I was attending a local meet-up of technology enthusiasts, and one of the people presenting was an experienced game developer. He had worked for a big games company in the US for years, and was now starting his own business as an independent developer. He preceded to talk about how games are made from first principles and about his experience as a games developer.
What was the first question from the audience? ‘What source control system do you use?’. The conversation then turned to favourite text editors. Really?? That’s when I felt out of place. I wanted to know how he would go about trying to integrate Unity with a native iOS UIKit Interface, what platform constraints the Xbox One has, the differences between developing for PS4 and Xbox One, but everyone seemed to want to ask trivial questions about infrastructure.
It made me think: There's a difference between someone who is interested in technology for the sake of technology, and this is why we see 15 year old games being ported to JavaScript, and someone like me who is fascinated by what technology can do that’s new. How it’s done interests me of course, but that’s not what matters. The world undoubtedly needs both types of people, but it did make me think: I’m not a geek.
