Dear Future Gamer

In answer to the letter from Peter O'Dowd in this week's issue. Speaking from a coder's viewpoint, the reason why games sometimes have too high a spec is actually quite simple.

It takes roughly between a year and two years to make a game from beginning to end. When you first make the game engine you have to try to predict what spec machines will be available in one or two years. Underestimate the spec and your game will look majorly behind the times; overestimate and no-one will have a machine powerful enough to run it.

Its' a Catch 22 situation. You also have to bear in mind that gamers like their games to get more and more advanced, so you have to try to cater for them, so a game which runs well on lower spec machines may sound like a top idea, but realistically it'd be slated for not keeping up to date with modern technology.

It's not the coder's fault if this happens. The reason why the game goes slow, takes up too much memory, etc, is not down to poor code but down to graphics, animation, sound, etc being of a better quality and thus taking up more space and taking longer to process.

Erm, I think that's all I can come up with there.

Mr Clam

FG: I appreciate what you're saying, but it's rubbish. That's why we end up with crap game after crap game. Developers should sit down, go, "Wow, that's a good idea for a game!" and get on with it, not sit down and go, "Right, how much power have we got to play with?" and come up with a game from that. It's putting the cart before the horse.