry in 1983.

    @El_Heffe said:

    Are you saying that if I want to write some software that will run on a PS3 or Xbox I have to pay a licensing fee to Sony or Microsoft?

    It depends on the type of game as well. From my understanding, Microsoft usually waives smaller companies the fees for Xbox Live Arcade games, but that's all negotiated... so. (I think, technically, they're supposed to charge Xbox Live Arcade games the same rate as commercial games.) XNA Creator Club games only have a $99/year fee, basically they're only paying for bandwidth.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    @immibis said:

    It's probably because Microsoft and Sony charge them a ridiculous license fee.
    License fee for what?  Forgive my ignorance -- I know absolutely nothing about video game development.  Are you saying that if I want to write some software that will run on a PS3 or Xbox I have to pay a licensing fee to Sony or Microsoft?

    Yes, you do.  Adding to blakey post, I can't vouch for MS because I never worked with the Xbox part of the company so..

    In the case of Sony you have to pay for the dev kit as well dev lic, or at least that was the way it worked some month ago



  • @serguey123 said:

    Yes, you do.  Adding to blakey post, I can't vouch for MS because I never worked with the Xbox part of the company so..

    In the case of Sony you have to pay for the dev kit as well dev lic, or at least that was the way it worked some month ago

    Oh yah, I forgot to mention dev kits. They're not very expensive, I think about $1200-per, but you pretty much need at least one for each developer to do serious game development on Xbox. They're pretty much identical to normal Xboxes, except a lot of the security code is removed (so you can load on arbitrary binaries and run them without worrying about signing), and they have a really low-level screenshot facility, and they have a really low-level debugger. Unfortunately, the Xbox 360 dev kits weren't much more robust than the actual console... when I worked on Xbox 360 testing, we found dead ones two or three times a week. (At this point, it's probably really hard to test a game on a launch Xbox 360...)

    (Creator Club games are in XNA, so you can develop and test those on pretty much any computer made this century.)



  • Guys, you're getting side-tracked. Let's get back to topic:


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