"I want to be a game developer...nah"

[jamail77]

This is me. I'm majoring in Computer Science partly because of my love for video games. The thing is I have always wanted my career to be about directly helping people less fortunate than me and getting into game development feels kind of, well, it feels kind of selfish. Don't get me wrong: Video games can have deep messages. In fact, they can influence altruistic people to be more productive through such messages. Then you've got things like the Humble Bundle that let you donate part of their profits to charity, meaning those charities get more money than they would have gotten from just the people who actively follow them.

These are all indirect acts of good though. When I'm not directly feeling good it feels like I'm lying to myself about how good of a person I'm trying to be. There's not only that, but I'd get to sit at a computer or game idea brainstorming room or wherever else game developers work throughout the day for large portions of the day messing with an art form I love. I might get to help a lot of people that way (though again it'd be mostly indirect help), but the environment is awfully comfortable. There'd be no physical labor or physical suffering to endure or witness whatsoever. It would have me fully embrace my own goals for myself while only partially embracing my goals for others. My dream career has to equally help me and help others; it can't be lopsided like that.

Who here has thought about becoming a game developer and then decided against it? What are your reasons? Anybody still on the fence about it? To be fair, I haven't fully abandoned the idea myself. I wouldn't mind doing it on the side as a part-time job or as a hobbyist though the former would be very hard to manage. Then again, the former does come with the advantage of a paycheck; if you're a hobbyist you're probably not making any money off your work.

EDIT: I should probably add that the things that come out about working conditions don't exactly make me keen on game developing either. Of course, you could start your own company or make sure to prevent that by looking for workplaces with reasonable work conditions. Still, there's always a chance you'll have to deal with bad working conditions inherent to the game industry at some point no matter how much you try to avoid it. Plus, there's the toxicity from upset fans and the anger over discussions like sexism and what not. It might be too much to handle. Then again, I guess you could say these things about any industry to an extent.

IMPORTANT EDIT, PLEASE READ: I have gotten a lot of responses implying I am perpetuating the stereotype that games are a waste of time that don't do anyone any good. If I thought that I wouldn't have an account here on this website. I know all the good games can do. I just don't believe games do any DIRECT good; they do INDIRECT good. Games can't literally eject food for the hungry and money for the poor out of the TV screen after all. But, yes, games can help people in other ways. I don't deny this. Games have helped people regain motor control, get past depression, all that.

I have also been asked why I can't do what I am clearly interested in and still do charitable work, that it's not selfish to go for your passions and even when it does become selfish it's okay to be a little selfish for yourself. I get that as well. My passion for games comes nowhere close to my passion to help people though. I don't want to just donate to charity or go to a soup kitchen once a week. I want my career to be about helping people all the time. If I get into games I prefer it were a side thing like hobbyist programming or a part-time job. I haven't ruled out games completely.

If anyone is still confused on my position please scroll through the discussion and find my responses to people and that might help you get a sense on where I stand. Please do this before making a post to avoid me repeating, once again T_T, that I am not criticizing games as this terrible thing. I would appreciate it.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I remember years ago I applied for a job at EA...entry level position, in EA. Thought it would be a way to dip my toe into the industry, and then try climb within. I had a friend who'd started out in EA as a QA tester and had risen quite far.

So, I guess I aced the interview, or they just had low standards, because I got a call almost immediately offering me the job. Eight dollars an hour...roughly half of what I was presently making. Mandatory 60 hours a week, going up to 80 during crunch time. No extra money for overtime.

I politely declined, stating that I couldn't afford to take such a sharp cut to salary. The fellow I was talking to became quite irate, and gave me a lecture I'll never forget, about how "Doctors and Lawyers" were quitting their jobs to come work in their QA department. I wished them well and apologized again for turning the position down.

Few years later there were pretty heavy layoffs in that office. I don't doubt it would've been a case of last in/first out for me. My friend quit and went to work for Lucas Arts in California. At this point, the closest I'm likely to get to the gaming industry is gazing at it from afar.

 

[MirenBainesUSMC]

I just don't see why you couldn't follow your chosen career path while also helping others and being charitable in your own way? Making money isn't selfish and neither is climbing the tiers of your field to obtain more pay, responsibility, and involvement with various projects and issues.

Look at it another way --- If you can't feed, support, and maintain yourself, how is it that you'll be able to uplift and help others?

And if someone told me " 8.00Hr with mandatory 60Hrs+ and 80hrs+ at crunch time" I'd laugh on the phone and hang up --- its not worth your time to hear an excuse or an irate lecture from such a buffoon. If Doctors and Lawyers are supposedly quitting their jobs ( They never quit, they go on hiatus), I certainly hope those individuals established themselves anyway that a pay cut means nothing to them....or they were just terrible Doctors and Lawyers.

