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Shalinor posted:What, you mean this thread is only for Producers now? You're saying Engineers and Artists aren't welcome? Yes, I purposely excluded myself from the thread to prove a point. 
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Jul 28, 2011 21:57
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M4rk posted:Wait wait wait wait wait, what. M4rk posted:So, who else here is on their way to becoming a PR guy or a Community Coordinator/Manager person? CM is a hybrid role where you do some PR/Marketing work and also provide a lot of feedback to development, but you yourself even grouped them together earlier, and I don't think they're wholly separate. I mean Robert Bowling is definitely a PR mouthpiece, but I'm sure he's put a lot of feedback into CoD development (especially now that he's creative strategist or whatever title they call him now that he's the only guy working for Infinity Ward  )Also I'd like to petition the thread to be renamed "Game Jobs Megathread: exclusively for guys who model space guns" e: SPAZZGUNS Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Jul 28, 2011 |
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Jul 28, 2011 21:58
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Sigma-X posted:I am curious as to what harm you see coming from a "working at Gamestop isn't part of the industry" opinion. Exclusionist club cultures emerge in every field all around the world. Some occurrences are clearly more serious than others; however, in every field, insider-outsider divisions encourage reinvention and groupthink. Club cultures encumber diversity and inclusiveness, thereby heightening barriers to entry. As a result, they are detrimental to creativity, innovation, and effective decision-making. The video game industry is a severe case. Workforce diversity is one of the major challenges that my association will be tackling. Maide posted:And my cousin is in the gaming industry because he works as a cashier at wallmart. He should put that on his resume; I can see that going well. Adraeus fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Jul 28, 2011 |
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Jul 28, 2011 22:21
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Oh knock it off, Black Eagle. Nobody wants to hear from the people who sell the game because this is a thread for people who MAKE them. A used car salesman may be part of the auto industry in the broadest sense but has no knowledge or input on how a car is made. Salesman are pretty much salesman and cashiers are cashiers regardless of the industry; let them make their own thread.
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Jul 28, 2011 22:35
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It's all a bit pedantic, but even though Gamestop sells mostly games, it's more a part of the "retail" industry than the "games" industry. I mean if you want to include distribution, then shouldn't all the people who work in factories producing DVDs also count? As well as the various delivery people that physically move those game boxes to the stores? Think of it from another angle: is Blockbuster video a part of the "film" industry because it mostly rents/sells movies (let's just ignore the fact that they're facing bankruptcy at the moment for the purpose of this example)? Or when you think of the film industry, do you really only think of like, Hollywood, movie stars, directors, etc.? If you want a more concrete definition of working in the games industry, just ask the question "Do I sit down at my job?" If the answer is "no", then you're working in retail/distribution. If the answer is "yes", then you're probably working in production/development/design. It's the latter that people think of when they talk about the "games industry". (Also, I personally worked at Blockbuster, but I don't consider myself part of the "games industry" just because I rented/sold games to people. I come to this thread because I'm much more interested in discussion about design and such than I am in discussion about up-selling and customer rewards programs).
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Jul 28, 2011 22:35
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Yeah that is overly pedantic Mr. Eagle. Knock it off.
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Jul 28, 2011 22:37
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Imajus posted:Studios who make MMOs always have lots of writing positions. This is actually very false, writing is expected to be a smaller subset of the skills you have as a content designer and a pure writer would get laughed out the door.
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Jul 28, 2011 22:49
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The Cheshire Cat posted:but even though Gamestop sells mostly games, it's more a part of the "retail" industry than the "games" industry. I mean if you want to include distribution, then shouldn't all the people who work in factories producing DVDs also count? As well as the various delivery people that physically move those game boxes to the stores? The Cheshire Cat posted:Think of it from another angle: is Blockbuster video a part of the "film" industry because it mostly rents/sells movies (let's just ignore the fact that they're facing bankruptcy at the moment for the purpose of this example)? Or when you think of the film industry, do you really only think of like, Hollywood, movie stars, directors, etc.?
