Game development is worthless? WTF? (Was: Why Ruby?)

[Daniel Gibson]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 5:41 PM, Caligo <iteronvexor at gmail.com> wrote:
> You are absolutely right; life sucks for many people, and that's why some of
> them choose to play video games.  It gives them a chance to escape reality,
> and game companies exploit this to make money.  Game companies use all kinds
> of psychology in their games to keep you playing as long as possible.  That
> is why to me there is no honor in game development.

This is bullshit.
Of course there are games with that goal (WoW, ...), but this doesn't make game
development in general "unhonorable". There are many games that are
not like this,
for example most single player only games.. you play them until the end or until
you can't get any further and that's it.. maybe you play them again in
the future, but
it's not like a constant addiction. (I'm not saying that multi player
games are generally
more "dangerous" or anything, single player games are just an example everybody
should be able to comprehend)
There are also game developers who openly label games like WoW "unethical",
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow