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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I have irl seen a bug report that had the word "friend of the family" in it.  How the hell does that get past a QA lead?
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Nov 10, 2012 07:45
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The Glumslinger posted:
I think it did, I seem to recall it being forwarded to me from the lead witht he caption 'lol fired'.
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Nov 10, 2012 08:07
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I think it did, I seem to recall it being forwarded to me from the lead witht he caption 'lol fired'. Work on a profanity filter some time. The bugs, and the tens of thousands of words in the profanity list, are hilarious.
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Nov 10, 2012 08:13
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Shalinor posted:Are you by any chance one of the Carpe Fulgur guys, or do we have more J->E folks than I'd realized? No, I've never worked with those folks, tho at this point my work is kinda 50/50 game/non-game stuff and so I don't do a lotta stuff apart from my main long-term contacts. I think as far as SA is concerned, there's me, and there's Douglas Dinsdale (who's been around even longer than I have), and we mostly hang out in the retro thread on Games more'n anything else.
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Nov 10, 2012 08:43
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whorfin posted:Work on a profanity filter some time. The bugs, and the tens of thousands of words in the profanity list, are hilarious. This actually was a bug about the profanity filter. The problem with it wasn't so much the profanity but the completely unprofessional way in which it was written up.
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Nov 10, 2012 11:42
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:This actually was a bug about the profanity filter. The problem with it wasn't so much the profanity but the completely unprofessional way in which it was written up. Once, when I still worked in QA, we were testing a new female model and found a texture seam in the crotch. The animator was known to be both defensive and a complainer, so we huddled and spent about 30 minutes figuring out the most professional way to put "the model has a cooter" in bug format. Ultimately I think we just went with "Model has a texture seam" and attached a screenshot. With a big red circle.
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Nov 10, 2012 12:21
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:This actually was a bug about the profanity filter. The problem with it wasn't so much the profanity but the completely unprofessional way in which it was written up. Reminds me of being in a meeting and 'carefully' pronouncing the Scunthorpe problem Also to the above about localization, I'm at Z2Live in Seattle, and we do localization in house, but I don't believe there's any openings currently.
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Nov 10, 2012 15:37
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Monster w21 Faces posted:So it's fancy chips 'n' cheese with gravy on top. Sorry to dredge this up so long after it was posted, but I've been busy and only just found time to catch up. As a Scot living in Canada, I'm seconding the notion that that poutine is absolutely the best post-pub takeaway food ever to exist. I can only guess that French-Canadian scientists worked long and hard to develop this. Comparing it to chips and cheese just doesn't do it justice. Especially if you can find a place that will stray from the traditional recipe and add things to it. Triple-pork poutine from Smoke's Poutinerie is the business. Fries, cheese-curds, gravy, pulled-pork, double-smoked bacon, and italian sausage. The fact that I somehow manage to resist the urge to go get poutine after every drunken night out, is the only reason I'm not the size of a house.
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Nov 10, 2012 20:01
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I've finally hit Boston after my cross country drive. Sucks to see a bunch of people laid off over here. Luckily my livelihood is coming from somewhere else (freelance) so hopefully money wont be a problem. I was wondering if you guys could help me out. I want to "go indie" after working at a AAA studio for a while, and it absolutely killed my drive to make video games at another AAA studio. I don't have much programming knowledge, but I have an idea for a somewhat small-scale game, and I've been watching videos on how to use Unity and and im considering picking up a few books on programming in C#. At this point it seems like that's the easiest way for me to prototype something being a 2D/3D artist. I was wondering if you guys might have any suggestions for me or any links to some awesome resources that will help me out in this transition from a specialized character artist into a general indie developer that can do a bit of programming. Also, any resources for developing on Unity would be great, I'm already trying to get involved with the unity3d.com community, and I've been listening to a couple of podcasts to see how other people have been doing it. Tanks fellers 
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Nov 10, 2012 20:15
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Hughlander posted:Reminds me of being in a meeting and 'carefully' pronouncing the Scunthorpe problem If you did have any openings, what kind of experience would you be looking for? I am fluent in French, and have done translating stuff on my own at home, but nothing professional. Would having a certificate or other such schooling help? To everybody else who gave advice: Thanks! I know that there are several translation/localization companies around here, I will ask them what their requirements are. I'm basically just trying to figure out what to do with my life. I love games, and speaking French, and I think translating would be a cool thing.
