Anyone work in the games industry?

i must admit i did want to work in the games industry but never really tried
i enjoyed programing in basic on the c64 and designing sprites but thats as far as it ever went lol
sadly i just dont see how anyone can earn decent money in gaming with the amount of computing graduates there are out there
 
Waiting to hear back about a testing job at a local company, I'm 27 but willing to start from the bottom as its something I really would love to get into, I'm no graphical genius or programming mastermind, but working on story, testing and even some voiceover for games is something I'd love to find myself in in the future, fingers crossed!
 
It's somethin i'm workin towards havin finished a computer sciences and games tech course at uni now but as a lot have said, most uni courses (includin the one i did) are pretty useless in terms of games

My advise and I'm sure Nokkon and a few others would agree, work hard on a portfolio, get involved in a project with a couple of friends maybe to show off what you can actually do. Personally I think that's much more worth while than the degree from a course like mine thats trained me up in a variety of programming languages and modelling packages but not really excelled in any particular language/package. I'm ok in lots of different things but not great in any particular area

So I'm busy workin on my portfolio and lookin for some other IT related job for the time being till I can get my portfolio up to scratch
 
I got my job as an artist in games development, just by drawing pictures in Deluxe paint(amiga/pc), sending them to random games development companies and i just got lucky. That was 15 years ago and games were a lot simpler then :). Now i do environment art(model/texture/light/level tech stuff) for current gen and next gen games (ive worked on 15 in total).

Im now very tired, bald and i have the physique of a 50 year old man, thanks to this job :)
 
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Buzza said:
I got a job as an artist in games development, just by drawing pictures in Deluxe paint(amiga/pc) and sending them to random games development companies and i got lucky. That was 15 years ago and games were a lot simpler then :) now i do environment art(model/texture/light/level tech stuff) for current gen and next gen games (ive worked on 15 in total).

Im now very tired, bald and i have the physique of a 50 year old man, thanks to this job :)
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You're working on next gen games already :eek:
 
when i say next gen i mean PS3/360. Im back doing PS2 stuff at the moment, so i still think of that as current gen ;) theres still a lot of PS2's out there being used.
 
Bosses son is working on the next Peter Molyneux game, he's 11 and is doing the motion capture/voicing for the main character. Both under NDA so have no idea what it's called or about, can't get him to talk!

Eventually aim to do something game related (nothing on the Wii/novelty franchise though, something rewarding and actually worth doing) if programming takes my fancy, just don't have the time for anything outside work at the mo, stuck doing the occasional vb.net app. Would love to go to Uni and do a real programming degree.
 
NokkonWud said:
Anything but characters really.
Asset design would be my preferred option, then environments, then vehicles. :)
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Character art needs to be top notch to have a chance of a job there, something people really have to specialise in.

We don't have any "asset design" roles. If you're thinking props and stuff, then it's done by each department when they need it. So enviro guys model bins, boxes and stuff. Character guys model the few little things they'd need for interactions and us car guys model anything that goes on the car.

Car guys are usualy just as specialist as character guys too, I've seen some enviro modellers attempts at cars.... :o:rolleyes:;):p

Unfortunatly I think the "next gen" tag is going to stick for quite a long time. Especially with the Wii giving a reason for the differating of technology.

I've said it beforem but uni degrees whilst not great, give you a taste of games subjects and it's upto the student to find a subject they enjoy and then work to show off their skills in that area.

Timbrad, voiceovers are usualy given to proper actors (although we have comical in studio voice overs whilst early in development :cool: ) Ubisoft has a mocap place in Montreal for this kind of thing.

Yoko, there may be plenty of computer graduates but there's still a shortage of programmers and on the art side, talent still stands out.

Venom closing recently helped us get several positions filled that were advertised for months.
 
My brother works for The Creative Assembly (character artist) and a good friend works for Splash Damage. I know a few people who work at Lionhead. I've been very tempted to get a job in the industry, but prefer to be a consumer.
 
JaFFa said:
Also amazing as I thought stainless died a long time ago, how long have you been there? Were you involved in the carmageddon days ?
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No, I joined over a year ago, I wasnt hear for cg. However most of the original devs are still here, we even have a kool little cg shrine with all the boxes and three metal Z pczone game of the year awards.
 
Herminator said:
Car guys are usualy just as specialist as character guys too, I've seen some enviro modellers attempts at cars.... :o:rolleyes:;):p
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Same. But then it's the same the other way around, I've seen car modellers try environments and some I saw at Teesside are shockingly poor.

I used to model cars first, then went into environments as that's what I always wanted to do, sadly when I lost my work it was a lot of that earlier stuff like cars, helicopters, tanks etc... Which obviously sucked.
 
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