I was blessed to be working at a startup with really good management that shielded me from a lot of the awfulness that is the reality of corporate game dev. But even then, I feel like aside from the time that I spent with people I worked with, a lot of it was wasted yeah. Aside from some indie games that are genuine works of art, you’re mostly just working on a pretty soulless product as your final output yeah.

That was part of the realization that led me to want to leave. I was watching this guy trying to get the hanging strap to animate under the gun with rope physics, so you could swivel your little dude around and the rope would look right, and he was taking like a couple of weeks on this thing, all this talent and genuine effort on his part, all these expensive tools and army of support to help him get it done, and I just wanted to start shouting DUDE YOU ARE WASTING YOUR LIFE. Like you could be using this talent for anything and instead you’re here with the strap hanging down to make one micron worth of this game that doesn’t need to happen in the first place.

Whoa I just got this little flashback to my frustration with the ultimate futility of working there. But yes I think the nature of big-money game development is pretty soulless yes.