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Bicuspid posted:There's no way this cost that much right? It's ripping off a phone app. The Wii version was actually fairly successful, for a venture requiring new hardware. So they automatically assumed that the market must also be there on 360 and PS3. Lots of stock was manufactured and left unsold, and this is what cost tons. But that's just my layman's understanding. Edit: Sigma-X posted:e: my former THQ employer, Volition, is hiring, and I have nothing but good things to say about the folks I worked with there. There are a lot of good people there and Mike and Dan did/do a good job of taking care of the employees. Yeah, on the subject of treating employees well... It's worth mentioning that I've had nothing but the best treatment at THQ Montreal. I never felt as a junior that I was just being exploited or the like, nor have we had mandatory crunch time. We did crunch, but when one of our leads had a family emergency during that time, he was still allowed to go back home to see things through. Jan fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 00:45
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Bicuspid posted:I had no idea what this was until I googled it just now and that is just a terrible idea for $49.99 uDraw Wii was basically Mario Paint for the Wii and sold like hotcakes to that market. If I had kids I would have bought it, and if I was 10 it would have been the coolest poo poo ever - Mario Paint is literally what put me on the path of computer graphics. 360/PS3 are not the same market and THQ proved that without a doubt.
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Dec 14, 2012 00:45
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Jan posted:If layoffs are your definition of not giving a poo poo about employees, then there are about three games companies out there that do. There are companies out there that do layoffs that I'm not too bothered by (I mean, all layoffs suck...but yeah). But how THQ has treated some of my friends I think it's safe to say they have other things in mind other than how they treat their employees. Plus, having layoffs at one company is not a massive huge deal, but having multiple studios shut down and laying off 50-90% of staff at other studios is a pretty big deal. Also, some amazingly talented people I know got laid off merely months after they got hired. You know something isn't right when a company overhires to reach deadlines and then culls the people they don't need anymore when they weren't just contract employees. I mean, I'm not blaming all of this on THQ. I'm sure the individual studios had a lot to do with it. I'm just management/publisher-bitter. The amount of money they hand out and then expect back is loving ridiculous and needs to stop. ceebee fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 00:52
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ceebee posted:Also, some amazingly talented people I know got laid off merely months after they got hired. You know something isn't right when a company overhires to reach deadlines and then culls the people they don't need anymore when they weren't just contract employees. This is really not as uncommon as you think, I think.
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Dec 14, 2012 00:58
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wodin posted:I don't think that would actually be very fun for anyone involved, to be honest. There's a lot to be said for not knowing how the sausage is made, and that kind of podcast is more or less a one way ticket to ruining people's enjoyment of mechanics and games. I guess we will have to agree to disagree, I would find that very interesting and I think others would too. I don't really see how that would ruin the enjoyment either, if anything, I think it could increase the appreciation of all the thought that goes into design. It's not like they would force you to listen to it anyway, if you are not into it.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:05
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Jan posted:The Wii version was actually fairly successful, for a venture requiring new hardware. So they automatically assumed that the market must also be there on 360 and PS3. Lots of stock was manufactured and left unsold, and this is what cost tons. Some of the guys I work with at VV are from Rainbow in Arizona and they loved it there until the end came. Seems like a lot of the THQ studios have great culture and comraderie, the corporate level just kinda made a mess of things. Every studio has its issues, my time at Vigil was well spent though. It was my first gig and I made a bunch of friends there, and the climate was pretty dang friendly. One could do a lot worse than working for THQ, but I would always keep a weather eye out and be prepared unless things really pick up for them.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:15
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Starting a new job in the middle of flu season is just asking for trouble, I guess. Ugh, nothing like having to take two days off inside of your first two weeks to make that great first impression.  Sucks, too, because I'm actually enjoying this job a lot more than I thought I would.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:23
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treeboy posted:Some of the guys I work with at VV are from Rainbow in Arizona and they loved it there until the end came. Seems like a lot of the THQ studios have great culture and comraderie, the corporate level just kinda made a mess of things. I didn't know you were at VV. Do you know John Day?
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Dec 14, 2012 01:33
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Well poo poo Jan my bad. I thought it was all bad for THQ. You are implying that they are not going to go out of business. Which is good. I would hate for Voltion and the others to not have a home. That and I want a drat Saints Row 4. 
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Dec 14, 2012 01:46
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Mega Shark posted:I didn't know you were at VV. Do you know John Day? spoke with him a bit today actually. Wicked mohawk.
