It has been a month since the last recap of testing Exode game play. The Dev is putting a huge chunk of game play together and should be releasing something with in a days of this posting. The main thing that has been coming from the Dev cave is information. There have been several publications over the past four weeks.
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This post will not be about the game Exode but about, "what a Dev is". You may wonder what the hell does this guy know about what a developer is? Well, I am or have been one, but currently focus my efforts on testing. It is my job to test the output of the developer for correctness and compliance to some standards or specification. So, I interact with developers all the time as we work to implement a design of some kind. So, this post is pure opinion, no research has been done by me to confirm what I think I know.
Developers are like those inventors you see in the movies, always trying to invent something that everyone will want or will help many people do something they were not able to do before. Most developers are employed by some company and they develop those projects that they are instructed to. In most cases this does not diminish the commitment to doing the best job possible. Few developers are actually self employed, or actually work on project which are self envisioned and created by them. Most self employed developers contract their skills out to those that need them. Self employed contract developers unusually make more salary then corporate employed developers.
The personality of a developer can range from social inept to the kind of person able to get along with everyone, all the time. It all depends on exposure, some stay cooped up and have little real life interaction, or have the attitude of superiority, as they perceive them self smarter than those around them. Some were teased so much as children that the did not interact with others and stayed home and studied things of interest. A developer that is very smart and very good socially is rare. The very smart, social developers are a joy to work with as they are willing to share without making you fell stupid. Smartness is not always about being smart, it also has to do with what you have done, what you do and what you learned from failures. I guess you could call it wisdom.
A developer that can generate an income from what they have developed and be self employed is among the cream of the crop. These are the people that have a vision and it is a good one because it is succeeding. They are able to reap the benefits from the effort and accumulated knowledge they have. These people are always on a quest to learn new things and evaluate if what they learn can be incorporated into their current work. These people really want others to enjoy or benefit from what they create. It is a main driving force behind what they do and why they do it.
The one thing that I have noticed in all developers is that they under estimate how long it takes to do things. Some of this is sales, you have to say you can do it in the time frame requested by the customer, get the job and then extend later. Some of it is to impress, that they can do it so quickly. Some is because they have not done it before and do not realize the full scope of the effort, they guess and the guess is not conservative. Of the 30+ projects I have worked on, 2-3 actually were done when they said they would be. The rest over ran anywhere from months to years late.
When it comes down to it, developers are regular people except they have "invention" on their mind a lot. The drive to create something new is not the same as other people. Some can devote many years to create or find the right components to make the dream a reality. And yes, many of the developments coming out today, were dreams in the past.
To connect this all back to Exode, if you think that what is going on with the development of the game itself is not normal, it is. Elindos is the sole developer of the main game content and it's direction. As a user it is hard to envision what is going on in the background, but I know, it is very complicated. What is being created and deployed now, is years of work. I believe that the wait will be worth it. That the Exode experience will be something that many of us have wanted for years. For me, that is a unique experience in the game which no one else will see or repeat.
I hope that my opinion and insight into the dev world has been informative for you. I hope that what I have said shows you that what is going on in Exode is normal development stuff. I for one think that our Commander is doing an amazing job and will only present us with content when it is ready. This is a good thing ...
May your Evac's be successful !!!