<razzy>
when we are talking about japan universities
<Regenaxer>
razzy, where do you live?
<razzy>
Regenaxer: when i am physically?
<razzy>
where i am physically?
<razzy>
middle europe
<Regenaxer>
Same here
<razzy>
Regenaxer: i like japan gardening and food prep, romania/slovakia woods, slavic girls, and german/sweden machinery
<Nistur>
I think I'm about to turn down two job offers for 'middle europe'
<razzy>
Nistur: i would like some :]
<Nistur>
would have liked to accept at least one of them, but I think it's not the right time
<razzy>
time for what :]
<Nistur>
One of the reasons is that I'm hoping to do my own stuff, and if I can do my own stuff, I might be able to finally use pil professionally :P
<Nistur>
well, the reason would be that I would be working on my own projects. I don't know what technology I'd be using... pil is definitely high on the list
<beneroth>
you got some reserves and you have ensured clients?
<Nistur>
beneroth: me?
<beneroth>
aye. mornin' :D
<Nistur>
hullo
<Nistur>
no and no :P
<beneroth>
ok :P
<Nistur>
buuuut I'm a game dev, and specifically, I want to make a game engine for a particular kind of game... I am looking to get funding for the creation of the engine...
<beneroth>
just don't underestimate doing your own business. it's hard.
<beneroth>
ah that might work.
<beneroth>
what kind of engine?
<Nistur>
I don't underestimate it :P I've been talking to everyone I know who has started a gamedev studio or similar in the past few weeks/months. I'm definitely not a business person, I'm a code monkey :P So I'm struggling
<Nistur>
Hmmm, the plan would be to be able to create story/dialogue based adventure games at the end... initially in 3D, but the reason for making this engine over using something like Adventure Game Studio, would be the workflow would (hopefully) lend itself to make games in a cheaper, easier way... plus need (ideally) zero code input for the actual game development
<beneroth>
nice idea
<Nistur>
development would baaaaaaasically be that you start off writing interactive fiction (ie a text adventure) and then add audio and concept art, in effect turning it though a Magnetic Scrolls' text adventure into a visual novel... and then eventually drop in the assets for the actual game... they're quire disparate game styles, but if the engine is built like this from the ground up I _think_ it should be
<Nistur>
possible
<razzy>
Nistur: imho most people nowadays are so much focused on big AAA companies and multibilion projects, that they forget that you do not need special game engine to make game
<Nistur>
and it means you can test out story etc, before it becomes too expensive to throw bits away
<beneroth>
I'm working on something comparable, maybe... though I focus mainly on database and web-app-backend, and focus on use with business software not games for now... but I would like to implement a browser game with it eventually
<Nistur>
but that ALSO means I could have 'interesting' export targets, like in theory I could get the engine to export the first stage as a Z-machine program :P
<razzy>
Nistur: so new interactive format for visual novel?
<razzy>
go for it
<Nistur>
razzy: I would love to, but I need money first :P
<razzy>
Nistur: why?
<Nistur>
but yeah, I think at least the tooling would be nice to do in pil
<beneroth>
Nistur, in my hobby gamedev days, the saying was a capable engine takes at minimum 2 years to develop. so you probably would want to have funding for 2-3 years minimum...
<beneroth>
pil is flexible. good to prototype and learn and improve.
<Nistur>
beneroth: yeah, I've got a 2 year plan to develop the engine and a small 3-episode game alongside it :P
<beneroth>
are you based in EU ?
<razzy>
Nistur: why not take some already developed free source comics or visual novel?
<Nistur>
UK
<Nistur>
beneroth: so, for now in the EU... but not for long :P
<razzy>
we will see how well you fare:]
<Nistur>
razzy: well, a number of reasons, primarily because this stuff takes a lot of time and effoer, and I have a full time job making other people's games :P I don't have enough energy at the end of the day to do more... this really needs me on it full time, so at the very minimum I'd need money to pay my mortgage and feed me :P but also, I cannot easily just take sources online because it's almost certainly
<Nistur>
not going to be quite right for what I want... so I'd need to cut out characters etc... and I'm not an artist... at that point it just makes sense to have an artist do it all for me... but artists also want money... and yeah, I don't really have that much I can put into the project at this point
<Nistur>
I've tried to do gamedev in my own time and pretty much got nowhere :P
<razzy>
you need picture show, play sound, read input actions and store previous choices for user. store and edit it in visual tree-like structure.
<razzy>
is there something already?
