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Irish Taxi Driver posted:Wouldn't studios be suspicious of someone quitting the day the game released? I can't imagine that would work more than twice. Considering how often I see an article about executives and vp's jumping from one company to the next, I'm not sure such behavior could hurt as much as you imagine. I think the biggest and maybe only exception I've ever heard of is Jaffe's recent announcement that he'll be leaving EatSleepPlay in a few months, after all the post release business is taken care of.
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Feb 8, 2012 07:55
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cgeq posted:Considering how often I see an article about executives and vp's jumping from one company to the next, I'm not sure such behavior could hurt as much as you imagine. I think the biggest and maybe only exception I've ever heard of is Jaffe's recent announcement that he'll be leaving EatSleepPlay in a few months, after all the post release business is taken care of. Maybe, but at the rank and file level it's different. While somewhat specific to the circumstance there's someone that left a company I was at quite suddenly. (Went on 2 week vacation, called mid vacation to give notice, came back and left 2 days later.) He's tried to return several times and has some management backing him to return, any developer on the project he was on at the time sings in unison, "Not just no, but hell no."
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Feb 8, 2012 16:35
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Dammit, spam callers, don't call me when I'm waiting for a callback.
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Feb 8, 2012 19:11
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Incidentally, if it's any consolation to job hunters - a friend of mine with around 11 years in the industry is having issues finding work too. He's a designer (last gig was MMO combat designer), though he's considering dropping that and going back to development-side, or even out of the industry entirely. My programmer friends are getting snapped up pretty quickly, but it was still a somewhat lengthy process for some of them. So especially if you're not code-side... yeah, times are a bit rough :/ EDIT: loving FINALLY! Days of fighting, and MY APP/SERVER SETUP FULLY CONNECTS TO FACEBOOK! YEEESSSSSS! Ok, now to make it do something more useful than say my name. Hmmm. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 8, 2012 19:33
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Shalinor posted:Incidentally, if it's any consolation to job hunters - a friend of mine with around 11 years in the industry is having issues finding work too. He's a designer (last gig was MMO combat designer), though he's considering dropping that and going back to development-side, or even out of the industry entirely. My programmer friends are getting snapped up pretty quickly, but it was still a somewhat lengthy process for some of them. Yeah, at this point it's been 5 months for me? And I'm really only qualified for junior-mid level design  Feels pretty rough, might as well just bite the bullet and go for QA.
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Feb 9, 2012 00:55
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Waterbed posted:Yeah, at this point it's been 5 months for me? And I'm really only qualified for junior-mid level design Don't get down on yourself. After Midway Austin shut down I was out of work for 9 months. That's not easy to handle but now I have a job I absolutely love.
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Feb 9, 2012 01:02
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Diplomaticus posted:Imagine a scenario where a team works until the day the game ships, then all scrams for new projects elsewhere, knowing they'll be getting the residuals from their first game anyway. No post-launch QA, no patching, no expansion development because all those people left to maximize the amount of time they would get on the next project for the next batch of residuals. If that were the case, then we'd likely see that happening now, given that the vast majority of the time, games industry bonuses are not worth sticking at a company for. I don't think most people base their decision to stay at a company, on the bonuses, unless they're working for one of the vanishingly small percentage of companies known for being very generous with bonuses. I'm sure I'm not the only one that on hearing a company trying to recruit me with talk of bonuses, mentally substitutes "bonuses" for "we've invested money in a company that claims to be making an infinite energy machine! When the game releases we'll give you a percentage of the profits from said investment!" Diplomaticus posted:That's the min-max scenario. Compare that to someone who stays with the company until the company itself makes the decision that they are no longer needed. Which is more deserving of additional compensation? Personally I'd say both are equally deserving, provided that the person that left served a reasonable amount of time. It's not reasonable to expect people to put their lives and careers on hold for the needs of a company. It's also massively one-sided, given that companies can and will let people go whenever it suits them.