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Nov 10, 2012 20:36
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Valigarmanda posted:If you did have any openings, what kind of experience would you be looking for? I am fluent in French, and have done translating stuff on my own at home, but nothing professional. Would having a certificate or other such schooling help? I'll ask the localization producer on Monday, I really don't know as I'm an engineering lead. Of course I think there's a product manager who lurks in this thread that can probably answer better than I.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:39
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ceebee posted:I've finally hit Boston after my cross country drive. Sucks to see a bunch of people laid off over here. Luckily my livelihood is coming from somewhere else (freelance) so hopefully money wont be a problem. afaik this thread here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3506853 has a lot of indie/hobby development type stuff going on, as the game jobs thread spun off as an jobs thread as opposed to a dev thread.
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Nov 11, 2012 00:44
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I have irl seen a bug report that had the word "friend of the family" in it. My coworkers at my last job told me of someone who was updating a bug and, in the change log, accidentally copy-pasted "need more boners" into the field and submitted it without double-checking.
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Nov 11, 2012 01:47
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ceebee posted:I was wondering if you guys might have any suggestions for me or any links to some awesome resources that will help me out in this transition from a specialized character artist into a general indie developer that can do a bit of programming. Artist -> general indie developer w/ some programming is a bit specific, but without sounding trite, just Google the genre of the game you want to make and you will literally find hundreds of tutorials on how to make a basic FPS/platformer/top-down game/whatever in any language or platform you can imagine. You can also try going to former coworkers for help or collusion, or looking for a lite version of a toolset you're already familiar with (UDK?)
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Nov 11, 2012 05:17
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I don't really know the genre of the game I'm making. It was inspired by some luchador distance game where you get launched and bounce around to get as far as possible. Can't remember what it was called.
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Nov 11, 2012 05:21
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ceebee posted:I don't really know the genre of the game I'm making. It was inspired by some luchador distance game where you get launched and bounce around to get as far as possible. Can't remember what it was called. This discussion should really go in the making games thread, so I will just leave this here for you to get started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
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Nov 11, 2012 05:32
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ceebee posted:I don't really know the genre of the game I'm making. It was inspired by some luchador distance game where you get launched and bounce around to get as far as possible. Can't remember what it was called. Burrito Bison.
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Nov 11, 2012 05:50
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Waterbed you are awesome thanks. Emoticon thanks I'll take a look at that but I've decided on unity for my engine as I know a bit of udk but it is way too bloated for what I want to do.
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Nov 11, 2012 05:58
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Anyone here have experience working in a system that uses behavior trees as one of the main modes of scripting? I'd love to chat you up for some low-level conversations.
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Nov 12, 2012 12:29
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Brackhar posted:Anyone here have experience working in a system that uses behavior trees as one of the main modes of scripting? I'd love to chat you up for some low-level conversations. I wrote one a few years back, but it was in Python and heavily influenced by a previous system I had worked on so it was more a mutated version of them than anything else (node persistence was the primary difference, so all children of a given node could be switched on and off as a function of whether the parent node was active or not, instead of stepping through them in whatever the defined order was). But go ahead and shoot and maybe I'll be helpful?
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Nov 12, 2012 14:19
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Paging Smegbot Do you have an email I can contact you by, with regards to Beartrap? Mine is my username at gmail.comI'm a stupid and don't have PMs after eight years on these forums. VVV You own, much love. 
GeeCee fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Nov 12, 2012 |
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Nov 12, 2012 19:51
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I've dropped you an email. While I'm posting, some of my former colleagues have just formed a studio as well: http://www.develop-online.net/news/42491/Stormcloud-Games-forms-in-Scotland They're awesome guys, hoping it works out for them.
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Nov 12, 2012 20:53
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Anybody at Gobo? I'm sorry my tools are awful 
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Nov 13, 2012 18:58
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So this Friday myself and 8 other people are taking part in our second annual 48 hour games marathon for charity. This year we're playing Borderlands 2. We'll be live streaming the whole thing. If you've got nothing better to do this weekend then please consider spending it with us! https://www.facebook.com/Horde4Charity
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Nov 13, 2012 21:35
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So my Facebook feeds are abuzz with layoffs at Glu. Maybe it's the incestuous nature of the industry but it really feels like the industry is shrinking and there's less and less jobs.
