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The real reason that we started our own studio revealed:quote:if you cant sneak the odd knob joke in a press release then whats the point
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Dec 17, 2012 17:17
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Mega Shark posted:I think that the Games Industry regards itself as special. I was from "the outside" but I hear about all the terrible Producers that came up from within the Industry and how terrible they are. A good Project Manager should assess how his team/teams work and then build off of the good things they do and work on correcting the bad. Sure, there are unique things with how you have to schedule and the blend of very talented people. Pretty much agree with all of that.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:46
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Hey there, I haven't seen any Marketing, PR, or Community Management chatter going on here so I don't know if I'll be able to regularly contribute to this thread unless some lurkers have been hiding burning questions about those fields of work. If anyone does though, I'd be happy to chat about them. I have noticed, over several pages, people chatting about looking for a new job in design, production, project management, etc. So I figured I'd drop a few links to jobs we (Amazon.com Game Services and Amazon.com Game Studios) have open. Let me know if you have any questions about them and I'll do my best to answer, or run down answers. Business Team Technical Roles https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/200147/technical-program-manager---amazon-game-services/job - This is a Technical Program Manager role working on projects that they'd discuss in the interview with you (forward looking stuff). This one is on the team I work on so I can definitely provide insight into team culture, etc. https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/201091/sr-product-manager%2c-digital-games/job?mode=job - This job is both on the team I work on and in my specific business group. I can tell you it is the most enjoyable team at Amazon  . https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/201411/lead-visual-designer-amazon.com%2c-vxd/job?mode=job - This is a visual design role. Alot of the stuff these guys are working on is forward looking. https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/19...net&iisn=Indeed - Another Technical Program Manager role Studio Side Roles This team is in my org but I'd have to ask questions to get more specifics about each job. https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/200223/sr.-bi-engineer%2c-amazon-game-studios/job?mode=job - BI Engineer role https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/200224/sr.-game-designer%2c-amazon-game-studios/job?mode=job - Game designer role https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/192497/game-designer%2c-amazon-game-studios/job?mode=job&iis=Advertisement-Internet&iisn=Indeed - Game Designer role https://us-amazon.icims.com/jobs/153771/sr.-marketing-manager-%2528mobile-games%2529/job?mode=job&iis=Advertisement-Internet&iisn=Indeed - This would be my counterpart in the studio, I work on the retail side. Hope this is helpful, if not let me know so I don't post useless stuff in your thread.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:50
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Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. I'm not at all interesting in getting into the industry or anything, but the horror stories make me wonder.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:53
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. My job has directly led to the breakup of my relationship and not in the way you might think. Hope to go into it in more detail soon. We're still great friends though and live together.
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Dec 17, 2012 17:57
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Monster w21 Faces posted:My job has directly led to the breakup of my relationship and not in the way you might think. Hope to go into it in more detail soon. Did you let her die in Diablo 3?