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<razzy>
i also trying to test some of my ideas, and getting nowhere :] or improving lowly
<razzy>
slowly
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<razzy>
i consider game-ish visual novel one of the most efficient data formats
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<razzy>
never seen good format yet
<razzy>
somebody fowarded me brogue, it is most fun i had in years in game
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<Nistur>
razzy: the roguelike?
<razzy>
yop
<razzy>
borderline text adventure
<Nistur>
I have spent a LONG time playing roguelikes :P
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<razzy>
every encounter feel meaningfull
<razzy>
i love it
<razzy>
it is hard as fuck
<razzy>
and propably unfair :]
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<razzy>
i feel the game cheating
<Nistur>
have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? :P
<Nistur>
not _actually_ text based, it's a graphical window that looks like a text one (so they can get more characters)
<razzy>
but it cheats in good way, when i gain unpropable advantage, it breaks its own rules to give me hell
<razzy>
every dungeon is proper life story in 30 minutes
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<razzy>
Nistur: not really
<Nistur>
razzy: sounds like you might enjoy it
<beneroth>
T
<beneroth>
Dwarf Fortress is incredible. AND the creators can live from it (donations only!)
<beneroth>
razzy, ever heard of Darkfall Online ?
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<razzy>
Dwarf fortress is very lispy game
<razzy>
i watched the birth, but never actually played
<razzy>
user interface is rough
<razzy>
beneroth: darkfall seems like nice social study
<beneroth>
razzy, in multiple respects, true ^^
<beneroth>
I played it intensely for 3 years (the original one, currently their are two reboots alive with different new companies behind them, the original company was an epic fuckup)
<razzy>
you learn most about your fellow human, if you let it run unrestricted in virtual enviroment
<beneroth>
learned many business/political skills from the game xD
<razzy>
epic fuckup?
<beneroth>
there are always restrictions. and people are good in make up unwritten rules to organise themselves. But I guess DF community was also highly (self-) selected weird bunch
<beneroth>
Aventurine
<beneroth>
greek company.
<razzy>
in what way?
<razzy>
what is most uncommon things you hav elearned?
<beneroth>
original creator of the game (and its engine) is Norwegian. somehow he and some greek dudes met and the greeks buyed his little company (deep in dev, no product yet), they moved to Greece, and afaik lived from programming jobs for the greek military while developing their dream MMO. Greek crisis hit them hard.
<razzy>
epic story
<beneroth>
their communication was extremely bad and unprofessional for most of their companies live
<beneroth>
the official forum was very badly moderated and was a game in itself. full of trash talking. partly fun, partly driving a lot of potential players away.
<beneroth>
it was like one step above 4chan or so.
<razzy>
well, communication has to be clear, no need for profesionalism in my book
<beneroth>
well stuff like "new update will come next week -- no in two months - sorry nah"
<razzy>
i would let player forum police itself :D,.. let it rot, until order self-emerge
<razzy>
i think people overmanage lots of stuff
<Nistur>
never ever trust players :P
<beneroth>
game was technically extremely well. fight mechanic is like a shooter, so much more complex than usual mainstream MMO mechanics (even today). I was in fights involving about a thousand people on a single map tile (prolly one single server), and the game ran smooth if the client machine was capable enough.
<Nistur>
but one issue I have seen from gamedev companies is that they are trying too hard to be _too_ 'professional'
<razzy>
woa :] sooo distributed server?
<beneroth>
well yeah it was like in eve online - intrigues, diplomacy, politics, conning, lies - that was the main meta game (politic between clans)
<razzy>
client-server in one package?
<beneroth>
afaik not distributed. well distributed over many servers within one datacenter afaik
<beneroth>
no
<Nistur>
if I had been allowed to reply to some comments on forums, reddit etc, I would have liked it, but official communications always have to be vetted etc
<beneroth>
T
<Nistur>
which means that players often know nothing about what's going on
<Nistur>
which is a shame
<beneroth>
in that game even player answers were often vetted by their player clan officers, because a forum thread could started ingame wars :P
<beneroth>
Nistur, T this was a huge problem
<razzy>
i would have made distributed server :]
<razzy>
beneroth: nice :D :D :D i would have loved it
<beneroth>
epic shit like: original author of the whole concept and game engine had in the late-stage of the company (when it was probably only 3-4 guys) once a mental breakdown while streaming to the internet.
<razzy>
woa:] do not want to get involved
<beneroth>
razzy, meta game was clans and alliances of clans playing politics and conquering of ingame cities, which gave additional resources (or just because they were nice)
<beneroth>
first half year saw even a world war, one half of the server allied against the other half - the other half was a role-playing alliance, role-playing a medieval british kingdom trying to conquer everything.
