Mapping as a career?

Hold up just one damned second. Your reply left no room for expansion exactly like mine did yet I am a hypocrite for saying mine? Where do you get off calling me such when there is absolutely no difference in the structure of either of our replies?

If you do not like the word definition of "TEAM" I suggest you use it less.

The fact that you disagree is not the issue now. You have crossed the line into name calling and thats unforgivable from someone who preaches so much as you do about freedoms and whatnot.

I suggest you go back and read your replies in that not so long ago thread and refresh your memory about how conversations advance and stop. You effectively stopped this one.

I have never been a hypocrite in my entire life. Having you say it now doesn't make it any more of a reality than before. In fact, your words are a bit of "talking out the other side of your mouth" now as well. :sad:

I suggest you look up the word "TEAM"

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

Every single time I post something I'm hyper conscious about making sure I preface everything with "In my opinion" or "I think."

You don't and it rubs me the wrong way.

I thought a team was a group of people who have a common purpose, but
not necessarily like minded ones. Unless you take "like minded" to mean
having the same goal, but I wouldn't have. I've been in teams before
where
people have completely different ideas and opinions, but our goal is
the same.

EDIT: I looked up some definitions, and that seems to be the common concensus...

Google
Define

Dictionary.com

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Addicted to Morphine</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Every single time I post something I'm hyper conscious about making sure I preface everything with "In my opinion" or "I think."

You don't and it rubs me the wrong way.
</DIV></DIV>

Careful, those are fighting words. You sound like you "know" more than you could possibly be able to.

and

I apologize for my lack of sensitivity. I have pointed views sometimes and they tend to cloud my phrases. I should have been more aware when I typed the word "Wrong"

It showed poor judgment on my part. I still feel that you were in error, that has not changed but I do feel that I was wrong in the method I used in pointing out your oversight.

I will endeavor to abstaine from doing so henceforth.

ReNo said:
I thought a team was a group of people who have a common purpose, but not necessarily like minded ones. I've been in teams before where people have completely different ideas and opinions, but our goal is the same.

By this definition (and one that I do on some level agree with) the Snarkpit is a team. What makes our chances of success any less than "Paid" professionals?

I am not for a second going to believe that being paid guarantees anything.

Are you discounting my definition of "team" somehow as legitimately accurate as well? Have you never seen a like minded team?

You may not be aware of it, but thats exactly how I just read this reply. :sad:

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

UD, I don't want to become bitter enemies or anything like that... and
I'm sorry I flew off the handle like I did. It's hard to stay
emotionally detached during a debate, but that's something I should
work on. I shouldn't have let myself get beyond the issues at hand.

It's funny how we always seem to butt heads :smile: I don't think we
would in real life (I'm the passive easy-going type), but online forums
are such a cold medium.

I'm sorry again for losing my cool and making it more personal than I should have.

As to our discussion:

Perhaps its the very absence of experience thats my biggest issue. I know mapping communities, being part of about 6 of them it tends to make me biased.

I buy almost everything created when it comes to FPS games and I cannot help but notice things that I feel could have been done better. Not being privy to why they were done that way is a definite hole in my hypothesis when I claim that users can do it better with the community behind them for support.

Perhaps I should just accept that someone got paid to make and release those maps and forget the whys and wherefores of the game.

I still think I am correct, but only in so far as to the experience I have to draw upon.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

You're assuming that a team working on a level (which isn't always the case) does agree on everything. Even within a company, there can be fierce debates and arguments over the direction of things, and that's not accounting third parties like publishers/producers and in some cases the people who originally made the franchise (:P ). Our lead designer on Quake had a little piece of paper taped to his door from the Soldier of Fortune days proclaiming the date and time in SOF2's development when he and our project lead for quake (who was a fellow designer at the time, I think) actually agreed on something. And in those days, Raven arguments were bitter, bitter affairs :smile: People try to be nicer now since there's more people and more likelihood of someone getting offended :razz:

The resources present at the professional level are staggering, from other opinions to level of quality to technology to knowledge/experience of other employees, etc. The big advantage the amateur community retains is the lack of timelines. When people (publishers or investors) are paying millions of dollars, they don't want endless feature creep and an inability to get stuff done (see: Stalker :razz: ). So a lot of times things have to be taken to a certain point and left there. But that's a necessity anyway - the game would never be done otherwise.

