@Salarn: Who is in charge of the interface design for games? Is there a dedicated interaction / UX designer? Or is that left up to the graphics team or some other "designer" type?
Ask me anything about game development.
@Salarn: Thanks for the reply. Just about to finish uni and the world of finding a job is pretty scary right now.
Is it worth it?
Thanks, Salarn. Your detailed, insightful look into the life of a game programmer is quite enlightening. I have a question. Feel free to respond only if you have the time and feel inclined to do so...
How tiring is it sitting in front of a computer most of the day to work? I mean...is it taxing on your eyes/brain? I worked a low-end data entry job at a financial company for a while. The work environment was great, but I still hated how tired it made me feel by the end of the day, especially if I didn't get a good night's sleep. This was despite the fact that I wasn't doing any kind of physical labour. I suppose this is true of any career. But I just wanted to know your thoughts specifically when it comes to a top computer job like programming.
Thanks!
@Jay444111: Good morning, I won't be watching this thread closely today, but I'll poke in a bit.
So, on disk DLC, or DLC in general. What a topic.
Not everyone hates it, most people don't even know how their games work or were electricity comes from. If you're positing on the internet about a game, you're a 2%er of gamers, not representative of the whole market.
To address your points, most people are not forced to buy anything at least not something labeled as entertainment. I really hate being forced to buy 3D glasses for $3 extra to see Advengers and having no 2D option, however, it was still my choice to go see it on opening weekend instead of waiting for the movie to come out on Netflix (who buys DVDs any more). You do own the game you bought, if they said "100 missions!" and it turns out there are only 20 and 80 required additional payment, then they are asking for a sueing. Steetfighter X Teken started with thirty odd characters, if that was not enough, don't buy it. ME3 had 20+ hours of gameplayer, if you wanted 2 more hours you could pay 10$ for it, your choice.
My NES is broken. I may never be able to play blaster master again on it. Thankfully my virtual boy still works! Entropy is a large power in the world, I'm sad my PS3 doesn't have PS2 compatibility. If a company will not sell you a product anymore, that is the only time were I advocated "abandonware". All I can say on this point, is if the game you love is disable when you are still actively playing it, tell the company, that would really suck.
DLC does go on sale, it's just very slowly on the 360 and PS3 compared to steam. You can see what is on sale each week here. The systems in place for the PSN and 360 marketplaces are years old, will they change for the next gen? I unofficially think so, steam has posted time and time again that there sales are the most profitable time for games. However, people keep buying stuff at full price.
How do I feel about piracy, in the spirit of 9am in the morning I'll be brief. Piracy is stealing. I mentioned above, "abandonware" any software that cannot be purchased legally I am okay with. However, take the time to email the copywrite holder if you like the IP and say, "I just played Betrayal of Krondor for 30 hours, here is my vote for a remake". If games are too expensive, then wait prices go down, I've been waiting a long time to get a pool they really expensive honestly too expensive, but few if any people steal pools. ME3 was half off on amazon pretty much a month after release, early adopters pay more for everything.
As a consumer and as a professional, Piracy hurts me. You favorite studio is one failed project away from closure, the margins are very thin on most games (publishers have a few mistakes in them thanks to their evergreen titles). Nobody can give you an exact number of dollars lost to piracy or used games, that is a second hand market that isn't reported. All I can say for sure is that it's more than zero. Double Fine for example was at the razor for layoffs until the kickstarter campaign, I've been laid off twice, I don't know anyone with a few years in the industry who hasn't had a canceled project and the vast majority of people were laid off at least once.
DRM, well, hmm. I have 300+ retail games on steam, the DRM for them has only been an issue once, when unlocking the orange box. I've had more issues with DRM on the 360 when changing system IDs on a red ring then a slim upgrade. Every money download for 360 requires authentication of either an logged in profile or the xbox ID that the content is registered to. I play MMOs, their DRM is pretty obvious.
If all you are getting out of DRM is the ownership validation, then if the user ever sees it, it's then badly implemented DRM, but the DRM itself isn't bad you probably have dozens of things using DRM you never knew about because it was well implemented. A top tier company, say the makers of Diablo 3, add value to the DRM to make it a feature, add the Auction Houses, Safer open games, harrasment protection, and cheat free PvP and the DRM for blizzard is only a tiny thing the always on connection provides. DRM is not new, even in the 80s I had code wheels and marron papers and turned to page 17 paragraph 3 to find the word "vanilla".
