The Developer's Life by Francois
Dominic Laramee Archive
 Developer's
Life Part 17: The IGDA Quality of Life Paper
By François Dominic Laramée
Not very often do I begin a project wondering
about its ultimate influence on the "greater
good". Less often still do I keep on wondering
once the project is over. But that is exactly how
I feel about Quality of Life in the Game
Industry: Challenges and Best Practices, the
IGDA white paper which the committee I have the
honor of chairing has unveiled at GDC and
officially released in late April. And if you
think this "quality of life" stuff is worthless
tripe that a Real Game Developer With A Hardcore
Work Ethic shouldn't care about… Well, I hope you
will change your mind someday. Preferably before
you reach a management position and have time to
cause too much damage...More
(May 2004)
Developer's
Life Part 16: San Jose for the Last Time (And Not
a Moment Too Soon)
By François Dominic Laramée
Every GDC has a defining moment. Shigeru Miyamoto
getting a well-deserved standing ovation from a packed
house of his peers. Bill Gates announcing the Xbox.
Decrepit booth bimbos in skunk outfits shilling for an
odor-emitting PC peripheral...This year's most memorable event took place during
Andrew House's PlayStation keynote. While showing off
the funky little EyeToy (which received an innovation
award and was ubiquitous on the expo floor), House
mentioned that Sony was about to release an EyeToy-enhanced
dancing game, which sounds like a winner to me. At which
point the craziness began...More
(April 2004)
Developer's Life Part 15: The Name
of the Game is Blame
By François Dominic Laramée
When games end up losing money, there are
plenty of opportunities for blame. So, FDL says, we bitch and moan a lot, but we know that in the end,
if a studio delivers a serviceable game in something
remotely resembling the original schedule and budget,
its immediate future is safe. If the game tanks in the
marketplace, the publisher will chalk it up to the
nature of the business and keep working with the studio.
Especially if it’s one of their own internal operations,
over which the publisher holds almost divine levels of
power. Right? Or maybe not...More
(January
2004)
Developer's
Life Part 14: New Year's Resolutions
(High-Res, Low-Res, And Every Mipmap In Between)
By François Dominic Laramée
Our FDL again dares to voice what others dare only
to think. In this issue, he lays out his New Year's
Resolutions. Read why he vows to be more optimistic,
read more, play better with others, and practice more...More
(January
2004)
Developer's Life Part 13: More
Bookshelf Clearing
By François Dominic Laramée
It's that time of year again: my bookshelves are
overflowing with good stuff I have to recommend to you
guys, just in time for the game industry's Great Annual
Post-Christmas-Release-Crunch Sleepoff! Lots of good
stuff in there, so grab a pencil, fire up your Amazon
wish list, or just cajole your loved one something
extra, and read on…More (November 2003)
The
Developer's Life Part 12: Enough is Never Really
Enough
The always opinionated FDL kicks off a hot
summer with his take on the IDSA's attack on a
Washington state law, neoliberal dogma and
Reagan-Thatcher-Bush-Chrétien laissez-faire
capitalism. He also wonders why every game needs
to fill twelve DVDs and require 200 hours of
play time to receive favorable reviews – or even
any sort of distribution at all? And then he
really gets fired up...More
(June 2003)
The
Developers Life Part 11: Size Matters
Some time ago, the esteemed editor of this
publication and I briefly considered looking for a
sponsor for my column. Back then I quickly dismissed the
idea, convinced that no sponsor worth his salt would
give a second look to my left-leaning nonsense when
there were so many worthier targets for their
not-entirely-disinterested generosity. But now might be
a good time to revisit the concept, because the more I
think about it, the more I believe that I just might be
the last sponsor-free entity left on Earth...More
(May 2003)
The
Developer's Life Part 10: Looking for a Quick Fix
By François Dominic Laramée
One of the things that surprised our beloved FDL
during the process of putting together his upcoming book
Secrets of the Game Business was how few of
the developers who wrote articles or submitted to
interviews complained about the business practices of
their publishers. After all, while the situation inside
the industry may not be anywhere near as dire as
"conventional wisdom" would lead us to believe, he has
lived through a couple of horror stories himself, and he
expected most of my peers to have as well. But it
doesn't seem to be the case....More
(December02/January03)
The
Developer's Life Part 9: Top Tens Revisited, or How to
Screw Up Even Worse Than Before
By now, Francois Dominic Laramee has written over 60
articles and close to 250 comedy capsules for a dozen
different publications. He is just about six weeks away
from signing off on my second book. And yet, he gets
more reader email discussing his old diatribe "How to
Screw Up a Perfectly Good Game Company in 10 Easy
Steps," published over two and a half years ago,
than all other topics combined. So he started thinking,
did that article age well? Is its advice still relevant?