When you're looking at stuff and thinking it could have been done better, it's entirely probable the person who made it agrees, and likely moreso. Quake has been doing very well, with about the usual amount of bitter intarweb hatred, but after all the time I spent in it I can still be scathing if I want about all the things that we could have done better, either by our own errors/time limitations, or the imposed will of others. In the end, though, I'm still proud to have worked on it - which holds true word for word with my amateur work. You'd be hard pressed to find someone making content who is really happy with it when it's 'done;' and over time the more I look back at the stuff the more I realize how much I did wrong - stuff built for the wrong reasons, items placed for the wrong emphasis, etc. So long story short, I think there's always going to be things you can spot to be improved regardless of whether or not the person got paid.

As much as I love my job, I still do kinda long for the full creative freedom and timeframe-free development of amateur stuff, which is why I have a whole host of maps and small mods I plan on making for Quake now that I actually have some of that 'time' thing again.

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www.button-masher.net

If everyone disagreed in like manner we would all sleep better at night. (at least I would)

If you take all my replies thus far there was a small piece of each contained with your one reply Mr. Squirrel. I may be wrong, but not so much as to not be within sight of the truth of it all.

I will however request my right to judge Quake 4 for its ability to pass muster. I trust you did well, but I still want to see for myself.

I have not bought it yet, but I had a choice in my budget this time. "Civ 4 or Quake 4"

One guess which won.

I do however believe that if I could create a team of users to create a series of maps, they would/could compete satisfactorily with any "paid" professional.

I know some pretty amazing people.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

By this definition (and one that I do on some level agree with)
the Snarkpit is a team. What makes our chances of success any less than
"Paid" professionals?

Paid professionals have, for the most part at least, been hired due to
their talent and experience. Open communities don't have any sort of
quality check - feedback can come from anybody, well informed or not.
Now this has both advantages and disadvantages I'll admit, but it's
reasonable for people to take the suggestions of those with proven
ability - such as those you'd find in a game dev studio - over those
who do not. I'm not saying you don't find such individuals in an open
community as of course you do, but probably not so frequently. Also,
you can rely on people say right next to you to give feedback and it's
far more easily and frequently available - posting your map on a
website and asking for feedback by no means guarantees it.

Are you discounting my definition of "team" somehow as
legitimately accurate as well? Have you never seen a like minded
team?

Of course I have seen likeminded teams, but by your original
statement, being likeminded is a requirement for a team. I'd say it's
far more unlikely than likely that all the members of a game
development team are like minded.

Wrong. The very definition of the word team is a group of "LIKE MINDED INDIVIDUALS"

If you do not like the word definition of "TEAM" I suggest you use it less.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

My definition of "Like minded" is the same as goal. What use would a team have if there was no commonality in the goal?

You seem to want to define "goal" as "individuality that happens to coincidentally be working together at the moment". This is not a concept definition I happen to share. I happen to agree with the old adage, "There is no I in team"

My definition of team stands, in spite of the multiple definitions defined thus far.

"Teams are made up of people with a common goal = Like mindedness thinking." - This was my intent when I posted. I now realize, after re-reading it that it was not the best choice of words to use, but that doesn't for a moment retract the "goal" of my intent. :razz:

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

Ah ok, that clears things up. I did as in my earlier post if you meant
"like-minded " to mean "goal", but you didn't reply to that question
hence my confusion. Anyways...

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Encore!

I'd respond to what people said, but it'll all be taken the wrong way ... I will say though, UD, if you've never worked in a game-development environment ... how can you judge as to what it's like? KFS, obviously, works in the environment you're "describing", and he has many good points.

I would imagine he'd have a better idea than most people here. As far as I know only him and Finger work at game studios.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

To answer your obvious innuendo Crono, I cannot. I did bow out in the end. What more would you wish of me?

I can only judge by, what I see on the store shelves. If thats not good enough to qualify an opinion considering its my money that bought it, what else is there? I may not have an educated opinion but I do have an uneducated one that is of no less value.

I can however acknowledge that not having a working knowledge does omit a vital piece of my viewpoint but here again I have been in middle management within other companies before and the bulls**t at the top levels is probably similar in each case. People at the top are never as cognizant as they think they are where trouble issues are concerned.