How about completing a degree and finding like minded and talented people to jump start your own game company? I do believe that's how Bioware started. Certainly a challenge with many issues to consider but... who says you couldn't do it if you really had a passion to do so?

Shoot these days all you need to do is make an addicting mobile game and boom. There starts your cash flow to invest in an actual working studio. Be the next Angry Birds guy and then be a company EA fears. Why not?

 

[Fappy]

I remember years ago I applied for a job at EA...entry level position, in EA. Thought it would be a way to dip my toe into the industry, and then try climb within. I had a friend who'd started out in EA as a QA tester and had risen quite far.

So, I guess I aced the interview, or they just had low standards, because I got a call almost immediately offering me the job. Eight dollars an hour...roughly half of what I was presently making. Mandatory 60 hours a week, going up to 80 during crunch time. No extra money for overtime.

I politely declined, stating that I couldn't afford to take such a sharp cut to salary. The fellow I was talking to became quite irate, and gave me a lecture I'll never forget, about how "Doctors and Lawyers" were quitting their jobs to come work in their QA department. I wished them well and apologized again for turning the position down.

Few years later there were pretty heavy layoffs in that office. I don't doubt it would've been a case of last in/first out for me. My friend quit and went to work for Lucas Arts in California. At this point, the closest I'm likely to get to the gaming industry is gazing at it from afar.

I don't know if I'd take that kind of pay-cut either, especially if I wasn't actually in a creative position in the company. It's important to value what your company is producing (which I currently do not), but I wouldn't make that kind of sacrifice just to say I work in the game industry. If there was a clear implication I could move up to a favorable position, maybe, but at this rate it looks like you're better off learning how to code/learning how to use a popular game engine and making an indy game yourself.

 

[Elfgore]

Holy snip!

That... why in the hell would anyone take that. I make more at an untrained and uneducated job than that... and I get overtime. EA even screws over their employees.

I did. From about age ten, I always wanted to make the games I love. Either at Bioware or Bethesda. But sadly, I just couldn't make the cut. My math skills are nowhere close to the needed skill. The man in charge of the game design program at the college I almost attended straight up told me I wouldn't cut it. After that, I decided to withdraw from the school. Everything other than their game design program sucked anyway and ended up going to college from home. Saved me a shit ton of money, I may be getting a career soon, and I can still hang out with my friends. I made the right choice to give up making games.

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

I have a similar yet opposite experience. My education is related to the refinery industry. I finished up the courses applied for the jobs. I realized I don't want to be in that industry. It is good money, but no where near what I want from my life. Along the way since, I have been learning game development. Not formally, But I would like to take some courses at some point. I realized that game development was exactly what I want out of my life. It incorporates all of my passions,I was kind of amazed I had not put two and two together until then.

I was actually just earlier today, day dreaming of being rich. Being able to teach kids music on Mondays, art on Tuesdays, Graphic art on Thursdays, Coding on Fridays. Soup Kitchens every weekday lunch. Building houses on the weekends. Growing my hair out to give to locks of love. All this while my game development bossiness, kept the money coming. I know that this is a daydream. I could not do any of that working in the refinery business.

Sometimes you got to go for the money, sometimes you follow your passion. It is up to you to decide.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well OP you left me wondering, what is your dream job then? I imagine a charity construction worker in Siberia might fit the bill, plenty of physical labor, plenty to endure, very charitable and by all accounts as uncomfortable as one can get on a job.

I didn't get into game development because it's not a stable job, regular IT work might not be glamorous but it does keep me from being homeless... which I find fairly important. Also if I really wanted to finish one of my projects there is plenty of time to do it, truth is I'm not that driven when such an over-abundance of games is getting made every day.

 

[AcropolisParthenon]

Eh I am taking steps towards this industry to become a video game programmer silly right?, but i think with hard work you can do good for others in this industry ( optimism level is over 9000).

 

[L. Declis]

Eh I am taking steps towards this industry to become a video game programmer silly right?, but i think with hard work you can do good for others in this industry ( optimism level is over 9000).

Do you know how to make the gaming industry a better place?

Make a good game.

The gaming world is better because of the Last of Us. It's better because of Bioshock. It's better because of Mass Effect. It's better because of [insert good game here].

If you make a good game that you put your heart into, people will enjoy it. People will think a little better of games, gamers and the industry.

Let's take a game I like which is good and has a heart and a message.

Metal Gear Solid 1 - 4.5

Metal Gear Solid: You are not defined by your genes, your family or anything. You are who you want to be.
Metal Gear Solid 2: You leave behind more than your genes. What is your legacy? What ideas are worth preserving and passing onto others? Go and tell people your ideas.
Metal Gear Solid 3: What is important to you? Nationalism? Love? Duty? Friendship? How far is too far? You are not your country.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Governments cannot be trusted. Only people. Only freedom is worth fighting for. Only humanity is worth fighting for.
Metal Gear Peace Walker: Governments fight for themselves. If you want happiness, you need to find your own. Make your own.
Metal Gear Ground Zero: Government internment prisons like Guantanamo are bad. How bad? How about you actually go look around one. Yeah, pretty horrific, huh?