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Dec 17, 2012 17:59
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. I do but there are some caveats: 1. I'm a 27 year old single guy, so my level of actual commitment to things outside of work is extremely variable. 2. I am not on the production side, I am on the business/marketing side. This doesn't mean I'm not up often up at 5:00AM working (hello Saturday night-Sunday morning!), but I don't have the regular sprint cycles that the content folks do. 3. I moved across the country, from Florida to Seattle, to take a job in the industry, so my family and all my closest friends live thousands of miles away. 4. I've been lucky enough to work at 2 companies in the industry that really value their employees personal lives and encourage the people that work for them to live the way they want to live. I've also been lucky enough to work on teams with people I became/have become very close friends with, so alot of the time I'm hanging out recreation ally with those I work with. This makes it easier to transition from being at a concert to "something has broken and we must fix it" mode. 5. We have a ping pong table 3 feet from my desk. That's just my 2 cents.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:00
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. Horror stories aren't the norm, luckily! I mostly manage to have time to have a life - whether or not I actually do have a life is debatable but I certainly have the time. I don't think I'm that much of an outlier. [edit] concerned mom posted:Did you let her die in Diablo 3?  (That's not why I broke up with him though) floofyscorp fucked around with this message at 18:04 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 18:01
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. Very much so. We actually have an opposite problem at our studio where the more hardcore guys don't use their vacation, so our owner's wife ends up scheduling group ski trips / etc. just to get them to get away from work for awhile. As we've grown it's become more mature and family friendly, but for awhile I was one of the few people who flew home across country to see family around the holidays, which was very strange indeed.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:04
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. Outside of peaks during crunch for ~2 weeks once or twice a year, I've been doing 8-9am to 6-7pm pretty regularly since 2002 (before that, I was in the "yay games! gonna sleep at my desk! Woo!" camp). During crunch, it might go up to 12h days or add in a Saturday/Sunday to the mix. So yes, the life outside of work is plentiful.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:05
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. Absolutely, I almost always have fun/special things planned every weekend with my family. I have five kids and a wife and even when things get busy we always have things planned, we just plan them at different times around my schedule. Even in the busy times I'm never under any pressure to not show up to my kid's holiday school play or things like that.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:17
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. Uh, yes - very much so. Well, sometimes we do stay longer, like up to 9-10 pm to play board games. Apart from that it's pretty much just your regular 8 hours a day job.
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Dec 17, 2012 18:21
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floofyscorp posted:No lie, one of the worst fights I had with my ex was when he tried to teach me Starcraft and instead beat me mercilessly with invisible space marines or something. I had no idea what was going on  "I don't love losers"
GeeCee fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 18:43
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floofyscorp posted:Oh man. We started our closed beta on Wednesday(so excited!) and we already have a YouTube video rant from a Transformers fan about how terrible our game is and how he's boycotting us This will never grow old. Except when it does... and you want them to stop. please god make them stop
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Dec 17, 2012 19:03
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. On my first job I never had to work overtime a single time in a year and a half. On my current job I've had to do it a few times, but nothing terrible. That said, I had a friend who had to work overtime for months straight, so I guess it depends on the company.
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Dec 17, 2012 19:44
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First internship was pretty bleh, with me coming at 8 and leaving at around 9-10pm for four months, because I had to juggle my assistant producer workload plus that of another producer's who left shortly before I arrived. At least it was an amazing learning experience. Second internship was great. Stayed late... to play games, often. First job was bleh again, with a ton of work due to working against insane deadlines with an understaffed team. Current job is awesome. Better to push back a release/milestone a little bit than burn out the team if it's going to require too much sustained crunch.
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Dec 17, 2012 19:58
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You guys are lucky only having to do that for a short while, I did that for a year and a half with no end in sight. Try not to work on MMOs, they are terribly soul draining, expectations are high and deadlines are short. I'm starting to get hardcore back into personal art. Doing some mobile assets is pretty enjoyable, not having to create like 10 different texture maps helps quite a bit. Freelance is going easy breezy too 
ceebee fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 20:05
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Ceebee: Probably the most useful thing I learned out of my mobile development experience was how to work with Vector layers inside photoshop. It got to the point that entire character bone sprite sets would be drawn up solely with vector colour/gradient layers, mainly because there was such a need to be able to edit, recolour and rescale our way-above-pixel-level sprites. All photoshop vectors, not a single hand drawn pixel remained  EDIT: Oh what the gently caress I forgot to put Safe Sex Frank on there as well :C GeeCee fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 20:41
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Aliginge posted:Ceebee: Probably the most useful thing I learned out of my mobile development experience was how to work with Vector layers inside photoshop. It got to the point that entire character bone sprite sets would be drawn up solely with vector colour/gradient layers, mainly because there was such a need to be able to edit, recolour and rescale our way-above-pixel-level sprites.