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Feb 9, 2012 02:32
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Shalinor posted:Incidentally, if it's any consolation to job hunters - a friend of mine with around 11 years in the industry is having issues finding work too. He's a designer (last gig was MMO combat designer), though he's considering dropping that and going back to development-side, or even out of the industry entirely. My programmer friends are getting snapped up pretty quickly, but it was still a somewhat lengthy process for some of them. My designer ego wants to believe this is another sign the industry's nearing collapse. No one cares how "fun" a game is (because, only a "designer" can make a game fun, right?  ) they just want to pump out as many games made as possible on the off chance that one of them sticks around the iPhone's top 10 for a while.Waterbed posted:Yeah, at this point it's been 5 months for me? And I'm really only qualified for junior-mid level design I did QA while I was out of work. I wouldn't recommend it. If you have unemployment, I'd try to schedule completing a project in whatever time you have left on the dole.
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Feb 9, 2012 04:32
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Waterbed posted:Yeah, at this point it's been 5 months for me? And I'm really only qualified for junior-mid level design Lemme see dat portfolio.
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Feb 9, 2012 04:35
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cgeq posted:My designer ego wants to believe this is another sign the industry's nearing collapse. No one cares how "fun" a game is (because, only a "designer" can make a game fun, right? "Designer" in a large AAA studio is often code for "content monkey." There are exceptions, there are senior enough teams where that isn't the case, but for the typical non-senior designer on a AAA team, their job is "make content." Right now, the industry is contracting, and the number of AAA games is quickly shrinking. As that happens, the need for non-senior designers contracts at a rate much faster than any other discipline. Programmers can add content, artists can add content, etc, AND they can program/art. Smaller projects favor people that can wear lots of hats. A technical designer / designer that used to be an artist, probably, but a regular ol' pure designer, no. ... and I've had the related argument with said friend. "No! You DON'T want programmers doing design work, because if they're unsupervised, they'll cut corners! They need someone to hold them to design standards!" - to which I say "bullshit," mostly, but it's a valid argument. The fact remains, though, that a programmer or artist can in fact make content / handle design work to some degree, and still put out a solid game. Maybe the design won't be amazing, but the game will likely still be solid and fun. Given that, when you're looking at a budget that says you've only got 4 seats - are you really going to put a pure designer in one of them? EDIT: And I say this as someone that once considered jumping the fence to be a designer. At this point, I'm exceptionally glad I did not. EDIT2: There are exceptions to that; It isn't like AAA is the only sector of the market that houses big teams. There's big team casual that's hiring right now, and the related big team social/F2P studios. AAA itself, though, is contracting, and the projects that most of them are ending up on (startups et al) aren't typically the sort that bring on pure designers. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 9, 2012 04:54
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If by any chance there's someone here at DoubleFine, (1), congrats on the announcing of your Kickstarter project, and (2), please PM me or get in contact somehow.
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Feb 9, 2012 05:13
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Irish Taxi Driver posted:Lemme see dat portfolio. My website is https://www.breaksteaks.com. I'm experienced in mechanics design/(competitive) multiplayer stuff, and not level design  Working on level design stuff right now though in my lull.
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Feb 9, 2012 05:39
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mutata posted:If by any chance there's someone here at DoubleFine, (1), congrats on the announcing of your Kickstarter project Holy poo poo, it already hit $150,000!
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Feb 9, 2012 05:42
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I'm looking to dip my toes back into the concept art world after being away for a while. I'd done some work with smaller companies around, but I was fresh out of college and needed steady full time work to deal with my loans, so all that kind of fell to the side while I concentrated on my design job during the day, and comics at night. The bug has bitten me again recently however, and I feel like giving concepting another go. Does anyone have some advice on getting out there? I've been dropping by conceptart.org and the like, but I like you guys more  .
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Feb 9, 2012 06:27
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Make art. Post online. Get feedback/fans/whatever and finally start applying around. Most of my friends in the concept business (games, film, cinematics, etc) got their jobs through connections or the publicity from their work posted online.
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Feb 9, 2012 07:03
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ShinAli posted:Holy poo poo, it already hit $150,000! And now it's over half a million. That's going to be one long Special Thanks section in the credit list. I love how pledging $15 basically is pre-ordering. I mean, that's how it's supposed to work, right? The power of a good reputation is amazing. Maybe as more examples demonstrate how profitable it can be arise, even big companies will try to invest in also building a good reputation?
