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I recently heard some lectures about game designer (... game artists, creative director etc etc) as a profession and am both surprised that it is even bigger and successful than I thought and that much of what - say - the "productive" part of the industry does is similar to what we do and exercise already by creating our game. (OK, Nobody can deny the huge dimensions of Clonk which also covers most fields that'd ever pop up in a game.)And I was wondering, could you imagine to work in the games industry - you know, not as a hobby but as a breadwinning? And if yes, as what? The industry is big, there are many different people who do very different work - not like in the development of this game where everyone does a bit of everything.
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Working in game industry is just like working in any other industry. That depends highly on your education. If you have studied to become/ for example, a software engineer, or a designer, or a manager you would possibly see no big difference between working in game company and any other software company.Well, of course, it is always nice to spend most of your time on doing things you like to do (especially if you gain new experience and earn money by doing that).
>Well, of course, it is always nice to spend most of your time on doing things you like to do
I actually think that something like that may sound like real fun for the first few months - but later on it probably just gets simple routine, and even if it sounds like games and fun all the time, later on you will be likely to see it as any other job - you just get to do similar things all over again and again and you may have to accept decisions for ingame-content without question, even if you would approach it differently. I don't think that in the end you can be really satisfied with your work.
So in the end for me, it sounds like fun, but I don't think I'll enjoy it for very long.
What can I say... On EVERY work you have to do what your boss says rather than what you like to do. But that does not forbids me from receiving fun and pleasure from things that I do. As a software engineer of non-gaming company I can tell you that it does not actually have a lot of meaning to me whether I work on projects I like or projects I do not like. Anyway I do what I can do and try do it the best possible way (and this can hardly be considered as a routine). Yeah, and I am always satisfied with my work if in the end everything works as it was supposed to work.Software development (fortunately) involves a significant diversity of thing you can do (for you probably won't do the same thing again and again - even if you must, you can just copy some parts you've already done). And in case of game development... you just create a game (with all the fun the development process involves). If you want to make a game you would like to play then... you probably have to work harder to one day become a person that actually makes decisions =).
Yeah, thats the cool thing bout being a programmer. There are always new tasks to do which require research and learning and figuring out the best way to do it. Of course there is routine, but it's OK.Where / as what do you work?
I'm working as a software engineer (programmer, if you like calling it that way :-) ) in the company that develops computer-aided management systems for various technological processes, different accounting and controlling systems (that heavily depends our actual customers). Currently we work for our national electricity companies and subcompanies by providing them with Electricity Control and Electricity Accounting systems... oh boy, I'm starting to think that this is not that interesting for everyone to hear...Anyway, there is a plenty of work here and I VERY seldom get bored with uninteresting everyday routines =).
If one has substancial problems accepting the decisions of his project leader, he will have problems with any job. It might be the difference between "I maek a good game" and "I do my part to make this a good game". But I get your point, this is a reason to do game development as a hobby rather than as a job.
>but later on it probably just gets simple routine, and even if it sounds like games and fun all the time, later on you will be likely to see it as any other job -
No, when you really find a job where you can live out your passion then it gets never bored, that's the difference between normal people and the privileged ones (actually it's pretty tough to get a job where you can contribute fully in what you like). Why should something about a job change your attitude when you always involved in creative processes, when the actual field of work changes and gives you always new and interesting tasks. Architects, Artist and Designers e.g. have always fun!
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In fact, this is what I'm planning to go to college for. I'm going to take a two year course in professional 3D modelling, covering character design, environmental design, modelling, texturing, and a minor animation course. I'll be heading off to college this September.
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Yes, I could imagine it. After all, I am studying computer game development at the uni right now.
Well, as somebody that has gotten asked that question a few times recently, and strictly from a programmer's perspective - no. From my point of view, the games industry is something very unlike what we're doing here. You will be forced to work in cycles, working on something for a few years that is pre-scheduled to cease development after that when a new piece of engine technology comes out. That's not really the environment for sound technological work - instead you get last-minute crunch-time hacking. Which is something the studio will be able to demand because there are so many people willing to do the work that it's unlikely you're skilled enough to not be easily replaceable by someone that is willing to work late hours.
The only job I might actually want would be the position to actually design games. But I guess that, again, everybody is aiming for that spot, and it's obviously a very tricky spot to be in, because the quality of your ideas has enormous impact on what the company might earn with the game. Because the company knows that, it is unlikely to give this spot to anybody that doesn't have a proven track record, which might take quite some time. The only straight-line career into that seat is roughly what matthes did: Design your own games, develop them by yourself, market them by yourself. Be hugely successful somehow (I don't think Clonk counts, sadly). But that's hard, and speaking about myself again, I'm much too disorganized and seriously lack talent in the artistic department to be able to pull of a move to indie.
Bottom line: I will keep it as a hobby, precisely so it can remain fun.
