My experience as a QA tester says that there’s no way devs will allow the QA to get included in anything of the sort.

I think you’re missing the point. He’s not saying that every game on DS was exclusively touch-based, he’s saying the DS had a lot of games that used very novel touch interfaces. Which is true. You can look at many of the popular games on smartphones over the last decade and find that a lot of the mechanics and input so…

It would actually be less than that I think... factoring in that if you were hourly, once you crested 40 hours, you would be making 1.5x the rate (can’t recall if that is a law or just a super common policy). Stuff like unregulated crunch, low pay (when factoring in the amount of hours worked), etc. are common reasons…

There’s an interesting clash happening in those areas where the developers cut content but leave it in the game (because sometimes it’s simpler to just lock it out than rip out every line of it and it’s associated code) and the people who want to squeeze every last drop of story from these stones.

There’s danger there…

Always got to look at the per hour salary you're making. 12 hour days including Saturday for 100k a year? $26.7 an hour.

Not true, all groups need it. Programmers, while well paid, usually end up making less than half that when you factor in constantly long hours. A place I was at was paying out over 100k a year for them, but they were doing the work of 2-3 programmers.

I would just say that after reading Kate’s article, she makes a point - the larger unions would just want the numbers and ignore the larger issues, mostly because they can’t or won’t understand them.

I’ve been a programmer at a couple game studios, and I’ve spoken with QA folks about this topic.  The reality is that QA _needs_ engineers and artists to unionize with them, otherwise their unions won’t have any power.  Ultimately they are easy enough to be replaced, whereas other disciplines are not.

Seeing a Microsoft exec reduce Ninja Theory to those metrics is chilling. I hope they provide a fertile, supportive environment for NT. But you don’t see Sony and Nintendo talk about their devs like that, even when the former isn’t a stranger to shuttering studios. 

I totally understand that - happened to me too. But then I moved to the south and realized most all well behaved kids learned at a young age to say ma’am. I didn’t know that being raised in Chicago.

Good thing God of War turned out to be soooo good. I love it. I love it even more with New Game+. Feels great when you don’t have to worry about enemies levels, you can just go in and destroy your foes! No more running circles in the arena and throwing your axe or doing hit and run attacks!

I’m firmly in favor of unionizing game development.

National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood.

I don’t much care for “ma’am” myself, and “miss” even less at my age, from adults. But I just ... ask them to call me by my name?

Yep, I know this area somewhat as my family roots are in Rocky Mount. Maybe things have changed a lot lately, but the idea of a teacher in those parts getting upset at being called “ma’am” doesn’t compute with me. That’s one of the part of the country where kids saying “sir” and “ma’am” is like oxygen in the air, you…

I’ve encountered the same. I think it’s the same sort of thing where some men don’t like to be called “Mr. —-” because “Mr. --- is my dad”. Seems like an arrested development thing to me.

I have to admit that it was a turning point in my life when people started calling me ma’am instead of miss. But, hey, I got over it and so should she. 

This is...weird. Especially for the fact that it happened in the south. They usually are big on ma’am. When I was in elementary school in Texas as a kid, we had to say it when addressing a teacher and if we didnt we’d get in trouble.

If my son comes home and says he got in trouble for calling a teacher “ma’am” she won’t have to worry. Because when I get to the school that will be the last thing I call her.