Compromise for DRM and DLC is what is really needed. No, not everyone in the industry thinks all gamers are thieves, so we are looking for solutions that make DRM that only hinder thieves. DLC isn't bad, crappy quality over priced DLC is bad. We make DLC because it's profitable so we keep our jobs. If the DLC is bad and doesn't make a profit, capitalism based evolution will take over.
@jonano said:
@Salarn: Hey man I just really want to make games but I have no experience in any programming or anything like that . Do you know where I can start or what to out for or any good books on programming games and the like? cheers mate .
Do you want to make games as a programmer? If not these recommendations will be terrible. I am a fan of http://oreilly.com/ for books, I have some physical books, even with the power of the internet, a good physical index is great. I also recommend the "Game ----- Gems" books, they come in a variety of topics, and they are full of stories of developers solving problems. If you have a friend scribble out the titles of the articles you can even read them as a mystery novel "Bill Budge and the Generic Tree Container". :)
If you want to get started, find a working basic engine like Unity, Gamemaker, flash, and make a game with the help of google. These days, the tools available are so much better, I made this about ten years ago. It helps to make friends with artists. (once again, communication is your most important skill)
@Paul_Is_Drunk said:
@Jay444111: I think it's one of those things were those in the industry see it as smart. I imagine that it is fairly obvious that most consumers do not see it the same way.
I certainly don't. He mentions that production is like a relay race, and that some teams finish before others, so they presumably get put to work on DLC. I'd have to imagine before the current generation of consoles, any team working on side stuff that wraps up before the game goes gold would have been put on the disc, otherwise why were they even working on it? Ostensibly this generation offered the opportunity to put out any material that wasn't finished before going gold as a later addition. Then it became same day. Then it became on disc.
You will also notice the 4 reasons he gives are money, money, online capability, and not wanting to wait for downloads. Sure, he listed three reasons, but in the sentence right before that he mentions that it is profitable. In any business, that's always a big focus. So, from the emic perspective, it's quite smart. From the etic? Not so much.
My money is important to me, yours is important to you also. Now I didn't work on games way back when, but on the PS2 and Xbox, things that didn't get onto the disk were lost forever. Take any best RPG game ever made, such as Planescape. Have you seen the restoration pack? All of that stuff was "on disk" that players would have normally never gotten access to because the devs had to make cuts when time or money started to create limitations. If they knew they could fix it afterwards for $3 (1990s money) and releases it as a DLC, I would have loved it, that game is so good, I still want more.
I am not qualified to discuss in great detail business ethics, however even the least internet aware gamer knows the value of their own dollar. If a company burns their customer too many times by releasing games that don't have a good return on cost, it won't sell until it does. I paid $60 for MvC3 to find out 9 months later they would sell it again? That sucked and I won't buy UMvC3 until it goes on under $15 a price I feel is valid for the characters offered. I don't know where the ethics are on this, a company cannot survive if their customers won't buy from them.
@RobotHamster said:
Can you get me a job?
Can you get me a resume/CV with a portfolio?
@connerthekewlkid said:
how was your relationship with Lucasarts making fracture and were they very friendly?
I cannot comment directly on the buisness relationship. (Protip: everything you say on the internet is permanent and you always google applicants names)
You may notice some namingsimilarities.
@Jay444111 said:
Actually... that brings up another question. Why DOESN'T a video game developer have a documentory film go on as they develop a game? I imagine they would pay a good amount to get the film and allow them to film you guys while you also show people the industry indepth. Win for everyone involved.
There are some, and if you were a backer for Double Fine Adventure, you'll see the one that is being made for that. The problem is, most of the time, it's boring. I spend a lot of time standing at my desk coding, with interrupts to talk with other workers and attend meetings. You could condense 18 months of development into maybe 18 hours of interesting content. Maybe I'm completely wrong, do you all want to hear the story about how I optimized scaleform2.0 and the associated actionscript for targeting brackets?
@Vodun said:
@Salarn: Who is in charge of the interface design for games? Is there a dedicated interaction / UX designer? Or is that left up to the graphics team or some other "designer" type?