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Jul 28, 2011 22:51
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Black Eagle is a poster pretty firmly embedded in the business end of making games, as opposed to the production end. That kind of perspective is useful (and valid), and if you disagree with him, that's fine. I do too, and in fact admit a certain predilection for guffahing at GameStop employees listing that as game industry experience. ... but he is still accurate in what he's suggesting. He just views the game industry through a different lens. So let's not go shouting him out of the thread, k? wodin posted:This is actually very false, writing is expected to be a smaller subset of the skills you have as a content designer and a pure writer would get laughed out the door. A writer should be getting familiar with mod tools and making levels and quests and items. 99.9% of writers in the industry aren't pure writers, they're "narrative designers," and what you ideally want is a narrative designer with real authorial chops. Incidentally, narrative design is also the single most flooded of the design specializations, because of the number of designers who think they can write. So authors are prized... IF you can also demonstrate the ability to implement your work into the game world. If you can't do that, yeah, you're fighting for one of a very, very small set of positions that don't open up all that often. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Jul 28, 2011 |
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Jul 28, 2011 23:06
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Sigma-X posted:CM is a hybrid role where you do some PR/Marketing work and also provide a lot of feedback to development, but you yourself even grouped them together earlier, and I don't think they're wholly separate.  I keep PR and CM separate in my mind, but I know they intertwine in meatspace. I personally believe there should be enough overlap between the two departments so that consistent messages are propagated, but there also needs to be separation enough so that Community Managers don't feel pressured to market to a group of people who need no further advertising, just information (existing fans suffering from marketing fatigue).
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Jul 28, 2011 23:29
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wodin posted:This is actually very false, writing is expected to be a smaller subset of the skills you have as a content designer and a pure writer would get laughed out the door. Yeah, this. No studio I've worked at has had a pure "writer" title. At my current studio the "writer" is the Creative Director. Other than that I have worked with VO coordinators, narrative designers, content designers, and level designers (different from world builders and level builders, which are more art-focused). There was a copy editor and his assistant for a while at one studio but they were turned into a full content designer later when writing work slowed down.
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Jul 28, 2011 23:52
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M4rk posted:CMs aren't developers? This is news to me. Do you understand the role of CMs fully? Ater 12 years of working with them at 3 different companies, I'm pretty sure I do. To continue the Pedant-a-thon, no, CMs are not developers. They are many (valuable) things, but a developer is not one of them. Sorry! You may sit with them, you may inform their decisions, but if you haven't pushed code, assets, etc into a game and have no bits on the disc or download, you're not developing the game. Producers, QA, CM, IT, HR, PR, BizDev, Ops, and so on don't contribute directly to the game proper (though they all serve integral roles in its creation, shipping, revenues, and countless other intangibles), and are therefore not "developing" it. Edit: For extra-pedantry, some place only refer to engineers as "developers"! devilmouse fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jul 28, 2011 |
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Jul 28, 2011 23:54
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devilmouse posted:Ater 12 years of working with them at 3 different companies, I'm pretty sure I do. Is the person who designs Battle.Net's database systems a game developer? How about the people who writes the actual server software? What about the person who wrote the game installer? The person who wrote the patching system?
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Jul 29, 2011 00:00
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Maide posted:Is the person who designs Battle.Net's database systems a game developer? How about the people who writes the actual server software? What about the person who wrote the game installer? The person who wrote the patching system? Yes to all! Did you do something the game would not run without? Developer! Writing a surveymonkey to name test game names? Not a developer! Did you write the stats tracking that enables people to make informed decisions based on player actions? Developer! Did you answer a player's help request after they encountered a bug that caused them to lose an item? Not a developer! It's a pretty blurry line, but after years of marketing douchebags at e3 referring to themselves as integral parts of the process? Or IT saying that the games would not ship without them imposing arcane policies for 'security'? It tends to make one a bit short-tempered. Edit: vvvv As an Idea Guy, I'm about to develop some sweet ideas up in here! devilmouse fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 00:04
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Pendant-a-thon 2011 what up To put some warm fuzzies on it, you can be on the development team without being a developer. Contribution to the success of a project doesn't require actually developing anything (but it's a lot more exciting if you are.) Edit: ^^^ You mean PMs, right? Also: 
Doctor Yiff fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 00:26
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I've never heard of a non-engineer being called a developer. Artists might be on the game team, but I've never heard of them describing themselves as developers. Certainly never heard of CMs calling themselves devs. To me dev means developer means software developer means engineer.
