What's a game programmers motivation?

[Roland_Designer]

Hi everyone,

I am currently researching for a report that I am going to write about the topic "Inventing games: What motivates programmers and gaming inventors to do what they do?".

Therefore, I would like to collect many different thoughts on that subject from the members of this community.

As I myself have been playing video games since I was 12, I have been around many forums and modding communities. I consider the aspect of modding and providing gaming material for free to be an especially interesting phenomenon, because it raises several questions:

Why do people get involved with writing thousands of lines of code - very often over a period of several months or years - without getting any kind of payment in return? Are they really doing it just for fun? Or do they hope to be able to list it as a reference when they apply for a new job? What is the the brave diligent modders' motivation?

Of course, budgets and money varry a lot in the gaming industry: with a budget of 265$ dollars, the GTA V production swallowed more money than the average hollywood blockbuster. At the same time, the producer studio boosted its sales from about 1 billion $ up to 1,86 billion $ at the end of 2013.

But meanwhile, the free-to-play industry - a branch that developed completely from independent programmers and unpaid modders who were coding just for fun - is booming and has sales that range from a few million to almost 1 billion $ (I am talking about LoL).

So, of course, money matters a lot in the video game industry. However, regarding the huge modding communities around many games, does it really matter that much? Is the small and independent modder's or programmer's big wish to be discovered from a big producer one day?

On the other hand, I would like to discuss inventing games.

Are there even real game inventors any more? The big brains behind the genious concepts? I mean stars like Sid Meyer, Will Wright or Shigeru Miyamoto.

In commercial programming, isn't there actually the tendency to either rely on old, well-tried and proven gaming concepts (like total war concept, ego shooter concept, open world , busniess simulation etc.) and to throw out some kind of variation of an old concept every once in a while or to catch and commercialise genious individuals with great innovative ideas, like the guys from the WC3 modding community who made Defense of the Ancient happen?

There are many many private schools that advertise themselves with being able to train people to be professional game or concept designers. But as I don't know anyone who works in the gaming industry professionally, I am very interested in who really writes and develops ideas, stories or concepts for new games.

Also, I have always imagined that - as with movie script writers - the author and theoretical brain of a gaming concept is a unique artist, an individual genious, like the three celebrities I mentioned above. But it seems to me, that developing a game concept is rather an accumulation of many different ideas from many contributors nowadays. Are there still any Quentin Tarantinos or Christopher Nolans in the gaming industry?

What are your opinions on my thoughts or on the topic in general? Tell me what you think, I would be looking forward to debating with you!

Regards

Roland

[cinedine]

Two words: Money and Passion.

Most professional programmers don't really care what they write. It's a job and you get paid for it. Which is the thing about the gaming industry - sometimes you don't. And you have 20-hour days to meet the deadline. And no vacations. And if the project fails, your job might be in danger. It's one of the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥-up industries I know and you simply have to love what you're doing. Modding is often used to get a foot in the door, like the Falskaar Mod for Skyrim which sole purpose was to get a job at Bethesda.

Of course I can't speak for everyone, but one of the main drives behind getting a job in this industry - or being a programmer at all - are the games you've played. Being part of the magic and create something people enjoy and spend hours upon hours on yourself is a strong motivation. Just like any other job with creative input - being a musician, working in the movies or hell, even being a professional athlete is just living the dream of your younger self to the extend you can.

---

Some things you might want to look into, if you really want to write a journalistic piece:

Цитата допису Roland_Designer:

But meanwhile, the free-to-play industry - a branch that developed completely from independent programmers and unpaid modders who were coding just for fun - is booming and has sales that range from a few million to almost 1 billion $ (I am talking about LoL).

As far as I remember the first free-to-play publisher in a grand scale was K2 Networks which even trademarked some derivation of the name. So hardly independend programmers or modders but business people.
Unless you're talking about mods, which "unpaidness" is more of a legal issue. But even than "studios" like Rewolf (Gunman Chronicles) were bought up and financed by others.

Are there even real game inventors any more? The big brains behind the genious concepts? I mean stars like Sid Meyer, Will Wright or Shigeru Miyamoto.

