How to get into the game industry and why you shouldn't (I can't sleep, sorry).

[Shabubu]

That Montreal studio has done some cool stuff... And, Montreal is a city like no other that I have been to. Whole thing is pretty much underground 'cause of the damned cold. Drive like maniacs.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do, I wouldn't recommend relocating across the Atlantic unless it's a sure thing, though. We're cool over here, but not that cool.

 

[WILLTHEALMIGHTY]

I'm really unsure about what I'll be doing in life, and I was thinking trying my shot the game industry... Thing is, the skills I have are minimal, but I guess you get to learn those later.

Doesn't sound exactly like the nicest industry...

 

[Shabubu]

I'm really unsure about what I'll be doing in life, and I was thinking trying my shot the game industry... Thing is, the skills I have are minimal, but I guess you get to learn those later.

Doesn't sound exactly like the nicest industry...

The way I tested if the industry was what I wanted, was by interning at a game studio in their IT department (minimal skills needed, build stuff). I got to see how things worked, and it was enough to help me decide to get some skills. You make contacts that way as well.

There is a lot of elitism going on, there is an old-crew around the world who were in making games before they became big. They stick together, make it harder for more upstarts. Can't blame them, that's the way this stuff tends to go. *Get off my lawn!*

I think it'll become a little more friendly, in the future. There are things that have to be ironed out first which takes time.

 

[Vaynes]

Shabubu, I'll back up your point made about courses on games design with this BBC article [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7460870.stm].

I work there.

I went to university on a course which was touted as a way into the games industry but turned out to only offer any programming in the first year, the rest of the course was based around video production. Possibly bad research on my part and everyone else on the course.

By the end of the final year there was 5 of us left out of 28 in first year. I'm the only one to be working in the games industry, and thats because I made a mod for my final year project. My tutors tried to talk me into making a video of some sort because the course content in the final year was geared in this direction. Eventually I stopped going to the tutorial sessions and just got on with what I wanted to do.

It was a bit of a gamble but I got 80%+ for the project and a job in the industry.

Can't complain about the conditions so far, I've been through one crunch, it only lasted 2 months and about 60 hours per week. The pay isn't great but I enjoy what I do.

 

[Vaynes]

I'm really unsure about what I'll be doing in life, and I was thinking trying my shot the game industry... Thing is, the skills I have are minimal, but I guess you get to learn those later.

Doesn't sound exactly like the nicest industry...

Play with the tools developers give you to mod their games. You can get experience of coding/art/level design.

Interviewers will look at this stuff if you include it in a portfolio, if you can use one set of tools its easier to learn the in house stuff.

 

[Danny Ocean]

What about the hardware industry? What would one need to break into that?
Hell, can you break into that?

 

[Shabubu]

What about the hardware industry? What would one need to break into that?
Hell, can you break into that?

You talking about making graphics cards, sound cards, CPU's and the like? Out of my experience, but I can wing it. Or, just building machines?

Computer Engineering (not software engineering) -
Electrical Engineering...
Firmware and Driver development = software engineering (focus on embedded systems)

I never really thought of how difficult it would be to get into those fields, they're usually not as high profile. I'd imagine you get a good degree and do the interview gauntlet. Don't see how one would build a portfolio...but, it'll most likely be a hell of a lot of schooling...engineers have some of the most expensive schooling (aside from law and medical.)

 

[Danny Ocean]

I went a looked at some of the game developer's websites. It seems like almost every job there requires a knowledge of C#! Except for art, but I can't draw too well.

What about a creative director, or whoever it is who comes up with ideas?

 

[Jobz]

This was very illuminating, I had wanted to become a video game programmer at one point while I was in high school, and still enjoyed coding. But I lost interest in it during college when I realized how tedious and boring coding games actually was.

Stops being a fun hobby when you get paid to look at it all day, huh? Some people have it in them, I learned I don't.

It's a hobby again, I evolve clocks in my spare time. *shrug*

Yup...They say anything stops being fun when it becomes your job, no matter how much you like it. I haven't coded anything since I dropped computer science as my major, not sure if I'll ever pick it up as a hobby again, but who knows?

 

[Woe Is You]

I've wanted to work in games since my mid-teens, and I think the hardest part for me would be just getting inside the circle when all the weight that I will have is just a maths degree and no experience at creating games bar a crappy recreation of snake in a crappy language (Python).

