Monday, October 20, 2008

Of Shame

I'd like to crystallize in a blog post the wisdom of an australian "developer" named "openglaussie", as seen over at Gamedev.net.

I guess nothing good will come from spaghetti eaters, mafia bosses and short , tan people, who bullshit others as a way of living, italians are the worst catergory in everything.

[...]

I don't think i have a wrong attitude, is just my way to put things on, i don't sugar coat, no way, italians aren't good at making games, i am not talking about knowledge, since we all know that italians universities are among the best ( only in litterature ), [...] technologically italy is many steps behind, no entertainment culture finalized at videogames [...], they don't use their cars anymore to spare oil


Please note how he also edited his posts later on. I'm not sure I feel like commenting on this right now.

Edit: well, while I'm waiting for the report I'm working on to finish crunching numbers, I guess I can spend a few minutes writing down how I feel about this.
That people of other countries have a low consideration for italians is nothing new. It's a sad reality, not shared across everyone of course, but it does happen. However, we're talking about game development here and I'll keep it at that.
I think Italy never ever had the possibility to grow in the gaming industry. We simply don't have a business for that. Many bright minds fly away from this country towards more fertile fields, where they can actually work and make a good living out of their talent. The idea of a game dev convention is both a good and an irrelevant news. A good news, seeing as there's always the need to spark a start, but irrelevant, since I really doubt it'll help investors create business. It's all about earning a living eventually (for big companies even more so). We had a few good productions in a distant past (Milestone with Screamer and a few other racing games, or Lightshock with Pray for Death which was a very nice fighting game at the time), but then it all stopped.

I really think it's hard to start competing with multi-millionaire companies ex nihilo. I also think we wouldn't be able to create a Cave Story clone (which is an amazing game, a one man effort worth gold) even if we really wanted. Why is it so? I don't know, all I know is that they can convention all they want, but that's not gonna help unless someone starts changing the business. And this is something not happening overnight.

I for one have always been interested and secretly in love with game programming. I never found anyone to share this passion of mine with where I live. The italian game dev site reminds me of the desert, with a few, lone explorers along its path.

But then again, I can't complain. I for one am not doing much to change this. I cannot.

4 comments:

Ash said...

Oh man, I can relate to you on so many levels that I don't know where to begin with, although I'm sort of hesitant as to whether I should express my opinions on the subject since my situation is degrees of magnitude worse than yours and I'm afraid I might offend you by considering our situations just as severe.

Anyhow, suffice it to say that having been born and lived in Iran, one of the most fucked up countries on the face of this planet, I would have given up everything had I been given a chance to live in Italy, so ignore that ***hole and consider yourself extremely lucky.

Multiply whatever you said in your post by one hundred and you might just begin to realize how tortures and painful the crimson flames are down in the hell I'm living in.

Ash said...

torturous*

Raine said...

Dear Ashkan, the world's so small! A guy I've been knowing for ages and playing with for four years was from Iran. :) His parents moved away because of the regime and even had to change surname.

I've had a glimpse of the situation by speaking with him. He moved very early in life and he hasn't experienced the situation firsthand, but his parent did.

I can't say I perfectly understand the situation - I've just been told about it in the past; and surely it has changed over the years. However, it was a way to see there's always something different to relate to, realities which don't belong to us but to other individuals that are just like us.

Growing to understand and accept the difference in the others is not an easy undertaking, and it shows, doesn't it. :)

I feel lucky to have been gifted with the acquaintance of people from many different countries.

Thanks a lot for your feedback as usual Ashkan!

Ash said...

You're welcome.

The pleasure is all mine. :)