The short answer is no.

The long answer is probably no, as you need a certain mix of incredibly talented people with very specific attributes. Valve is notorious for only hiring the absolute best, going for those with wide specialist knowledge (but shallow knowledge of all other aspects of game development... some kind of "T" metaphor is used by them?), and ensuring everyone they hire can be an effective leader/is capable of following an effective leader when needs be. And you can't just have a few people with those attributes; everyone in the company has to be like that.

If you can hire only people that meet the above qualifications, then sure, you could make another Valve. But it's a very difficult (or at least expensive) proposition, and no doubt incredibly challenging to scale.

That sounds like an abstract, but adequate, description of how many genres of games function, though (4X, simulation, puzzle, RPG, to name a few).

I ended up as a Game Designer. It's what I really enjoy doing (even though I didn't know it was a valid career path until right at the end of high school), but I would have definitely considered programming if I knew it was an actual thing, especially since their pay/job security is way better than my career path...

That is what their proposal of teaching kids from school basic programming would do, yes?

I know lots of people view HR as an obstacle, but they are people too, you know. :P

And, you know, game makers, since a more stable and known platform to make things for makes for less development headaches for supporting whatever bizarre way people could have their PC set up for.

So after you add that to publishers, and as other people who've replied to you have noted advantages for consumer consumption (larger screen for viewing, subjectively better controls, less upgrade costs over time to stay on top)... doesn't everyone benefit from consoles, aside from people who just don't like consoles? And that segment of "everyone" (while not of course being everyone) is more than enough of people that they're a useful construct?

Being a game developer myself, I think it's more likely that he's just used to the "code name" version/spelling than anything. It's sorta hard to change what you call the thing you've been working on for months/years to something that probably was decided much closer to the end of that period.

That, or maybe it's his spelling that he likes to use, even if it didn't get traction with many others/anyone else in the company. Just means that he's also wrong, not absolved of all wrongdoing just because he was part of the creation process.

To my knowledge, it's because it's a standard mandated by one (or more) console holders. Since publishers don't like paying for platform-specific stuff they don't need to, the convention holds... and in all honesty, I think the main three all have some kind of guideline along those lines anyways.

There is some seriously inane shit platform holders will call you on to certify the game will be allowed to run on their device.

The issue is, according to TFA:

Harsh? Yes. Despite that, he should have tread more carefully, I'd say. As nice as finding and communicating the issue is, he should have known that trying to access whatever it was when he was obviously known by said company (and as such being watched) was going to put that company on edge.

The summary mentioned "city planning". For the intent of what they probably want to teach students, it seems likely that they'll do something similar to what I did in the Art Institute, where coordinating with an entire class to make a small town. While this seems very simple, you learn a lot when coordinating the style of buildings, ensuring you have a roadwork that everyone can work with (and fit their buildings with), and so forth.

There's no direct feedback, in many cases, but again, I think the focus in this case is more about interpersonal relationships. Such as, if you knock down all the trees in the area for wood and don't replant, other people will get pissed off at you for making their life harder (or at least view more ugly). Similar for people playing with fire too much; imagine what happens when someone's fireplace isn't properly insulated, and they burn down an entire city block.

There's surprisingly large value in seeing how doing your grunt work affects others, and coordinating to achieve the best result. That's something that Sim City can't achieve, and the emergent aspects for things like resource acquisition make it better suited than Lego.

Because taxes do wonder things to multiplying x.99 to things that also end in values that need to be rounded up. Sure.

To be clear, I'm being sarcastic.

Except that rounding only happens for cash transactions. Debit/credit/etc pays the same not-rounded-to-a-nickle amount as before, regardless to whether the user would have saved or spent a few pennies more.

Hell, because of that rule, Canadians have more power to save money. Just debit when you'd have to round up, and pay cash when it rounds down!

I think it's quite safe to assume that the site ran ads, so yes, piracy would be appropriate term.

Money can come from a lot of places. It doesn't have to be from the person procuring the goods (otherwise, why would things like Facebook be so "successful"?).

[Citation needed]

Many people assume that some corporation buying the laws is, as you insinuate, inevitable. For those who care, Valve is not only what they'd think the best bet is, but a legitimately good corporation to do so, considering their stance on many issues.

I can't say I fully agree with them, but many would rather take the devil than can somewhat trust that most others; things like "right to resell" are not a priority for most steam users.

As an designer who works on iOS games, including one that just had a limited launch only in Canada, I can assure you this is untrue. In fact, many developers do "limited launches" in places like Canada, New Zealand, Australia, etc to gather metrics before doing a major launch in the states/worldwide. In fact, as a Canadian, I sometimes get screwed over when certain apps (or songs, or videos) are not available in the Canadian store.

Of course, nothing stops developers from selling their app in every country's App Store on the planet if they want. Even if you don't translate it, it can still produce sales, and some cultures have no (or maybe just little) problem with generating sales for english-only games. But the key is that developers do have the choice to only sell in certain countries, so if they don't do their of research (which is of an unreasonable amount for a smaller dev, in some cases), this article is a prime example of what can happen.

From Geist's summary (emphasis mine):

So in terms of converting to something like braille, there's some leeway. Not sure what exactly, but they're at least somewhat trying to look out for people with disabilities.

My mother fills up her iDevices easily, because she has no qualms putting every song and every music video on her device (of course, until she reached the point where she couldn't. Now she needs to swap things around).

Hell, I have over ten gigs of hand-picked OverClocked ReMixes, and that's not counting the gigs of OCR albums I've downloaded and kept or any of my other kinds of music. While I'm a lot more frugal when it comes down to DLing movies, I can easily see a major movie consumer filling that up in about a year (movies are great with a train/bus commute).

As I've noted in a comment above, some people are digital hoarders, and would rather just have things on them at all times, instead of worrying about removing what you don't want and adding what you think you'll want to watch next.

On the Apple App Store, games can easily hit a gig or more (especially AAA games like Infinity Blade or Rage). While some people don't mind uninstalling and reinstalling apps periodically, a lot of others would rather just have everything on their device at all time, so having more space where software can actually be executed would be useful.

Of course, I'd imagine most people aren't gamers/hoarders, but with even some freemium titles being a third to half a gig, I can see someone getting a large collection going rather fast, even if only downloading chart-topping titles.