UIBuzz - Software and game development

Peter: 00:05

What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the UI Buzz Podcast. I'm your

Peter: 00:08

host as always, Peter Whidham. You can find myself and this podcast atpetewidham.com. It's been almost exactly a month since the last episode, so my apologies for that. I have been very busy, and I'll cover a couple of those things in this episode. And I'm also gonna talk about another game studio doing some questionable activity.

Peter: 00:28

I think it's fair to say when it comes to employees. And yes, you probably know which one I'm talking about if you're an avid gamer or game developer. So let's get into it. Let's start by talking about what I've been working on. I've been working on a lot of things.

Peter: 00:43

I have released an update to my endless hurdles game, which is built using SpriteKit technology on the Apple platform. I released a version that has a stadium event for essentially making a connection with the Olympics, clearly. It's a hurdle jumping game, so it makes sense. Right? And interesting thing is I put it together in a few days because of some forward planning that I did when I created the game.

Peter: 01:12

I think it was about 8 months ago when I did the original game. Maybe even a year at this point, maybe even more. And the idea was I wanted to make it simple to add events and this is the 3rd event in the game. The first one was a Halloween event and then there was a Christmas event and now there's this one, the stadium event. And the idea was that I wanted to be very modular so I could attach events to the game that would be timed for specific times or have them available all the time depending on which way I wanted to go.

Peter: 01:44

Well, this all worked out very well because I was able to put together the basic structure for the event in about a day and then after that it was a case of creating all of the assets. Right? The new graphics, any new features, new sounds, all of that kind of thing. It took a few days, but then it took about a week of testing with my testing folks and was able to be ready to be released with its own custom leaderboard and everything else where you could you gold, silver, bronze, right? Just like the Olympics and it all worked out great.

Peter: 02:19

And interestingly, I have seen a notable rise in people playing the game, thankfully. The intention behind releasing this free event again on a free game was to try and generate some interest for folks playing the game, and it's worked out very well. It it's not phenomenal by any stretch, but it is a notable increase in growth in players and people continuing to play it over time, which to me is the more important interesting aspect there because this is one of those games you play it for 5 minutes walk away and come back again sometime in the future. It isn't by no means meant be one of those lengthy long play games. So I'm heartened to see that folks are consistently playing it.

Peter: 03:04

That gives me the drive that I need to keep thinking about progressing with that game. This was built with the SpriteKit version, old version that I've been doing on my live streams. If you go to twitch.tvforward/compiledev, you will see them there and also on my YouTube channel, link in the show notes. And the Godot version is essentially ready except for some bug fixes and additional features that I'm working on. So I wanted to go ahead with the SpriteKit one because I knew I could do this quickly rather than wait for the Godot one and and miss the opportunity to align with the Olympics window.

Peter: 03:42

Right? And so that's worked out great. Now I can go back to the Godot version. On top of that, I've also been continuing my discovery and learning with Blender because I want to eventually replace a lot of the content in that game with essentially 3 d rendered graphics in a 2 d world. And therefore, it was a good opportunity and, yes, arguably an excuse to really learn Blender.

Peter: 04:08

And I've been having great fun with that. I have learned a massive amount in a short time, which is fantastic. It is funny how much you forget. I did 3 d Studio and Maya many years ago and so it's funny how you just forget these things and then as you start, you know, developing 3 d models and and all that stuff, it slowly starts to come back to you that way of thinking and how to deal with things in the 3 d space. And it also provides me the assets that I'll need for the 3 d version of the game and another game that I I have an idea for.

Peter: 04:44

So this is all good learning exercise. Having a lot of fun with blender, I've been able to create my character. Very rough version. This is a proof of concept and then learned how to put, you know, a rigging on there. So that I can animate the character having the running and jumping and then bring him in to my Godot game.

Peter: 05:04

And this is, again, work in progress, but the prototype worked out actually a lot better than I thought I would be capable of doing at this point. So that's another fun thing. You again, go to Peter Whidham.com. You'll find content on there talking about it along with some videos. I have also been working on a new Mac OS app for myself and this is something that I've needed to track some a whole bunch of timing things for projects and eventually I'll explain this to other platforms.

Peter: 05:35

But again, this is one of those make something for yourself because you need it and then eventually you realize, oh, this would actually be beneficial for other people. I'm using Swift, SwiftUI and Swift data and all that fun Apple stuff. Plenty of content on that going forward, but for right now the the idea here is that this essentially think of it as a project management or project tracking app for tasks and how long they take and and all that kind of stuff. And I'm working on some reporting in there and some charts and all that kind of thing. And again, this drives 2 things.

Peter: 06:11

1, I need this app for myself. And 2, it affords me an opportunity to play with some things I don't normally get to play with, which in this case is Swift Charts and a Mac OS desktop app. So there's some interesting things there to learn. It's very different in many ways than thinking about mobile apps and that kind of stuff. But I think it's gonna be an interesting project going forward.

Peter: 06:38

Again, I'll talk about more about that. If you really wanna hear a lot of the details on that kind of thing, you should check out my Compile Swift podcast. I'll put a link in the show notes where we talk about everything Apple platforms and and Apple development. So let's talk about the recent activity as far as yet another game studio. Yes, it's Bungie.

