The Framework

If one is to believe the books and magazine articles, websites, and game developers one talks to these days, there seems to be a general consensus that the bare-metal, code-it-from-scratch mentality just doesn't cut it any longer when developing games. Software engineering practices long appreciated elsewhere in the software development world are finally making an appearance in the last bastion of the garage-hacking, caffeine-swilling coder.

This is for a lot of reasons. For instance, game publishing schedules ("If it doesn't ship in time for Christmas, we're gonna lose our shirts!"), lack of in-house expertise ("Sure I can write that, just let me brush up on my number theory first."), egg-on-the-face from having shipped buggy products (let's not name names), improved tools and the general enlightenment of the coding community, amongst many other factors, are all changing the way games are made.