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Jul 29, 2011 00:31
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wodin posted:This is actually very false, writing is expected to be a smaller subset of the skills you have as a content designer and a pure writer would get laughed out the door. Jeez excuse me. There are a lot of "narrative designer" and "content developer" positions at MMO studios. The dozens I worked with at various studios had writing as their main background.
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Jul 29, 2011 00:40
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Guys lets all take a moment to remember different studios have different needs, titles, etc, and that we all make/want to make games. Now let's all touch dicks and cuddle, ok? unrelated question for Artists: What portfolios have you seen lately that wowed/intrigued you both in function and content? I am looking to finally get a portfolio back online and I'm looking for a good portfolio layout and style to shamelessly steal. I'm a giant loving fan of https://www.peperaart.com but don't seem to spend enough time any more looking at portfolios to really see something that I like. My current portfolio (not really current, it's 4+ years old) is offline at the moment so I can't link it, but the layout sucked because it took too many clicks to see a specific image and the images were small, although it did present a lot of organized information.
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Jul 29, 2011 00:49
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For someone asking earlier in the thread when I posted my resume, I finished updating my design portfolio, doesn't have any UI Artist related material in it yet but I'll probably get on it this weekend after some freelance work. You guys think I could knock it in the industry? Resume: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6736134/JKunzler_Resume.pdf Portfolio: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6736134/JKunzler_Portfoliov5.pdf Thanks in advance, duders.
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Jul 29, 2011 01:00
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Sigma-X posted:Guys lets all take a moment to remember different studios have different needs, titles, etc, and that we all make/want to make games. Didn't like that link solely because loading the page brought FireFox to its knees.
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Jul 29, 2011 01:01
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We have a couple of pure writers at our studio but they're responsible for writing tasks on dozens of games. Our studio is one of many under the umbrella of a large mobile game company but the writing comes almost entirely from ours. Sometimes designers and programmers will get to do a little writing as well. Usually this is near the end of a project when we're trying to rush things out the door and just need a couple of lines of dialog or help screens need to be updated.
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Jul 29, 2011 01:02
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Sigma-X posted:Now let's all touch dicks and cuddle, ok? In a distressing male-centric trend, when multiple people or systems have to interface and integrate, we refer to it as "touching tips". And then we moved to mercurial and it only got worse.
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Jul 29, 2011 01:04
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Sigma-X posted:Guys lets all take a moment to remember different studios have different needs, titles, etc, and that we all make/want to make games. A wonderful example of our male-dominated industry (Game Stop included!) 
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Jul 29, 2011 01:06
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I'm wondering how mad people's meetings get in other companies. Sometimes I've had ones where I'm sure it felt like 3 meetings of deja vu where nothing happened at all that was useful. Some end up as thumb twiddling while someone clicks a mouse... but recently they've been getting 'shouty-er' and frantic whiteboard drawings with pointing and liberal swearing. Ok that was mostly me, but the point still stands; I've been fighting a lot more for innovative level design rather than sitting on tried and tested old approaches. It's a pretty good feeling to argue and I feel it helps interaction in the team. Although 1 sided arguments end up being really detrimental though. What is everyone elses experience on the subject of meetings?
