Video game creators
- Thread starter jsmoke
- Start date
I'm a programmer/designer in the games industry.
Originally I did physics and realised I wanted to do games about 3 years in. So I taught myself C++ and started learning as much as possible. You will get nowhere in this industry unless you are a strong self-learner!!!
I entered a well known games competition with some friends and we won and were nominated for a BAFTA 'Ones to Watch' award. This really helped me get my first industry job.
I've only been in the industry for about 3 years but I've found it great. The people are generally friendly and smart. The workforce is very young so tends to be liberal and progressive.
Working conditions do seem to vary greatly though (my company was fine with basically no 'crunch' but some other studios apply a lot of pressure to work long hours) - generally the smaller and newer a company is, the better the working conditions.
There are very few women!
The industry is relatively small so don't **** people off as news will get round.
General advice for getting into the industry as a programmer:
- Do something mathsy at uni (engineering, physics, maths, computer science)
- Make games in your spare time (you need at least one fairly polished small game in your portfolio)
- Try and work on a game project in a team (e.g. with friends/people you met online/at uni etc) - companies love this in your portfolio
- Don't think that everyone is making AAA games you have heard of, many people break into the industry working for start-ups or small companies making casual games rather than Halo 17.
- Always keep learning (hopefully you love programming and games so this should come naturally)
Can't give specific advice on artist/produces/designer but there is plenty out there.
Originally I did physics and realised I wanted to do games about 3 years in. So I taught myself C++ and started learning as much as possible. You will get nowhere in this industry unless you are a strong self-learner!!!
I entered a well known games competition with some friends and we won and were nominated for a BAFTA 'Ones to Watch' award. This really helped me get my first industry job.
I've only been in the industry for about 3 years but I've found it great. The people are generally friendly and smart. The workforce is very young so tends to be liberal and progressive.
Working conditions do seem to vary greatly though (my company was fine with basically no 'crunch' but some other studios apply a lot of pressure to work long hours) - generally the smaller and newer a company is, the better the working conditions.
There are very few women!
The industry is relatively small so don't **** people off as news will get round.
General advice for getting into the industry as a programmer:
- Do something mathsy at uni (engineering, physics, maths, computer science)
- Make games in your spare time (you need at least one fairly polished small game in your portfolio)
- Try and work on a game project in a team (e.g. with friends/people you met online/at uni etc) - companies love this in your portfolio
- Don't think that everyone is making AAA games you have heard of, many people break into the industry working for start-ups or small companies making casual games rather than Halo 17.
- Always keep learning (hopefully you love programming and games so this should come naturally)
Can't give specific advice on artist/produces/designer but there is plenty out there.
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When I was younger I wanted to work in the games industry and spent most of my teenage years programming games engine,, I got pretty good replicates of quake 3 etc. however I heard too many horror stories and it is also hard to make a career out of it (e.g. Much less opportunities for progression, you start off Asa. Programmer and go to senior programmer and then what - not many leads and managers around compared to other fields). Plus you tend to get underpaid, especially if they rely on profit sharing. A friend of the family is quite famous in the games industry and he basically quit.
Saying that recently started making my own little game engine, Just toying around really. I had completely lost interest in programming but remembered my love for developing graphics, physics, lighting models etc.. I find it is a nice mix of maths, physics, interesting data structure and algorithms, requires efficient coding and pulling out performance. In any industry you spend most of your time doing repetitive boring glue code, tests, UI and general fluff rather than writing algorithms - and I say that as someone who regularly has to write fairly advanced algorithms but anytime you are in industry you always end up with the glue code. The thing is if you work on a commercials game you will suffer much of the same problems, just being part of a big team.
Saying that recently started making my own little game engine, Just toying around really. I had completely lost interest in programming but remembered my love for developing graphics, physics, lighting models etc.. I find it is a nice mix of maths, physics, interesting data structure and algorithms, requires efficient coding and pulling out performance. In any industry you spend most of your time doing repetitive boring glue code, tests, UI and general fluff rather than writing algorithms - and I say that as someone who regularly has to write fairly advanced algorithms but anytime you are in industry you always end up with the glue code. The thing is if you work on a commercials game you will suffer much of the same problems, just being part of a big team.
Interesting, how about indie development, 2D platformers seem quite popular just now, or at least they did a couple of years ago.
I suppose indie is what you make of it and if you can make a living which I doubt many do unless your pretty skilled.
Keep writing out 100s of word replies to this but then revising it and/or realising people don't really care about a lot of the details.
I did some commercial game development back in the day off connections I made while doing Quake 2/3 modding, didn't like how things tended to fall apart when trying to bring the talent of a group of individuals together on one product and the naive or just plain bad management and got out when it started to be run more like a money making business with innovation stiffled.
I got into it from the perspective of the cutting edge of development inspired mostly by Elite and the idea of a persistant large scale world instead of the 2D platformers and ultimately very linear adventure games of the time.
At the time was no real education path for game development - while I did study programming, etc. it was mostly business orientated and I ended up mostly teaching myself C/C++ from the game/mod source for stuff like Quake 2. I find people doing it as a career distasteful as they don't tend to have the same passion for it or pride in the finished product and tend to push out some "it'll do" features/code when they are mostly working.
I'm in a bit of an odd position as I don't have any real formal qualifications in the industry, my industry experience is very fragmented with work in a few failed startups, a little bit of work on projects Activision ran etc. and a couple of successful products that were built for professional simulation rather than gaming use. But have a wide depth of technical insight into engine programming both at an overview level and the details of feature implementation, level design (again technically proficient but lack a real artistic flair) and so on. Past few years due to work and other stuff not really managed to do much with it but like D.P. intend to get back to it from a hobby perspective soon.
I did some commercial game development back in the day off connections I made while doing Quake 2/3 modding, didn't like how things tended to fall apart when trying to bring the talent of a group of individuals together on one product and the naive or just plain bad management and got out when it started to be run more like a money making business with innovation stiffled.
I got into it from the perspective of the cutting edge of development inspired mostly by Elite and the idea of a persistant large scale world instead of the 2D platformers and ultimately very linear adventure games of the time.
At the time was no real education path for game development - while I did study programming, etc. it was mostly business orientated and I ended up mostly teaching myself C/C++ from the game/mod source for stuff like Quake 2. I find people doing it as a career distasteful as they don't tend to have the same passion for it or pride in the finished product and tend to push out some "it'll do" features/code when they are mostly working.
I'm in a bit of an odd position as I don't have any real formal qualifications in the industry, my industry experience is very fragmented with work in a few failed startups, a little bit of work on projects Activision ran etc. and a couple of successful products that were built for professional simulation rather than gaming use. But have a wide depth of technical insight into engine programming both at an overview level and the details of feature implementation, level design (again technically proficient but lack a real artistic flair) and so on. Past few years due to work and other stuff not really managed to do much with it but like D.P. intend to get back to it from a hobby perspective soon.
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