Some opinions regarding gaming

Unrealiable Software:

What is the reason that most of the game software industry is loathed?
Primarily, unrealiable software. Can you imagine an engineer from one of the car manufacturers
shrugging his shoulders and say "Bugs occur in car manufacturing". If they do, they would end
up paying a lot of money (@least in the west). While cars can cause physical harm to living
beings, does it mean that those products that do not cause direct harm to living beings are
acceptable if they are buggy?

Just the other day I went to pay my cell phone bill. Now I dont know if its my bad luck or
something else, the A/C was not working in that service center. I was already fed up with
their service and the delay in processing the bills was just adding to it. However when
I looked @ the person who was taking the bills, I could see the reflection of Windows 98 in his
spectacles. I am not going to start a Windows vs GNU/Linux vs Mac now, but I soon realised why
it was taking a long time for him to process the bills. Frequent BSOD crashes. He had to reboot
the system twice while processing my bill. Now what does all this imply? First the Windows 98 
(I think) has reached the end of its support life. Which means no bug fixes (as if there were
any decent ones while in the support period. SE2 barred). Second why does the software have to
crash in the first place?

For me a software is worth shipping/selling only when the software has been tested well enough.
Now this statement in itself will create a lot of ambiguity. What is well tested software? A
company could claim that the software is well tested just after a few hours of testing.

In game dev, crashes are acceptable (@least on PC). That is bad in itself. The 
frequent reasons that I hear are that patches can be provided @ anytime. However considering
that even the USA (largest game market) is ranking 10+ in broadband availability, supplying
patches is not something that is valid. Besides, the consumer is not supposed to be a beta
tester. If he is, then inform him before hand. BTW do not include that in the EULA. No one
reads an EULA that spans three pages.
Oh and by the way, if patching is a way, then the customer is paying more than the amount
printed on the box. Hez also paying for the download time.
What are the possible reasons for game industry to be so apathetic towards testing?

Only Time...

 Whenever the project gets delayed the first thing that gets cut in time is testing. 
I do not work in the testing field, however I ensure that my tester gets adequate support from me.
 Before a person XYZ (generally the person who goes to E3/GDC to sell the game to publishers) can
get the deal signed by a publisher, he makes tall promises. Once he comes back to his developers,
to announce that they havea deal he knows the ground reality. The demo he showed to the publisher
was just a prototype that the developers made by pulling together lots of hacky code. It was
an accident that the prototype got done in the first place. Now the developers are told that
if they dont do the project in this little time, they are in a big mess.
 Hmm lets see, so the developers were not contacted before the promise was made and then they are
given an unreasonable deadline (read: death_line). Whoz to blame? Nope not the representative.
No definitely not. No nononono.

Lack of understanding:

 Its simple common sense, when person XYZ does not know a thing about what he is selling, he will
make mistakes. Now if this person XYZ has authority, then he better be careful about the kind of
mistakes he can make. Mistakes are pardonable, blunders are not.
 First of all, if this person XYZ, has no idea of how game software is done, then he better NOT
take the authority. As a compromise, involve a person who knows something @least about gaming
software (or that particular field). 
 I worked with a person who was as lame as a person can get. I am a programmer, hez not. So it
makes sense to ask me for features, not tell me how to do it. Whether I have to use STL or not,
I have to use arrays instead of vectors is something I know better than he does. Whether to choose
publisher A or publisher B is something that I should NEVER ask. 
 I dont go to an artist and tell him that he should use a yellow colour instead of blue one. 
If an artist asks me to critique his work, I will be only able to say - "Looks good" or "Looks bad".
Sadly if the artist comes back and asks me where the problem lies, I will not be able to tell. 
If its technical I can help. If its aesthetic, I can give a suggestion, but ultimately the artist
decides.
However if the CEO of the company comes in and says that he would like a human
painted green and named 'Dirkin' aka 'Robert Di Niro'. what would the artist say?
 How does this effect ultimately? Robert Di Niro would be named Dirkin and then painted green 
in a game like "Age of Empires" and sent on a mission to free Scotland. Alien liberating Scots.

Right person for the job:

 Choosing the right person for the right job is very important. If a programmer is free, would he
be shifted over to making sketches. I hope it does not happen anywhere. If an artist is free would
he be asked to write a memory manager? That would be ridiculous.
 On similar terms, I am a programmer who works exclusively on XBOX, tools, audio and general 
software design. If I am asked to work in Graphics, I would not be willing to do that. Yes I 
did work in graphics, but that was three years ago and the graphics field has grown by leaps 
and bounds in the mean time. Asking me to do graphics would be suicidal. Besides if I end up 
writing some graphics code, it would be bad at best.

Avoiding repetitions:

 Would a person be willing to eat nothing but rice for over three months time? No. Similarly would
an artist who by definition has to 'create', be happy with redoing the same thing over and over
again? He will be. Imagine yourself stranded on an island with nowhere to go but a rice field.
The artist cannot protest, he is working for the company.
 Repetitions make the mind dull. Repeating a process for the sake of improvement is different.
How does one avoid the repetitions? Have a better idea of the future. Have an automated system
that would help avoid manual work. Various other methods, but basically avoid repetitions. Ask the
artists to create something new. Do NOT ask them to create 'Robert Di Niro' with four hands, just
because you would like to see him with four hands, even though its in Age of Empires. If a person does
not have have the capability to visualise 'Robert Di Niro' with four hands, and understand that
he does not fit into a game that is based on history where everyone happens to be human, that person
better think about what he is doing. This is an exaggerated case, however things like these happen
all the time.

Information is important:

http://students.iiit.net/~cyrax