Anyone work in the computer game industry in any form?

I have to agree with Fox. From speaking to people who have done it, It is like any industry that appears to be "fun". everyone wants to do it so unless you are very good or work very hard it is not going to be easy to get a good position.

However unlike being a rock star or a porn star you wont get as much money, it isn't actually that fun unless you are really high up and are actually allowed to design, rather than code all day.



Become an accountant.
 
Well lets put it this way, a games tester will earn about 12k a year unless they go up the ranks of pay in this area in which it MAY go up to about 14k. A programmer however will probably earn double that. Oh you will probably also have your love of gaming destroyed, and you WILL be required to work overtime whether you like it or not. Especially close to release date. I forgot to mention that a games tester is a very unsecure job as getting a permenant contract is next to impossible as testers arent viewed as a valuable asset to the company.
 
Spuds said:
I'm part of the customer support department for Jagex (Developers of RuneScape), although my role has more to do with identifying and documenting cases of intellectual property infringement that it does dealing with our players. I'm in a specialist team that deal with account hijackers, bots, private servers, goldfarming, etc.

Email is in trust if you want any more details.
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Jagex are scum.
 
SideWinder said:
Just to echo what Fox said...

From what i have read throughout the years on the forum, working in the computer games industry is low paid, rather dull at times, ruins your love for computers, long hours but can be quite cool at times. And once you get off the bottom rung, things only get better.
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i used to think beeing a games tester would be a great job then a program about it killed that illusion lol.

aparently a lot of well known people in the industry started as games testers though so i guess its just a way onto the ladder
 
Spuds said:
I take it I've banned your account recently then :p
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I don't play the game anymore.
I wouldn't play it now anyways.
I was level 102 with 57 mil (Not loads), but I'd given my account to my GF's brother, he got the account phised within an hour (He was hit with one of the "Join my clan" scams).
Anyways, I got the account back for him, but everything was gone, the account was essentially pointless now.
Jagex could easily returned what was lost. Point being, they wouldn't, but they're happy to take the 100's of pound in members the account had used.
 
I know lots of people who work\have worked in the video games industry, mostly as engineers for various prominent UK development houses. Hard, difficult work, long hours and relatively poor pay is the general consensus. That said, some of these people still enjoy it regardless. My old tech lead (a physics\lead dev on titles I'm sure many of you will have played) told me to "avoid it (the industry) like the plague".
 
I'm doing a masters in game design in trinity at the moment. I'll let you know this time next year what it's like :)

General advice I've been given is to get 2 years experience anywhere you can, try and get into a large studio even if it means being on the bottom rung of a huge place like EA. Once you have those 2 years experience then you can start looking at the "good" studios where you'd actually like to work like valve/blizzard/firaxis etc.

The only way you will ever succeed to become an actual game developer is through programming, artists aren't valued enough anymore in the organisation as you generally need 100 artists to every 5 programmers in an AAA game.

Going down the testing route is also pointless. They try and sell it as a good way to get into the industry, don't be fooled. If you're a good tester, guess what, they'll want to keep you as a tester, if you're a bad tester you'll be fired, thousands of others who want the job. There simply is no magic way to go from testing to the actual development team.

Also @ the jagex guy, do you know Eoin on the tools programming team? Went to school with him but I'm two years behind him college wise, he did the course i'm doing before going to Jagex.
 
wush said:
I'm a programmer and all I can say is that it depends greatly on which studio you work for.

It's a young industry so there are a fair amount of places run by people who don't know what they are doing, or have dodgy practices. I'm happy where I am.

Games testing is a dead end as far as a career stepladder in many cases.
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This is the best description so far...

I've done some previous work, tho mostly just contracted to build specific levels or program a specific portion of a game i.e. a DLL providing features through API.

Pay is generally quite low for what your doing regardless of the studio - but in many cases thats mitigated by the fact that generally things are a bit more laid back... unless your working for somewhere thats under EA, etc. tho I think EA have eased up a bit since the fiasco awhile back.

Hours can be quite varied... as you get towards release obviously your gonna spend quite a lot of time in the office... especially if your doing bug fixes as if your really into it you won't want to put it down in the middle of getting something fixed... and testing back and forth til its all nice and polished can take up more time than you expect... but if your as into it as I was you don't really notice the time.

I personally really enjoyed it as you were often on the cutting edge and back in the day had more freedom to experiment and think outside the box, tho a lot of studios these days play it commercially safe, use a lot of middleware and its generally not as interesting - but a lot safer long term jobwise. That said some productions are taking on the budget and scale of a small movie these days which makes it a bit more interesting.

EDIT: Personally I gave up on it as a career once publishers started taking more control and enforcing more commercially safe practises... I find it much more fun to experiment even if I never produce something releaseable in the long term.
 
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I have done some final balancing for various RTS games.

Martini1991 said:
I don't play the game anymore.
I wouldn't play it now anyways.
I was level 102 with 57 mil (Not loads), but I'd given my account to my GF's brother, he got the account phised within an hour (He was hit with one of the "Join my clan" scams).
Anyways, I got the account back for him, but everything was gone, the account was essentially pointless now.
Jagex could easily returned what was lost. Point being, they wouldn't, but they're happy to take the 100's of pound in members the account had used.
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Owned.
 
Spuds said:
Why? Because we can't protect people from their own stupidity?

We've put in several mechanisms to protect peoples items if the complete stranger they happily gave their password too surprisingly turns around and steals their account. We've even prosecuted the people stealing accounts, but there is only some much you can do to protect people from themselves. And no, it isn't as easy as simply giving people their items back.
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I wasn't say you got owned, im saying Martini1991 did.... I am well aware the idea that an end user cannot be protected from themselves.
 
I know several people who work in the industry for a number of different studios so I've probably got a reasonable overview of what goes on although I don't work in it myself. It can be long hours with little in the way of satisfaction if the game you work on gets canned or you are developing for a platform you don't like.

However most of my mates do enjoy it, if you work for a good company then it can be fairly rewarding both in terms of remuneration and the satisfaction that you get from the job. Overtime tends to be the norm rather than the exception and the reason for this was put by a mate as "it started as a bedroom industry where people worked for the love of it and it's not fully grown up yet" which is a fairly succinct way of putting it. It has a lot of positives to recommend it but it may destroy your ordinary enjoyment of games as you'll start to notice game failings that you would simply have glossed over before.
 
Thank you for all the replies. I've heard a lot about it being a tough industry but it's great to have some first hand responses.

I've got a huge passion for gaming and I'm not a money driven person so the lack of a good wage and long hours doesn't put me off.

I'd be more interested in the world building and level design area, but heading done any other route wouldn't put me off as long as I get my foot in the door.

So what type of courses would you take to help you in the direction?

Thanks
 
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