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OneEightHundred posted:The problem with doing technical work on audio code is that Miles and FMOD exist and are not terribly expensive. Yup, definitely and they are more than satisfactory for most uses. However, there is a growing demand in the AAA games to head towards high fidelity interactive music systems and synthesized sound effects (i.e. racing games where naive looped samples sound awful and physically modelled tire to ground friction noise and squeals are being investigated) where deeper technical skills can be applied. It's all a bit blue sky at present - graphics always come first - but it's a growing niche that is yet to be over-saturated. The pay's still crap, though.
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Nov 22, 2011 02:53
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Shalinor posted:EDIT: Is anyone wired enough into Hollywood-side to say whether they've got the same lock on the film industry? Is it as CA-focused? Or have they spread out better? (I realize they call it "Hollywood" for reason, but it seems like they've got a wider range of non-CA outsourcing groups and such... maybe just because of Hollywood's need to film elsewhere?) Right now Vancouver is doing well with Pixar and co operating up there. Toronto is a husk of what it once was and India is starting to become a hot spot with R/H and Dreamworks. There's also Singapore via ILM. However if you want good pay with nice benefits then California is your best bet. Canada is mainly supported by government assistance which can dry up at the drop of a hat(see Toronto). I'd say India is the best bet since it at least has it's own entertainment creation. Don't really get why you guys hate California so much.
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Nov 22, 2011 03:05
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Shalinor posted:
It's worth considering that anything you can do in film you can also do in television without any Hollywood centrism. It's easier entry and not at all a bad background to have if you want to transition into film.
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Nov 22, 2011 03:16
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Shalinor posted:I really do wish the games industry wasn't so CA-focused. Take Seattle, for instance. Really not a bad hub at all, plenty of studios there, aaaaand... I mean that list there almost already trumps it. And that's just Orange County.
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Nov 22, 2011 03:24
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Jan posted:It has been for a while, though, even if you bear in mind that Ubisoft is like half of the AAA development alone. Gameloft is also big in Montreal, 3-400 employees I think. Lots of openings too, from sound tester to 3D artist, etc.
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Nov 22, 2011 03:53
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Montreal sounds like it's doing pretty good. ..EFB, damnit.
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Nov 22, 2011 04:49
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thunderspanks posted:What are the opportunities like in the audio department (in general)? Video game sound is one of those things I've always dreamed of getting into, and while I have no practical experience in it currently I do have 2 years of broadcast/film audio post under my belt. In my experience with previous freelance projects, game audio is usually shoved into the lower-priority, "we'll deal with that later" end of the development chain. It's a ridiculously competitive part of the game industry -- mainly because most studios are willing to just hire one to a handful of specialists (and sometimes one of the "specialists" in that handful is someone doing the legal end of licensing existing pop music). For dedicated game musicians, it's even worse since they're often just hired on independent contract rather than in-house salary. It's mainly due to musicians only focusing on one or two specific types of music (read: the "I wanna compose hundreds of boss battles like Nobuo Uematsu!" types). If you want to even have a fighting chance on being an in-house music composer for a known company (especially if it's a contract developer), you have to be versatile in your musical genres! I can't stress this enough. And even if you're finally in and working on a project, technical resources are oftentimes dedicated to the rest of the game -- while the scraps are reluctrantly handed over to the audio person to make do with. This was especially true just a few years ago on handheld platforms like the DS; imagine being asked to do a sequenced symphonic soundtrack arrangement, and you're only given less than half a megabyte of RAM allotted for both sample/SFX & sequence data! Those limitations are easing up a little with newer game platforms of course (and nowadays the trend is to stream the music), but space & resources are still kind of a problem for games that are download-exclusive. My friend jake (virt) made these videos a couple of years ago for his MAGfest panels. Despite the hilarious taco cheese littered all over, the underlying message is a pretty accurate decription for any new person trying to dive into game audio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWA9dMXS1wo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1vUB9QPHvY (Actually, maybe the OP can at least have these links up? It is quite lacking on the audio end...) He started off doing freelance work for independent and smaller franchises, working himself up to finally doing AAA projects. He now works in-house for Wayforward Technologies, but his contract is lenient enough that he's allowed to work with other companies. But although he finally estasblished himself for his insanely intricate attention to technical details alongside his amazing musical chops, he still has to deal with having lesser competitors undercut him on bids for said freelance work. And unless you're already well-known as some gutso film composer just overflowing with massive gigs of QLSO vienna sausage symphony libraries connected to your stacks of diamond-encrusted HD rackmounts meant solely for your gearslutz.com profile, in the beginning you WILL have to start off with titles/franchises with lower prestige. And even then, there's still a ton of other composers vying for the spot (hence, the entire routine of often being undercut on bids regardless of skill). The landscape might have changed a bit ever since -- especially since the advent of casual games make the barrier of entry a bit lower. Also like ynohtna said, there's growing opportunities for audio programmers doing interactive & synthesized sounds. But the rule of having to work up from low-prestige stints still applies for both sound designers and music composers -- as well as having the priority of game audio shoved as second-rate for said stints. By the way, hi! As you already imagine, I do game audio too. Jake's current position is quite the same as mine; I also work in-house as an all-around audio creator/programmer for a Japanese console developer, but my contract allows me to work freelance with other companies in Japan as long as they deal the business end with my boss. edit: additions here & there Nana-C fucked around with this message at 09:21 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 07:44
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Tetrad posted:Not that this is the time or place for it, but I just played a few rounds and had some feedback that I wanted to share: Sorry for quoting this from so far back but I just wanted to say thanks very much for the feedback. It's much appreciated. If anyone else wants to give Booty Quest a whirl and let me know what they think that would be great. Everyone here is still adjusting to working on such a strange platform so insights like this are fantastic.