It's Meier ;). And while no doubt the man is a spring of creativity, some games strongly associated with him - like Alpha Centauri - he didn't work on at all. And yes, there still are - that's how the whole indie thing started. People like Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac), Phil Fish (Fez), Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone), Jonathan Blow (Braid) all came up with somewhat new concepts and were highly lauded for them.

like the guys from the WC3 modding community who made Defense of the Ancient happen?

To nitpick, that would be StarCraft's Aeon of Strife.

[kdodds]

It's like any form of art. There is a drive to create a thing for the creation of the thing itself. This is true, I think, of the majority of all artists (though I do think there are a questionable few for whom the prime motivator is money). Make no mistake, even in the bland, user doesn't care, background code, there is elegance and art. It takes more than just knowledge and skill, which is why most programmers aren't game programmers. I suspect a lot of indie developers are doing what they do because of the no-input, you're just a code monkey, 16 hour grind mentality that so many within the industry say is pervasive with A pubs. Grind for 16 hours to create someone else's vision based on market targets? Or grind for 16 hours creating your own vision? The latter is certainly more rewarding.

[cinedine]

Цитата допису Roland_Designer:

Of course, budgets and money varry a lot in the gaming industry: with a budget of 265$ dollars, the GTA V production swallowed more money than the average hollywood blockbuster. At the same time, the producer studio boosted its sales from about 1 billion $ up to 1,86 billion $ at the end of 2013.

Can't believe I forgot about that.
Be careful comparing raw numbers. The GTA V budget is a total and like half of it went into marketing. The box office numbers of movie budgets are the production costs only - excluding marketing.

[Satoru]

http://ramiismail.com/2013/11/on-life-and-influence-and-impact-and-death-and-responsibility-and-legacy-and-also-videogames/

Everyone is different but generally people who makes games do so because they love it. Because you could be making a lot more money, in a more stable job environment, dumping out code in Oracle or Google.

Brenda Romero has an interesting quote from her days SirTech. She had a job offer from IBM for 2x her salary at SirTech. She went back to SirTech and said

"Yeah I think I just want to keep making games"

"I'd rather make games for half the money than anything else in the world"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C6moukpWR2E#t=153

Go to the 2:40 mark

[Roland_Designer]

Hi guys,

thanks for your answers! I will reply to them one after another.

Цитата допису cinedine:

Two words: Money and Passion.

Most professional programmers don't really care what they write. It's a job and you get paid for it. Which is the thing about the gaming industry - sometimes you don't. And you have 20-hour days to meet the deadline. And no vacations. And if the project fails, your job might be in danger. It's one of the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥-up industries I know and you simply have to love what you're doing. Modding is often used to get a foot in the door, like the Falskaar Mod for Skyrim which sole purpose was to get a job at Bethesda.

Of course I can't speak for everyone, but one of the main drives behind getting a job in this industry - or being a programmer at all - are the games you've played. Being part of the magic and create something people enjoy and spend hours upon hours on yourself is a strong motivation. Just like any other job with creative input - being a musician, working in the movies or hell, even being a professional athlete is just living the dream of your younger self to the extend you can.

I can totally understand that you have to be passionate and must love what you do.
Did you yourself make that experience? Are you currently working the this industry? It would be very interesting for me to hear more from an insider.

However, to be honest, I sense sort of a contradiction in what you explained there and I would like to clarify this.
On the one hand, you say that most of the professional programmers don't care what they write, they just do what they are told to. On the other hand, you explain that there is a certain amount of creative input that drives the programmer as some kind of 'artist'. Isn't that a contradiction to you? This sounds like a compromise between total boredom and artistic ingenuity, which doesn't make sense to me.

Persuing that issue, there is a further question that bothers me: I wonder how much the programmer really has to do with the creative process of developing a game. Isn't there an employee related gap between creative and executing staff? How do these two entities get together?

Цитата допису cinedine:

Some things you might want to look into, if you really want to write a journalistic piece:

Цитата допису Roland_Designer:

But meanwhile, the free-to-play industry - a branch that developed completely from independent programmers and unpaid modders who were coding just for fun - is booming and has sales that range from a few million to almost 1 billion $ (I am talking about LoL).

As far as I remember the first free-to-play publisher in a grand scale was K2 Networks which even trademarked some derivation of the name. So hardly independend programmers or modders but business people.
Unless you're talking about mods, which "unpaidness" is more of a legal issue. But even than "studios" like Rewolf (Gunman Chronicles) were bought up and financed by others.