It is rare that to have one person in charge of anything, and UI/UX is no different. There will likely be a hat(s) to wear for the code implementation, a hat to wear for the visual esthetic, a hat to wear for usability, a hat to wear for CRT requirements, and likely a few more. These will be distributed based on the size of the project and the size of the team. UI like sound are often the "oh yeah" tasks, I think UI is the first taste of a game for a player and is very important, but most development ends up being done with no sounds and debug menus so it gets skipped by many developers. Good UI is never noticed when it is doing it's job right. Menu flow is a little difference, you can do some neat fun things, but if it slows down the player navigation it's the worst. The best time to showoff is loading screens, and Dirt is the gold standard for that.
It's getting way better, clearly visible by the fact that you will see job openings for specific roles involving UI/UX development.
@Metzo_Paino said:
@Salarn: Thanks for the reply. Just about to finish uni and the world of finding a job is pretty scary right now.
Good luck!
@TheDudeOfGaming said:
Is it worth it?
I would say so. I enjoy games so much it's a passion, and everyone I've ever worked for has had that same passion. We love games, we want to make games that people love.
@Duskwind said:
Thanks, Salarn. Your detailed, insightful look into the life of a game programmer is quite enlightening. I have a question. Feel free to respond only if you have the time and feel inclined to do so...
How tiring is it sitting in front of a computer most of the day to work? I mean...is it taxing on your eyes/brain? I worked a low-end data entry job at a financial company for a while. The work environment was great, but I still hated how tired it made me feel by the end of the day, especially if I didn't get a good night's sleep. This was despite the fact that I wasn't doing any kind of physical labour. I suppose this is true of any career. But I just wanted to know your thoughts specifically when it comes to a top computer job like programming.
Thanks!
I have a standing desk so you question is almost impossible for me to answer. :P
A good company will take care of it's employees. I'm too tall to be trusted, and have needed standing desks or risers on my desk to sit at it comfortable. That has never been a negative for work, they will take care of you, if they won't they are not where you should work if you have the option.
I would say that in an average day, I spend maybe 70% of it looking at the computer screen, there is generally an hour or two worth of meetings in a day. I have two notebooks I spend a good deal working in, one for the current major task, the other for minor tasks. I relax my focus on the screen if the project is building, which happens often. I also do this a lot when thinking up a solution. So I've probably trained myself to only look at the screen when it's needed.
Physical and mental exhaustion does take it's toll, which is why if you work late they feed you. It's why they let you have games installed on work computers, retail consoles in lounges, or arcade machines in the cafeteria. Working your brain is as exhausting at times as lifting and toting. There are many nights where you come home and the last thing you want to do is play a game, especially one of the same genre that you work on.
A hard part of working in the game industry is that your hobby is also your job. I paint, write D&D adventures for friends, and otherthings to refresh my brain. Be a well rounded person, it makes all the difference. My wife said I was a zombie for a long period of early 2011, I don't remember personally, but I think that means she was right.
@Salarn: oh thats cool :]
@Jay444111: First day, on disc stuff is a bit janky, but I'll bet it has a lot to do with content locking being such a weird thing, as well as DLC development, and really development in general. It was touched on earlier, but not everyone finishes anywhere near the same time. Listen to the Bungie Podcasts, and you'll start to get a better idea of that stuff. I'm not saying that on disc DLC is good, just that it isn't always as evil as people assume. Some of it? Sure. Capcom has made it a policy of theirs to include it in their games until recently. That's pretty fucked up. But a lot of early/day one DLC is there because content locking, particularly as it pertains to ratings/cert, is really weird. And on top of that, the people who work the hardest at the beginning of a game's development often work the least at the end. Not everyone is really in crunch the same as everyone else. For example, sound is usually late in the development, but obviously a concept artist is focusing primarily on the beginning of the development. Another example would be that whoever happens to be lead on a particular level, C40 for example, will work much harder to create the level than to polish the level. So when the level is mostly complete, they can pass it on to the folks that will populate the level. At this point, they could potentially work on new levels, now that most of their work on the original level is done. But getting that all done before cert and ratings is the important thing, not when a game goes Gold. Cert and ratings are pretty lengthy processes, and they don't usually see the final game, especially for the ESRB who only cares about the maturity and severity of the content, and as far as I know doesn't much care about glitches.