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Nov 22, 2011 15:55
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MAGFest owns btw.
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Nov 22, 2011 16:47
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I never get to go to cool events. Even when I was on APB there were members of QA and the children of execs that went instead of me. :/
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Nov 22, 2011 16:52
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Shalinor posted:I really do wish the games industry wasn't so CA-focused. Take Seattle, for instance. Really not a bad hub at all, plenty of studios there, aaaaand... I mean that list there almost already trumps it. And that's just Orange County. Really? With 343, ArenaNet, Bungie, Valve, Uber Entertainment, Gas Powered, Microsoft, Popcap, Zynga, Runic (Torchlight), Monolith, Wizards of the Coast (ok, they aren't as software oriented), Flying Labs off the top of my head I wouldn't exactly say we're hurting either.
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Nov 22, 2011 17:00
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Pfhreak posted:Really? With 343, ArenaNet, Bungie, Valve, Uber Entertainment, Gas Powered, Microsoft, Popcap, Zynga, Runic (Torchlight), Monolith, Wizards of the Coast (ok, they aren't as software oriented), Flying Labs off the top of my head I wouldn't exactly say we're hurting either.
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Nov 22, 2011 17:18
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Shalinor posted:Don't get me wrong, WA is a very viable hub (and my hub of choice), I just mean that - you can rattle off lists like that for a ton of smaller regions within CA, too. In WA, there's really only the one region and one list. Oh, yeah. It's pretty much King County, and that's it. (Barring Cyan, but what are they even doing these days?)
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Nov 22, 2011 17:20
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Pfhreak posted:Oh, yeah. It's pretty much King County, and that's it. (Barring Cyan, but what are they even doing these days?) Google Maps claims the King County courthouse is over west-side, but pretty sure every dev you mentioned is east-side. EDIT: I realize that west side and east side also usually refer to the overall state, not just Washington, but... blah, whatever, you know what I mean. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 18:03
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Shalinor posted:Wait - is King County Bellevue-area, or is that actually west-side? (I am not from the area, just looking to move there in a few years) King County is needlessly huge, so it covers all of Seattle, and the eastside, where most of the studios are. The actual east side of the state is runner up for the country's middle of nowhere, so nobody really talks about it much anyway.
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Nov 22, 2011 18:49
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I remember teasing this eggciting news like 18 months ago in this thread. The wheels of industry turn slowly.
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Nov 22, 2011 18:50
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VextheGrey posted:King County is needlessly huge, so it covers all of Seattle, and the eastside, where most of the studios are.  Either way, maybe if my indie studio takes off, and I'm working from a home office anyways... hmmm.
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Nov 22, 2011 19:02
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Akuma posted:I remember teasing this eggciting news like 18 months ago in this thread. The wheels of industry turn slowly. DR. EGGMAN/ROBOTNIK 
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Nov 22, 2011 19:22
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Akuma posted:I remember teasing this eggciting news like 18 months ago in this thread. The wheels of industry turn slowly. They're bringing back Dizzy it seems :P Interesting choice
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Nov 22, 2011 19:29
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Shalinor posted:Unrelated question. Am I correct in assuming that trying to live out in Bremerton and commute via boat or ferry to game dev would suck balls? Unless you want to leave about 5am every morning, yes.
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Nov 22, 2011 19:42
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Shalinor posted:Unrelated question. Am I correct in assuming that trying to live out in Bremerton and commute via boat or ferry to game dev would suck balls? On the one hand, bad commute, but on the other... maaaan, I love small coastal towns Trying to go out and do anything, ever, sucks balls. Taking the ferry is one of those things that is super fun and quaint for about a week, then you are just waiting for your lease to be up so you can move.