Thanks for your information! Sorry for that, I didn't know too much about the beginnings of free-to-play. I was of course referring to the origins of Dota, which is a famous and very succesfull example for a commercialised mod, but - as you said - certainly not the first one.

Цитата допису cinedine:

Are there even real game inventors any more? The big brains behind the genious concepts? I mean stars like Sid Meyer, Will Wright or Shigeru Miyamoto.

It's Meier ;). And while no doubt the man is a spring of creativity, some games strongly associated with him - like Alpha Centauri - he didn't work on at all. And yes, there still are - that's how the whole indie thing started. People like Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes (Super Meat Boy, Binding of Isaac), Phil Fish (Fez), Mike Bithell (Thomas Was Alone), Jonathan Blow (Braid) all came up with somewhat new concepts and were highly lauded for them.

I disagree strongly on that.
The three examples I gave are unique characters in the history of developing games. Despite what was going on with Alpha Centarui, Sid Meier revolutionised gaming when he popularized the board game concept of Civlization in video gaming, which is today known as the 4X strategy genre and which has been popular and succesful throughout the ages. Miyamoto introduced the jump 'n run concept in the arcade game era (and stuck to the structure when he started making console games for Nintendo) and Will Wright developed The Sims, which was a totally new and voyeuristic version of a sand box game.

What I mean by that is that those three guys were revolutionists who changed gaming. I took a quick look at the games you mentioned (- again, I must admit that I didn't know very much or nothing about them -) and my impression would be that most of them seem like new versions of a already well known and proven concepts. For example, Super Meat Boy or Fez seem like classic jump 'n runs to me - altough they have a creative and innovative appearance, no doubt!

What I was asking about were the brave pioneers who introduced something completely new. Do you know what I mean?


I appreaciate your detailed and informative answer!

Цитата допису kdodds:

It's like any form of art. There is a drive to create a thing for the creation of the thing itself. This is true, I think, of the majority of all artists (though I do think there are a questionable few for whom the prime motivator is money). Make no mistake, even in the bland, user doesn't care, background code, there is elegance and art. It takes more than just knowledge and skill, which is why most programmers aren't game programmers. I suspect a lot of indie developers are doing what they do because of the no-input, you're just a code monkey, 16 hour grind mentality that so many within the industry say is pervasive with A pubs. Grind for 16 hours to create someone else's vision based on market targets? Or grind for 16 hours creating your own vision? The latter is certainly more rewarding.

I have heard from programmers who didn't work in the gaming industry that hours could be really long, bud I didn't know they it could be 16 hours.
So long hours, pressure and stress can be a motivation for taking matters into the own hands. Thanks for your answer!

Цитата допису Satoru:

http://ramiismail.com/2013/11/on-life-and-influence-and-impact-and-death-and-responsibility-and-legacy-and-also-videogames/

Everyone is different but generally people who makes games do so because they love it. Because you could be making a lot more money, in a more stable job environment, dumping out code in Oracle or Google.

Brenda Romero has an interesting quote from her days SirTech. She had a job offer from IBM for 2x her salary at SirTech. She went back to SirTech and said

"Yeah I think I just want to keep making games"

"I'd rather make games for half the money than anything else in the world"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=C6moukpWR2E#t=153

Go to the 2:40 mark

I am going to look into that clip as soon as I am able to, but at the moment I'm on the move.

I would assume that this is symptomatic for many creative jobs or professions people do because they have fun doing it. Try starting as an actor, as musician, as photographer, asfashion designer, or even as journalist - you have to work free-lance in most cases in the beginning and you are at constant risk of not getting any money at a moment's notice.


Thanks again for all your answers, I hope we can keep the debate up.


Regards

Roland

[Tux]

I changed proffesions into computer programming because I found scripting in Neverwinter Nights very exciting and fun. It allowed me to explore what can be done, express myself creatively and experiement.

Now that I am a programmer however I regret the career change. Programming I enjoy, working with people and management I do not

[Nameless]

...

[cinedine]

Цитата допису Roland_Designer:

Hi guys,

thanks for your answers! I will reply to them one after another.

I can totally understand that you have to be passionate and must love what you do.
Did you yourself make that experience? Are you currently working the this industry? It would be very interesting for me to hear more from an insider.