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Dec 14, 2012 01:52
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Anyone have some good tips for assembling a Portfolio involving code?
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Dec 14, 2012 02:36
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:I want to counter the recommendation of Gamers With Jobs. They are good-natured, but several of their contributors are shallow and insipid. They also have a nasty of habit of discussions that are riddled with basic factual errors. This is very true. The original poster would probably be better off by sticking to the episodes that feature developers as the special guest (e.g. Episode #'s 318, 292, 291, 290, 287, etc.)
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Dec 14, 2012 02:41
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I know this subject came up before, is there an album / site full of pictures of game developer offices anywhere? We're switching out cubical styles (although somehow I get to keep my office), which is exciting, and all the talk of how things can change / how it will look when it's done makes me want to look at more pictures of game dev offices.
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Dec 14, 2012 02:47
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If it's not room to room ball pits and jungle gyms I'm not interested EDIT: Why Yes UK goons I am posting this a 4:45am cos I'm trying to render out my gundam model using various viewport grabbers.
GeeCee fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 05:43
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Chainclaw posted:I know this subject came up before, is there an album / site full of pictures of game developer offices anywhere? We're switching out cubical styles (although somehow I get to keep my office), which is exciting, and all the talk of how things can change / how it will look when it's done makes me want to look at more pictures of game dev offices. Where I work, outside of 2 cubicles, everyone has their own office. It is amazing
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Dec 14, 2012 07:19
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treeboy posted:spoke with him a bit today actually. Wicked mohawk. Tell him Pat says, "Hi!" We were college classmates.
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Dec 14, 2012 08:22
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The Glumslinger posted:Where I work, outside of 2 cubicles, everyone has their own office. It is amazing The PA report has a few shots of our setup. The actual desk layouts are totally random as people just wheel them in wherever and move frequently. For a reference point on how often we move desks: Not a single person in any of those pictures is still sitting where they were when those pictures were taken, except IT and the front desk for obvious reasons. I know ArenaNet, Mojang, and CCP also rock a similar open office style, though without the wheelie desks.
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Dec 14, 2012 09:02
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Chernabog posted:I guess we will have to agree to disagree, I would find that very interesting and I think others would too. I don't really see how that would ruin the enjoyment either, if anything, I think it could increase the appreciation of all the thought that goes into design. It's not like they would force you to listen to it anyway, if you are not into it. But people outside the dev of that game aren't going to know that info, they're only going to be able to look at the finished thing, and that's basically just in-depth criticism which isn't what I would find interesting in a "by devs for devs" podcast. I mean, as a 3rd party you can look at a game and say "they should have done X, Y, Z instead". But maybe that was the original intention but the schedule got pulled right back so they had to tidy up a half-implemented system in the space of a month. How they rolled with the punches is the real interest to me.
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Dec 14, 2012 09:17
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Sigma-X posted:uDraw Wii was basically Mario Paint for the Wii and sold like hotcakes to that market. If I had kids I would have bought it, and if I was 10 it would have been the coolest poo poo ever - Mario Paint is literally what put me on the path of computer graphics. I actually think it was the tablet industry that ate the uDraw. Little kids want to play on their parent's iPads, not on a tablet for a console. The uDraw for Wii pre-dated the iPad, and had a window that worked. Edited to say fact checked this and I'm not quite right. The first iPad came out prior to the Wii uDraw. Still, I stand by my point about tablets as now being the primary gaming device for children. EgonSpengler fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 12:55
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The Glumslinger posted:Where I work, outside of 2 cubicles, everyone has their own office. It is amazing I can 100% see the draw of this, but I've been in a completely open layout with my team for the past year with windows and natural light and it's by far been the most fun I've had at work. You have to luck out and end up on a day-to-day team with people you like and get along with though. I worked at a small company that had ~30 people and we all sat at desks in one room, all facing the same direction, school classroom-style. That was weird...
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Dec 14, 2012 15:02
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I wish I at least had the option of an office, some days I have a hard time focusing and the ambient hubbub of an open production space really makes things distracting. Barring that, working from home would be even better, but we're still only allowed to do so outside of core hours.
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Dec 14, 2012 16:44
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I wish more places did telecommuting. There's no part of my job I can't do with a few select web passwords, intranet access, and skype, and I could keep my flu-ridden rear end home and still get work done. 
