This is missing a big part of the dynamic. Much enterprise software is what Joel Spolsky describes as "internal software"[0]:
> Internal software only has to work in one situation on one company’s computers.… Here usability is a lower priority, because a limited number of people need to use the software, and they don’t have any choice in the matter, and they will just have to deal with it. Speed of development is more important. Because the value of the development effort is spread over only one company, the amount of development resources that can be justified is significantly less.
So, a lot of enterprise software sucks because it simply doesn't make sense to make it decent. No matter how directly the end users communicate with the developers, this won't change.
The economics of internal software don't apply to products like Blackboard (which would go in Joel's "shrinkwrap" category), but the vast majority of enterprise software is internal and thus sucks for reasons entirely unrelated to this thread.
> Games are unique for two reasons. First, the economics of game development are hit-oriented. Some games are hits, many more games are failures, and if you want to make money on game software you recognize this and make sure that you have a portfolio of games so that the blockbuster hit makes up for the losses on the failures. This is more like movies than software.
> The bigger issue with the development of games is that there’s only one version. Once your users have played through Duke Nukem 3D, they are not going to upgrade to Duke Nukem 3.1D just to get some bug fixes and new weapons. With some exceptions, once somebody has played the game to the end, it’s boring to play it again. So games have the same quality requirements as embedded software and an incredible financial imperative to get it right the first time. Shrinkwrap developers have the luxury of knowing that if 1.0 doesn’t meet people’s needs and doesn’t sell, maybe 2.0 will.
The first part of that's kinda true, but DLC means the second part isn't. People will pay for what amounts to a point upgrade for game software.
> Internal software only has to work in one situation on one company’s computers.… Here usability is a lower priority, because a limited number of people need to use the software, and they don’t have any choice in the matter, and they will just have to deal with it. Speed of development is more important. Because the value of the development effort is spread over only one company, the amount of development resources that can be justified is significantly less.
So, a lot of enterprise software sucks because it simply doesn't make sense to make it decent. No matter how directly the end users communicate with the developers, this won't change.
The economics of internal software don't apply to products like Blackboard (which would go in Joel's "shrinkwrap" category), but the vast majority of enterprise software is internal and thus sucks for reasons entirely unrelated to this thread.
[0]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/05/06/five-worlds/