> I mean, it's embarrassing that GTA V required 5 minutes to parse a simple JSON file for 7 years, but the game sold in 170 million copies regardless.
It's because the game was good enough in spite of the tedious load times. I feel like devs often forget the fact that the computer is a black box to 99.9% of users. They don't care about how fast the game should parse JSON, they don't even know what JSON is. They only care about total load time relative to the enjoyment they get from the game.
Right, and I think that was the grandparent's point: a particular aspect of a piece of software being "embarrassing" usually has zero to do with how successful that software will be.
If figuring out that silly JSON parsing issue would have delayed the game's release by even one day, that would have caused problems for people. And clearly, not bothering to find the issue for years (and I believe it was eventually solved by a non-employee, even?) did not reduce the popularity of the game in any noticeable way that anyone cared about.
It's because the game was good enough in spite of the tedious load times. I feel like devs often forget the fact that the computer is a black box to 99.9% of users. They don't care about how fast the game should parse JSON, they don't even know what JSON is. They only care about total load time relative to the enjoyment they get from the game.