Peter: 06:57

Right? I'm sure it's a name. Anyone who does gaming knows, and anyone who does gaming development probably know it too. They're responsible originally for the Halo franchise and then, of course, Destiny. Now, as you all know, full disclosure, I was a huge massive Destiny fan from Destiny 1 day 1.

Peter: 07:21

And then Destiny 2 came along and, yeah, I still enjoyed it, but it wasn't so great. And then eventually, I I lost interest. But I always keep a note of these things and it's hard to let those years of playing a game go and you notice what's going on with the game and those kind of things. Well, you know, again, I read it the weekend. I'm sure it's probably all over everybody's game development feeds at this point.

Peter: 07:45

Yubunchy laid off a bunch of people. It was a couple of 100 people. Some reports say it would have been a lot more and that's kind of part of the controversy there. And essentially what happened was, in a rough timeline here, Sony bought Bungie. Nothing wrong with that, But the CEO of Bungie decided to go spend some of that money, quite a lot of that money.

Peter: 08:09

And, hey, you make a successful game studio, you're entitled to the rewards and the benefits from that. But it's not cool to then turn around a few days later and say, oh, and we're gonna be lay off a bunch of people. Reports say that the latest Destiny DLC is arguably one of the more popular ones and that kind of thing and brought in a lot of revenue and then you turn that and say you're gonna blow a bunch of people off. You know, it's gonna leave a sour taste in the mouth, especially if you already have a reputation for being a bit of a bit of one of those people. Let's put it that way.

Peter: 08:44

Right? And, you know, again, this is trend in Gemball. I think it's very disturbing, and I think it's, you know, it's it's bad for the gaming industry. It's bad for the morale of the gaming development industry. When you keep hearing about these things where studios essentially take care of themselves and basically say screw the employees.

Peter: 09:12

Right? That's not gonna sit well in any anything at all. But we all know how the gaming industry just demands so much from developers and essentially you end up dedicating your life to it. In no uncertain terms if you're working for a triple a studio and then they do this kind of thing to you. Well, you know, yes, a reminder to everybody.

Peter: 09:35

Right? Whatever any company tells you, you know, you are an employee at the end of the day. You're they see you as an asset and I'm not making excuses for companies, but just remind yourself. Right? They're not your best friend.

Peter: 09:50

Right? They they want you to think they are, but they're not your best friend. And they can do this to you in a heartbeat as has been proven yet again. And it leaves a really sour taste for those of us, software developers in general in the industry, but this keeps happening and this keeps happening a lot in the game development industry right now. And it's not surprising in some ways that game studios are hurting because, hey, there's not a lot of money floating around.

Peter: 10:18

Right? Look at the state of the world. People, if you have to choose between a loaf of bread or a game, I hope you choose a loaf of bread. But that's gonna hurt these game studios and by extension, of course, it hurts everybody that works for them. It's just completely wrong when a game studio says, you know what?

Peter: 10:36

We'll keep the execs happy. We'll keep the board happy. We'll keep the CEO happy and everybody else suffers. It's just wrong. Right?

Peter: 10:44

There are examples of the reverse. Nintendo Switch, for example. Right? When someone turns around and says, yeah, okay. I'm the CEO or whatever exact, but the people below us are the ones that do the work.

Peter: 10:57

And they deserve the rewards right now. And you've seen the results. Nintendo Switch. Right? Massively popular.

Peter: 11:05

Right? It can't be understated. These companies will never learn that investing in your employees is the number one thing. Right? There's always gonna be some reason that some financial whatever won't be met and it's not the employee's fault necessarily.

Peter: 11:23

Right? Most of the time, it's not an employee's fault. They're the ones busting their butts to try and get you these wins and get you what you're looking for and yet they're the first ones to be punished when it all goes wrong and I'm never going to understand that mentality. I think that these companies need to learn that hey, you keep screwing with these with employees long enough. They're gonna turn on you, and they're gonna go elsewhere.

Peter: 11:48

And then what you're gonna do? Now you've got no money, and it's your own for damn fault. Right? Don't go spending the profits without thinking about your staff first. That's basically what I'm saying.

Peter: 11:59

So I really wanted to just put that statement out there that, hey, if you've been affected by any of these layoffs in any of these companies, there's people out there to help you. Right? Reach out to them because we all know what you're going through and and we wanna try and help you out. And to the companies, you better start learning your lesson. Right?

Peter: 12:18

Simple as that. Because companies come and go. Right? You're the flavor of the month 1 week, then you're not. Right?

Peter: 12:25

Blizzard is another perfectly good example. And if your audience, if your users or your staff turn on you in a heartbeat, you got nowhere left to go and you're screwed. Just remember that. Right? These are the people that make the money that you seem to love so much.

Peter: 12:42

Anyway, just wanted to put that out there. Reach out to me if you have thoughts on that. At EOI Buzz on Twitter. I I know it's a hot topic right now, but hey, I'm I feel for all of you folks out there that are suffering because of these things. So that's it, folks.

Peter: 12:56

That's what I got for you in this episode. I really just wanted to get this one out there, catch you all up, and, of course, comment on this situation with the gaming industry because it's a hot topic right now, and it's just burning me how much it's hurting people. That's it, folks. Speak to you in the next one.