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Feb 9, 2012 15:25
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cgeq posted:Maybe as more examples demonstrate how profitable it can be arise, even big companies will try to invest in also building a good reputation? What does this even mean? Is there a difference between "good reputation" and "good brand"? Is there a company out there that is successful that has a terrible reputation? Is there some company out there doing good sales while publicly incinerating babies in a special device powered by DLC sales? Doublefine has a long history of interesting projects that do not make good sales but have amazing flavor. I don't know that that is a "good reputation" as it's certainly injured their ability to find funding for their games. I would argue that being Doublefine has proven to be not profitable, considering their continual publisher jumping and scramble to find new sources of money. The notion of half a million dollars in fan support being some sort of metric of success is mind boggling to me, because that amount of money has got to be lower than any of the funding for their previous games. I think Doublefine looking at Kickstarter indicates an issue with cash flow and investor relations that is fundamentally not profitable. I think Doublefine does some fantastic work as it pertains to art direction, writing, world-building etc (Despite not liking Psychonauts' gameplay I played it for a gently caress of a long time due to the above, as an example) but I wouldn't hold them up as an indicator of success.
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Feb 9, 2012 15:44
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Well aren't you a Mr. Angrypants all the time!
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Feb 9, 2012 15:47
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mutata posted:Well aren't you a Mr. Angrypants all the time! It's true! I think the kickstarter thing is great for Doublefine but I literally don't see what the supposed profitable reputation there is. Considering Doublefine's indie-darling reputation is predicated on this idea that "They make amazing games that nobody buys because the industry is broken, man" calling their reputation profitable seems a bit off. I like Doublefine, and I wish them well, I just don't think profitable is the word I would ever use to describe Doublefine's rep.
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Feb 9, 2012 16:04
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Sigma-X posted:Is there a company out there that is successful that has a terrible reputation? Electronic Arts and Activision jump immediately to mind. Oh! Ubisoft on the PC side, too.
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Feb 9, 2012 16:26
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Its my understanding that the reputation at play here is Tim Scahfer 's more than Double Fine's.
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Feb 9, 2012 16:42
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mutata posted:Its my understanding that the reputation at play here is Tim Scahfer 's more than Double Fine's. Tim Schafer is dreamy  EA/Activision/Ubi get crap as publishers but as developers many of their internal developers have pretty positive reputations. Making good games earns you a pretty positive reputation, and making good games that sell well is profitable. Feel free to hold up any random 80+ rated game that has sold millions of copies as "not a good game by my standards", but by any metric the industry offers I don't you could call any of EA/Activision/Ubi's best sellers bad games.
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Feb 9, 2012 16:49
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Sigma-X posted:"They make amazing games that nobody buys because the industry is broken, man" By cutting out "the industry", it seems more likely that they can be perfectly profitable. I guess we'll see.
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Feb 9, 2012 17:29
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I dropped my $15 in the pool for it. I don't really care for adventure games, but I've liked everything Double Fine has done. I'm excited to see the weird fallout from this. The dev teams that don't quite understand and think they'll also get a million out of Kickstarter no problem, and when they don't, the multipage diatribes of why the system made their Kickstarter fail.