So he went back, re-read them both, and put together the
following notes and thoughts. Including a couple of
extra ways to inflict grievous damage on yourself
without even really trying...More
(October/November 2002)
The
Developer's Life
Part 8: The Urge to Create
By François Dominic Laramée
I stumbled upon a book about the ultimate creative
experiment: the Creatures project, a game series that
made a huge splash in Europe and should have made a much
bigger one in North America, because it featured the
first successful large-scale experiment in artificial
life. ..More
(August/September 2002)
The
Developer's Life
Part 7: Cleaning Up the Bookshelf
By Francois Dominic Laramee
Now that the E3 crunch is behind us and that
a couple of benevolent console manufacturers have
lowered the prices of their wares to relatively
non-exorbitant levels, we game developers find ourselves
in possession of two rare commodities: a modicum of free
time, and some leftover pocket change. This, of course,
means that it's time to start thinking about our light
summer reading...More
(June 2002)
The
Developer's Life Part 6: Losing the Passion
By François Dominic Laramée
"At the risk of ruining my career, let me state that
I lost my passion for computer games a long time ago.
Don't get me wrong: I still get pretty excited when a
new Will Wright title comes out, and my wife thinks that
I spend way too much of my pocket change at the local
board game shop. But I won't go out of my way to try out
twenty new demos every week like I'm told I should"...More (May 2002)
The
Developer's Life
Part 5: Do You Know the Way Out of San Jose?
By François Dominic Laramée
Yes, it's that time once again: good old FDL is back
with yet another edition of his very personal, very
subjective and not very lucid report on the Game
Developers Conference...More
(April 2002)
The
Developer's Life
Part 4: Dealing With Success and
Failure
By François Dominic Laramée
For better or for worse, game development is a part of
the entertainment industry, and its benchmarks for
success have been applied here as well as in movies, TV
or print publishing...More
(February 2002)
THE
DEVELOPER'S LIFE
PART 3: REGAINING CONTROL
By François Dominic Laramée
Three years ago, I chose to give up the security
of regular employment to become a freelancer because I
wanted to take control over my life. What I had
experienced prior to 1998, both within and without the
game industry (the greed, the power struggles, the
ever-increasing demands on employees' time) seemed alien
to me. I could no longer focus my efforts on fulfilling
someone else's idea of what my goals in life should be,
so I dropped out...More
(December 2001)
THE
DEVELOPER'S LIFE
PART 2: PUTTING THE HOUSE IN ORDER
By François Dominic Laramée
As the Fall release season begins, we
are reminded of one of the truisms of our business: you
can't postpone Christmas. Since most of us ultimately
depend on those all-important holiday sales for our
livelihoods, shipping product on time is even more
important for game developers than for just about anyone
else, in any industry.
Yet, the annual cascade of bad news
has already begun. From the benign one- or two-week
delays in shipment of Xbox and GameCube hardware to the
far more troubling outright cancellation of SimsVille,
game development projects routinely falter, stumble, or
fail altogether...More
(October 2001)
THE
DEVELOPER'S LIFE (OR LACK THEREOF)
PART 1: A CALL FOR FREEDOM by François Dominic
Laramée
...While researching his recent book, Free Agent Nation, author
Daniel Pink spent more than a year on the road talking
to hundreds of them, all over the United States. What he
found out is staggering: soloists, microbusinesses and
temps now account for 33 million American
workers. One out of four. And their numbers are growing
fast...More
(August 2001)
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