This realization you had is precisely one of the reasons for which I was very vocal in a recent thread [1] about a startup that wants to (watch out, projectile vomiting coming) make manufacturing "orders of magnitude" better.
The problem with a lot of these ideas is ignorance of what real product development and manufacturing entails in the context of real-life applications, regulatory constraints, liability and more.. They think that because you can iterate code fast while sipping a latte at Starbucks the same "logic" can be applied to manufacturing and, voilà, "orders of magnitude" better manufacturing.
Reality, as you have come to realize, is often far more complex that machining a few pieces of metal, throwing together a microprocessor board and writing code over a weekend. And every industry is different.
Congratulations, at least you were able to extract yourself from that road-to-nowhere and have positive things to look forward to. I am sure you'll be very aware of this in the future and help your own kids not get hooked.
As far as this not being the fault of developers. OK, sure, at a basic level, you are absolutely correct. Just like it is far easier for thugs to sell drugs to kids than to go find a real job or start a real company with real products.
The issue here is that all of these game studios go for easy-and-addictive without a care in the world about what damage they are causing. Trying to find new creative and positive gaming experiences is much, much harder. The formula for addictive games is known and relatively easy to implement these days.
Of course, there are no absolutes. There are good games out there that, with moderation, do no harm. That's what I tell my kids. It's not that I don't want them to play. They need to have fun and some of these games are fun. It's about moderation.
Here's reality, it is well documented that gaming addition is hard for adults to kick. There are stories of people wasting years of their lives on this stuff. Young kids don't have any self moderation skills whatsoever other than physical exhaustion. Addictive games are a perfect match for young one's.
I wish I had taken videos of my kids lying about their "use". The look on their faces was that of addicts. Nothing less, nothing more. You could tell a mile away they were in denial and their little brains just wanted more drugs. Dangerous stuff.
It's interesting to me to watch a video about a new gaming platform and have that video show me all the ways in which said platform will destroy nearly all forms of real human interaction with others, reducing us to unthinking drones looking at screens moving little virtual characters around while our brains whittle away.
This is the problem with the gaming industry. It's the equivalent of very smart engineers using their skills on the web to find ever more effective ways to make people click on ads. It's such a waste of human talent.
Gaming is different but not really. Most of the popular games have no real redeeming qualities. They are black holes into which youth can get sucked into, burn hours, days and years and, in extreme cases, ruin their lives. This, I think, is despicable.
If you want to do well in gaming you have to use your skills to find ways to create addictive games that shift a person into a Pavlovian state where they want more, they keep clicking the buttons and, eventually, they send you money. This has certainly been proven by the iOS space. Games like "Clash of Clans" is one of many examples of this.
Getting truly creative to find ways for people to engage with more intelligent and useful activities is very, very difficult. And so, to usurp part of a phrase that paints an amazing image...when they go low, we go lower.
I have long been disenchanted with what the gaming industry has done to kids. It's making money at the expense of their brains and emotions. It's selling drugs in digital form.
I didn't used to think this way until I saw the effect on my own kids. To make a long story short, my two little ones started to lie to us and play a couple of these addictive games on their iPods.
We have a simple rule at our house: On Saturday's you can play the available games for a couple of hours. The rest of the week play with legos, go outside, play with the dogs, etc.
This worked very well for many years (almost 18 to be precise). In fact, in a lot of cases they'd play less than two hours because they'd get sick of it and prefer to go for physical play.
Until a couple of games surfaced. And they, like evolved bacteria, became immune to the mechanism that made my kids decide to stop playing. Soon we would discover them playing the games in secret under their blankets at 11 at night instead of sleeping. Warnings did not work. And, after a couple of them we took the iPads and iPods away. They had become destructive devices rather than the opposite.
My kids were lying to me in a manner which I would imagine was no different than kids lying about taking drugs.
They've been off the iOS devices and these games for a year. They get their devices back in January. Cleared of all the addictive games. We'll see what happens.
So, yeah, I look at a video like the one for the Switch and immediately imagine how many lives it will destroy if used as portrayed.
Sad. Of course. I know the French people will not be intimidated by this.
I find it sometimes asphyxiating to realize humanity has come so far and yet can devolve into baseline animal behavior at the drop of a feather. We are very far away, as a whole, from being an enlightened species.
Clearly there's a huge problem with a small percentage of people in the Islamic world. It seems obvious the "adults on the planet" could and should have the power to truly unite against this ridiculous minority and stop these lunatics cold. Now. Not in ten years. Now.
I don't know what the solution might be but it certainly isn't anywhere near appeasing or accepting them (the minority is what I am talking about). I do know it is sad and ridiculous that in the year 2015 we have to take off our shoes to get on planes and worry about getting shot in a theater or restaurant.
I wonder if anyone has looked at the idea of not showing the funding goal at all until it is funded (or not) or some other metric. For example, show it during the last week of the campaign.
I am trying to think of a way to allow project originators the freedom to set reasonable goals (a million, whatever) without fear of this one number becoming a drag on their campaign despite the fact that they are actually being honest about what it will take to deliver a quality product.
As someone with over 30 years in hardware + software + mechanical product design and manufacturing one thing that always bothers me on Kickstarter is the dishonesty of funding goals.
Now, I do realize quite a few project owners come at it without the product manufacturing experience. I definitely get that part. Yet, I don't see it as an excuse. People need to do due diligence and get numbers closer to reality.
I remember one of the first (if not the first) RGB LED light bulb project (don't remember the name), perhaps two years ago. I think they went out with a raise target of $50K. If I remember correctly, they ended-up raising nearly $2MM.
The instant I saw that campaign I knew that if they raised anywhere south of somewhere between $1MM and $2MM there was no way in hell they'd be able to get the project done and delivered. The required iterations covering DFM (Design for Manufacturing), mechanical, electrical, firmware, tooling, environmental testing and regulatory testing would burn cash as if it were free. In hardware, each iteration cost real money --and potentially lots of it. $50K was not going to make a dent.
If they go into it knowing the funding goal will not be sufficient and are banking on exceeding it, they are simply not being honest.
My scam alerts go off immediately when I see such a severe project-to-funding-target mismatch. And that's why I call it "dishonest". It could also be "naive" but, again, it's the old "ignorance of the law isn't an excuse" situation. If you are going to go on Kickstarter with a hardware project and have no prior experience in manufacturing, do everyone a favor, do your homework and set a funding goal that will not have you scam your supporters out of money when you burn through it too quickly and can't deliver.
I hope MS does something about this immediately. It's maddening.