The only job I might actually want would be the position to actually design games. But I guess that, again, everybody is aiming for that spot, and it's obviously a very tricky spot to be in, because the quality of your ideas has enormous impact on what the company might earn with the game. Because the company knows that, it is unlikely to give this spot to anybody that doesn't have a proven track record, which might take quite some time. The only straight-line career into that seat is roughly what matthes did: Design your own games, develop them by yourself, market them by yourself. Be hugely successful somehow (I don't think Clonk counts, sadly). But that's hard, and speaking about myself again, I'm much too disorganized and seriously lack talent in the artistic department to be able to pull of a move to indie.
Bottom line: I will keep it as a hobby, precisely so it can remain fun.
It is true that game programmers get paid less (in average) than programmers in average and that they are expected to work (in average) more of these "last-minute crunch-time hacking" then the average programmer.But as with any other company, it depends on the company very much, much more than on anything else.
I'm not so sure about that. There are things that the medium you're working for dictates. Or seen from the opposite angle: If it's mostly about the company, then what's the point of restricting yourself to game programming?
Well, there are companies which reuse their technology more than others do. An engine which is licensed for multiple games, or one that is simply used for more than one game in house should be able to profit from “sound technological work”. One probably cannot entirely escape from doing hacks to solve an edge case a few weeks or months before shipping, but I think that's true for most other software development, too. Hopefully not for software powering safety critical parts of nuclear power plants and airplanes, but I also hope that those are also free of “interesting technological work” as opposed to “boring but proven technological work” ;-)
Well, I implicitly assumed that we're not talking about engine programming, as
a) Modern engines are ever-more complex. I doubt you can become a good engine developer nowadays without specialized training.
b) It doesn't really have much to do with games any more. You essentially built the environment for those that do the "actual" fun-delivering.
Which is related to the point above: When I think about what makes me have fun doing "programming" work - well, it doesn't seem too related to whether it's for a game or not. And the "game design" aspects that I enjoy are much more accessible on a hobby level. I actually prefer doing a small challenging map like Sunshine to building a whole game.
a) Modern engines are ever-more complex. I doubt you can become a good engine developer nowadays without specialized training.
b) It doesn't really have much to do with games any more. You essentially built the environment for those that do the "actual" fun-delivering.
Which is related to the point above: When I think about what makes me have fun doing "programming" work - well, it doesn't seem too related to whether it's for a game or not. And the "game design" aspects that I enjoy are much more accessible on a hobby level. I actually prefer doing a small challenging map like Sunshine to building a whole game.
I can't imagine to work as a game programmer pretty much out of the reasons Peter mentioned in the first paragraph of his post. I doubt the situation would be much different in a non-games-oriented software company. I'd rather love to do something more "exciting" like research in particle physics or space flight.
You know, research also isn't what it used to be. Particle physicists now have to do ridiculous amounts of maths while arguing with the general poeple either about why exactly they need another TeV of energy in their rays (at best) or why they are producing earth-eating black holes (at worst). Space flight also lost a lot of its flair since it's clear that manned spaceflight is simply very hard and not very cost-effective - and that anything beyond our own solar system would take no-fun amounts of time in case Einstein got it right.
Okay, got another life dream I can rip through? I'm getting all warmed up ;)
(Btw: I'm now doing on a PhD on Haskell. Yeah, each his own definition of fun :) )
Okay, got another life dream I can rip through? I'm getting all warmed up ;)
(Btw: I'm now doing on a PhD on Haskell. Yeah, each his own definition of fun :) )
> You know, research also isn't what it used to be. Particle physicists now have to do ridiculous amounts of maths while arguing with the general poeple either about why exactly they need another TeV of energy in their rays (at best) or why they are producing earth-eating black holes (at worst).
Well, I don't know what research used to be :). But I've had a few insights last year at Duke and some more in my position as research assistant (Hiwi) now, and from my current point of view this is much more what I'd like to do than to write software all day long for some customer.
> Space flight also lost a lot of its flair since it's clear that manned spaceflight is simply very hard and not very cost-effective
Exactly this kind of challenge is what makes it interesting to me. And of course there is also unmanned spaceflight.
> (Btw: I'm now doing on a PhD on Haskell. Yeah, each his own definition of fun :) )
Cool. At which university? Is what your work is about understandable to someone who doesn't know much about functional programming? ;)
Well, my comments were obviously a bit tongue-in-cheek :)
It's at the University of Leeds. And hm, let's see if I can explain this quickly in terms of where my personal hook is... Haskell is purely functional, which means that you won't have side effects and the runtime system can decide freely in which order or on which core to perform a concrete calculation. The easiest way to make use of this is to annotate points in the program where it might be a good idea to consider such a migration (called "sparking"). In theory, this is the optimal solution to the whole parallelism problem. In case the need for parallelism gets really, really bad - and it certainly seems to be on the rise right now - this is probably the direction things might go.