 

[BeerTent]

[...]

If anything, it's a smart move to stay out. Working in the game industry is a fucking disaster filled with headache, worry, and crunch hours. You can make an alright living in I.T. anywhere, provided you have the skills and certs. Games industry? Nope.

Tell you what, you still want to make games? Have a love for them? Have at her. [http://unity3d.com/unity/download]

 

[DanielBrown]

Haven't thought about it myself, but an old friend of mine went to a game design/developer school. I urged him not to go as he'd be wasting three years of his life(we live in Sweden and there's more schools than there are places to work with that subject). He wanted to study design instead of development. I said that was also stupid as I knew he had no artistic bones in his body, and I figured development could at least be used in other applications than just gaming.
He went anyway and chose design. Last I saw he worked in a call center.

Follow your dreams, sure, but try to be realistic about it... And yes, I am aware that it isn't exactly within my rights to criticise his life choices.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

Making games is not a selfish endeavor. I mean, I'm sure there are people who do it just for the money, but crafting a piece of art is a work of passion.

And more than that, games are not just toys. They bring joy to a lot of people. Happy people tend to heal better in hospitals, children who are in cancer wards use games as a means of distraction. There's a lot of good that can come from building that video game. From crafting that virtual world that the player can walk through and engage with.

Games have always been my hobby, since games became a thing. I started playing in 1976 and have not stopped. And let me tell you, during the toughest times in my life it was games that helped me lose myself, forget my problems for a brief respite of sanity in a world that seemed like it was trying to crush my spirit. When I went through divorce, when my kid was in the hospital in danger of dying from an ailment with an 80% mortality rate, when I got hurt and had to stop working at the job I loved- all those times games provided me with an outlet for what I needed at the time.

And even without the deeper implications, games provide the player with increased hand-eye coordination, it strengthens problem solving skills, and when someone is in need of a cathartic release a game is a great way to vent.

I guess what I'm saying is that I love games. I love being a gamer, even though that word feels a little dirty in light of the past two months of hashtag asshattery that it's become associated with. And games are, to me, the culmination of every art form we've developed. From music, to cinematography to sketches to storyboarding, games incorporate everything to make the best form of entertainment I know of.

So I don't think entering that field is a bad move.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

Throughout Middle school and through the first year of high school. However, reading about what it takes to make a game, and hearing the technical side, made me lose interest. It just didn't sound fun, at least to me. I then realized that I had more fun coming up with ideas for games than actually making games. It was also in high school where I get really into anime and movies, and I became increasingly interested in storytelling, and it was around senior year where I realize that I wanted to do screenwriting.

 

[Unia]

I feel you OP, choosing a career between dreams and real-life sensibilities is tough. I was pretty stumped when it was time to apply to college. I thought I'd just go with which subjects I excelled at - that netted me biology and philosophy. There's not much demand for philosophers and biologists have a hard time making a living as well, so I went for something slightly more practical. I found this niche program for "Sustainable development". I could make a loooong rant to detail why that was a mistake but here's the TLDR version:

- Everything was too spread out and general. I learned *of* many things but not enough to claim I knew them
- The program was maybe quarter natural science, the rest was economy (brrrr) and social science (which usually made me go "Well DUH")
- The school itself was ridiculously unorganized; The whole year would miss lectures because of communication failure, test results and feedback would take upwards to 5 months, half the visiting lecturers would start By asking the students what we're supposed to get a degree on...
- Underneath all was this sense that what we were doing was most responsible and noble, and we were supposed to thrive on passion when other resources fell short

I was too stubborn to quit until this charade had eroded both my physical and mental health. Shortly after that the whole program got buried, so this isn't just me bellyaching after personal failure. Now I'm in a shorter, less ambitious program to learn computer programming. That's right, your dream career is my down-to-earth option X) Well not quite; I like the idea of making games too but I'm also keenly aware of the odds against me.

If we're expected to spend a great part of our lives doing something, it's not unreasonable to hope to get more than a paycheck out of it, is it? Bottom line - you're not alone. And altruism is an attitude, not a job.

 

[Jak2364]

I actually went to school for game design, wooo was that a mistake. It wasn't totally the school's fault, I wasn't quite ready for college, but they kinda screwed up too. I didn't feel like I was actually learning anything while I was there that I couldn't have learned from some kind of online source. In fact, since most of the lectures were online anyways, the only point in going to class was because they'd take points away from us if we didn't. The teachers didn't do much to actually teach us, they only existed to give and grade assignments. That's fine for people that already have some experience with the topic at hand, but for people with no experience at all that obviously doesn't work.