Actually, Python isn't such a bad language to begin with. It's multi-platform, it's got tons of libraries and code already made for it, is used for just about everything and you can do some rapid development on it. Companies like Google use Python pretty extensively and EVE Online has been pretty much done completely on it. Companies like NetDevil use it for their tools. It isn't as wanted a skill as C/C++, but getting a job as a Python dev isn't a hard task.

The most important part, though, is just learning how to program. Learn how to solve a problem by using computer logic. After that, migrating between languages is usually a pretty easy task.

 

[Shabubu]

I went a looked at some of the game developer's websites. It seems like almost every job there requires a knowledge of C#! Except for art, but I can't draw too well.

What about a creative director, or whoever it is who comes up with ideas?

Creative Directors...oddly enough, I have no 100% answer for that. I believe they're mainly art leads that keeps all the 'creative' things meshing well.

Oh, after looking up what a creative director actually does...yea, it's art-leads and marketing.

Standard art stuff, be an artist and have managerial experience. One of the most important positions on a game, you cause what everyone sees...so, rather important.

 

[Bob_F_It]

If Python isn't as bad as I think, perhaps I will give it another look.
It seemed bad to me because I was finding it hard to use. And I was finding it hard to use because the teacher thought teaching me to use it meant pointing me to their tutorials. Not having any experience at all with programming makes this a huge kick in the pants. If I found an easier way to learn it (one that doesn't make this assumption of past experience) then I'll try it out again.

The book I'm using to learn Flash? It's a "For Dummies" book. Those books are great, especially for newbies.

 

[Shabubu]

If Python isn't as bad as I think, perhaps I will give it another look.
It seemed bad to me because I was finding it hard to use. And I was finding it hard to use because the teacher thought teaching me to use it meant pointing me to their tutorials. Not having any experience at all with programming makes this a huge kick in the pants. If I found an easier way to learn it (one that doesn't make this assumption of past experience) then I'll try it out again.

The book I'm using to learn Flash? It's a "For Dummies" book. Those books are great, especially for newbies.

Python is an odd cookie. It has a learning curve, but it's considered one of the easier languages to pick up (which, is not a good thing, imo). However, it's in several games and I think once you see CPU power increase it'll be inside more games. Games are rarely written in it, but they can embed the python bits into other code. That's how Eve Online is able to get such awesome technology, they use python for a lot of their server work, giving them benefits that Blizzard wishes they had.

I always advise people to learn C# with .net, it's fairly easy to pick up - tons of tutorials and sample code - and it's trivial to go to C++ from that.

Flash, I've tried to learn it several times, I never could wrap my head around the frame-based code. But, when I get the urge again I'll look into one of those For Dummies books.

It's hard to teach yourself to code. I had many false-starts on picking up C++, you just have to wrap your head around those few required logic constructs and then it's practice.

If you have any specific issues, I'd be glad to help. I think the schools should be teaching coding right next to writing and mathematics. Mainly because it's where the world is going.

 

[Shabubu]

I think the schools should be teaching coding right next to writing and mathematics.

I wrote an article detailing how I thought that computers should be used in education; programming was one of the fundamental imperatives. OK, I've only learned BASIC and enough C++ to program a calculator (I am seriously going onto some C++ coding using Allegro, however, and I do know what I'm doing) but the logic learned is really useful in understanding why a computer does what it does.

Python is an odd cookie. It has a learning curve, but it's considered one of the easier languages to pick up (which, is not a good thing, imo). However, it's in several games and I think once you see CPU power increase it'll be inside more games. Games are rarely written in it, but they can embed the python bits into other code. That's how Eve Online is able to get such awesome technology, they use python for a lot of their server work, giving them benefits that Blizzard wishes they had.

That's the thing. Python's a scripting language. It's not particularly useful for programming games yet; no interpreted language is. However, it's great for programming bits of server code.

I think the mentality that interpreted languages can't be used for games is something borne out of the limited cpu cycles of yesteryear. CPU's are getting faster and faster with more and more cores, I think we can have several interpreters running in the future and no one will notice.

The benefits and development speed of these languages goes well with games - development time is God right now in that industry.

 

[Shabubu]

I wrote an article detailing how I thought that computers should be used in education; programming was one of the fundamental imperatives. OK, I've only learned BASIC and enough C++ to program a calculator (I am seriously going onto some C++ coding using Allegro, however, and I do know what I'm doing) but the logic learned is really useful in understanding why a computer does what it does.

Have a link to that article?