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Nov 22, 2011 20:49
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Shalinor posted:Unrelated question. Am I correct in assuming that trying to live out in Bremerton and commute via boat or ferry to game dev would suck balls? On the one hand, bad commute, but on the other... maaaan, I love small coastal towns I don't think I could paint a word picture for you that would accurately describe the horror of Bremerton->Bellevue/Kirkland/Redmond. South Seattle would probably be tolerable, but nobody is down there. In general, traffic in the entire region is really bad, the infrastructure can't handle the number of people. [Edit: Seattle-chat]
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Nov 22, 2011 23:15
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Shalinor posted:Unrelated question. Am I correct in assuming that trying to live out in Bremerton and commute via boat or ferry to game dev would suck balls? On the one hand, bad commute, but on the other... maaaan, I love small coastal towns Ferry ride is an hour each way to downtown Seattle plus another half hour+ if you are working on the east side, and will run you several hundred dollars a month just in ferry fees. If you ride the bus instead it'd be about two hours total to Downtown Bellevue (near where Bungie, Valve and Sucker Punch are). Plus Bremerton is kind of dumpy. Friday Harbor is where the small coastal town feel is at. Jaytan fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Nov 23, 2011 |
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Nov 23, 2011 00:29
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Shalinor posted:There have already been enough "you can do it" responses, so I am going to take a different tack. You seem to have made a lot of assumptions here, I've not been trying "the same thing", I've done all I can to develop and have cast the net wide in the hopes of just getting something to get moving again. The fact is I'm badly depressed, two prozac a day, though I'm not convinced it helps. That coupled with experience that prevents me equating hard work and reward makes it very difficult to build momentum on my own projects. I interviewed for a role with a games startup working in HTML5 and Javascript, which I had not doing seriously before. The interview and job were interesting, so on my own initiative I spent the next day putting together Asteroids clone in HTML5 and sent it to him, hoping that would show how fast I could pick stuff up and to just try and go that extra mile. It was great having goals and purpose again. But he still didn't think I could learn the skills fast enough. Given he invited me to interview knowing my prior experience, he must have thought it could be possible for me to be the candidate he picked, so what more could I have done to my ability to pick up the skills? I don't think it's out of line to say I deserve better, than I shouldn't have been made redundant with so little to my name, that my career shouldn't have been damaged the way it was by my last job. I worked long and hard in QA and was repeatedly and constantly overlooked for promotion, even to the compliance role I was already doing. A QA application turns into a job offer of Build Engineer, something dressed as an opportunity, but which in the end results in all routes to other parts of the organisation being barred, and being repeatedly denied promised wage reviews and kept at a low QA wage. Meanwhile a guy does a few months of QA and becomes an associate producer, to be paid much more than me to do much less. I saved the company hundreds of man hours, and I get canned and find myself where I am today. Please, if nothing else, understand why I am as I am.
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Nov 23, 2011 11:49
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BizarroAzrael posted:You seem to have made a lot of assumptions here, I've not been trying "the same thing", I've done all I can to develop and have cast the net wide in the hopes of just getting something to get moving again. I don't know anymore than you've told us here in this thread. But the "idiots get hired over me and I get screwed every time" attitude you have in this thread alone makes me think there is more to the story. Clearly if you are getting passed up time and time again and others aren't you have to start thinking "maybe it's me" at some point, right? I often see people with the "this company NEEDS me and everyone else is dumb" attitude... and really they are pretty worthless. I'm not saying you are worthless (I don't know you), and maybe you don't mean to sound the way you do, but that's how I am taking it. Have you been depressed for a long time? Maybe that's just it, is your general demeanor so bad people just don't like spending time with you? I'm not trying to be a dick, but every attempt of advice anyone gives you shoot down pretty quickly, I'm just trying to understand. How long have you been looking? Last time I was laid off it took me almost 10 months to get a job again.
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Nov 23, 2011 17:48
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Az, I mean this nicely, but you consistently have a bad attitude when you post here. You bitch about folks more successful than you, talk them down, talk yourself up, and talk about how useful you were and how deeply you were slighted. Maybe all of this is true! Maybe job forces have conspired against you. Maybe poo poo is terrible and something is wrong. But if that sort of attitude carries into your interviews at all, it's going to reflect very poorly on you. Nobody is going to hire the entitled guy who talks about how he does all the work and no one else does and they're all idiots who get promoted over him. And finally, using that poo poo to justify why you don't work on your own projects is not beneficial to you. You say you have experiences where your hard work (on someone else's project) didn't pay off - why do you think that will be the same on your own projects? It's ok to talk yourself up. Never talk other people down. Speak highly of your accomplishments, but do not talk about how they were immaterial or some jackass got a promotion afterwards. Save the bitching for the bar.