<beneroth>
one other alliance hold a 5th of the whole world under their tight control for over 2 years
<razzy>
are spinoffs any good?
<beneroth>
problem was, whenever a big clan/alliance broke apart - usually because of internal issues which only became problems when the organisation got pressure from outside - huge bunch of players left the game
<beneroth>
sometimes hundreds
<razzy>
they were so invested in it
<razzy>
:D
<razzy>
i think it is the feature
<Nistur>
I would love to suggest trying to drive community interaction for the game I'm working on now, but it's a licensed title, so it's nigh on impossible that we'd get approval from the license owner (MGM) and also it's a free2play mobile game... so much as people DO get invested in the games, I don't think they would necessarily get invested in a community
<beneroth>
razzy, I signed up with Darkfall New Dawn, french guys with experience in dev and business, I trust they are capable. I have hardly ever time to play, no idea what the current state of things is
<beneroth>
the other reboot, RoA, is apparently some ex-players of the original one without much business or game design sense. dunno if they're even still around.
<razzy>
i am busy too, i could not signed up new world to conquer
<beneroth>
Nistur, DFO who was a very invested community
<beneroth>
original (greek) company shut down the original Darkfall, then created a sequel, which was much simpler and smaller world map, in hope to get more players. didn't work out much, they got new people but most of the old players found it to simple and raided the forums every 3 months or so to demand the original to be restarted.
<Nistur>
actually
<Nistur>
that's a good point
<Nistur>
I can ask you lot :P
<beneroth>
apparently after like 3 years of begging, or maybe just because the original company was so desperate for money, this two reboot groups managed to obtain a license (and the original source) to make reboots
<beneroth>
shortly after that the Aventurine shut down (the company, and their then-still-running Darkfall 2) from one day to the next.
<Nistur>
IF I actually get money to fund my gamedev project, it will be developing the engine in tandem with a 3-episode adventure game... which would play a little like a point and click game maybe... different control methods on different platforms possibly, to stretch the engine...
<Nistur>
anyway
<Nistur>
if I get this set up
<Nistur>
I would want to try and get some community involvement
<razzy>
beneroth: imho good mmo could emerge from much simpler graphics
<beneroth>
T
<Nistur>
for one thing, I would need to pimp the engine out (I'm intending to release it dual license... open source for non profit, or a paid license... to be able to persuade investors that I Can make money from it)
<Nistur>
so yeah
<Nistur>
what kind of community involvement do you think would be good for my project? I could suggest things like dev livestreams, but personally I think they're pretty boring :P So I'm not sure whether that'd be worth it (but I'm happy to be told I'm wrong)
<beneroth>
razzy, well the darkfall graphics were okish-good, but in most material (many youtube vids) it looks shit because player all turned of shadows and filter effects because it was a PvP advantage
<beneroth>
Nistur, livestreams are big now, see twitch. even programmers livestreaming how they code is a thing now.
<razzy>
i do not think even 3D is neccesary
<beneroth>
razzy, and the gameplay was open world pvp - nowhere save. always looking out for being jumped.
<beneroth>
razzy, T
<Nistur>
beneroth: I know one guy who livestreams his coding work. I think no-one watches him :P
<beneroth>
my vision is a browser game with adventure and strategy elements. dynamic quest-generation etc. I believe I would have to build things which are not easy to copy, so the focus would be on game-mechanics and interactive world/npcs.
<razzy>
beneroth: you just need good symbols to represent game mechanics
<beneroth>
razzy, see Dwarf Fortress, that is what they did. practically ASCII graphics in favour of having time to develop very complex world simulation.
<Nistur>
I think "very complex" is underselling DF somewhat
<beneroth>
I think I would allow people to write their own clients, and prevent cheating all on server side (only safe way, but most online games don't do it properly for performance reasons / lazy devs)
<razzy>
beneroth: for true scalability, you should decentralise on server side, and let powerfull clients run parts of it
<beneroth>
T -though its questionable if it really works out in practice that well as in theory.
<beneroth>
Skype was originaly designed that way. they moved away from it, because it didn't work out stable.
<beneroth>
maybe now it's different when broadband is more common
<Nistur>
we were considering doing that for the game we're working on now
<Nistur>
a bit like how blockchain does it
<Nistur>
have a number of random clients simulate the game, and if they all agree, then the simulation passes
<beneroth>
bingo! buzzword! :D
<Nistur>
and only if it fails, do we do the actual simulation on the server
<razzy>
nah, blockchaid does it very poorly
<beneroth>
blockchain is a distributed logfile. not so many use cases where you actually need it.