This is mostly stuff I've picked up from dev podcasts/documentations. For example, I know that DLC maps were being made for Halo 3 before Halo 3 shipped, but only to some extent. And at the time, people were all freaked out over it, despite it being perfectly logical and honest and a reasonable practice.
PS, Awesome thread with some good information. Really great to hear from someone in the know!
@Salarn Since you are still kicking around, I have another question, if you have the time. What do you think about the situation with 38 Studios? Obviously, there is a lot we don't know and details are still emerging slowly, but it hasn't stop people in the media and commenters from voicing their opinion, and trying to assign blame to various parties for the studio's failure, like Curt Schilling. I wondered what you thought of the decision of 38's management to not pay its employees, ostensibly as a way to make its bond payments and remain solvent, and whether you thought that was an ethical thing to do. I'm not sure how the labor laws of RI specifically deal with exempt (i.e. non-hourly) employees pay, but I can almost guarantee you that it is illegal to not pay hourly employees for their work (it certainly is in NY State, and can also get you in trouble with the Tax and Finance Department for failing to withhold taxes properly). Have you ever worked for someone who refused to pay you for work done? Is it something you were okay with, if it meant that you might keep your job and eventually get paid back? Personally, I don't really see a difference between not paying someone for their work and theft.
Being a hobbyist graphic designer who's thinking of making a career out of it, I'm really curious about the art side of things. Do you guys outsource a lot of your art production - concept art, textures, UI design, etc? How competitive are these fields? In general, how important is it to have experience with traditional mediums like pencil or paint, or do you guys only care about the digital stuff? I've heard from a lot of people in similar industries that degrees don't really matter - how true is this regarding the games industry? Any advice or things I should be aware of regarding a portfolio?
I know you've kind of already touched on this, but any information or insight you could provide would be awesome.
First, backstory. I disown the entire games industry in it's current state and wish everyone involved would go out of business. My conscience wouldn't allow me work in that industry.
My question, when do you think we'll see more commercial free software games?
@hardindr said:
@Salarn Since you are still kicking around, I have another question, if you have the time. What do you think about the situation with 38 Studios? Obviously, there is a lot we don't know and details are still emerging slowly, but it hasn't stop people in the media and commenters from voicing their opinion, and trying to assign blame to various parties for the studio's failure, like Curt Schilling. I wondered what you thought of the decision of 38's management to not pay its employees, ostensibly as a way to make its bond payments and remain solvent, and whether you thought that was an ethical thing to do. I'm not sure how the labor laws of RI specifically deal with exempt (i.e. non-hourly) employees pay, but I can almost guarantee you that it is illegal to not pay hourly employees for their work (it certainly is in NY State, and can also get you in trouble with the Tax and Finance Department for failing to withhold taxes properly). Have you ever worked for someone who refused to pay you for work done? Is it something you were okay with, if it meant that you might keep your job and eventually get paid back? Personally, I don't really see a difference between not paying someone for their work and theft.
I cannot comment directly on the 38 studios business practices.
The game dev community has been great in their support, offering support such as job openings and such for the people displaced by the company closure. I've already spoken to my friends who were at BHG that were effected. They should all be able to find jobs in the industry again if they desire, the down side is for those with families or homes, relocation is harder and harder.
I have always received my salary pay on time. Each time I've been laid off, I have received pay for unused vacation time. I have had "promised" bonuses be turned into base pay to keep the studio running, but bonuses are bonuses. I have only once received a royalty payment (my share was $18 which I used to buy Katamari Damacy). I have worked many hours past what I agreed to on contract to ship a title, but could not be certain if it added up to an extra month of unpaid work on not in a year.
It is not uncommon for money to run tight for game companies or any company really. It comes down to promises and trust, if a company asks you to work a month without pay, they better have an good offer to keep you on board for that. No serious company chooses to not pay their employees, they are forced to not pay their employees. I only have Psych 101 knowledge, but in an any situation where you have passion such as creating games, it's really easy to fall into Sunken Costs"Oh it's just one more month of crunch!" "Oh, it's just two more weeks until we are paid!" it's not hard to get blinded by that passion.