All I can say is, this discussion went as well as can be expected. It was however a good thing that no one was around to inflame it. :heee:

Whether things will be taken wrong or not is entirely within your ability to forestall. It is however easily done since people do it to me on many occasions but with a bit of time and patience they eventually grasp my meaning even if my point is still wrong in their opinion. I am sure that when it happens to you that you are also able to rectify the incident.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

No, it doesn't really happen to me. If I argue with other people on this site, it's almost always in a playful or respectful manner. If I say something someone said was wrong it won't be in the matter of opinion, it will be fact. (Unless I'm giving Reno s**t about Xbox or something like that :biggrin: )

I'm still not understanding your grammar at times. The way you phrase things really puts the "blame" on who ever you're conversing with ... which implies you never think you're wrong. Before you go on a rant, like a lot of people I know, saying I never think I'm wrong, that's simply not true. A lot of people forget how often I admit I'm wrong, and if I'm not sure about something I will not state it factually or forcefully. I'll also add things like, "But I'm not sure". Because I'm not.

Your posts though ... don't do this. I mean, at one point, you flat out said someone else's opinion, for the scope of this discussion, is at the same level of experience as you are, was wrong.

Some of the things you post are hypocritical, and just to give you a hint, defending hypocrisy by calling them hypocritical. It just doesn't make sense.

I'm sure in your mind your points sound well thought out, but you should work on expressing them in an open manner. That way things would stay as a discussion instead of a fight.

I'm sure this sounds weird because I'm specifically talking to you ... but no one else really cause a problem ... it all pretty much centered around your comments and your silly definition that group means team ... or something like that.

All I'm saying is ... only a few other members here have to rectify anything they say on a regular basis ...

Constructive criticism.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

God dammit.

God dammit.

God dammit.

God dammit.

God dammit.

God dammit.

I had this long reply and the stinking site lost it AGAIN!!!!!!

Crono, I am weird. Learn my peculiar speech patterns and accept them instead of attempting in vain to alter them to suit your idea of "Proper"

If I say something wrong, ask for clarification. If you continue to misunderstand me its a sign of your lack in communicating. I can understand people doing it a few time but repeating it makes you look dumb.

Part of communication is learning the nuances of each others habits. I continuously say things that seem on the surface to be improper but afterward they eventually make sense to most.

Anyway, I am sorry to sound so rude this time but losing my post truly pissed me off and it was actually well thought out and courteous. Talk about dumb, I still forget to copy/paste. How damned hard headed is that?

In the end, if I say something improper assume its my peculiarness and things might progress past this constant tit for tat thing.

(/continues to cry over lost post)

<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 35 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Crono, I want you to contemplate something tonight. I know your first impulse will be to answer now, but I am serious, do not reply until you have thought about this in detail.

Since you and I are the only ones currently in discussion we can limit this to just ourselves.

Now, I do not for a moment consider you stupid, but I am painfully aware that you are slow on certain subjects, namely my peculiar habits of speech patterns.

Now, do not for a moment think that I am not aware of my own habits, they have been my bane for quite some time. What I want you to think about is, do you not know that you yourself are not weird free? Have you not noticed that I do not call into account every nuance you spout daily? You have an incredibly annoying habit of correcting people you have no need of doing. True, this is an open forum and each and every topic is open to the world but you seem to relish going on and on endlessly without any thought as to whom you are addressing.

My point is, I accept you as is. I am not, nor will I ever ask you to comply to my ways of thinking. I do however expect the notion to be reciprocated. I am not in need of your corrections, I am not desirable of your attentions concerning my peculiarities at all. I just expect you to accept them as is.

This is not a retaliation, nor a shifting of blame unto another. This is a request for acceptance from you to desist this constant tit for tat.

Again, I ask you to think on this tonight before you reply. Unless your post contains some hope that you will however reluctantly accept me as is, I will ignore any alternative post.

Have a good night.

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.

/grabs popcorn

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http://maze5.net

Bravo

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yikes.

I don't like popcorn.

Chips. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Crono said:
Bravo

Well, you didn't wait, which is sad but I am glad that I finally did something right.

My deepest thanks.

Have a good day all. :smile:

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There is no history until something happens, then there is.