No joke. In a couple of years, I'll be up for my 20 year high school reunion, and the time has flown. I work with I guy who I graduated high school with. Every now and then, as we are discussing the events of our lives, one of us will turn to the other and ask, "when did we get old?" It happens before you know it!Signa said:
So You Want To Be a Game Developer?
- Thread starter Shamus Young
- Start date
Good thing I wanted to go into a more friendly business, the film industry! 
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Living in the Peninsula, I have and had several friends and acquaintances who work in the games industry. I live between Playstation and EA. I have heard stories and seen these people. They have a passion for their work, but a life filled with many long hours, and no sense of job security until almost the last minute. Some get by fine, at least with appearances, others quit and moved on to other jobs.
This, on top of all I read about the industry, has killed so much of my desire to make games. I still have some, but I am very busy myself these days, with teaching and tutoring, that it isn't easy to find time elsewhere. So, yeah, making games is hard, especially on the grunts.
Thanks for the article, Shamus.
This, on top of all I read about the industry, has killed so much of my desire to make games. I still have some, but I am very busy myself these days, with teaching and tutoring, that it isn't easy to find time elsewhere. So, yeah, making games is hard, especially on the grunts.
Thanks for the article, Shamus.
You can learn (hell even copy-paste the example code of)Bat Vader said:
YouTube tutorials and Google. I'm not saying making good games is easy but as the article states you can learn from home, actually imo thats the ideal. Thats what Yahtzee does, he is a self-taught game developer.
And imo he is decent, the graphics fail him but he isn't an artist or anything of the sort but his ideas are creative. The art of theft is kinda clever, of course not revolutionary but there aren't a lot of 2D stealth games outside of Flash.swf games.
The problem with me though is that it just doesn't click inside my head when I am trying to learn it on my own. I had the same issue with math in high school as well. I can do up to simple algebra pretty well but after that I just couldn't learn it. It didn't matter how much I studied or how much tutoring I had I was just incapable of learning any type of math past simple algebra. It's the same with programming too. I could watch dozens of tutorials, study it, or have someone personally tutor me on it but the end result is that I just can't learn it. I don't know why. There is just some barrier there that seems to prevent me from learning it.Lazule said:
I appreciate the help but I am a lost cause.
Robyrt said:How many aspiring game developers are going to get a job in a casino? Almost none of them. Instead, you should compare to a job that they could have had instead, with equivalent skills and training. As Shamus points out, going into the private sector tech industry instead, you'll get paid more for less work, more stability, and an equally cushy white-collar office environment.Therumancer said:
It sounds like your career path is just as unstable, underpaid, and unhealthy as game development, but that doesn't have to be the norm. I spent a lot of time and money getting a job that doesn't have any of these problems. I'm sorry to inform you, however, that it doesn't involve goofing off all day for 6 months and then realizing I actually needed to write some code. If you think your security job is more action-packed than mine, we are hiring
The point here is that according to the few articles I've seen that are written from people outside the industry, namely looking at that old one from Maxim, game developers are being paid VERY well for what they do. What's more part of my point was that going by the various studio tours and such and comparing it to say the IT departments I've been through it's the exact opposite of a harsh working environment. Understand I worked for the largest Casino in the world (Foxwoods) for 4 years (it's called "The Emerald City" as it has pretty much anything you can think of at the resort/casino and an around the clock population of a small city), and the third largest (Mohegan Sun) for six years which is similar to Foxwoods but a little smaller. Whether bigger resort/casinos have been constructed since I was forced into retirement I do not know, but we're talking a truly massive scale. The IT / Technical and administration departments (notice the "s") were not small.
One thing you also have to consider is that the whole argument of "what I could do with these skills elsewhere" is pretty ridiculous as simply put the market is flooded with people with computer degrees, computer degrees, management degrees, and oxygen are probably among the three most common elements in the USA. In theory if someone could land their dream job with their degree, of course they would make more money, that's what dream jobs are all about. Sadly the thing is those jobs are already taken. One of the problems with the USA in particular is that degrees lose their value when everyone has one. Objectively speaking working in game development is a great job, and frankly those working in game development are likely lying if they claim they could do better elsewhere, because if they could the industry wouldn't have them by their wrinklies when it plays their layoff games, and they can be easily replaced. This does not mean that the jobs themselves are bad in any way. What's more things like Criminal Justice (especially Forensics which is what I was going for) probably involve more than your average technical degree, I never compared it point by point and credit by credit. That said for financial reasons I was unable to complete my degree which is why I wound up where I was (it's unknown how much of my training could be translated into some kind of credits at this point given the reasons I've been forced to retire), and to be blunt I was still swimming in debt (which I managed to pay off actually).
One of the big reasons I have a "vendetta" against White Collar workers as Frappe puts it, and why people should care, is because one of the big problems in the US is that we simply have too many people training for and chasing after those kinds of careers, and becoming incredibly arrogant due to thinking they are something special or expecting to be a leader. You can't build an army entirely made of officers and support troops so to speak. As a result we have people starving in the streets with computer and management degrees, and the need to hire people to do regular work from outside the country, not to mention how it influences things like the illegal immigration problem. You might see 200 people interview for middle management, but if your lucky 2 guys to show up for a job working a mechanical press because so few people even have a clue as to how to do it (I don't). The very fact that game developers QQ about what is a very cushy job is the height of ridiculous decadence.
Given the overpopulation of computer related degrees and the situation, perhaps one day we shall see the industry develop where coders will be paid piecemeal for their work, chained to their desks, with security guards patrolling their cubical farms from suspended catwalks, keeping people on task with electrified whips... you know "Scumsoft" from "Space Quest III".