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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>There are savvy readers who follow writers and artists, not characters. There are savvy fans of Anime who do this as well. There are even people who do this with books and movies. There are some gamers who do this with games.

Yes, but game developers aren't the ones doing the art, or writing, for games.

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At the game studios that I'm familiar with the term "game developer" refers to anyone working on the game and not just the programmers. So an artist or writer would generally be considered a game developer but the studio's accountant and CEO would probably not be considered game developers.

Movie directors aren't necessarily the ones doing the art, or writing for movies.

But a movie director is akin to a top level management position, not a regular developer.

For projects of a comparable size, the lead programmer or VP of development has a commensurate affect.

We don't pay people based on 'effort'. We pay people based on their output, in particular their ability to take create situations where money changes hands.

If somebody thinks they can get more money with less effort then we want them to try working that way instead.

We pay people based on their output, in particular their ability to take create situations where money changes hands.

In other words, corporations make a cost/benefit calculation. In the case of software developers and lead software developers, my experience is that most corporations can concretely read the dollar amount as cost, but often drastically underestimate the potential cost of bad software.

There are situations where many people are valued below market for a long, long time. Markets aren't omniscient and infinitely fast.

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