However, to be honest, I sense sort of a contradiction in what you explained there and I would like to clarify this.
On the one hand, you say that most of the professional programmers don't care what they write, they just do what they are told to. On the other hand, you explain that there is a certain amount of creative input that drives the programmer as some kind of 'artist'. Isn't that a contradiction to you? This sounds like a compromise between total boredom and artistic ingenuity, which doesn't make sense to me.

Persuing that issue, there is a further question that bothers me: I wonder how much the programmer really has to do with the creative process of developing a game. Isn't there an employee related gap between creative and executing staff? How do these two entities get together?

It's a bit of the what kdodds and you say - the writing is part of the art and in bigger companies that's usually all you do. For example I can clearly distinguish between code within the small project I currently work on done by two others, code from my actual colleagues at work and code from some of my class mates (I'm a junior and we have a theory in a school environment) - everyone has his own style and unique quirks.
I once heard a very nice comparison: coding is like playing a musical score - usually someone else writes it (i.e. saying what you have to do) but it's partly open to your own interpretation and you fill it with life.

That's the part about not caring what you do. Most people I know just love the work and whether they code for a game, a commercial application or a a private project, they're just as passionate about their code. Or they really just do it for the money and couldn't care less. It's also one of the very few jobs where I know so many people still doing the same during their spare time.
But working in the game industry itself - for me - is a whole other level of crazyness. The project I mentioned is indeed a game, put we're currently four people just doing it for the sake of it. No deadlines, no milestones, no expecations, very relaxing. In contrast the small company I work for has 2 seniors and 3 juniors. Everyone has to pull his weight, you have to meet the expectations, people come and complain stuff is not like they imagine it and it being a software focussed company, you have the feeling that those few people are the only ones working at times. And we do not have the pressure of hype through the marketing, pressure of not being paid due to missing a milestone (like contracted or not-self-publishing studios) or getting the whole project dumped. Just remember Crytek UK from a few months ago which has gone weeks without payment. Or people working as free lancers in the industry - going from uncertain job to uncertain job. If you don't work in a sought-after specialized area like e.g. AI developement you're the first who's expanable if the budget says so.
This for me goes beyond the love of programming and is solely explainable to me as loving to be part of the game industry itself. Like the difference between someone who likes a soccer team and playing some soccer himself - even in a semi-professional league - and someone who applies for the job of green keeper at their stadium despite having the capabilities of pursuing an academic career only to be part of that team.

And then there's the gap between creative input and actual coding you mentioned. It's different from studio to studio, but the bigger the more distinguished it becomes. There's a job 'Game Designer' for the ones with the actual ideas or 'Creative Director' for the ones with the general idea ;). Often times they play test and say what's working and what's not and the programmers than have to act accordingly. It's a bit like the disparity between an actor, director and writer and it's no coincident that job descriptions and terminology are very similar in both industries. You have some room for your own creativity, but if the general idea is "this button opens the inventory", that's pretty much your job. And yes, it does get specific like this. On the other hand you can pitch an idea like "Hey, you know if we make this inventory a list instead of a static sized array, we can get around that nasty eight-items-limit" or "hey, since we store the information if currently active status modifications anyway, we can easily make it visible for the player." Or more realistically: "Yeah, of course we can do this - if you don't mind waiting 5min for the neccessary calculations every time" and "Oh sure, give us 5 more months to completly rewrite everything and we make this seemingly slight and effortless change." The programmers know what's possible/feasible and in a way set the limits of a project. But that also goes for graphics and other departements - e.g. you can completely forget about making a 3D game if none of your coders new anything about 3D engines and your graphics team only does pixel art unless you plan on either getting new people or give the current ones enough time to learn.
And of course programming is so much bigger today - you have the one's working on the actual business logic, the ones working on the UI, the one's working on optimization, networking, internal toolsets ... again - the bigger the studio the lesser your actual input. Sometimes don't even know what exactly you're working on and how it will be incorporated into the final product. For example your sole work may be writing code to store data in. Like parameters for NPCs (health, energy, friendly/unfriendly), items (damage, armor, vendor value), quests (active/inactive, description), dialogue options (text, prerequisite, triggered action) - you may know that it's some kind of role playing game, but whether it is an open world epic or a small dungeon crawler, hack and slash or round based strategy, MMO or single player ... is not of your concern. And in fact it's totally possible and highly likely that your work will be part of a similar project in the future even if you've left the studio years ago.

