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Search - "these people dared me"
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So, there was this person I met on the internet who was preaching about how the success of games depends primarily on luck.
His argument was that even though he made a great game(his opinion) and uploaded it to the appstore his game failed to gain popularity.
He stated that there are about 500 games uploaded daily and it is only the matter of luck whether or not a game gets noticed and that he ran out of luck.
Now, his game was a pretty ripped off copy of the overused tile matching games. I pointed out to him that the reason his game didn't do well was probably because he made a ripoff(I actually used 'a copy's but 'ripoff' sounds more rant like) and that he priced it fairly high, while there were free games with more features and better graphics and mechanics(based on the description of the game and screenshots).
He then began to rage(all caps obviously) about how I am talking out of my ass and that I probably haven't even made a game yet.
I politely(the only reason I was polite was because the account was known to my Twitter followers. Sometimes one has to protect one's name) told him that I am an indie game developer and that I have made a decent amount of games.
He then proceeded to mock me and dared me to name a few.
So I posted four links to my 48 hour competition games and one to an official game.
He then began to call me an imposter, so I did a shout-out to him through my Twitter account.
Instead of continuing on Twitter, he ran back to the forum, and began to shit talk about how anyone can do it if they have a team with them.
I corrected him on that, stating how I was alone at the time and these particular games were the results of me working hard and striving to improve myself.
Then the guy finally starts spamming on different threads about how I am an arrogant bastard and other explicit forms of abuses before finally getting banned.
Sometimes I don't even know why I bother.
When I was starting out, there was this developer who would point out the faults in my games so that I could work on them. That was a great help and probably accelerated my growth. He was a great mentor and is now a good friend and is now in my team.
I guess some people are so hung up on their pride that they will refuse to accept their mistakes and make any efforts to improve.9 -
> Worst work culture you've experienced?
It's a tie between my first to employers.
First: A career's dead end.
Bosses hardly ever said the truth, suger-coated everything and told you just about anything to get what they wanted. E.g. a coworker of mine was sent on a business trip to another company. They had told him this is his big chance! He'd attend a project kick-off meeting, maybe become its lead permanently. When he got there, the other company was like "So you're the temporary first-level supporter? Great! Here's your headset".
And well, devs were worth nothing anyway. For every dev there were 2-3 "consultants" that wrote detailed specifications, including SQL statements and pseudocode. The dev's job was just to translate that to working code. Except for the two highest senior devs, who had perfect job security. They had cooked up a custom Ant-based build system, had forked several high-profile Java projects (e.g. Hibernate) and their code was purposely cryptic and convoluted.
You had no chance to make changes to their projects without involuntarily breaking half of it. And then you'd have to beg for a bit of their time. And doing something they didn't like? Forget it. After I suggested to introduce automated testing I was treated like a heretic. Well of course, that would have threatened their job security. Even managers had no power against them. If these two would quit half a dozen projects would simply be dead.
And finally, the pecking order. Juniors, like me back then, didn't get taught shit. We were just there for the work the seniors didn't want to do. When one of the senior devs had implemented a patch on the master branch, it was the junior's job to apply it to the other branches.
Second: A massive sweatshop, almost like a real-life caricature.
It was a big corporation. Managers acted like kings, always taking the best for themselves while leaving crumbs for the plebs (=devs, operators, etc). They had the spacious single offices, we had the open plan (so awesome for communication and teamwork! synergy effects!). When they got bored, they left meetings just like that. We... well don't even think about being late.
And of course most managers followed the "kiss up, kick down" principle. Boy, was I getting kicked because I dared to question a decision of my boss. He made my life so hard I got sick for a month, being close to burnout. The best part? I gave notice a month later, and _he_still_was_surprised_!
Plebs weren't allowed anything below perfection, bosses on the other hand... so, I got yelled at by some manager. Twice. For essentially nothing, things just bruised his fragile ego. My bosses response? "Oh he's just human". No, the plebs was expected to obey the powers that be. Something you didn't like? That just means your attitude needs adjustment. Like with the open plan offices: I criticized the noise and distraction. Well that's just my _opinion_, right? Anyone else is happily enjoying it! Why can't I just be like the others? And most people really had given up, working like on a production line.
The company itself, while big, was a big ball of small, isolated groups, sticking together by office politics. In your software you'd need to call a service made by a different team, sooner or later. Not documented, noone was ever willing to help. To actually get help, you needed to get your boss to talk to their boss. Then you'd have a chance at all.
Oh, and the red tape. Say you needed a simple cable. You know, like those for $2 on Amazon. You'd open a support ticket and a week later everyone involved had signed it off. Probably. Like your boss, the support's boss, the internal IT services' boss, and maybe some other poor sap who felt important. Or maybe not, because the justification for needing that cable wasn't specific enough. I mean, just imagine the potential damage if our employees owned a cable they shouldn't!
You know, after these two employers I actually needed therapy. Looking back now, hooooly shit... that's why I can't repeat often enough that we devs put up with way too much bullshit.3