ChatGPT's recommendation to learn statistics/calculus serve as a foundation for learning machine learning since it utilizes concepts from the above subjects (e.g if you understand derivates/slope, you'll understand inherently how gradient descent works).
If you just want to tinker around with models and try it out, feel free to go into it without much math knowledge and just learn them as you go. ChatGPT's recommendation is great if you have a multiyear horizon/plan to be in ML (e.g. perfect for a college student who can take courses in stats/ML side by side) or have plenty of time.
>Nothing about that arrangement attracts me, especially given the abusive nature of the industry and the frequency that they go through crunch, lack any real worker protections, no unions, etc.
I'd beg to differ on this point. Lots of changes have been made in game development culture including less crunch culture[0]. Worker protection/unions aren't exactly something that's afforded to many white collar jobs in the first place, not sure why that would be an expectation here. Even so, there have been improvements to this - e.g. the Game Workers Alliance. I encourage you to ask developers this question today.
>No game dev company out there seems to treat its staff well during a game's development, so even if I wanted to work on a game as part of a team, I'd be looking at a poor work/life balance and a stressful work environment. I'm too old for that kind of BS.
There are game companies that do treat their staff well! I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements like this when there are a ton of studios with a ton of varying cultures. It's not like solo development isn't stressful or immune to crunch either, even if you choose your own hours. Solo development calls for highly varying skills - it's one of those things you underestimate until you've actually tried it.
>If I can't build and release the game myself, then it simply isn't good enough to release. I cannot trust collaborators to not take control of my projects, nor would I entrust creative ideas to a for-profit entity without my cut.
Nothing good in this world gets built in a vacuum. A hyperbole, potentially (e.g. Stardew Valley, Rainworld), but game development really is a road best driven with a team - people to help out in different disciplines, lighten the load on others. Finding a good team is hard, but once you do, it's hard to want to forgo them. I don't think I can convince you on this front, but the vast majority of solo developers who don't release a game should be proof enough.
No hard feelings from me - I just wanted to clarify what the game industry is actually like today. The Kotaku articles can be frightening, but talking to people in the industry today and getting thoughts from different roles (e.g. producers, designers, engineers, QA, artists, etc.) and different industries within game dev (indie, AA, AAA studios,etc.) would help form a more informed opinion.
>In-house development doesn't suffer from this issue, and you'll have full control over the code.
Proprietary engines suffer from plenty which you haven't stated
- can be a mess to read or understand; many hacks done to accomplish a certain feature because it helped ship X feature
- tons of tribal knowledge. If you've worked with a proprietary engine before, you already know documentation will be lackluster and to little fault of the engineers - there's so much to know about the engine that developers don't have the time to chart out what everything does in the engine while pushing out fixes and features.Often, you need to poke the principal programmer who's been with the studio since its inception to understand how a certain long-existing feature works. That's a major point of weakness for the studio!
- Engine limitations! Ask the bethesda devs on their experience building multiplayer for Fallout 76[0]. Imagine building multiplayer in an engine that has never needed to support it. That's a huge refactor and a ton of time spent doing that when it's already handled by Unreal Engine. Developers will need to maintain that engine in the future so the pain doesn't stop after the game gets shipped!
Your post sounds like someone who hasn't worked in game development before. I advise listening to GDC talks, noclip documentaries, and more if you want to get a better understanding of what game development actually looks like. It's a lot more complicated than "your change in price policy makes me mad" (by the way, most AAA studios already have contracts/price agreements with these engines given the amount of revenue they generate for Unity/Unreal).
Nice! If there's any aspects of growth in the games industry, it's definitely in making the artist's workflow more collaborative and efficient (of course, game infrastructure is also growing a lot too but it seems like AWS/Azure/Unity are on top of that).
I think one missing aspect is whether they enjoy their work. He never mentioned leaving out of boredom being something he would not argue about, so I presume that's the subset of people he may be talking to.
From the people I've talked to, Epic Games and Riot developers seem to have their shit together as far as being able to scale their backends to millions of players. Improbable too (although they're more of a game services studio), who are the creators of Thanos*
If you just want to tinker around with models and try it out, feel free to go into it without much math knowledge and just learn them as you go. ChatGPT's recommendation is great if you have a multiyear horizon/plan to be in ML (e.g. perfect for a college student who can take courses in stats/ML side by side) or have plenty of time.