To reiterate the genius of Sid Meier - he found ways which totally changed 'the game' - making the machines do something no one else thought possible. I'm talking about the flight simulations for Atari/C64 where he induced Assembler Code to simulate the axis of the plane. This level of involvement is almost exclusively found in small indie teams today.
That was also thirty years ago and paths have been trotten out today. Real revolution is rare today. Cliff Blezinsky was the last I know with Gears of War which laid out the rules of modern shooters today and definded the cover shooter genre.
Jonathan Blow's Braid is the sole reason for the puzzle platformer craze today (which Fez and Thomas Was Alone are actually part of) and McMillen and Refene's Super Meat Boy spawned the new 'difficulty movement' (for a lack of a better name) - combining old school's unfogiveness with todays soft gloves like instant and infinite repeats. Apart from that most paths are already trotten and the industry only repeats itself. Like fashion, music, literature or anything else around for some decades.

[Roland_Designer]

Цитата допису cinedine:

It's a bit of the what kdodds and you say - the writing is part of the art and in bigger companies that's usually all you do. For example I can clearly distinguish between code within the small project I currently work on done by two others, code from my actual colleagues at work and code from some of my class mates (I'm a junior and we have a theory in a school environment) - everyone has his own style and unique quirks.
I once heard a very nice comparison: coding is like playing a musical score - usually someone else writes it (i.e. saying what you have to do) but it's partly open to your own interpretation and you fill it with life.

That's the part about not caring what you do. Most people I know just love the work and whether they code for a game, a commercial application or a a private project, they're just as passionate about their code. Or they really just do it for the money and couldn't care less. It's also one of the very few jobs where I know so many people still doing the same during their spare time.
But working in the game industry itself - for me - is a whole other level of crazyness. The project I mentioned is indeed a game, put we're currently four people just doing it for the sake of it. No deadlines, no milestones, no expecations, very relaxing. In contrast the small company I work for has 2 seniors and 3 juniors. Everyone has to pull his weight, you have to meet the expectations, people come and complain stuff is not like they imagine it and it being a software focussed company, you have the feeling that those few people are the only ones working at times. And we do not have the pressure of hype through the marketing, pressure of not being paid due to missing a milestone (like contracted or not-self-publishing studios) or getting the whole project dumped. Just remember Crytek UK from a few months ago which has gone weeks without payment. Or people working as free lancers in the industry - going from uncertain job to uncertain job. If you don't work in a sought-after specialized area like e.g. AI developement you're the first who's expanable if the budget says so.
This for me goes beyond the love of programming and is solely explainable to me as loving to be part of the game industry itself. Like the difference between someone who likes a soccer team and playing some soccer himself - even in a semi-professional league - and someone who applies for the job of green keeper at their stadium despite having the capabilities of pursuing an academic career only to be part of that team.

And then there's the gap between creative input and actual coding you mentioned. It's different from studio to studio, but the bigger the more distinguished it becomes. There's a job 'Game Designer' for the ones with the actual ideas or 'Creative Director' for the ones with the general idea ;). Often times they play test and say what's working and what's not and the programmers than have to act accordingly. It's a bit like the disparity between an actor, director and writer and it's no coincident that job descriptions and terminology are very similar in both industries. You have some room for your own creativity, but if the general idea is "this button opens the inventory", that's pretty much your job. And yes, it does get specific like this. On the other hand you can pitch an idea like "Hey, you know if we make this inventory a list instead of a static sized array, we can get around that nasty eight-items-limit" or "hey, since we store the information if currently active status modifications anyway, we can easily make it visible for the player." Or more realistically: "Yeah, of course we can do this - if you don't mind waiting 5min for the neccessary calculations every time" and "Oh sure, give us 5 more months to completly rewrite everything and we make this seemingly slight and effortless change." The programmers know what's possible/feasible and in a way set the limits of a project. But that also goes for graphics and other departements - e.g. you can completely forget about making a 3D game if none of your coders new anything about 3D engines and your graphics team only does pixel art unless you plan on either getting new people or give the current ones enough time to learn.
And of course programming is so much bigger today - you have the one's working on the actual business logic, the ones working on the UI, the one's working on optimization, networking, internal toolsets ... again - the bigger the studio the lesser your actual input. Sometimes don't even know what exactly you're working on and how it will be incorporated into the final product. For example your sole work may be writing code to store data in. Like parameters for NPCs (health, energy, friendly/unfriendly), items (damage, armor, vendor value), quests (active/inactive, description), dialogue options (text, prerequisite, triggered action) - you may know that it's some kind of role playing game, but whether it is an open world epic or a small dungeon crawler, hack and slash or round based strategy, MMO or single player ... is not of your concern. And in fact it's totally possible and highly likely that your work will be part of a similar project in the future even if you've left the studio years ago.

