Posts by Allen Cheung
The Growth Trajectory of a Front-End Engineer
I've been wrestling with this question for years: what does a successful, senior-to-staff-to-VP level front-end engineer look like? It's a question that I've found has different answers depends on who's answering, which…
Cashing in on Engineering Wisdom
I think every few months, I'll come across an article that laments that the software industry is explicitly and implicitly ageist; that it's infatuated with youth and has a frat-boy monoculture that does not welcome women…
Outsized Credit to Undersized Effort
It's easy to derive patterns and conjure connections from the tidbits of news that we consume daily. Whether it's drawing a line between the strategy underlining all of Microsoft's products, to placing all the…
What Happened to Final Fantasy?!
This generation of consoles has not been kind to Japanese game developers. The quality of games from "western" game developers has leaped ahead in terms of innovative systems, advanced technology and worldwide appeal; while Japanese quirkiness has proven…
Used Games and the Modern Gaming Economy
As disgusting as it felt, I went out today and sold a bunch of my PS3 games to Gamespot. Then turned around and used that credit to buy a few other games, thus enabling the second-hand gaming market to live…
The Free-to-Play Gaming Evolution
Games have come a long way since when they cost $80 and came in cardboard boxes with terrible cover art. The mechanism of funding (Kickstarter), the development process (ranging from tiny one-person indie shops to global studios), the medium (disc…