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Feb 9, 2012 17:51
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I've gotten the impression that the Kickstarter thing has essentially turned DF into a bigass indie studio, and that's pretty exciting. I don't think a big studio has ever gone the Kickstarter route to decouple themselves from the publisher model and interface directly with fans. I, for one, really really like the idea that I can directly buy into what I specifically want to play instead of having a publisher determine that, and while indies and startups have been doing it, it's cool to see a full-blown established dev banking on their reputation to do it at a grander scale. I think it's a fantastic strategy for a dev like DF, and with digital distribution, it's kinda perfect. Besides, as Tim says in the Kickstarter video, either they make an awesome game that everyone will love, or they totally fail and crash and burn and their destruction gets recorded in a nice little documentary for us all to watch. Either way, we win! Edit: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/02/09/thought-double-fines-kickstarter-asks-some-big-questions/ mutata fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 9, 2012 17:52
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mutata posted:I've gotten the impression that the Kickstarter thing has essentially turned DF into a bigass indie studio, and that's pretty exciting. I don't think a big studio has ever gone the Kickstarter route to decouple themselves from the publisher model and interface directly with fans. I, for one, really really like the idea that I can directly buy into what I specifically want to play instead of having a publisher determine that, and while indies and startups have been doing it, it's cool to see a full-blown established dev banking on their reputation to do it at a grander scale. I'm hoping it's a fantastic strategy for DF, and it certainly has a lot of potential. My point was that "building a good reputation like DF's is profitable" is a nebulous and not very meaningful statement, because "good reputation" is wildly flexible, and I don't think profitable is a term that applies to DF as a whole, as evidenced by their slow slide towards independent distribution.
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Feb 9, 2012 18:49
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Sigma-X posted:My point was that "building a good reputation like DF's is profitable" is a nebulous and not very meaningful statement, because "good reputation" is wildly flexible, and I don't think profitable is a term that applies to DF as a whole, as evidenced by their slow slide towards independent distribution. All anyone is saying is that - for instance, if I tried to fund a $400k game on the back of a funny video and some pictures of other games I'd been involved in, I probably wouldn't raise $70k, let alone $700k. DoubleFine's / Tim Schafer's solid reputation lets them do that on the back of nothing but promises. ... though you can bet we'll be trying a smaller Kickstarter in a few months on the back of a vertical slice, just to see if it'll fly. I imagine Double Fine's success here has a lot of devs considering larger crowd funded projects. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Feb 9, 2012 |
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Feb 9, 2012 18:58
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Might throw some money DoubleFine's way. I also just found out that Stacking is being released on PC. 
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Feb 9, 2012 19:05
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Man I'm just hit a cold streak at this point. It's like been the 10th interview and all I get is not good enough to fit a criteria. It's slowly getting to the point of me going why the gently caress should I even try at this point. And it's not the number of interviews, it's how long I've been unemployed. Nearly 8 months now. Part of me feels like I shouldn't bother with QA at all. I can't really go for other positions because my portfolio only consists of doodles, student work and one lousy personal project. sigh...
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Feb 9, 2012 21:11
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Shindragon posted:I can't really go for other positions because my portfolio only consists of doodles, student work and one lousy personal project. Hey I got a great thing for you to do inbetween sending out applications... Work on the portfolio!
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Feb 9, 2012 22:20
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Doesn't having 10 interviews and no offers suggest the interviews are the problem, and not the portfolio?
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Feb 9, 2012 22:49
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Akuma posted:Doesn't having 10 interviews and no offers suggest the interviews are the problem, and not the portfolio? I thought he was interviewing for QA because he feels like he can't do anything else with his portfolio, although his portfolio is for some other discipline. Also, on that note, QA guys interviewing for QA that are assuming they'll be a designer/artist/programmer/ideas guy 3 months down the line are not going to get past the interview process. If you're making it to the interview and then they're turning you down, either someone else more qualified applied afterwards (which is unlikely to be the case for QA since those don't have portfolio work) or you're not handling the interview as well as the other candidates. As unlikely as it may seem, people hiring for QA are looking for QA folks, so trying to wink-wink nudge it as a stepping stone position in the interview is going to leave you losing out compared to the guy who wants to just play videogames all day for money. e: if they're asking the 5-year/10-year plan type questions, feel free to mention you're looking to move up in those, just don't spend the whole interview talking about how you're an amazing designer the whole time. You're applying for a QA position, interview for the QA position.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:06
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From the kickstarter video, Schafer said they would need about 300k to make the game. Its a good bit of cash, sure, but 300k doesn't sound that much for a studio like Double Fine, granted that he said he would have a small team work on it. They're well beyond that now but could they have really made a game with 300k?