To reiterate the genius of Sid Meier - he found ways which totally changed 'the game' - making the machines do something no one else thought possible. I'm talking about the flight simulations for Atari/C64 where he induced Assembler Code to simulate the axis of the plane. This level of involvement is almost exclusively found in small indie teams today.
That was also thirty years ago and paths have been trotten out today. Real revolution is rare today. Cliff Blezinsky was the last I know with Gears of War which laid out the rules of modern shooters today and definded the cover shooter genre.
Jonathan Blow's Braid is the sole reason for the puzzle platformer craze today (which Fez and Thomas Was Alone are actually part of) and McMillen and Refene's Super Meat Boy spawned the new 'difficulty movement' (for a lack of a better name) - combining old school's unfogiveness with todays soft gloves like instant and infinite repeats. Apart from that most paths are already trotten and the industry only repeats itself. Like fashion, music, literature or anything else around for some decades.

Wow, that was a mind-blowing answer. :D

So, as you say, you have to distniguish clearly between different dimensions of developing a game. Working on a small projects with friends or colleagues in a private environment gives you more freedom in terms of making creative decisions as well as with technical issues.

On the other hand, in a bigger company your actual input to the finished game might be much less visible, because so many people work on the same project and it's hard to tell where youre code lines go.

There is actually a theory in media studies that describes what we are talking about very precisely: the stock cube. It tries to explain the fact that single contributions, changes or inputs in modern movie making (by contrast with the time when making movies was much simpler) are hardly to retrace to a single person - so the piece of art itself becomes a stock cube uniting those singularites without them being clearly visible in the finished product - something like that one guy responsble for the light who had the brilliant idea to light the godfather in his office up in that certain way. I think this is also applyable to larger scaled game development very well.

But I imagine this can get very frustrating for the individual. Have you ever felt that this doesn't satisfy you or thought about changing your field of work?
I can understand your comparison with the football team, but I would guess that having been the green keeper for several years hoping to maybe be able to contribute something bigger to the team at some point can be shattering.

I can't agree more with you on the topic of repetition and lack of ideas, and that's also what I heard from people in other forums. My impression is that the gaming industry slightly changed its focus from inventing new games or game concepts towards new ways of experiencing games during the last few years or the last decade.

What I mean by that is for example gesture vision technology, Playstation Eye, the Wii remote controle or the Oculus Rift. There are even some guys at the US west coast (in "porn valley") who are trying to make virtual sex devices or who are mesuring and motion capturing porn actors (this is the vice documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBRSR_LGlOE). Now, of course this has nothing to do with gaming, but it is certainly supposed to be a way to have fun in a virtual environment.

The possibility of setting new standards technologically seems to outshine creative and innovative work on the games themselves.
To me, this is very similar to Peter Jackson's excessive affinity towards technology in movie making. I have been so frustrated watching the third Hobbit movie (as it was with part one and two), because 1000 frames per second and animated rabbits that didn't look lifelike at all simply can't turn a bad movie into a good one. The way of accessing this kind of entertainment is in my opinion not the key to a satisfying product.

Цитата допису Tux:

I changed proffesions into computer programming because I found scripting in Neverwinter Nights very exciting and fun. It allowed me to explore what can be done, express myself creatively and experiement.

Now that I am a programmer however I regret the career change. Programming I enjoy, working with people and management I do not

I guess this is the strike of balance one has to be prepared to commit if working at a bigger company - just like cinedine said.

But just to make sure I understand everything correctly: What do you mean by "working with people and management I don not [enjoy]"? Why don't you like working with people? I can imagine that deadlines or specifications from you boss can be annoying, but isn't working in a team a good environment for debating and getting new ideas? At least, that's what I experienced.


Regards

Roland