Planes, Games, and Automobiles: The Nomads of Game Development | Hacker News Reader

Planes, Games, and Automobiles: The Nomads of Game Development

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68 pointsedroche11 comments

"The only way to understand the world is to go to the world," says Ismail. "You have to go there, because there's too much in the way. There's too much keeping you in your safe, understandable cultural bubble because people can talk to you and you can communicate. Honestly, understanding the world requires you to go where no one can understand you."

Isn't this lifestyle built on another form of consumerism: that of riding giant steel machines that burn tons of petrol to fly in the sky, instead of the one he's avoiding?

I also really enjoy discovering new people, cultures and languages- but I find I can do that better by staying somewhere for a few years.

To each their own though! I support Rekka and Devine on Patreon, and their boat journey has been neat to follow (and this one consumes much less fossil fuels). My father having been an avid sailor in his youth, it's something I could see myself doing with him when he retires.

I think it's worse than that -- for me it all reads, "young person with zero responsibilities chooses unsustainable lifestyle and has an awesome time". What happens to the designers when their boat needs serious maintenance, something that boats need _constantly_? We already know that one of the van guys basically only was able to function because a friend helped him sell his (broken down) van and move his crap home for him.

Game development is also a terrible platform to build a life on. What happens when you burn out? What happens if (when) no-one likes your game?

Although HN loves to hate game development, and I understand where you're coming from, at least in Rami's case he's in the top 0.1% of indie game developers and has multiple $1M+ grossing games on the market (http://steamspy.com/dev/Vlambeer). He is in every way the exception, but I think its ok for him to live and exceptional lifestyle if he wants to without fear of burn out or "no one liking his game". The HN view of game development tends to apply more to salaried AAA developers in mid or bottom tier studios, and new, inexperienced or unsuccessful indie game developers, which might be the majority, but are certainly not Rami.

> but I think its ok for him to live and exceptional lifestyle if he wants to without fear of burn out or "no one liking his game".

So you are ok with him living his life how he chooses? Why do you think that is something that needed to be said? That should be everyone's default disposition, so I'm not sure if you're expecting a cookie for this or what?

Also, I don't think you have a strong enough grasp of this community to begin making assertions about its opinions towards certain professionals. As it is, your comment reads like "Silly HN readers, you guys aren't as smart as me, let me explain why you should share my opinion."

> As it is, your comment reads like "Silly HN readers, you guys aren't as smart as me, let me explain why you should share my opinion."

So ~50% of the comments on this site?

I have 4153 karma and have been an active Hackernews member for over 5 years, so I feel like I have a decent amount of insight into general patterns I see in the community. I'm aware that HN is super diverse and people have different backgrounds and viewpoints, which is one reason why I like HN over other technical communities.

That said if I was to treat HN comments as a hivemind and generalize I'd say overall HN leans negative on the game industry. There is a lot of truth in these views but people tend to generalize towards "all game programmers are underpaid and over worked and should work on business CRUD apps" and not look at individual cases of motivations, success or failure. This is both stereotyping and anecdotal but I see it in game industry related threads time and time again. I wasn't trying to sound smarter than the community, I'm sorry if I came off that way.

When the article says something like "at first their families were concerned" I initially thought they meant their wife and kids, but no, it's their _parents_ -- which gives you a clue as to where these guys are coming from.

That's because they're game developers. Game developers are young. They haven't burnt out yet. :) Seriously though, there are lots of people who decided to take their act on the road in a similar fashion as these kids. One of whom is a 40 something composer[0]. He doesn't have kids, but if you search around you'll find families on liveaboards and in larger RVs.

[0]: tosimplify.net

Rami Ismail gives a great talk on translation and language barriers in games:

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022362/We-Suck-at-Inclusivity-...

He also does a good job of peeling back the curtain behind indie development and realities of being an independent game developer. We could use a few more people like him in our industry.

What a life...

Go where you want, do what you want, buy what you want.

Get payed for making and playing video games.

Sign me up!

I don't know if he's still at it. But, a gamedev friend of mine spent at least a couple years living cheap in Bermuda with his wife, working remote four months out of the year and just chillin the rest of the time. He is a wiser man than I.

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​Planes, Games, and Automobiles: The Nomads of Game Development

Planes, Games, and Automobiles: The Nomads of Game Development