This is the thing that drives artists and craftsmen to despair and drink: That a flawed, buggy, poor quality work can be "successful" while something beautiful and technically perfect can fail.
San Andreas might be rough under the hood, but on the surface it was nothing short of a masterpiece of game design. The engine was so complex and the cities felt alive, and the game could handle a lot of general nonsense. Still one of my favorite go-to games.
The job of the artist is to take the years of expertise and distill it down into something "enjoyable." The hardest mental hurdle to get over is that people just don't care about the technicals being perfect. Hell, the final product doesn't even need to be beautiful; it just needs to be arresting.
One artist can take months painting a picture of a landscape where everything is perfect. And the next artist can throw 4 colors of paint at a wall. The fact that lots of people enjoy the work of the second artist doesn't invalidate the work of the first. The two artists are focusing on different things; and it's possible for both of them to be successful at reaching their goals.
Let's be clear that it was a success very much in spite of UB, not because of it. And there was still a cost--likely at least hundreds of person-hours spent fixing other similar bugs due to UB (if not more).
I worked in gamedev around the time this game was made and this would have been very much an ordinary, everyday kind of bug. The only really exceptional thing about it is that it was discovered after such a long time.
This is the thing that drives artists and craftsmen to despair and drink: That a flawed, buggy, poor quality work can be "successful" while something beautiful and technically perfect can fail.
San Andreas might be rough under the hood, but on the surface it was nothing short of a masterpiece of game design. The engine was so complex and the cities felt alive, and the game could handle a lot of general nonsense. Still one of my favorite go-to games.
The job of the artist is to take the years of expertise and distill it down into something "enjoyable." The hardest mental hurdle to get over is that people just don't care about the technicals being perfect. Hell, the final product doesn't even need to be beautiful; it just needs to be arresting.
Heck, sometimes the thing that's most interesting about a work is people arguing over whether or not it's art.
One artist can take months painting a picture of a landscape where everything is perfect. And the next artist can throw 4 colors of paint at a wall. The fact that lots of people enjoy the work of the second artist doesn't invalidate the work of the first. The two artists are focusing on different things; and it's possible for both of them to be successful at reaching their goals.
Some artist also think "is mot music because it has no guitars".
The standars "artist" have are atificial and snoby.
How can Deadmau5/whatever EDM artist sell so much?
Let's be clear that it was a success very much in spite of UB, not because of it. And there was still a cost--likely at least hundreds of person-hours spent fixing other similar bugs due to UB (if not more).
I worked in gamedev around the time this game was made and this would have been very much an ordinary, everyday kind of bug. The only really exceptional thing about it is that it was discovered after such a long time.