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Nov 14, 2012 05:16
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Hughlander posted:So my Facebook feeds are abuzz with layoffs at Glu. Remember back when everyone thought the industry was recession proof? 
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Nov 14, 2012 05:18
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emoticon posted:Remember back when everyone thought the industry was recession proof?
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Nov 14, 2012 05:25
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Hughlander posted:So my Facebook feeds are abuzz with layoffs at Glu. Some impact to Griptonite games in Kirkland, WA it looks like. They're a Glu subsidiary.
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Nov 14, 2012 05:49
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DancingMachine posted:Some impact to Griptonite games in Kirkland, WA it looks like. They're a Glu subsidiary. If anyone knows anyone hiring, I'll pass things along to the really talented people who were let go. Adraeus posted:No? There was a time period that the games industry seemed recession proof, before the advent of cheap time killers like Facebook and Twitter. Generally when money got tight, video game sales would go up. They were generally a more affordable entertainment option for people than going out to movies or vacations. Chainclaw fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Nov 14, 2012 |
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Nov 14, 2012 06:09
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emoticon posted:Remember back when everyone thought the industry was recession proof? Yes. My friend still holds this view because "there is always somewhere to work." I disagree, because if it was recession proof so many companies wouldn't be closing down in the first place.
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Nov 14, 2012 06:11
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Games being recession proof or not isn't the issue, what games are NOT immune to is bad business decisions. THQ is dying because it made some huge mistakes, same with Zynga. I don't think it matters what industry you are in at a certain level of incompetence.
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Nov 14, 2012 06:16
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I wouldn't blame the recession entirely. Some of the big studios have had profits increase this year, a bunch of games still sell millions of copies. But making a single bad business decision when you're handling a $50M project can crush a company. Or when you're a young studio without deep pockets.
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Nov 14, 2012 06:33
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Games as an industry is probably recession proof. But Games as an industry is an incredibly broad industry. Keep in mind that Zynga literally redefined what "Games Industry" meant when they started out. They then failed to adapt meaningfully to the market they created and when it shifted they farted blood and fell. They basically took Mary Kay/Tupperware/Lia Sophia style social advertising models and turned them into games and to a level that was completely unprecedented. iOS/mobile and digital distribution as indie platforms have all shaken things up considerably as well, as has the push towards Games as a Service rather than Games as a Product (which is market driven, not publisher driven, at least in my opinion). The big publishers that have stuck around have been able to successfully find tent-poles the big-money games shift to Games as a Service, and Midway/THQ have not.
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Nov 14, 2012 06:34
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Chainclaw posted:If anyone knows anyone hiring, I'll pass things along to the really talented people who were let go. Still a couple of positions open at Amazon Game Studios.
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Nov 14, 2012 06:35
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Sigma-X posted:Games as an industry is probably recession proof. But Games as an industry is an incredibly broad industry. I always remember what my first producer said, "You can have a career in the industry, you just can't necessarily have a job." Of course that was working for EA Where I moved twice in less than a year as they closed different studios but kept some of the same people. I think I'm at the point now where I'd leave the industry rather than move if I couldn't find something where I am.
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Nov 14, 2012 15:11
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Sigma-X posted:Games as an industry is probably recession proof. But Games as an industry is an incredibly broad industry. We're not seeing the fallout of the recession, we're seeing the fallout of the freemium shift. Lots of new companies are opening, but it isn't yet clear if the number of jobs will stay the same. Seemingly, not - AAA practices needed bodies in a way that mobile just doesn't.
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Nov 14, 2012 15:28
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I really can't work out if the freemium model and what's come of it is around to stay or if it's a pretty big bubble that is going to burst eventually. It seems like only a few companies are making any money out of it. I work for a mobile studio that's held in quite high regard by mobile companies and consumers and yet we don't seem to be making enough at all. Basing your entire business model on 'whales' might work for a while but I can see a shift back to paid or free apps that work as companions to larger games etc becoming big again.
