While game design is a tad bit challengeing, I think its true that alot of people do not understand how long it takes just to set up the simplest things in a game. Programming with any 3d Library is no real treat Just to incorparate a prerendered FMV on a title screen took me 2300 lines of code. Thie was to set up the basic aritecture to show the movie, and include the basic title menu. Thats a lot of work.

What BatChao illueded to is mainly the problem. A lot of what I have been seeing is publishers using nothing but 3d Studio Max and maya to rush titles out there. Which brings me to my point. There has been a general huge lapse in the programming side of video games over the past years. Game making suites can create "bloatware" games quick and cheap. The end result is sacrificing product quality for cost. Considering just how long and tedious programming by hand can be, this is not largley a bad move.

This has been my biggest beef with many game design companies of late. While gaming mediums do not loose so much in the :bloatware" transition, control over the engine and general interaction does loose quite a bit. To me, the sacrifice is not worth it when you run into such occorences as a flying semi :P

Bipper