Fishbus fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 01:25
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Sigma-X posted:Guys lets all take a moment to remember different studios have different needs, titles, etc, and that we all make/want to make games. EDIT: I also really like this portfolio: http://www.ilyanedyal.com/ Imajus fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 01:32
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Fishbus posted:I'm wondering how mad peoples meetings get in other companies. Sometimes I've had ones where I'm sure it was like 3x deja vu and nothing happened. Some are watching thumb twiddles but recently they've been getting 'shouty-er' and frantic whiteboard drawings and pointing with some liberal swearing. Ok that was mostly me, but the point still stands; I've been fighting a lot more for innovative level design rather than sitting on tried and testest old approaches. It's a pretty good feeling to argue I feel it helps interaction. Although 1 sided arguements end up being really detrimental. What is everyone elses experiences? Ah! I forgot to post about the person who was on the verge of crying in a meeting. We were having a meeting about an iphone game that never came out a couple of years ago. Iphone games now a days are a lot more sophisticated so this stuff might be possible now, but back then, with our engine, no. The designer wanted to do a weird sequence in the game where you're having a dream/hallucination and you're in an all black maze so you can't see anything at all and you have to manouver through the maze walls. It might have been that you were suppose to look like you were running in outer space but not moving through it, but in a maze? Eventually you would stumble upon a dead bloody body on the ground and your character freaks out and takes out a chain saw and cuts a hole in the darkness and walks through and he's back in his house. This game was suppose to be on a tight schedule. We were suppose to just bust it out as fast as we could and didn't have time for new tech. I said that we really weren't capable of doing those sort of things with the engine, the art director said he didn't really understand the maze thing and thought it probably wouldn't work. If we wanted to do it, it would of had to have been a pre rendered cut scene that would have taken a lot of time to do. The guy flips out, tears in his eyes, saying he didn't understand why it couldn't work and why didn't we like his ideas, etc. Me, the art director, and the design director were like  while he was sniffling. The meeting quickly came to a close after that.I haven't gone to a meeting in a long time unless it was just a general company wide update meeting. I'm the only one doing what I'm working on on the art team so there's really no need. If I need to talk to a programmer about stuff or they need to talk to me about something, I just go over to their room. Alterian fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 01:40
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Chasiubao posted:I've never heard of a non-engineer being called a developer. Artists might be on the game team, but I've never heard of them describing themselves as developers. Certainly never heard of CMs calling themselves devs. To me dev means developer means software developer means engineer. Sorry I have to go back to this. What the gently caress is a "game team"? I've never heard that before and I'm an artist 
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Jul 29, 2011 02:19
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ceebee posted:Sorry I have to go back to this. What the gently caress is a "game team"? I've never heard that before and I'm an artist Well, you have a specific "team" of people dedicated to working on "the game," and then you have artists, out in the corporate ether creating all art for every game at the studio, to whom you send specifications to and get the art you need back. Those people dedicated to working on that game might come up with a term like "game team" and not always consider those artists part of it. Personally, I've never heard of the term either, but maybe it's a big company thing? I remember an article on gamasutra that discussed the whole "Developer" terminology and its distinction between designers, programers, artists, etc, and it arrived at conclusions and made points I found generally agreeable, but a quick search of gamasutra leaves me realizing there's too many articles with the term "developer." cgeq fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 02:39
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Imajus posted:EDIT: I also really like this portfolio: http://www.ilyanedyal.com/ This has the most beautiful piles of garbage renders I've ever seen... wow. Also not the most outstanding one, but I've come to the conclusion that my portfolio blows dicks (http://lee-hodges.co.uk/). After a long slew of "Thanks but no thanks" from lots of companies, it's definitely a wake up call to make new things on new engines to an awesome standard. All of my stuff is school work finished to a lovely standard (functional, but ugly as hell), as well as the remains of a failed mod team and a WIP piece. I think after GameDev: VI finishes this Sunday, I might join another mod team or carry on with solo projects (and maybe find another job with friendlier work hours...).
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Jul 29, 2011 02:44
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Super Slash posted:This has the most beautiful piles of garbage renders I've ever seen... wow. Closed window. That exclamation point was unnecessary. Next applicant!  (Just kidding.) My "portfolio" (if you want to call it that) sucks too. Just a bunch of random videos and crap I've made. It's hard to make a screenshot of a website exciting without explaining it's the biggest drat fansite for a specific game, and then explaining why they should care.
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Jul 29, 2011 03:15
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Oh geeze I didn't mean to start a developer vs non-developer argument, I just wanted Shalinor to talk to some other cool ladies in the industry.  In regards to the discussion though, I firmly believe that QA is an integral part of game development and it really burns my buns when someone tries to argue otherwise.
