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Comment by AlchemistCamp | Hacker News Reader

The video game industry probably isn't the place for you, then. All my previous colleagues with that background had horror stories.

It's like Hollywood. There is always a multitude of starstruck 20 year-olds who would happily do the job for free, just for a chance to "make it big". Larger employers count on it and it distorts the salary/work-life balance economics of all the junior and mid-level employees in the industry.

The video game industry is a tournament. I have nothing but respect for the talent it attracts, but you have to be a little bit crazy to enter it.

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How many video games engineers actually make it big?

Okay I worked in games and Hollywood and I loved ultima8. :/ but on ultima8 sure the bar is sky high to follow up the greatest single player masterpiece and expansion set of all time but it’s also not utterly broken, lost and incomplete like the next game in the series Ascension.

You are one of the crazy ones. The world needs you!

Ultima IV holds a special place in my heart that I'll never forget. I played it as a kid and then played it again, finally beating it just three years ago.

I haven't actually played through more than the first couple of hours of VIII, but probably will eventually. I did really try to get through IX, though and it was really frustrating both how buggy it was and that the hardware requirements were so far ahead of my machine.

> and that the hardware requirements were so far ahead of my machine.

and everyone's. I actually tried playing it with a ton of video cards because buying video cards was my biggest hobby at the time. I think the Matrox Mystique handled it best overall from what I remember.

That's mind-boggling. I'd thought it was just me and my budget PC the first time I tried. Why would they set the system requirements so high?

The whole game was overly ambitious all along. I think they were thinking SkyRim and Witcher when the technology was only up to par with Mine-Craft graphics if that. War-Craft3 a game that came out a few years later barely navigated through the glitch metaverse of pre-millennia realtime 3-D graphics.

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