I've not worked freelance or but everyone I know who has is adamant that you get a contract always. When I was a dumb kid working retail, I remember a few times putting in an hour here or there after clocking out for "one more thing", but I was a dumb kid and spent my money on dumb things. I am smarter now, and make sure to read fine print and validate promises are kept from employers.
@Salarn said:
@Vodun said:
@Salarn: Who is in charge of the interface design for games? Is there a dedicated interaction / UX designer? Or is that left up to the graphics team or some other "designer" type?
It is rare that to have one person in charge of anything, and UI/UX is no different. There will likely be a hat(s) to wear for the code implementation, a hat to wear for the visual esthetic, a hat to wear for usability, a hat to wear for CRT requirements, and likely a few more. These will be distributed based on the size of the project and the size of the team. UI like sound are often the "oh yeah" tasks, I think UI is the first taste of a game for a player and is very important, but most development ends up being done with no sounds and debug menus so it gets skipped by many developers. Good UI is never noticed when it is doing it's job right. Menu flow is a little difference, you can do some neat fun things, but if it slows down the player navigation it's the worst. The best time to showoff is loading screens, and Dirt is the gold standard for that.
It's getting way better, clearly visible by the fact that you will see job openings for specific roles involving UI/UX development.
Well, there's a slight difference between UX and usability. I would rate Dirt highly on UX but low on usability. Their menus look and feel great but this comes at the cost of speed and visibility. Anyway, you give this gaming interaction designer hope! ;) Thanks for your reply.
@Three0neFive said:
Being a hobbyist graphic designer who's thinking of making a career out of it, I'm really curious about the art side of things. Do you guys outsource a lot of your art production - concept art, textures, UI design, etc? How competitive are these fields? In general, how important is it to have experience with traditional mediums like pencil or paint, or do you guys only care about the digital stuff? I've heard from a lot of people in similar industries that degrees don't really matter - how true is this regarding the games industry? Any advice or things I should be aware of regarding a portfolio?
I know you've kind of already touched on this, but any information or insight you could provide would be awesome.
Unlike a tie wearing industry, it is very rare that you will get a pay raise if you complete a master or doctorate level degree. Many of my friends in the government sector have clear rewards placed on completing more education. I'd love to go back and get more MATHS but time is a limitation. On the plus side, most companies will re-reimburse you at least partial for on going (relevant) education, since they get benefits of that education.
I've mentioned before, the portfolio is the most important thing. Use your education to build your portfolio, I could not get a job after graduating with a CS degree, so I went back to school and after a year building my resume and an additional $20k in student loans, I did get my first game dev job. Trust your professors, they are teaching you skills you need to know, even if you're a dumb college student like me who thinks that a class on interpretative languages is worthless. Keep track of your professors, and write them apology letters five some years later, they'll love you for it.
If you are wondering what to do to build your portfolio, I wish I could do something more than. "Draw all things!" but the bigger variety the better, even if it's something you personally hate to draw. If you are working for someone else, you may have to draw chibi elfs for a project, or you may have to draw a super detailed steam punk watch, or you might have to draw Biff McCleffJaw. Do backgrounds, do objects, hell, fill a few pages with the best crates and boxes you can draw because every game needs crates and boxes. It's also a very important thing to also be able to draw characters of different races, class, and gender. That goes double if you can draw them in a respectful and realistic way, (i.e. not Doris DD-Cups)
On a more technical level, try to draw you stuff with Onion layering (and I apologize for any rough terminology, my graphic design minor is years old). A big thing is having characters can that be changed by switch a hat or piece of gear or texture. Have a basic character art with as few costume pieces as possible then have overlays you can put on to change them. You know just like the paper dolls.
As for what media is important, everything starts as concept art, and depending on the project that could be a physical media, at least be able to sketch with pencil. Other than that, be comfortable with both vector art and raster images and you should be qualified for anything that involves color. You'll need more if you want to make models.
@predator said:
First, backstory. I disown the entire games industry in it's current state and wish everyone involved would go out of business. My conscience wouldn't allow me work in that industry.
My question, when do you think we'll see more commercial free software games?
The three best games ever are available for freealready.