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Dec 17, 2012 20:45
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I need to get used to that pen tool thingamajigger. I dig that style man, I hope you find something soon I got top row'd on CGHub a couple days ago. Really surprised how much people looked at my work. Kinda hit a small goal I had in my career...didn't think it would've happened for my first job. Pretty cool to think about http://oi45.tinypic.com/o5zznm.jpg Big thumbnail farthest to the right. ceebee fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 20:47
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Shalinor posted:I get that there was drama over the comedy, blah blah, but - dude. Your stuff on the game was great. I love the look of it. Definitely want to see safe-sex frank.  I particularly recall the dream sequence proposed which involved sausages flying at Frank's face because he's secretly gay or something, isn't that terribly funny?  We flatly blocked that one with a "No, that's stupid, we're not doing that. "Akuma no doubt has plenty of tales to tell. also, Safe Sex Frank  Our CEOs idea that costume, credit where it's due 
GeeCee fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 21:17
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Aliginge posted:Thanks, but Akuma and his wife were the real brains behind the best bits of the project I think they might still have my copy of the films and all.
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Dec 17, 2012 21:21
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Aliginge posted:Thanks, but Akuma and his wife were the real brains behind the best bits of the project and I believe the writing partnership we had with one of the writers on Naked Gun 33.3r, really hurt the comedy. Every time our version of the Naked Gun script went back for approval, it was changed in some completely stupid, inappropriate and unfunny way.
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Dec 17, 2012 21:21
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SnafuAl posted:I think they might still have my copy of the films and all. Shalinor posted:I can't comment as to the nature of the relationship, but having anything whatsoever to do with Naked Gun 33 1/3rd - ouch. That was... uh, not a good one. Akuma fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Dec 17, 2012 |
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Dec 17, 2012 21:33
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Akuma posted:So we'll have him grab the lady, yeah? And slam her up against the wall! And then he'll touch her up at gunpoint. Violent molestations are funny, right? Right? I know I'm aroused. In case anyone was unsure, this was literally one of the suggestions the guy made.
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Dec 17, 2012 21:43
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. It's always been good except (spot the link with my last post) when we have had producers or similar people who were either incredibly keen on 'pressure as a motivator' or just wanted the directors to be happy at the expense of the designers and coders. Other than that, as much as you can expect in any job in similar industries (I worked in computer security for a few years and it was pretty equivalent in number of times extra hours appeared.) I think we hear about the bad guys disproportionately just because the effect when it is shockingly bad is upon a whole studio, whereas a good work hours regime feels so natural that noone is inspired to talk about it. I'm currently incredibly happy with the producers I work with - they are solely interested in making time scheduling work effectively and very good at deflecting requests from anyone not supposed to be allocating work but with delusions that they can get away with sneaking in their pet projects. If I am doing overtime I know who messed up - it was me, which alleviaters the sadness somewhat.
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Dec 17, 2012 21:52
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. I realize that I'm probably an anomaly in this regard, but I've maintained a strict ethic because it's important to me, important to my wife and children, and because I can be really effective at my role in a normal time frame. This decision has never hampered my upward mobility, and in some cases, it's actually strengthened it. It's meant that I stay happy, which in turn makes me very productive. When I became a lead, it meant that my team stays happy, which keeps them high-functioning. It becomes cyclical when I use this same productivity to keep my team well-scheduled, ensuring that we don't make promises that we can't keep, or a promise that will require many additional hours to fulfill. I understand that there are a lot of people out there who work long hours, quite a few get recognized for it, and even more that don't. I don't begrudge people that work more than a regular day, but I do take issue with studios that make it part of a mandatory schedule. It's rampant through the industry, and I've been careful to work at places that don't make it a habit. I remember when I got my very first job, and a week into it, I started to panic, thinking that I was really behind. I confessed to a coworker that I was thinking of coming in on the weekend to get caught up, and he mentioned something that I'll never forget. He told me that even though I could come in and work more, that my bosses would be even more impressed if I could use the time that I had to get the work done, instead of having it spill over into extra hours. I'm really glad he said that to me, because it forever changed my outlook. (Thanks pewp.) Small blurb mentioning that I've worked for EA-owned studios for virtually all 7 years.