I guess that's more about the school than game design, but I'd guess my main point is that you have to make sure it's something you really really want, something you can get the motivation for, so that way even if you choose a "meh" school like I did, you can still power through it and see what you can learn. I wish I'd figured that out before I went, I would've known game design wasn't for me and I wouldn't have wasted all that money that I still have to pay back. ;~;

 

[Sol_HSA]

This is me. I'm majoring in Computer Science partly because of my love for video games. The thing is I have always wanted my career to be about directly helping people less fortunate than me and getting into game development feels kind of, well, it feels kind of selfish

I worked in the game industry for about a decade, and I kinda know what you mean. When you start to look at what you're doing and how it affects the world at large, the game industry just feels a bit, well, parasitic. It doesn't really "produce" anything, apart from providing escapism. It drives sales of hardware, sometimes directly, mostly indirectly. More recently it's felt even more evil with all the "freemium" scamming and such going on. The 'biz was always broken, but now it feels.. tainted.

Making games is fun though, as is playing games. I'm filling those needs by tinkering on game development related stuff on my free time (such was taking part on the Ludum Dare game jams and making free code libraries for game devs).

So anyway, at one point I made the change and applied to some graphics hardware related companies and I've been on that road since. I like the (relative) stability and long-term thinking that is missing from gamedev.

Would I work full time in gamedev at some point? Not ruling that completely out, but I'd have to have some financial stability and the project shouldn't go against my ethics.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

SNIP

I've thought about getting into the games industry, but it can be a rough industry. Many game companies can essentially be finished after creating just one game that falls way short of sales expectations. As someone posted earlier, you may be starting at a pretty low, entry-level wage for the company. The truth is that there are a LOT of people who are trying to get into the games industry, and because of that companies can afford to aim low for initial wages.

I think a lot of people think that being a video game designer is just hours of sitting around playing games, drawing pictures of dragons and robots, and talking nerd stuff with other nerds. While it certainly happens, it's also a lot of mundane work and long hours as well. I always equate it to when I was in the Army: we'd get guys who thought that literally all we did was shoot guns, ride around in helicopters, and blow things up all day. While you do that, it's actually only a tiny % of what the job actually entails.

But hey, CS degrees are in demand regardless nowadays, so you'd be good to stick with it one way or the other, as that way you'll always have some back-up.

 

[Ferisar]

Thought about it. Know that I won't do anything outside of Quality Assurance to get a foot in the door. I can't with a right mind want to go for a game-dev-specific degrees, because it's just not something I can justify doing. If I ever get a chance to do QA, I will though. It sounds like fun, despite being fairly menial. There are actually some games out there I really don't think I would mind seeing in their "earlier"(to put with flattery) states.

Then again, I'm currently an English/Literature major, so fuck knows what's going through my head in terms of future planning.

ALSO:
Being aware of the plight of others and feeling worse about yourself because you've "got it good" isn't really fair. Why deny what life has given you? I understand the want to be useful, but you also have to consider how tangible that idea is to you. Do you want to donate to charities? Volunteer? Go over-seas? Help developing nations? Like, there's a reason why not everyone does that stuff. You shouldn't feel like you're a worse person for it. It's all about context. It's the same reason when the PC master race is yelling about 60FPS/4K res, most people aren't jumping at them for not talking about starving African children. Everything has its place, and there's no universal "morality graph" which measures immediacy vs. height of issue.

Either way, do what you want to do. Help people as you see yourself fit best to help people.

Captcha: captcha in the rye

r u fokin' srs captcha? yu got puns now m8?

holy...

EDIT:

This is me. I'm majoring in Computer Science partly because of my love for video games. The thing is I have always wanted my career to be about directly helping people less fortunate than me and getting into game development feels kind of, well, it feels kind of selfish

I worked in the game industry for about a decade, and I kinda know what you mean. When you start to look at what you're doing and how it affects the world at large, the game industry just feels a bit, well, parasitic. It doesn't really "produce" anything, apart from providing escapism. It drives sales of hardware, sometimes directly, mostly indirectly. More recently it's felt even more evil with all the "freemium" scamming and such going on. The 'biz was always broken, but now it feels.. tainted.

Just to play the other side of that coin, any media presence, from the earliest Greek play, has always been about escapism (at least partially). There's value in that, even if it's not physical. Sure, it doesn't reach everyone or help everyone, but it's a bit harsh to call it parasitic x). I'm sure you know from having worked in it, but would you say that games being a virtual experience invalidates their worth to people? Honest question, not sure if it sounds a bit awkward.

 

[visiblenoise]

I completely understand how you feel, because I want to (and am actively attempting to) be a game developer, and I have no desire to be charitable. I've always wanted to work on things not to help people solve their problems, but to give them things to look forward to or ways to escape. That kinda leaves out poor people entirely.

Sorry if I'm not helping =D