Completely free games are every where. Cave Story, Spunky, Warning Forever, I want to be the guy, Command and Conquer, and more and more. Try google, it's got your back.
Amazon gives a free android game every day, and loads of other games are only $1 or less.
There are also tons of other F2P games all over the place, you'll have to go into more detail about what is needed to satisfy the qualifier of "more".
@Three0neFive said:
Being a hobbyist graphic designer who's thinking of making a career out of it, I'm really curious about the art side of things. Do you guys outsource a lot of your art production - concept art, textures, UI design, etc? How competitive are these fields? In general, how important is it to have experience with traditional mediums like pencil or paint, or do you guys only care about the digital stuff? I've heard from a lot of people in similar industries that degrees don't really matter - how true is this regarding the games industry? Any advice or things I should be aware of regarding a portfolio?
I know you've kind of already touched on this, but any information or insight you could provide would be awesome.
Oh sorry, you also asked about outsourcing. Well, yes, we outsource loads and loads of things. It really depends on the studio size. You may have seen Vinny's comment on the credits for rayman origins being 20+ minutes long. That's because when you have a company of 7000+ employees you sometimes outsource to yourself! Keeping everyone working is very important.
Outsourcing is very important for smaller studios also. Not every studio can maintain a Motion/Performance capture set. Not every studio can have a full audio lab. Middle ware is also a form of outsourcing, UIs => Scaleform, Physics => Havok, Sound => FMod, Trees => SpeedTree, MoviePlayer => Bink, etc... It is just not worth paying to staff a tree guy for every studio. Code is outsourced as much as anything else, just has a different name.
I don't know enough to say about how competitive it is, I have some friends who love, and are much happier with having an office to work at and the separation from work and home.
I don't have a question, just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to do this. I am currently perusing a CS degree and while I dont think I will be trying to work in the games industry, it is always interesting to hear from the workers side of things. Good luck with your future endeavors duder.
@Salarn said:
The three best games ever are available for freealready.
Completely free games are every where. Cave Story, Spunky, Warning Forever, I want to be the guy, Command and Conquer, and more and more. Try google, it's got your back.
Amazon gives a free android game every day, and loads of other games are only $1 or less.
There are also tons of other F2P games all over the place, you'll have to go into more detail about what is needed to satisfy the qualifier of "more".
I meant free as in freedom, not price. Commercial free software games are nonexistent from corporations to indie developers alike except for Ryzom. I believe you could develop many business plans such as a free game engine with a support plan. I think a 'pay what you want' system could work too for a free game.
@Sjosz said:
@predator: Can you qualify your statement about disowning the games industry? I'm curious.
It's because the entire medium is binded to proprietary software and because I like games, I don't want it to be.
Hey, just wanted to say thanks as well! This is an awesome read!
@predator said:
@Salarn said:
The three best games ever are available for freealready.
Completely free games are every where. Cave Story, Spunky, Warning Forever, I want to be the guy, Command and Conquer, and more and more. Try google, it's got your back.
Amazon gives a free android game every day, and loads of other games are only $1 or less.
There are also tons of other F2P games all over the place, you'll have to go into more detail about what is needed to satisfy the qualifier of "more".
I meant free as in freedom, not price. Commercial free software games are nonexistent from corporations to indie developers alike except for Ryzom. I believe you could develop many business plans such as a free game engine with a support plan. I think a 'pay what you want' system could work too for a free game.
@Sjosz said:
@predator: Can you qualify your statement about disowning the games industry? I'm curious.
It's because the entire medium is binded to proprietary software and because I like games, I don't want it to be.
Hmm, well, I am not qualified to to into depths of micro or macro economics, however. Nothing is free.
What is perceived as free is in actually donations of money or time to others, but that cost is still there just not passed on to their audience. You mentioned Ryzom, they have a monthly fee, it may be optional, but clearly they have convinced enough people pay for the subscription, even if you choose not to pay for it, there is always someone paying for it. This is not unique to the software industry, Panera bread has their pay what you wish restaurants.
Open source software may be free to you, but someone donated their time and money to provide it for you. That works great for some projects, and not so great for others, with game teams breaking 400 people just paying the power bill is thousands of dollars. Or if you are a small indie team, it's your house and ability to eat on the line.