<Nistur>
I meant more that you have to have an agreement on it, that you're not relying on one client to simulate it
<Nistur>
but we're not going to do that because it is particularly complex to set up, and we have a bunch of different problems
<beneroth>
I'd guess the extra work of getting such a distributed construct stable without hurting some clients too much (while internet load and computer load shifts all the time!) might be better invested in having the server optimized
<Nistur>
yeah
<beneroth>
Nistur, yeah I would think so too
<razzy>
beneroth: yes, you simulate everything 3 times, and 2 first equvalent answers get accepted
<Nistur>
once we have the system live, we can do some tests
<beneroth>
Nistur, also makes it prone to DoSsing
<beneroth>
razzy, see into distributed databases, there is a thing like "consent algorithms"
<beneroth>
*consensus
<razzy>
i would rather write my own
<beneroth>
comes also with some problems: what if nodes become unavailable - or, with clients possible - malicious?
<razzy>
yeah, every problem in the book
<beneroth>
razzy, hm the algorithms that work are mathematically well proved. people continue to re-invent stuff themselves with a lot of big mistakes, but its not really a good way
<Nistur>
beneroth: this is why we would have to do tests first, to see if we can detect that :P But also we'd not just send out 3 simulations, but probably at least 10
<Nistur>
and they would ALL have to agree in precisely the same way before they got accepted
<Nistur>
but that's not for the first implementation. First we have a server based system
<beneroth>
Nistur, so one little malicious client (by accident or purpose) can make you waste a lot of computing power and still force you to server use.
<razzy>
:]
<beneroth>
btw. in case of Darkfall, there was a cheater-client available (illegally, from a third party) which was more expensive then the game subscription.
<Nistur>
beneroth: the server use is negligible, especially as it would be a step up from simulating _everything_ on the server... but also it would hopefully not happen that often
<beneroth>
well also available for other MMOs, but in Darkfall with its highly competitive PvP it mattered a lot. in most MMOs such tools get unnoticed and do not significantly harm other players experience.
<razzy>
beneroth: players can also have timescale in which to operate. some encounters could be 10seconds to make a move, some encounters could be realtime. there could be time dilatations
<beneroth>
Nistur, the other aspect is, if its morally really right to externalize cost to players that way :)
<razzy>
beneroth: i think it is, if you put recommnded resources to it :]
<beneroth>
razzy, yep I know. this is a main feature of my game idea ^^ I have a little notebook with concepts and ideas, which grew over years and will continue to do so until I have the tech (database and stuff) ready and the money/time to attempt an implementation :)
<razzy>
i.e. if you tell them.
<beneroth>
agreed.
<razzy>
on the upside, you would never need computing resources again :D
<Nistur>
I think the thing you'd do is put an option in settings, on by default, saying they agree to providing resources for the betterment of the game or something, not tell them WHAT they're doing
<beneroth>
but not telling them (aka telling them in the fine-print, for legal cover, but never actually getting their consciousness real consent) is highly attractive for such a system..
<beneroth>
Nistur, yeah, that is what I mean
<Nistur>
maybe present a popup to ask
<Nistur>
most people won't care
<Nistur>
especially for free2play games
<Nistur>
they just want to play
<razzy>
the computer is running anyway :]
<razzy>
so i would not care
<Nistur>
until recently mobile adverts in these games apparently ran a crypto miner while they displayed adverts...
<beneroth>
most people don't care that the cost of burning fuel is wracking the climate and increasing health issues. this externalized cost has a lot of interest in the long run. but a single "instance" of this cost is negligible small, so no one cares.
<beneroth>
Nistur, T. horrible.
<Nistur>
the thing is, people are in charge of their own resources. You can give them the option, but you do NOT want to tell them what for, because that would lead to a more concerted effort to try to hack it
<razzy>
beneroth: they should put horrible taxes on gas and computer chips and everything :]
<razzy>
but if you already have a computer, it is better to use it fully
<beneroth>
razzy, hard to calculate. maybe the overhead is worth it, if those chips are used to do biological simulations and find new cancer treatments. hard tasks.
<Nistur>
I am in favour of being as open as possible, but at the same time, for this game to make money, it needs to be secure... and if the simulations were simulated in a distributed fashion, it would make sense to put as much in the way of people trying to compromise the system
<beneroth>
so two fields which require investment. probably still cheaper to vertically optimize your datacenter.
