@ Scott Conner: I partially agree, especially on your point that game developers tend to only develop for 1-2 platforms, while web developers have to watch out a bit more. However, we’re living in times where developers have created abstractions like frameworks and libraries for working with the web, and building specialized solutions is easier than ever before nowadays even with IE6 still around. Also, web developers tend to be too afraid to use gracefull degradation / progressive enhancement for actual features, which I think is a shame. Also, while it’s true that web devs might need to learn a bit more syntax, they only usually learn 2-3 programming languages – JavaScript, and one or two backend languages. On the other side, you pointed out C++ and Open GL, both a lot more complex that what we usually have to work with (memory management, anyone? ). Thanks for the good comment!

@ dave: That’s excellent, I will read your post right away! Great that I was able to start a dialogue. In fact, I should have pointed out in the post that this is of course a web developer’s objective – I would *additionally* hire game devs, not exclusively, because as you’re completely right, both have crucial skills I’d need. Cheers!

@ bojan: I do agree, but this is the same for the web development world. I’ve been working on plugins and widgets for the last couple years now, and it’s really a whole different world than writing a specific application. The very same goes for game development.

@ bailey: see my comment above. It’s exactly the same situation. Web developers often have the luxury to deliver throw away code because they can literally patch without having their users to install new software – game development followed in the recent years, when consoles got hard disks. Frameworks always have to be more mature because they’re versioned and delivered across the web. Concerning specific solutions, it’s important to note that we’re moving into a direction where specific solutions will happen more often in web dev as well. If you’re building a high end mobile app, chances are likely that you’re targeting webkit only (if you Opera Mobile / Fennec).

Take it from someone who has spent a decade in games industry before moving on – the code in games is no sloppier than what you can see in many other industries. Au contraire – people who write engines and frameworks do usually sweat over every single line of C/C++/asm/shader code. The actual game-code is a throw-away and it matters not if it’s optimal/nice or not.

I’ve had both web and game experience. I know both web and game programmers. And while I agree that game programmers are very resourceful (they have to be), they are in practice very sloppy.

Most professional game code is never seen, mostly proprietary, and duct-taped together. The games are usually designed for one or two platforms in mind and that “fully specified-world” symptom that game programmers have does not translate well to web development.

Web developers are forced to evolve much faster and learn a wider variety of technologies and languages.

A game programmer probably knows Photoshop (if they are also an artist), but mostly either C/C++ OpenGL or AS2/3. Maybe a little bit of assembly if you’re boss like Carmack.

For even a simple web application to be done correctly, you probably need to know HTML/CSS/Javascript/(PHP/RoR/Erlang/ASP/.NET)/(MySQL/Couch DB) as well as strong Unix skills.

In general, game programmers have a static solution-stack and often get suckered into the golden-hammer idealism that their technology provides (Why use iPhone built in UI if I can spend 3 weeks writing my own pretty library in OpenGL?)

Merely my $0.02, based on experience. YMMV

There is a strong urge to keep the status-quo. People with complimentary skills but different background can bring new thoughts that your typical pros might not have thought of or even ruled out just because it’s not “the way it is done”.

Nice article.