
What a strange tweet, maybe I'm misunderstanding the point because I haven't seen the FarCry source code
Can you make a successful game with the ugliest code possible? Of course!
You could eliminate all new lines and build FarCry in a single line of code, you could intentionally obfuscate every single variable and give it random names, you could write it all in a single class in a single giant Update() loop, the compiler doesn't care.
But if you do that you might drown in a mountain of technical debt before ever finishing your game.
I absolutely get that some people are zealots when it comes to clean code and they follow the rules so rigidly that they completely forget the purpose of those rules, they forget the goal is to help you produce a better game/software.
But going to the complete opposite side of the spectrum and completely devaluing those principles seems insane to me.
Clean code isn't magic, it won't magically make your game better or successful, it's merely a set of guiding principles meant to help YOU as the developer. If you ignore them the compiler doesn't care, it will compile the code just the same, it will only affect YOU as the developer.
Should you obsess over writing the most absolute perfect code possible to the point where you're not even making progress in your game? No, of course not!
But should you completely disregard any and all coding standards because a certain game found success without it? No, I don't think that's wise.
Celeste sold millions of copies, was it because it had a 5k loc method? That makes me think of the maxim "correlation is not causation"
You code absolutely doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to "work", but the dirtier code you write the harder it is to get it to "work".
So for me the number one goal is "complete the game" and a close second is "keep code quality as good as possible in order to make it easier on me to actually complete the game"
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