Some companies do release the source code for projects, you can get Doom 1-3, you can get the source for the best game ever Star Control 2, google it up you will find lots. Will the world change to make every game free? Sadly no, we've all got bills to pay.
How did you first get into programming? I've dabbled some but it's difficult for me to wrap my mind around. It's like trying to smash through a brick wall with my head, I feel like I won't get it until I suddenly get it all if that makes any sense.
@predator said:
First, backstory. I disown the entire games industry in it's current state and wish everyone involved would go out of business. My conscience wouldn't allow me work in that industry.
My question, when do you think we'll see more commercial free software games?
And I thought I was a fucking asshole.
@spilledmilkfactory said:
How did you first get into programming? I've dabbled some but it's difficult for me to wrap my mind around. It's like trying to smash through a brick wall with my head, I feel like I won't get it until I suddenly get it all if that makes any sense.
I started programming basic when I was very young, back when computer games came in book or magazine form. I typed games in line by line to basic and ran them, so I could play them. I think the book was "Games Apple Play" but google failed me on that. So yes, sadly, data entry was apparently fun for me as a child.
If you are having trouble with programming, my first piece of advice is break the task down first into the smallest pieces you can. Computers are very fast, but are also very dumb. It is almost like dealing with a math savant who is two years old.
If you want to make Super Mario Brothers, just start with the smallest piece, say, move a sprite on the screen to the right. That of course assumes that you have a sprite drawing on the screen, my advice for that is simply use someone else engine. Get a 30 day trial of game maker, flash studio, or something else and focus on solving a problem that is interesting to you.
People often ask what programming language is the most important, and the majority of the time it's C++. However, that is only a half answer, I can say lots of french words, but cannot string them together in a meaningful way. The core logic behind programming is more crucial than the words (syntax) that you use to express that logic. Step away from the computer, and pick a simple game, say connect four, checkers, tic-tac-toe. Spend some time thinking about how you would explain to the rules of the game to someone but only using conditional statements.
If it's your turn, if the spot is empty, if there are X pieces in a row, if there are no empty spots, if you reach the end of the board.
It will likely result in sloppy code at first, but you can always refactor it later.
@Juno500 said:
When you play a game you havn't worked on, do you feel as though your experience in working on games causes you to notice things that a typical gamer wouldn't, or at least focus on aspects of the game that most gamers wouldn't think about as much?
That does happen a lot. They could make a pretty potent drinking game based on cert violations found in released games. Personally, I am a bit OCD and I have a lot of table top experience so working out performance from a rule set or min/maxing is something that I may fixate on. I will sometimes play very bad games (especially bad tower defense games) to crack the systems and find out what always wins. I mentioned Dwarf Fortress a few times in the bast, that game is not for sane people ( or sane dwarves poor little guy ), but I love it.
Today, I decided to play a random Wii game, and put in Fragile Dreams (I pretty much buy any game that is $5 or less new), I played for a bit over an hour with my wife watching on and off with her 3DS in hand. Turns out, it has some really solid mechanics. Which is a very dry way of looking at stuff, but as I played and talked we commented on art direction of the posters in the subway, and how frequently they were repeated. The character design and costumes, main character great, weird girl terrible. How the game had great pacing, which I define as letting me play with less than 30 seconds of exposition and then start feeding plot and cut scenes, and why I didn't choose skyward sword to start because it has a slooooooow start. When the wiimote speaker worked well and when it didn't. I guess the answer is, when something is or isn't fun, we stop and figure out why because that answer is relevant for our jobs.
It's not just games, I remember when working heavily on UI one weekend coworkers and I watched Zombieland, and I was enthralled by how clever the intro credits were. Clear readable, yet moved by character actions to make the viewer want to put at least some focus on them to see how they will get push or exploded by action on screen.
As for games I worked on, during my very first week of professional employment I asked my lead why his shelf had a good dozen or so games all in shrink wrap. He said to me "After spending 18 months or more working on a game, the last thing you want to do is play it." Truer words were never spoken. For my wife, never play games against people who did the QA/QC they will destroy you without mercy, and make you cry.
-----
Cheers all
I'll might do another one of these threads later, after E3 depending on my weekend free time.
What did you do before game development? And how much more awesome is game development?
Please Log In to post.
Log in to comment