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Nov 14, 2012 15:35
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 JOB TIMEWe are looking for a great artist to come work with our established art team. We are offering a full-time position for an artist with the passion and drive to create amazing, fun, characterful, mass-market games. Games the world wants to play. With the exceptional creative and technical art skills to create fun, addictive games, you will be contributing to the delivery of Outplay's innovative, engaging and massively enjoyable games across the mobile and social gaming landscape. Is this you? What are you waiting for? The person • Solid working knowledge of 2D art production and tools including Flash, Photoshop and Illustrator • Solid 3d skills • Collaborates well with the Art team and other disciplines • Ability to take concept art to a finished production level • Excellent communication and presentation skills • Able to take direction well • Able to handle multiple tasks and deliver on these to the highest quality. Extras • Graphic design • UI skills Please apply via http://www.outplayentertainment.com/jobs/
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Nov 14, 2012 15:42
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concerned mom posted:I really can't work out if the freemium model and what's come of it is around to stay or if it's a pretty big bubble that is going to burst eventually. It seems like only a few companies are making any money out of it. I work for a mobile studio that's held in quite high regard by mobile companies and consumers and yet we don't seem to be making enough at all. Basing your entire business model on 'whales' might work for a while but I can see a shift back to paid or free apps that work as companions to larger games etc becoming big again. 1.) the casuals targeted by freemium are a temporary market that will eventually lose interest 2.) core gamers have zero interest in their entire world becoming f2p. ... mind that I'm not looping MMOs in there, or equivalent. Those, I think, are staying F2P. The days of freemium runners and jumpers and management games and such, though, are numbered. Not that it'll die soon, but I don't think it will last long-term. EDIT: I suppose you could also compare it to Flash games. A space where people once made handsome livings, now reduced to a space only hobbyists can afford to bother with. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Nov 14, 2012 |
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Nov 14, 2012 15:50
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The revenue models are rough for F2P, but certainly way better than trying to do for-pay games. Let's make a fake company (or a real one in my case... HA!!) and look at some back of the napkin numbers! Assume a burn-rate of 10k/employee/month, which includes rent, taxes, payroll, health insurance, and a relatively ok salary, so your employees aren't stuck eating ramen and able to actually, you know, have a life. If you want to bump this to a competitive salary and better benefits, increase the rate to 15k/employee/month. Let's then assume a 5 person team, made up of 2 designer/engineers, 2 engineers, and an artist, and we're looking at needing 50k/month to break even. Let's ignore, for the time being the ramp in to releasing the first game because, hey, savings and severance! Because we're all awesome, let's say we can bang out a game in 4-5 months, so our budget for a game ends up being 200-250k. What do we need to break even? With a $.99 app, well, we need 350k downloads. Ouch! Pushing it to 1.99 and that comes down to 180k downloads. Still ouch! This is resounding success land in the app store and requires lots of luck/press/whatever. Pushing the price higher pushes your downloads even faster, especially since with a team of 5, you're not exactly in AAA territory here and it's harder to get notice. With a poorly monetized, but free game, pulling in only a pathetic $0.01/DAU because you're only running ads or don't understand how money works in F2P, we'd need 160k DAU, putting downloads upwards of 2M. Well, poo poo, that's certainly not happening without charting something fierce. What if we get more aggressive with our monetization though? Let's assume that I'm ok at my job but not a Japanese master at GREE or making hardcore PVP ala Battle Pirates/Clash of Clans (where they can pull down upwards of $0.4-.7/DAU) and can pull down a far more respectable $0.05/DAU. Well, that only requires 35k DAU. More manageable to be sure. Drag that up to $0.1/DAU and hey, down to 20k DAU. That only requires a few hundred thousand downloads, assuming your NURR/CURR/RURR are good. Certainly enough to get the flywheels turning and give you enough runway to optimize, start looking at your lifetime values, advertise, and such. F2P odds are just too much better to think about doing anything else. The upside is also much larger as well. FOR NOW! BUM BUM BUM! ---- Edit for THE FUTURE! I think what's happening is that casuals will get bored of the same-old-same-old, but with the rise of tablet and the awful "midcore" audience, the opportunity is now to move people between engagement levels. We still don't target the core gamer audience, but there's a pretty wide gulf between them and the FarmVille mommy audience.
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Nov 14, 2012 16:38
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