gamedev English

gnoop · Oct 10 2025

I accidentally dug up a pile of old e-mails from 90th , gamedev messages, reports and discussions and been curious to read some. The language have considerably shifted since. Not in exact literal wording but rather in feeling . It was interesting to read . Was sort of sharp, sometimes rough, expressive and colorful, with sometimes a few mild cursing like crap . I would say in same tone great English literature have been showing since Shakespeare.

Now I feel sleepy when I read the correspondence. It's so faint and corner-rounding, so like what chatGPT writes , polished and toned down . So neutral or always positive. With everyone always happy, cool and great for something looking mediocre at best. The exact idea is sometimes getting lost in between.

I am curious. Is it just my imagination ? Perhaps just company or person specific ? Or just folks got older ?

thomasp · Oct 10 2025

It may just be boys talk. Teams back then will have been far more homogeneous than nowadays with less of an age range, far more of a gender imbalance and so on. So if you were one of the boys you would have fit right in and probably preferred that high-fivin' bitch-slapping style of communicating and working (late-) nights. Bit more complicated these days.

The more diverse and larger your team gets you obviously have to be more careful with your wording (and everything else). I mean one company I was at had this comfy massive couch in their reception area. I only sat there one - for the interview - and flicked through the pile of (mostly game dev-) magazines on offer to pass the time.

Much later I learned that in those good old days I missed out on they would have had porn mags laying there instead... yeah.

If you like that kind of thing, try a startup? The spirit surely is still very much alive (remember FTX?).

gnoop · Oct 10 2025

I wouldn't say it was all boys talks. The boss was a woman with phd in computer science actually. Now it looks like everyone asks chatGPT to reply. I do it sometimes too and always wonder why It always tries to neutral any graphic or expressive image in my text which IMO feels dull and lose its purpose. It's not that I miss it a lot. Just wonder if it's new norm or something and why GPT always does it ?

thomasp said:

porn mags

it's what I am talking about . An instant graphic imagery in your text. Not necessarily of sexual nature. Try to run it through GPT and it would be gone.

Rima · Oct 11 2025

Rather than boy's talk, I think it's probably more that they were less corporate, at a guess? Game dev was quite a bit different back then. Now it's a big industry, so it's become more corporate and up its own arse, I assume. With lots of middle managers and HR policies.

poopipe · Oct 11 2025

It's more to do with studio size and regulation.

once you get past a certain size you legally need HR and once you have HR you have rules about how you speak to people and they're enforced by people who are payed to not have a sense of humour

gamedev English

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