<razzy>
Nistur: distributed system could be made more secure than centralised one
<beneroth>
secure against unavailability
<beneroth>
but much harder to secure against manipulation.
<razzy>
well,.. no
<beneroth>
more moving parts, more agents doing actions in the system.
<razzy>
not that much more
<beneroth>
centralised systems are much easer to control.
<razzy>
definitly
<beneroth>
so my point stands.
<razzy>
much easier to controll by standard means
<beneroth>
just think about the network-partition problem: what if one half of your distributed system suddenly can't talk to the other half anymore? do they continue separated? can they? can they be merged together again? what about merge conflicts?
<beneroth>
we already know how to control and scale centralized systems.
<beneroth>
de-centralized are much harder. we have some very good ones, see DNS, IP, TCP... but its though stuff.
<razzy>
beneroth: answers to your question depend on problem to solve
<beneroth>
no need to introduce complexity if it doesn't give very definite and good benefits.
<beneroth>
keep it simple is the law.
<beneroth>
razzy, T
<beneroth>
exactly
<razzy>
beneroth: for a gameworld, i would suggest one central node to command and controll
<razzy>
with veting rights
<Nistur>
the other thing to think about is that, for free2play games, players expect to be able to play indefinitely, and for free. Most of them play for free. This is acceptable and actually desirable to some extent... but it does increase maintenance costs and data storage/transmission costs... by mitigating some of those costs, they are then allowing the game to continue running for considerably longer,
<Nistur>
potentially... which I think is something that the players _do_ want
<razzy>
but offload most of the world to playerbase
<Nistur>
it's not necessarily about making as much money as possible, but providing longevity to those that want it
<razzy>
beneroth: you could be just controlling the hashes of your nodes, and killing ones that are off
<razzy>
imho much cheaper than building huge datacenter
<razzy>
beneroth: my idea for distributted game was for open rimworld, which core players would want to run nonstop anyway
<beneroth>
Nistur, I think the free-2-play business model(s) is an abomination. bad for both companies and consumers. but yeah, to late to change that.
<Nistur>
beneroth: I think it CAN be an abomination. The thing is, if there is actual decent gameplay and you are not really limited by it, I don't mind it that much
<Nistur>
the previous game I worked on, it was a premium game first, so it focused a lot on making that fun first
<Nistur>
then became free2play afterwards
<Nistur>
it has 'energy' so that you can only play a certain amount before it needs to recharge, but it was very generous with that, and you could easily play the entire thing without spending a penny
<beneroth>
did it work out? usually that doesn't work out - slapping an item shop over the thing later on - game mechanics need to drive the incentives to buy for that it really works out, no?
<Nistur>
money would get you... fancier gear, or removed some of the grind, which imo is not a bad thing. Some games NEED grind because otherwise the game doesn't flow (you need to have a difficulty curve so that you cannot chance the last boss with lvl.1 gear)
<beneroth>
or well, you only focus on the "whales" (the few player spending a lot of money). but that leads usually to adapt the game to their needs over time, which usually eventually breaks the game for the mass of free players, so the game becomes EOL
<Nistur>
it was also scaled, so in order to get much higher level gear than your level, you had to spend a LOT of money, to kind of discourage the pay to win mentality
<beneroth>
which is legitimate good business, but not nice from a gaming pov
<beneroth>
hm
<Nistur>
of course there were some people who paid a lot of money
<beneroth>
well Nintendo was very early on very outspoken to this whole development, even before mobile became so powerful
<Nistur>
and if they want to, then I have nothing against that really... some people have a lot of money to waste
<razzy>
beneroth: games have internal economy, player could get game-credit with computing power, real money, or his player time and make target for others,.. why is it a problem?
<Nistur>
so I think that game actually worked well, because it didn't ever feel like it was penalising a free player, and it was genuinely fun to play
<Nistur>
oh
<Nistur>
and another thing that was monetised was customisations
<Nistur>
and I don't mind that at all
<Nistur>
if you want a bright pink gun, go ahead
<Nistur>
it doesn't change the game at all
<beneroth>
now they have (apparently) no choice to also try it out. they tried to create a premium mobile game (MARIO RUN), which failed, and they make good money from their micro-payment-lure game (Fire Emblem Heroes)
<Nistur>
and people can make themselves more unique, especially for PvP
<beneroth>
my last comment was about Nintendo
<razzy>
beneroth: any problem with my statement?