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Nov 23, 2011 19:25
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I don't know poo poo about poo poo, but it seems like it'd be a good time for a break and to entertain some different life paths for a while...
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Nov 23, 2011 19:49
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mutata posted:I don't know poo poo about poo poo, but it seems like it'd be a good time for a break and to entertain some different life paths for a while... I already said, I'm trying to get work doing C# development or something, and every time I get asked why I should be making twice what I got at Frontier, graduate money. I can't afford to get further education, so options are limited. Sorry I'm not more cheerful, but I have absolutely no reason to be. I'm tired of being the one that gives way.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:29
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BizarroAzrael posted:I already said, I'm trying to get work doing C# development or something, and every time I get asked why I should be making twice what I got at Frontier, graduate money. I can't afford to get further education, so options are limited. Lie about your past salary if you were being radically underpaid. Seriously. If you are in the US they will never know barring some weird turn of events (e.g. old employer buys new one).
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Nov 23, 2011 22:36
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BizarroAzrael posted:I already said, I'm trying to get work doing C# development or something, and every time I get asked why I should be making twice what I got at Frontier, graduate money. I can't afford to get further education, so options are limited. Actually TELLING them your salary would amount to giving up a heck of a lot of bargaining power. The whole point (again, here) is to negotiate them up without them ever being aware how much of a raise you're actually getting.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:45
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It's standard as far as I'm aware, they ask for previous pay, verified by references. Sometimes they ask for a expected salary, which I give as a range modified for the job in question and cost of living for the location.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:53
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BizarroAzrael, we met at GDC two years ago right? I'm almost certain we did except for some reason I have theaznsensation's phone number listed under your name in my phone. -e- Pretty sure it was two years ago; that was the goon meet at Chevy's, last year was at the asian basement place where SpaceDrake's tea had a flower growing a penis in it.
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Nov 23, 2011 22:55
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BizarroAzrael posted:You seem to have made a lot of assumptions here, I've not been trying "the same thing", I've done all I can to develop and have cast the net wide in the hopes of just getting something to get moving again. For what it's worth, HTML5/JS dev is really valuable in the UK. A friend who worked with me at Crytek, with roughly 1/3rd of my experience was getting offered around 600pound/day contract rate from some game companies. He took a job with a financial services company instead.  What is it you do again? If you're a build engineer, we're desperately looking for one of those.
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Nov 23, 2011 23:03
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BizarroAzrael posted:It's standard as far as I'm aware, they ask for previous pay, verified by references. Sometimes they ask for a expected salary, which I give as a range modified for the job in question and cost of living for the location. Thats not true at all, at least not in the US. I've gotten plenty of jobs lying about my salary. Its like references, which are pretty rarely checked. I've had pretty big jumps and no one has ever said anything to me about it. When I've hired I've either not asked (don't care) or asked and just noted it. The only time it stands out is if someone jumps up and says they made something weird.
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Nov 23, 2011 23:12
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Acethomas posted:Thats not true at all, at least not in the US. I've gotten plenty of jobs lying about my salary. Its like references, which are pretty rarely checked. I've had pretty big jumps and no one has ever said anything to me about it. When I've hired I've either not asked (don't care) or asked and just noted it. The only time it stands out is if someone jumps up and says they made something weird. I'm in the UK. Salient point, should have said, which is why; Diplomaticus posted:BizarroAzrael, we met at GDC two years ago right? I'm almost certain we did except for some reason I have theaznsensation's phone number listed under your name in my phone. -pretty sure that wasn't me. I've only done UK events and we've not had a GDC since 2007 I think. I'm guessing you have a 'droid, probably associated me with that number somehow on it's own. Backov posted:For what it's worth, HTML5/JS dev is really valuable in the UK. A friend who worked with me at Crytek, with roughly 1/3rd of my experience was getting offered around 600pound/day contract rate from some game companies. Yeah I know, I spoke with one of your guys about it when they did that recruitment gathering in Guildford, but I got a Content Developer assessment for an application I had made a month or so prior. Dude sounded interested and the role sounded cool, a good progression of my previous specialisation, and I'm a Transformers nut, but I checked with them earlier today and it seems they thought I was better suited for the role I did the assessment for and don't want me for that.
