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

[kongajinken]

You are basically going through the same "life crisis" I have been going through. So instead of saying anything I'll just say the answer I found to this dilemma. I can totally feel you on the, but it feels like I won't be helping society directly part. What I ended up finding out for myself is basically this.

There is more to life than just living. If the only thing that mattered in life was just living, you would be satisfied feeding your 2 year old food, and neglecting to play or have fun with them for the remainder of their day. Obviously this is not true, there is much more to their life than just feeding or protecting them. Heck playing with them helps them grow to be better people and have more confidence and self worth. What I am trying to say is, there is more to life than just living. There is enjoying life. To deny this is to deny our own humanity.

At first I didn't see this, I would constantly think of ways to help society, and things like gaming was a prime target as a waste of time. After all no tangible product is gained, only time lost. Than after I started taking this to its more logical extreme I realized something. There is no purpose to socialization, none, there is no benefit to you hanging out with your friends. Sure at the end of the day it may feel good, but why spend the day with your grandma? Who cares if she had a good day? It's not like any tangible benefit came from helping her cross the road. It was at this realization that it became perfectly clear to me. There is living and there is enjoying life. If you had to option to live in a box for the rest of your life, unconscious but alive for 4000 years. Would you take it over living out the rest of your life? I for one would not even dream of such a depressing scenario, and I wouldn't even be conscious to feel sadness!

This basically formed my core realization of, since there is more to life than just making it a better place through increasing food production and what not, there is also a way to make the world a better place in other ways. This can be anything from books to relax after a hard nights work, TV shows to talk about with a friend, or games to play with family. While at first glance you may feel bad over this things, it is these kinda things that make life so enjoyable. To take away the things in life that we do is to in essence make life itself worse for all of us.

So basically I found out that I was defining my sense of purpose in life to be related to how many burgers I made, or how much crops I sowed. Which while a necessary part of our lives, there is much much more to life than just making sure there's food on the table tomorrow. Hell some of the biggest charities like make a wish foundation are based under the premise that while they may not be able to save a child's life, they can do their darnedest to make it as pleasant and fun for the kid until the worst comes to pass. And I don't think there's anyone that would say this is a terrible thing.

 

[jamail77]

You are basically going through the same "life crisis" I have been going through. So instead of saying anything I'll just say the answer I found to this dilemma. I can totally feel you on the, but it feels like I won't be helping society directly part. What I ended up finding out for myself is basically this.

No offense, but it doesn't sound like we're going through the same thing at all. Don't get me wrong: There are MANY similarities, but the core of our respective "crises" (I wouldn't even call my issue a crisis really) is very different. Nonetheless, the advice is appreciated.

I want to help people BECAUSE that is more than just living. To me, just living is providing for yourself and your immediate family members and friends and just going through your daily routine. It's bland. It sounds to me your issue was more about how if that's all you did in life, then are you really enjoying all that life has to offer. You were worried you weren't productive enough to call yourself a part of evolution and a party of society. I, on the other hand, love helping people because I don't do it to prove I'm productive enough to justify that evolution kept me, but rather because it gives me such joy. It's fun and kind and creative and interesting and lots of other things all in one. I consider it more than just going through the routine of the day. It's not about lost productive time spent doing fun things, which I still love doing; I certainly feel no shame in enjoying myself just because there are people suffering from situations I can't stop. But, I do want to help those people get out of those situations even if I can't control the situations.

I know there's other ways to help people and I know sometimes it's good enough to just make people's lives pleasurable even if you can't solve their core problems. But, I'm not suffering a life crisis over this. I want my life to have meaning, yes, but it's not something I lose sleep over nor is it something I let control my life the way it sounds like it did to you. You didn't sound happy focusing solely on the world's problems/providing for yourself and your family because you lost time that could have been devoted to making the most out of your life rather than others', like having fun playing video games. For me though, it makes me very happy while still making me feel like I'm getting the most out of my life. The former situation is not something to be ashamed of; heck, I sometimes feel like that due to the stress and work it requires. I just feel the latter more. You weren't enjoying it because you wanted to help people in ways that didn't damage your physical and mental well being and still allowed you to pursue more personal interests, so you didn't miss life itself. For the most part I do enjoy doing it though and it is just as much of a personal interest to my well being as playing video games or spending time with friends and family or going for a nice run. And, the best part is, I don't let it make me miss life; I don't let it control me as you are warning me it could. In fact, I sometimes experience life through aiding others.

As I said, I may still become a game developer. It'll just be a hobbyist or part time thing to devote my life to what I truly love.

 

[bpm195]

I'm a software engineer a few years into my career. I don't work in the games industry because the conditions are generally horrible; the pay is worse, the hours are worse, and they are generally behind in terms of good development practices.

If you want to take your computer science degree and use it to help people, I don't think your time is well spent developing games. I think a greater impact would be writing a robust, open, and low cost solution to some niche problem that charities, non-profits, or even well meaning businesses suffer from. You will find that most software development jobs are developing expensive software solutions to problems (usually niche problems) that businesses suffer from. Doing the same for charities would make you a saint.

 

[jamail77]

If you want to take your computer science degree and use it to help people, I don't think your time is well spent developing games. I think a greater impact would be writing a robust, open, and low cost solution to some niche problem that charities, non-profits, or even well meaning businesses suffer from. You will find that most software development jobs are developing expensive software solutions to problems (usually niche problems) that businesses suffer from. Doing the same for charities would make you a saint.

That is very similar to 1 of the many options I'm considering. My old Biological Anthropology professor even suggested bioenginerring as a viable option for me. I mostly think about infrastructure. I'll just quote what someone else said in this thread

If making an impact on the real world is something you're concerned about, there are tonnes of ways of doing it within Computer Science. For example, my University is currently working on a game to help adolescents with mental health issues.[footnote]http://big.cs.bris.ac.uk/projects/gnats-island[/footnote] There was also a final year project on using simulations to look the effects of fishing, and another which helped check the status of water wells for African villages, though I can't find any links for those projects at this point. But the gist of what I'm trying to say is that CS and games development can very much have a positive impact on the world.

I am personally interested in Computer Science as it relates to infrastructure, so your advice is very relevant to what I'd like to do.

 

[planetwinitalia]

Thank you for the great stuff guys

 

[Aesir23]

Not really "development" in the technical aspect but...

As I was growing up one of my biggest aspirations was to write for a game studio. Writing and video games are two things I genuinely enjoy so it seemed like a good idea to combine the two even though I knew it would be difficult to get my foot in the door.

What made me decide against it was the harassment and threats against people like Jennifer Hepler, the guy who changed how imaginary guns worked in CoD, etc. I know it sounds ridiculous considering recent events but I didn't like the idea of being made into a target/villainous figure because I wrote something people didn't like whether it was a certain topic or if they judged my writing for that particular game to be mediocre at best. The last thing I would want is for a job to kill any enjoyment I get out of a hobby I've participated in for the past twenty-one years.