bradamantium
replied to your post:
Before I joined Gearbox Software, I wo...
I don’t think he’s making a case for mercy as much as looking to stem the angry tides of people who really don’t know any of this stuff. It’s just a look at how the sausage is made, not necessarily making any big point.
It's funny you mention this, because I'm having a very similar conversation with a developer friend of mine about this right now, and he said something very similar, and that perhaps this article wasn't "for" me, as a technical person who works in engineering. That's a fair statement.
And that's all well and good, but the concern is - he's not just some random gamer, he's a former critic, and that colors things quite a bit. It's concerning that someone who reviews games apparently didn't understand that games are hard to make, for example.
It's also possible that maybe it's just me here, but the whole time it came across as "this is really hard and we have feelings so be nice." That's all true, it is hard, and of course game devs have feelings, and no one should be insulting the devs themselves.
And things like bringing up Assassin's Creed specifically, particularly in light of the recent Unity debacle, or saying "well we choose not to focus on endings in exchange for something else" - these sorts of examples, at least to me, seem more like arguing for mercy than just explanations. If it is just for sausage-making, at the very least I think he may want better examples.