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Dec 14, 2012 17:04
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Small 2-4 person offices for life. Death to open floor plans / cubicles! This has been well-documented as suboptimal for productivity forever and yet people still cling to this notion that it's better for creativity or whatever to have everyone sitting near each other.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:06
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We went from open office to high-walled cubicals and it was the worst ever. Made me feel like I was back working in a call center, they weren't that big of cubicals either since we didn't have a need for console devkits and TVs. I think the 2-4 person per office thing is pretty ideal. I think I've heard it being called the "pod system" or something.
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Dec 14, 2012 17:29
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I've never been in a shared 2-4 person office myself, but interacting with people in them is a hassle. It puts people in a position where they can be easily distracted. If I walk into a shared office to talk to someone, it's hard for most people not to let themselves get distracted and join in on the conversation. Also, I've seen it happen a few times where people in a shared office happen to have habits that drive each other nuts. Also, the 2-4 person office thing heightens communication between those people, but breaks off communication with the rest of the team. The people in shared offices on teams I've been on often complained about feeling out of the loop and out of touch on happenings on a project. The rolling desk stuff looks pretty slick, and I could see a lot of benefits to that. If I could bring myself to give up an office full of tchotchkes, a rolling desk would awesome for me, my position has me supporting a lot of teams, so being able to roll up next to one team for a week while I work on something for them would be great. The new short cube walls are potentially a temporary experiment, see how well it goes for a project cycle. The problem with office layout stuff is there are studies, anecdotes, and research that claim every style of office layout is terrible / amazing / good for productivity / bad for productivity.
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Dec 14, 2012 18:01
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I think the one studio I've seen that seemed to have worked really well in an open setting was Adhesive (guys making Hawken). They have a small team of like 18 people or so. I spent a couple hours there and their office is like one big warehouse with a bunch of desks. I don't mind an open office, it feels much better than a 1 person-per-cubical farm at least. The only other inbetween I've seen is Blizzard and Naughty Dog's offices. They have cubicals but they're large ones and occasionally there's 2-3 people per 1-2 "cubicals". Those felt pretty nice but with a studio with that many employees inter-studio communication gets put into the hands of a middleman or lead usually...which I can't say I enjoy most of the time. I like going over to design or animation and collaborating with stuff to make sure we're ultimately making something cohesive and that we all like (including art directors/leads), as long as I'm not outstaying my welcome or reducing any kind of productivity. I mean, Naughty Dog was so big a lot of the people had scooters to get around to different teams and poo poo which seemed pretty goofy. ceebee fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 18:25
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ceebee posted:I mean, Naughty Dog was so big a lot of the people had scooters to get around to different teams and poo poo which seemed pretty goofy. Lemon King posted:Anyone have some good tips for assembling a Portfolio involving code? Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 19:14
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Vigil had a pod setup I really enjoyed. Each pod had 8 people in it, 4 on each side, with openings into the pod at either end. Walls were upper chest/shoulder height on me (i'm about 5'10") so you could still chat with other people nearby by standing up or just raising your voice slightly, but unless people were being boisterous there wasn't too much noise pollution from nearby pods. this was nice since Animators could pretty much all be in one group with designers right next to us while still maintaining a fair amount of peace. I tried to find a pictures of it on their site, but they don't really have any. There was a game informer tour though that did a decent job of showing it off. http://www.vigilgames.com/videos/behind-the-scenes-at-vigil-with-gameinformer about 55sec in you can see the environment artist pod.
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Dec 14, 2012 19:34
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FreakyZoid posted:I'd like it if it was the designers themselves explaining how a certain level ended up that way, what the original design for a system was and why it was changed, what financial & technical constraints they were under etc. Yeah, I can see your point and I do think that with the actual developers you could get a lot more insight. I still think that there could be interesting information to be found from a design perspective, even if it is external, rather than from a gamer's standpoint.
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Dec 14, 2012 20:54
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ceebee posted:I mean, Naughty Dog was so big a lot of the people had scooters to get around to different teams and poo poo which seemed pretty goofy. They're a really great bunch of guys though. I liked sneaking into their lifedrawing sessions when they have them up.
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Dec 14, 2012 21:02
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ceebee posted:I mean, Naughty Dog was so big a lot of the people had scooters to get around to different teams and poo poo which seemed pretty goofy. Man, now I want to work there. My job frowned on my wearing my quad skates to get around the office. "Blah blah blah occupational hazard blah blah" I'm sorry, a derby bout is hazardous, skating around the office is not.
