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Group Photos of Classic Dev Teams

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
n984Fqi.png
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Anyone notice anything about these pics? We have to get back to making gaming a boys club.
It’s not the boy club thing that made gaming. It was the passion from the devs. The whole small team experimenting. Etc. People working together not from a tick box or budgets so massive you cannot change a thing.
Also tbh they didn’t have to answer to any committee. Just go ahead make the game they wanted.

Awesome

Carmack and Romero also worked so well. I miss classic ID.
 
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Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Anyone notice anything about these pics? We have to get back to making gaming a boys club.
It has nothing to do with being men. Sierra games were designed primarily from a woman.

The issue is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, and they overall care more about slacktivism than producing a quality product. A lack of passion, focus on checklists and DEI nonsense will ruin any product.
 
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simpatico

Member
It’s not the boy club thing that made gaming. It was the passion from the devs. The whole small team experimenting. Etc. People working together not from a tick box or budgets so massive you cannot change a thing.
Also tbh they didn’t have to answer to any committee. Just go ahead make the game they wanted.

Awesome

Carmack and Romero also worked so well. I miss classic ID.
It's not that women can't do it, they change the environment. It's the effect they have on men in a space. Imagine a room full of programming nerds. Now imagine it with a few women sprinkled in. Entirely different mood, vibe, etc. Guys get uptight, get weird, get thirsty etc. Destroys open creativity.
 
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poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
It's not that women can't do it, they change the environment. Imagine a room full of programming nerds. Now imagine it with a few women sprinkled in. Entirely different mood, vibe, etc.
Most of these photos have a few women in them though.
 

simpatico

Member
Most of these photos have a few women in them though.
Back then the women working in STEM were awkward big brain geniuses. They're so awkward and spectrumy that they didn't even make the boys nervous or thirsty. The modern STEM girl has a C average and gets through college by getting nerdy guys to do their work. She got into STEM because it was the vogue major at the time. Guidance councilor told them to. I work with them everyday, and also did back when these pictures were taken. It's an entirely different creature. Anyone working with engineers then and now will agree with this statement.
 
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dolabla

Member
Some absolute legends. Gaming was different back then. I don't know if it'll ever get back to that level. So much creativity. It's why I find myself more and more going back to the classics that these guys made.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Sweet. One guy in the Bioware pic is wearing an Oilers jersey.

Those were the days. Small teams who can crank out quality games fast. No politics, no BS, no diversity hires, and since it was pre-social media no weirdos with attitude online looking for followers.
 

Roberts

Member
That’s pretty cool. I didn’t realize they had whole bunch of Western devs back then. Well, I probably read about it and forgot 😅.
You are probably joking, but there is Spielberg, David Geffen and I think the other are film/music industry people that I can't instantly recognise.
 
Gen X... The last Gen without prominent culties and blue hairs.

Compare this with today's teams... Shit compare 2008 to 2014 teams to today's and its so different.
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Another team photo of Black Isle Studios (top right). Although that's the Planescape team. Not sure how much overlap with the Fallout team I posted above.
Also, original Interplay team, and modern Obsidian Entertainment (partial team, obviously).
Found online and I didn't feel like chopping it up.

nOZb7pK.jpeg
Fixed.

yrmhn1I.jpeg
 

Hypereides

Gold Member
It’s not the boy club thing that made gaming. It was the passion from the devs. The whole small team experimenting. Etc. People working together not from a tick box or budgets so massive you cannot change a thing.
Also tbh they didn’t have to answer to any committee. Just go ahead make the game they wanted.

Awesome

Carmack and Romero also worked so well. I miss classic ID.
Well said. I just miss when it was genuine nerds and like minded individuals who came about that actually wanted to be there without being subject to some strange diversity quota or weird ass nonsense being pushed down on them.

The current situation in "big league" gamedev ticks me off. Now it seems like its mostly made up of posers and folks with half-hearted interest who get in. Would explain why many modern big games largely lack genuine and exciting elements.

EDIT: Used to often hear from my folks talk about how rock music changed for the worse once it became too big. Didn't really understand what they meant at the time. Seeing what's happening in gamedev, I can somewhat relate now.
 
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tommib

Gold Member
And that's why I'm mainly sticking to Indies, AAs or non western games these days.

The greatest games of video game history have been made by tiny teams compared to todays standard. Insane.
Totally agree with this. Massive teams just dilute any kind of vision. They’re just global industrial products for a global audience. AAs and indies are indeed the future.

That and Nintendo.
 

tommib

Gold Member
I know they're breaking ground and all that but I can't help but look at it as if they are digging their own graves.

RIP Sierra On-Line
They had a good run with innovative games and true classics. They got bought by Activision right? What I like to call, the kiss of death.
 

tommib

Gold Member
Does anyone know if you can run GOG games on a steam deck? They have almost all Sierra classics. I don’t have a windows PC. Would the deck run them? I would get one just to play Shivers and Gabriel Knight again.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Most pics are amazing and so where those times and the talents involved. Still… you can physically smell some of those pics, lol. The nerdiness is out of scale.

Also ironic that the Silent Hill teams had more women than most of the 90s western studios posted, yet you know the prejudices about Asian studios that are passed around. More ironically still, the earlier game studios like Atari and Sierra were perfectly capable of working a lot and making great products while including more women that it would be the norm a decade later.

Love the Super Mario World devs group photo. I didn’t recognize Tezuka at first, he’s way chubbier these days.
 
Most pics are amazing and so where those times and the talents involved. Still… you can physically smell some of those pics, lol. The nerdiness is out of scale.

Also ironic that the Silent Hill teams had more women than most of the 90s western studios posted, yet you know the prejudices about Asian studios that are passed around. More ironically still, the earlier game studios like Atari and Sierra were perfectly capable of working a lot and making great products while including more women that it would be the norm a decade later.

Love the Super Mario World devs group photo. I didn’t recognize Tezuka at first, he’s way chubbier these days.
Yes, it's not women that have caused the issues with AAA games for sure. It's the dilution of artistic vision and the move to being big corporations led by the nose by HR departments that has caused the rot.

I pray for a big video game crash every day. Bring back that start-up energy.
 
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Hudo

Member
Damn. Absolute baddie at the front there.
There's a translation of an interview/story Beep magazine (Japanese gaming magazine) made in 1987 where they specifically talked about a female staffer (Akemi Kamio) as one of the main motivating factors for that visit to Konami. I found it hilarious but if that interview/story were made today, Twitter would collectively lose their shit and cancel the magazine. (Because Twitter are a bunch of mentally ill pussies)
Here's the translated story. Courtesy of Shmuplations.com
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Fun seems to have been replaced by profit.

I’m not saying the doom team wanted no money but I think the main thing they had was fun. Seems once money/shareholders got in the way it started to go off the rails.

John Romero went off the rails.

Also If I remember correctly the doom team had a female staff member who would take care of them in the sense she was like a surrogate mother. Making sure to remind them to eat/bath sleep etc. If I recall they had the upmost respect for her.
Donna Jackson was her name.

Though it wasn’t her job it was just they were too busy having fun making games to think about anything else.

 
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