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Jul 29, 2011 03:24
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ceebee posted:Sorry I have to go back to this. What the gently caress is a "game team"? I've never heard that before and I'm an artist Centralized tech team of software engineers that produces re-usable core libraries for say, NHL, FIFA, and NBA. Not a game team, but they are developers. Centralized art team composed of artists and TAs, creating assets and models for NHL, FIFA, and NBA. Not a game team, not developers, but they are artists. Specific team of engineers and artists working on implementing game-specific AI, graphics, audio, and gameplay for a particular title. Game team, the former are developers, the latter are not. In the world I came from, developer was equivalent to engineer. It's not better than artist, it's just a different title. Artists and developers can comprise a game team, but you wouldn't hear the artists calling themselves developers. Chasiubao fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Jul 29, 2011 |
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Jul 29, 2011 03:47
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gently caress, it is taking every fiber in my body to not post a youtube of Steve Ballmer saying developers developers developers developers developers. Fake edit: Well I've already gone down this rabbit hole so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
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Jul 29, 2011 04:09
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The best dev diary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5kvqZBRVg Developers.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:15
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Archetype posted:The best dev diary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5kvqZBRVg quote:Game design is an incredibly complicated process. Nobody knows how to do it. That's one of the only things in that video that made sense.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:22
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Archetype posted:The best dev diary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5kvqZBRVg Okay I've seen that before, and I'm pretty sure it's fake (or at least HEAVILY edited). Who is the guy in the video? Is he an actual games industry guy, or just someone that made a weird video?
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Jul 29, 2011 04:24
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Super Slash posted:This has the most beautiful piles of garbage renders I've ever seen... wow. In general (because I made the same mistakes): -I'd nuke the biography and replace it with the resume. Its much more important and needs to be a tab. -All your screenshots need your name and your email at the very least! -A better browsing method for your screenshots. I'd recommend lightbox. Really easy to set up and use. -Talk about your levels more! You have small blurbs on the story. Tell me how you built them! -Give me some download links. Especially for Sandtrapped and CTF_Barnyard. I want to run around them. My experience is with Source so let me write you some  on those pieces:CTF_Barnyard Honestly, I'd remove this. I don't think its very impressive and it feels very flat. If you want to keep it though: The lighting skews towards RED so the BLU base is entirely in darkness. A lot of your lights it only looks like you're using the generic light entity. Valve tends to use a combination of this and a light spot. If you're using light spots, I'd bump up their values by at least double. I see a lot of texture seams, like in shot 1 on the blue roof to the far right, and shot 5 with the cinder block texture on the right. Your interior spaces look too big and don't feel composed very well. A way to combat this would be cielings, open them up a bit more and embrace the structure's shape, like a barn's slanted roof or the space that interior supports create. The canyon walls really bug me. One of TF2's greatest strengths is in what you can get away with as level boundaries, be it a picket fence or a giant stop sign. Rock walls feel out of place and really make it more claustrophobic. They're nice looking displacements, I'll give you that. Whats that metal support doing over the center of the map? The ground displacements are flat. Vary the terrain up, use the alpha displacement stuff, add some truck tracks for where the trucks drive (they can also do double duty acting as directional signs for players!). I like the previous shots but I don't have any form of comparison for how they look now. Why did you change them? What was the problem? Tell me your fix! I need a level overview shot! You need to talk about the level more at the very least. Skill Atoms are good knowledge for developers, yeah, but I want to know why you built the map this way, what research you conducted, how the space evolved, how play tests went, etc. Train Station quote:Please note that this video is due for re-editing to include the proper lighting which the level was built with, as the current lack of any real lighting is not representative of the final piece. You need to do this. The fullbright is really annoying me and that disclaimer made me want to avoid the video. Sandtrapped I'd say this is your best source piece, though I think the video is too long and you need to talk about the design processes.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:31
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw&feature=share I would honestly not be surprised if it was one of you guys who made this video.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:32
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Imajus posted:Jeez excuse me. There are a lot of "narrative designer" and "content developer" positions at MMO studios. The dozens I worked with at various studios had writing as their main background. I guess my response came out more brusque than I intended. I've just had to sift through a lot of really painful resumes where the person has an English degree and wants to ~write for games~ and wanted to head it off at the pass. It seems like their vision of what they're going to be doing is writing story arcs and dialogue all day with no actual implementation - a peon will do that for them. The bulk of a content creator's job is going to be populating the world itself, spawning creatures, scripting the encounters and quests they're building, and generally making the world feel alive and populated. Narrative skills developed by writing can certainly assist in that job and several of our guys have a writing background as well, but there's a lot of other learning that needs to happen before they're qualified for a job. That was what I was trying to communicate. Sorry for being short - was just dashing the post off during lunch break.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:33
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Aliginge posted:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGar7KC6Wiw&feature=share That video is amazing and it made me laugh but it linked me to this related video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GoF0khg3Ac&NR=1 and it made me cry.
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Jul 29, 2011 04:48
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