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Dec 14, 2012 21:14
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Nagna Zul posted:Are there any Eidos Montréal goons in the thread? I'll be starting there next month. I'm a Level Designer at EM! This might seem like an odd question, but by any chance are you also a Level Designer coming from France? Cause if you are... You might be sitting next to me on your first day  (If not, well... welcome! lol) Happy Blue Cow fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Dec 14, 2012 |
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Dec 14, 2012 22:16
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Jan posted:Man, now I want to work there. My job frowned on my wearing my quad skates to get around the office. "Blah blah blah occupational hazard blah blah" One of my colleagues quit EA many years ago after being told off for running in the corridors...
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Dec 15, 2012 01:43
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Shalinor posted:Basically, don't show the code if you can avoid it, beyond one as a sample of your style / that you use comments. Instead, focus on YouTube videos of your code in action. It'll probably be programmer art, but no one really cares for a coder's portfolio. Work related is about items as such: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IHr9i5oBBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek8-AI8Y6OA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNTtoS904x0 Lemon King fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 01:52
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Lemon King posted:Its partial code and some design, the overview for the interview mentioned I should bring a portfolio. A chap I used to work with had the best goddamn coder portfolio I've ever seen. It was mostly screenshots/videos of the projects he'd worked on along with short text blurbs that explained each project a little and what he'd done on each. He is a goon so if he's reading this he might pop in and show it off...
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Dec 15, 2012 02:17
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Smegbot posted:A chap I used to work with had the best goddamn coder portfolio I've ever seen. It was mostly screenshots/videos of the projects he'd worked on along with short text blurbs that explained each project a little and what he'd done on each. I confirmed incredibly awkwardly that this is me. I think the vast majority of why the portfolio is good is because my friend is a god-damned amazing web designer, but here it is in case it's useful to anyone: http://portfolio.baldurk.org/. It's rather out of date since I haven't touched it since leaving Cohort Studios, I should get Crysis 2 + C1C + Crysis 3 up there at least, and maybe drop the oldest couple of projects that aren't so relevant anymore. Whether it's good at getting me hired, I don't know. I'm employed now which is probably a good sign at least. I don't have enough experience to say what makes a good coder portfolio, but at an educated guess I'd say that you can probably go light on the details and try and hook interest either visually (if relevant) or with very high-level information about what you did. If people want details about your skills or history, or get code samples, they can ask you for them (or give you a coding test).
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Dec 15, 2012 02:41
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What's everyone's read on a reasonable goal for an indie kickstarter these days? After Jones On Fire goes out in January, I'm figuring I'll spend a few months on a prototype of Next Game, which will use the same art style and share a lot of the platforming tech. It'll be a noir murder mystery set in a time loop, taking place on a closed-off research campus. Sci-fi future with fedoras and chiaroscuro lighting, basically, and metroidvania'ing around a world with day/night cycles and reactive NPCs/environment. (and no, I don't mean OMG SMOOTH TIME REWIND LIKE BRAID OVER 3 DAYS or anything, I'd keep it much simpler than that - minding scope will be critical) ... I'd be going in with a solid look-and-feel prototype, probably be a half hour-ish loop with a few cause-and-effect plotlines to play through in various ways. That, (indie) film-grade camera/lighting/mic to shoot video with, a better understanding of stretch goals and necessary information update cadence, etc. Not another Gravitaz, basically. If we'd had a game that wasn't accurately described as "like Wipeout, but on PC", better initial video, etc, we might have stood at least some chance of funding. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 05:23
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devilmouse posted:Small 2-4 person offices for life. Death to open floor plans / cubicles! This has been well-documented as suboptimal for productivity forever and yet people still cling to this notion that it's better for creativity or whatever to have everyone sitting near each other. Really? That would be good to understand more deeply. Got any links? I recently lobbied for and received a "getaway" office where people who need to focus and are having trouble with distractions in the open floor plan can temporarily get away and do work. Too early to tell if it is helping but it doesn't seem like people are using it very much.
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Dec 15, 2012 06:45
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treeboy posted:spoke with him a bit today actually. Wicked mohawk. If you see Christoper Goss, please greet him with "En Taro Adun". Happy Blue Cow posted:I'm a Level Designer at EM! Hi! I'm a programmer, AI programmer coming from Québec. I look forward to working with you guys! Nagna Zul fucked around with this message at 22:02 on Jan 5, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2012 06:50
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DancingMachine posted:Really? That would be good to understand more deeply. Got any links?
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