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Nov 23, 2011 23:24
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Does anybody know anything about PIX for Windows? Does it only capture D3D calls? Or is it like the 360 one where you can see what the current CPU and GPU threads are as well? I'm trying to track down a completely random bug and even just getting a hint of what is causing it (CPU, GPU, RAM, networking) would help immensely. Thanks. [edit] BizarroAzrael posted:I don't think it's out of line to say I deserve better, than I shouldn't have been made redundant with so little to my name, that my career shouldn't have been damaged the way it was by my last job. I worked long and hard in QA and was repeatedly and constantly overlooked for promotion, even to the compliance role I was already doing. A QA application turns into a job offer of Build Engineer, something dressed as an opportunity, but which in the end results in all routes to other parts of the organisation being barred, and being repeatedly denied promised wage reviews and kept at a low QA wage. Meanwhile a guy does a few months of QA and becomes an associate producer, to be paid much more than me to do much less. I saved the company hundreds of man hours, and I get canned and find myself where I am today. It's always out of line to say "I deserve better". Nobody deserves better, you deserve what happens. Maybe you shouldn't be bitter about the people around you getting the jobs you didn't and instead you start asking what they did differently. I mean surely there has to be some sort of delineating factor between why person X got the job and you didn't, so find out what that is and then start working towards doing that. Even if it means you may have to step a bit outside of your comfort zone or go further than what you consider the "extra mile" to find out. It never hurts to ask for advice, and it's only something that can benefit you in the long run. So ask around, talk to some of your former co-workers about why you were constantly looked over, talk to the guys who got hired over you about what they did differently, and then compare that to what you were doing. Sure most of the time nobody is going to tell you outright "it's because you smelled like cabbage and your collection of anime body pillow were creepy" but you can usually get a general sense of what someone was getting at. The more people you talk to the clearer that picture will get. Knowing and being cognizant of your shortcomings won't get you a job, but it'll give you an idea of things to work on for the future. Take myself for example, I currently work QA and am trying to break into design. As such I put myself out there and talk to anyone who will listen about the skills needed, get advice or help with content made from studio tools, offer what help I can over the daily playtest discussions, and sometimes even go so far as to ask the designers themselves if they need any help with anything or if there are any small tasks I could do for them. Has anybody made me a designer yet? Hell no, but I'm also not expecting a job offer to just fall into my lap. I know exactly where my problem lies, I don't apply for open design positions because I have no real portfolio to speak of. I have no real portfolio because honestly, the options available to make a portfolio and the additional skills I would need to learn weighed against the time it would take seems too daunting and it's a bit paralyzing. I know how to use the studio tools very well, and have even managed to produce work with it that made it into a shipped game and got me a design credit. Even so however, specificity is my weakness. I know one toolset, and enough of one language to make something and that's it. I don't expect a position out of it until I apply for one and I'm not going to apply for one until I feel competitive with everyone else out there. Anyways, to make this post not get too far off topic I'll make my point: Just because you've done it before doesn't mean you'll ever get to do it again unless you have a comeback for every reason a potential employer would come up with for not hiring you. This includes your skillset, attitude, behavior, and appearance. Don't worry about other people's success and instead focus on your own. MustardFacial fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Nov 24, 2011 |
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Nov 24, 2011 03:28
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Jaytan posted:Lie about your past salary if you were being radically underpaid. Seriously. Absolutely adhere to this. I've had people come in to where I work (admittedly not game dev) and tell us that they made a normal wage at a place I know almost criminally underpays people. It's just an easy way to keep from being dicked over.
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Nov 24, 2011 04:21
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BizarroAzrael posted:It's standard as far as I'm aware, they ask for previous pay, verified by references. Sometimes they ask for a expected salary, which I give as a range modified for the job in question and cost of living for the location.
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Nov 24, 2011 07:56
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MustardFacial posted:Does anybody know anything about PIX for Windows? Does it only capture D3D calls? Or is it like the 360 one where you can see what the current CPU and GPU threads are as well? I'm trying to track down a completely random bug and even just getting a hint of what is causing it (CPU, GPU, RAM, networking) would help immensely. Thanks. I've not used PIX but I've used the Intel Graphics Performance Analyzer tools which are similar to PIX but only provide GPU frametime. It looks like you can go into the API calls in a frame but can't go through the threads like that. The GPA tools are free on intel's site. I'm an artist so I've just used them to poke around and see what sort of maps and poo poo BF3 is using.
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Nov 24, 2011 09:10
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BizarroAzrael posted:It's standard as far as I'm aware, they ask for previous pay, verified by references. Sometimes they ask for a expected salary, which I give as a range modified for the job in question and cost of living for the location. Answer the question with "whatever your studio's salary for a QA position with my experience is". Get them to start the negotiation.
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Nov 24, 2011 09:30
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