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Dec 18, 2012 06:19
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Mega Shark posted:TL;DR: I agree with the idea that the industry is too insular. Exclusive and elitist, even. If you have the talent to be a good project manager in general, then you have the right talent to be a game producer. But I don't buy that generic project management skills/talent are enough. You really need the experience of multiple software development shipping cycles under your belt. Seeing what works and what doesn't, what kinds of problems crop up, what all the roles are and how their work interrelates, understanding a number of technical issues, etc. I agree that QA is not an ideal hiring pool as they are kind of observers in a way rather than full participants. But I'd still rather have a good internal on-site QA person promoted to junior producer than bring in a project manager from the widget building company. Better is to move a developer over, but devs who want to become producers (and have the right skill set) are less common. A software project manager from the non-games software world, who has a demonstrable passion for and understanding of games in general, is also a good bet I think. devilmouse posted:A day late to this, but catch! Good stuff, thanks.
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Dec 18, 2012 06:24
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Akuma posted:So we'll have him grab the lady, yeah? And slam her up against the wall! And then he'll touch her up at gunpoint. Violent molestations are funny, right? Right? I know I'm aroused. There are no words...
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Dec 18, 2012 14:19
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Akuma posted:Holy poo poo, they're on my shelf! PM me your address and I'll send them over! Sorry, dude. Will do, no hurry. Akuma posted:So we'll have him grab the lady, yeah? And slam her up against the wall! And then he'll touch her up at gunpoint. Violent molestations are funny, right? Right? I know I'm aroused. Yeah, I remember you telling me about that one. Was this the same guy who had a complete aversion to any pun-based name gags like the ones the first Naked Gun film and the Police Squad series did so well? I seem to recall a lot of the funny one-liners being stripped out by his revisions.
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Dec 18, 2012 17:16
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Anybody in the thread at Sony Santa Monica?
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Dec 18, 2012 17:40
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Aaaaand its gone: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/thq-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-shares-halted-2012-12-19?link=MW_latest_news THQ filing for bankruptcy.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:18
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Bankruptcy is far from dissolution. Kmart's gone bankrupt like 3 times. That's a "technically" kind of statement though.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:39
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mutata posted:Bankruptcy is far from dissolution. Kmart's gone bankrupt like 3 times. That's a "technically" kind of statement though. I've even heard people refer to Chapter 11 as a tactic.
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Dec 19, 2012 20:54
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Not great for their public image or share price, when they sell again, though is it!
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Dec 19, 2012 21:13
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They already sold, to a private equity company. I'm not a bankruptcy attorney but I assume they filed Ch. 11 instead of Ch. 7 because they're not so badly off that it is unrecoverable. What would typically happen is that the private equity firm will reorganize everything, shift management around, put their people in, and start identifying what they can sell off to create a financially healthy company and pay some of their debts. Then, when it looks in better shape (usually 5 years, but sometimes less) they'll sell the company. For THQ I'd expect there's going to be cancellations and significant layoffs (including firings of middle and senior management on the corporate side) and they'll shutter some of their studio assets.
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Dec 19, 2012 21:26
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http://venturebeat.com/2012/12/19/thq-files-for-bankruptcy-assets-sold-to-investor-clearlake/ Jason has also been saying on Twitter and Facebook that all major titles are on track. quote:Sure you've heard the big news for @THQ. Commitment from Clearlake Capital to buy the business. Major step in securing financial future.
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Dec 19, 2012 21:28
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not sure how many studios there are left to shutter.
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Dec 19, 2012 21:50
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Adraeus posted:I've even heard people refer to Chapter 11 as a tactic. You've heard Donald Trump speak then?
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Dec 19, 2012 22:01
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Sion posted:You've heard Donald Trump speak then? Assuming you actually have enough money to pay creditors *and* restructure, it can be a powerful fat cutting tool, especially in middle/upper management
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Dec 19, 2012 22:02
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