But there is a problem with the approach: As always, the flipside of having an automated mechanism doing really smart things is that you lose a bit of control over what actually happens. Now Haskell's all about that you don't need to care, but sometimes you have a program using copious amounts of heap-space, using each core only half - and no real idea why. It's probably a bug on your part, but that doesn't really help the situation.
What you need at this point is a good profiling tool, showing you what your program does and allowing your to trace the reasons behind it. As we're talking about massively parallel programs here, that's not really something where you are done with just a list of functions and runtimes - you need, well, better tools. There's already ThreadScope, but that's only a symptomatic view at best.
The PhD will be about finding out whether there are, well, better ways. Not very specific, but it wouldn't be research otherwise, now would it? :)
It's at the University of Leeds. And hm, let's see if I can explain this quickly in terms of where my personal hook is... Haskell is purely functional, which means that you won't have side effects and the runtime system can decide freely in which order or on which core to perform a concrete calculation. The easiest way to make use of this is to annotate points in the program where it might be a good idea to consider such a migration (called "sparking"). In theory, this is the optimal solution to the whole parallelism problem. In case the need for parallelism gets really, really bad - and it certainly seems to be on the rise right now - this is probably the direction things might go.
But there is a problem with the approach: As always, the flipside of having an automated mechanism doing really smart things is that you lose a bit of control over what actually happens. Now Haskell's all about that you don't need to care, but sometimes you have a program using copious amounts of heap-space, using each core only half - and no real idea why. It's probably a bug on your part, but that doesn't really help the situation.
What you need at this point is a good profiling tool, showing you what your program does and allowing your to trace the reasons behind it. As we're talking about massively parallel programs here, that's not really something where you are done with just a list of functions and runtimes - you need, well, better tools. There's already ThreadScope, but that's only a symptomatic view at best.
The PhD will be about finding out whether there are, well, better ways. Not very specific, but it wouldn't be research otherwise, now would it? :)
The only thing I would like to add is that nowadays the game development (in industrial meaning of this word) has gone WRONG way (from my humble point of view). Developers are in a constant chase for graphics and sound quality / visual effects and such (significantly increasing system requirements) that you can hardly see any fresh ideas there. In fact with every new big video game release you get the same stuff that has already been made by someone just with different (improved) sound and graphics. The reason fo this (I think) is profit orientation of big game development companies, their marketing strategies (they make what is sold good, not something fresh and innovative).I think, the only area where there is still place for brand new ideas is various indie game development. But the problem for indie companies is the lack of quality/professionalism/marketing (even with the presence of an outstanding idea).
So in the end I have to agree with Peter - there is no big fun in working neither for big game development company (because of the fact that you make games you will probably not want to play afterwards) nor for indie company (for you will never reach the quality level of big software companies). So it is probably better to create something more usefull in different area of software development...
> But the problem for indie companies is the lack of quality/professionalism/marketing
Just as a quick side note: I don't think it's that bad. You can do good quality if you do a simple idea where polishing isn't something that requires a fifty-man team. You can do professionalism if you have the right attitude. And the "marketing" aspect is shifting very fast these days, with "indie" becoming a marketing brand of its own in platforms like Steam.
The main problem I see is that you have to be/do all of that at once, or have at least one other person that's equally committed to your project. And that with almost no financing and huge amounts of risk. That is pretty hard.
> ... do all of that at once ... with almost no financing and huge amounts of risk
Yeah, that is what I wanted to say (but my thoughts went too far away while I was writing my post :-) )
By the way, to all that were (once) part of the official Clonk-Team during CE, CR and CX: Even though we were not employed or anything, the development we did under the direction of Matthes was closer to an indie game development than it is now (as an OS project). We had a clearer management and (time) schedule towards releases (or releases of a new title) including confidentiality etc. and more definite specifications on what to do.So, do you think the situation for us is better now?
It's hard to compare, because I had a lot more time back then. Though comparing CR and CX - CR was much closer to an opensource project; CX was much more organized and complete specifications were written in advance - I preferred the CR stle which gave me freedom to do whatever I wanted to. Fixed tasks are nice to get a project done, but they don't work that well if contributors are there mostly voluntarily.
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Sorry for waking this thread up, but this Slashdot entry and especially the linked article seem quite relevant here.
Heh.
> That’s probably why the indies seem so happy whenever you see them all together at GDC, and why one of the only things that seems to make them mad is if you tell them they’ll be working for Zynga someday.
Heh.
Interesting article@GamasutraI somehow felt sorry for Matthes while reading this article - the image of the gamer how it is described in the article doesn't seem to be too different of what we know from the clonk community. After all, if commercial or not, often there is a lot of Herzblut (~commitment) in a game and of course it will hurt the developers to only read gamers bitching about the game. I can imagine that it is much worse within the "core gaming" communities than with an indie game like Clonk though.
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