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Feb 9, 2012 23:08
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Nevermind, bad math.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:13
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ShinAli posted:From the kickstarter video, Schafer said they would need about 300k to make the game. Its a good bit of cash, sure, but 300k doesn't sound that much for a studio like Double Fine, granted that he said he would have a small team work on it. They're well beyond that now but could they have really made a game with 300k? They said a small team, 6-8 months. I think given SF, assuming costs of $100k/yr per employee (that's salary+benefits+everything they need to function) is probably a bit on the low side, but it's a big round number. That means 6-8 people on the project, with the <8 people buying you external contracts like VO, etc. Doable? Probably. I can't imagine that they're going to be delivering something significantly more involved than a Telltale game, and I believe they have their own tech so they can amortize the whole tech costs on other projects and keep most of their money on content. He's not promising Psychonauts 2, he's promising a "back to our roots" point and click adventure game, which needs relatively little tech and little content beyond writing and character work. Especially with good art direction, you can get a ton out of a small team for a game of that type.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:15
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ShinAli posted:From the kickstarter video, Schafer said they would need about 300k to make the game. Its a good bit of cash, sure, but 300k doesn't sound that much for a studio like Double Fine, granted that he said he would have a small team work on it. They're well beyond that now but could they have really made a game with 300k? Apparently Monkey Island's budget was $135,000. If it really is a splinter team as a side project on existing tech, I don't see how $300,000 couldn't make a game, but what do I know, I'm just an intern.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:15
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Shindragon posted:Man I'm just hit a cold streak at this point. It's like been the 10th interview and all I get is not good enough to fit a criteria. It's slowly getting to the point of me going why the gently caress should I even try at this point. And it's not the number of interviews, it's how long I've been unemployed. If you're getting 10 interviews and no bites, I'd suggest reading up on the mountains of interview advice out there. Also, you might try loading up LinkedIn and getting in touch with someone at the company once you've been invited to the interview; it doesn't have to be someone higher-up in charge of hiring, but maybe someone on the ground level relatively close to your network. Just shoot them an e-mail and tell them you've been invited to interview, and before you go in you'd like to know what it's like working there, what the feeling around the company is, etc. You don't have to grill them, just keep it friendly and casual, and you'll glean a lot of info from it. Admittedly, this is a pretty daunting task, because you're basically cold-calling someone randomly about a company you're not even associated with yet. So again, try to find someone related to your network, either through school or former co-workers (even if you never interacted with them directly). As a last resort, HR people tend to be pretty open about giving info about the company, and as long as you can avoid sounding like you're trying to get a cheat sheet for the interview, your interest in the company can only help you.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:18
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In the SA game challenge people are able to make interesting games with teams of 3-4 people, in 30 days, with no budget. I'm sure that a team of 5-10 people with financial backing and 6-8 months can make something good and polished.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:21
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I appreciate the advice guys. While I have been working on the portfolio, I just have this nagging feeling 2D is not enough. Nowadays they want people with 3D experience (Maya, Max, Zbrush) while my skills are a bit basic with those, I can't really show anything considering I don't really have those programs (they cost like hell I was lucky to get it because of school honestly) edit: Thinking about it is probably my answers that knock me off. The normal questions I get is like what was your experience in such and such company (in this case sony) and they always say that is a big company to work with. Then they would point out they have smaller teams. I wonder if my answers saying that I enjoy working with teams is also a strike because the job I interviewing have a smaller team (like 5). And yeah I do get the whole in five years what do you see yourself doing and I would say like concept artist in their company or something related to that. Like honestly? I'm not working from QA to artist. That would be foolish, that rarely happens. I mostly use QA so I can at least provide a steady income so I can at least built a better pc for 3D programs and provide myself more resources to use when working on the portfolio. You might ask if that's the case why not go for a regular job. Well yes I have, I just tend to attract QA interviewers more so than a grocery or retail store. I just can't seem to seal the deal. Shindragon fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Feb 10, 2012 |
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Feb 10, 2012 00:08
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The list of successful Kickstarter games projects, just in case anyone thought only famous names could build the money they need. Obviously you're not earning the $1m+ you need for an open world AAA title, but what indie wouldn't clap their hands at a $80k cash injection up front?
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Feb 10, 2012 00:42
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