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Comment by andyjohnson0 | Hacker News Reader

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andyjohnson0·

Some context. According to [1], the text is from the March 1995 issue "Windows Sources" magazine [2].

Does Card have any experience of business or software?

[1] http://www.netjeff.com/humor/item.cgi?file=DeveloperBees

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Sources

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His book Lost Boys contains pretty fair descriptions of the videogame industry and development processes in the 80's, and he did a good amount of videogames writing in the 90's, including Monkey Island, The Dig and the disaster that was Neohunter.

I was going to mention Lost Boys. That book provided my first exposure to an account of the life of a computer programmer, even if the character was fictional.

What was disastrous about Neohunter? It looks like an interesting idea, but other than the old box art (with description of the game) I can't really find any information on it.

The gameplay was stale and the visuals tried to abuse pre-3D technology to add depth and immersion to what was an oldschool 2D point and shoot, but the tech and art were simply not up for the task. Ed Kilham (of Tie Fighter fame) is an awesome guy but he can't make miracles. Orson Scott Card's story was essentially invisible behind the mess, and apparently he didn't care much for it either.

http://www.gamefront.com/gaming-todays-exclusive-interview-w...

"a side-scrolling shooter that I’m not sure was ever published, since it was coming out just when first-person shooters completely took over the genre. However, for that game I came up with the slang that I later used in battle school in the Shadow books and in the movie scripts I’ve written for Ender’s Game. Nothing gets wasted."

(disclaimer: as they were finishing Neohunter, Ronin hired my bro to do their future tech and rendering, and IMHO things improved a lot for Ronin in that area)

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