<beneroth>
Nistur, I agree with you generally, but I still think it's a very very thin line and there should be a better model in principle
<beneroth>
razzy, nah
<Nistur>
so I think there were a few 'whales' that just bought everything they could get their hands on, but the continued development was funded mostly by people buying aesthetic things, which were generally cheap, but was enough to keep the project cashflow positive to provide even more actual content for players
<beneroth>
razzy, you end up basically with blockchain infrastructure business models.. or Minecraft (there was a lot of money in server hosting!)
<Nistur>
it is a very delicate thing to do, I agree. But it's a format that works right now, and if you are trying to NOT screw the players, it can work, that's all I was saying. Premium games are struggling, and even when they're not, their lifetime is generally a few months at best then people forget about them. Free2play games have a much longer lifetime, which is both very good, and a metric fucktonne of work
<razzy>
beneroth: yop something between is reasonable in this universe imho
<beneroth>
the positive effect of freemium, including ad-monetized internet services like Google Search, is that its a pretty big subsidization machine. very many people can this way get access to content and services they would never be able to afford themselves.
<beneroth>
but I think the social and mental health costs are not to be underestimated.
<beneroth>
Nistur, T
<razzy>
beneroth: T. problem is with free to consume addictive things
<beneroth>
and to add, this subsidization machine comes with a expensive financial overhead. the stuff would cost less all in all if it would not go through marketing/advertisment departments. I mean factually we pay for all this with higher prices for the real stuff we buy (which finances the marketing departments, which finances internet ads)
<beneroth>
and also the high cost of having some of the brightest minds of our times work on "how to get people to click on X" instead of doing e.g. cancer or climate research
<razzy>
yeah :], you are talking about priority of peoples goals
<razzy>
and optimization
<razzy>
i always have an itch, when somebody has other values than I
<razzy>
some people might just want to run marketing departments, perhaps
<razzy>
they might feel like julius cesar, when controlling masses
<beneroth>
definitively
<beneroth>
its an pretty old wisdom that the people best suited for leadership are ones the least lured by its powers
<razzy>
would i make north-korea no-adds-land if i would think it is ok?
<razzy>
yesss :]
<razzy>
good leadership is hard fucking work :]
<beneroth>
yes. and very lonely work. only other people with leadership experience can even understand, nearly all people who don't know it underestimate it by far
<Nistur>
I have a few people quite close to me who have had one form of cancer or another (thankfully all so far ok) and it REALLY sucks... it's a thing that's quite close to me... but your statement is a little bit incorrect. You don't want everybody to do cancer research. There are a lot of worthwhile goals. You may not see gamedev as highly as cancer research but I cannot do cancer research, not just that I'm
<Nistur>
not experienced but the whole medical thing is... not for me. I _do_ however want to give people ways they can relax. I think games of all kinds, video games included CAN be positive things. I have my name on some titles which I think are... less valuable but even so... imagine a surgeon who has a couple of stressful cancer surgeries with a few hours to spare in between... if he plays a few rounds of
<Nistur>
Candy Crush to chill, so be it
<beneroth>
Nistur, I agree.
<Nistur>
I know this isn't quite what you're saying
<Nistur>
but at the same time
<beneroth>
my point was about the people optimizing the google and facebook algorithms to optimize attention would probably also be very fitting in an algorithm dev team to develop better computer simulations which would help in those fields.
<beneroth>
I fully acknowledge your point and I value the worth of works which makes live more bearable
<Nistur>
... that sounded like I was getting quite defensive over my profession :P
<Nistur>
I wasn't really
<beneroth>
that is a complete different category than e.g. micro-optimizing high-speed-trading algorithms, no?
<beneroth>
one thing is to create new value, other one is just optimizing zero-sum games
<razzy>
oh, trading could be non zero sum game
<beneroth>
T
<razzy>
trading provide value
<Nistur>
financial companies are always hiring from gamedev
<Nistur>
it's both tempting and sickening :P
<beneroth>
the REAL question is, if we could have all the nice useful (for whole humanity) stuff without all the overhead of all the zero-sum and exploit games all around it
<beneroth>
history so far says it is probably unlikely
<razzy>
beneroth: imho we could
<razzy>
at least get close
<beneroth>
T
<beneroth>
so I believe to.
<beneroth>
but a humble opinion is something complete different to stuff working in the real world. and especially being stable and keeping working as originally intended even when leadership and culture changes.
<beneroth>
hard problems.
<razzy>
beneroth: imagine possibility. if i do not like what you are doing, i could burn my euro with your euro any time, without consequence