Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

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BizarroAzrael: Apr 6, 2006; "That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

concerned mom posted:

Is it in the Midlands by any chance? If it's who I'm thinking of ask how much you'd want I reckon.

Nope!

Don't know if I should talk openly about who it is, you never know who's reading do you? Not that I would break and NDAs or anything. It's why I've been quiet in here, I had two interviews last week as well.

Sigma-X posted:

What is the role? Can you research similar roles and find a good expectation? Have you performed a similar role? Do you need to relocate/increase your commute or incur additional commute fees? What is the impact of the job on your current salary (or previous salary).

Figure out your costs of taking the job before you just talk about numbers.

If things are going well for you right now (they sound like they are) a "bad" number from you isn't going to kill that, so don't worry too much about the specific number. Figure out your baseline needs and your desired wages, and don't let them know your baseline needs.

Do not give them a number lower than what you would accept. If you give them any number (ie, previous wages) it is very likely they'll give you that number.

Worst case scenario, if you can't find data or salary negotiation gambits, just say that you're understanding of their nature as a startup and can be flexible within reason, and see where they start it out. This is probably your best bet if you're unable to do due diligence on the nature of the role.

This is a startup - are they offering stock options? You can mention a target number that is higher than what you would need to live comfortably and then mention that salary can be flexible if there is additional compensation such as stock options, etc. Never say you're willing to accept lower. It shows you don't have confidence in yourself which will turn into them losing confidence in you. Instead, negotiate for accepting "different" as above - either specify stock options, signing bonuses, relocation expenses, commuter/cell/etc coverage, etc.

Sorry, these are kind of stream of consciousness but I'm trying to dump this out before lunch is over.

I've not come across a job quite like this before, and I have looked. It's dealing with all matters testing, writing test cases, selection of tracking software, outsourced testers, establishing smoke test procedures, maybe organizing focus tests. I have worked out costs of living, they are similar if I commute or relocate, but I think relocation works better for me in the long run. No offers in terms of benefits or stock has been put to me. Based on the sort of money I would like to be making, given it's a six month contract and I'm considering a Master's Degree later in the year and would like to put some money away, I think I will pitch them a range starting at the minimum it would take to house me, add meaningfully to my savings and have a bit of disposable income, and going up to the most I feel I can ask for.

BizarroAzrael fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Feb 5, 2013

# ? Feb 5, 2013 23:29

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:48

xgalaxy: Jan 27, 2004; i write code

I always make them throw out a figure first.
I've found they are usually right where I was thinking or higher.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 06:33

Tricky Ed: Aug 18, 2010; It is important to avoid confusion. This is the one that's okay to lick.

When I made the transition from contract to full time, I was expecting to have to fight to get an Associate title and something north of $35k. If they'd asked me about salary requirements I might have gotten nothing more than that, since I would have been dumb enough to say that.

Instead, the first offer from them was Designer and a number so much higher than I was expecting I didn't even think to ask for more. I don't know if I could have gotten more, or if other considerations were possible (such as counting contract time towards seniority) but I jumped at the first number I was offered and probably didn't come out as well as I could have because of that.

So I guess if that experience offers any lessons, they are:

1) Don't offer the first number, especially if this would be a big jump up for you.
2) The company's job is to offer you the minimum amount they think you'll accept.
3) The company wants to fill the position, and if you're getting an offer they want you to fill it. They're hoping you don't turn them down. You've probably got some space to go from the initial offer.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 10:08

BizarroAzrael: Apr 6, 2006; "That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

Sure, but they've asked me and I'm not sure I can ask them to offer a figure from here. Am I wrong, could I just say that the position seems a bit unique and I'd like to hear what they think it's worth?

# ? Feb 6, 2013 10:50

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

I've been on both sides of this and the first thing you want is information: How well the company's funded, how are their games doing, how senior is the team, is there equity involved, how much does the position make at other companies, how much do you want/need to make, etc.

Don't be shy, but don't be crazy. If you're a junior person asking for 90k/year, you'll be laughed at. I've seen friends low-ball themselves pretty badly. Don't do this. A 20-30% raise in salary means very little to a funded company while it means a great deal to an individual person. If they've asked you for a number, just give them one that's within the band for that position at similar companies. If they're well-funded, they won't blink and you'll both go home happy. Even if you over-extend (and they actually want you), they'll just say, "Well, we're not really going to pay that much for the position / people doing that at other companies make X / etc".

Three examples: Friend A is a junior designer with maybe 1.5 years of experience. He says that he's been given an offer for a contract position at a post-revenue, but small company. He says he's thinking about asking for $20/hr and what I think about that. I tell him to ask for $35 instead. They squinted their eyes a little bit at him, but gave it to him.

Friend B is a product manager who's in talks with a VC-backed health care company. They've just closed a sizable B round. In discussions with them, they ask her what she was making at her previous gig and she fudges her salary numbers a bit to be about 5% higher than what they were previously and emphasized to them that she'd be looking for more given the (rare/valuable) experience she was bringing and that she was really psyched on this company but had some other offers that she was considering and if they could please hurry up and get back to her, that'd be super duper. They made her offer 20% higher than her previous gig.

A few years ago, I was joining a startup and when the CEO made me an offer (which was higher than my previous salary by 10% or so, I said, "I realize you are only 4 people, so I'm going to be straight up. I'm making X right now, but I'm living in a cheaper place and I'd have to move to join you. To be able to afford to do so and maintain my standard of living, I'd need to be making X+20% (which is a little more than your number) to maintain this standard of living." He said, "That makes sense, OK!"

edit after reading more of the thread:

1) Oh - you don't actually have an offer yet. You can totally push this off! "Let's see if we're a good fit before we discuss salary." This way, you don't give them a reason to ding you on expecting too much before you know if they want to hire you. If they insist on it, just give them a somewhat inflated number with the caveat of "Well, this position would require me to move / spend more time away from my family / etc so I'd likely be looking for significantly more than my previous job."

2) It sounds like you're talking about a QA Engineer / QA Lead. So poke around those jobs for comparable compensation.

devilmouse fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Feb 6, 2013

# ? Feb 6, 2013 14:29

Dinurth: Aug 6, 2004; ?

devilmouse posted:

1) Oh - you don't actually have an offer yet. You can totally push this off! "Let's see if we're a good fit before we discuss salary." This way, you don't give them a reason to ding you on expecting too much before you know if they want to hire you. If they insist on it, just give them a somewhat inflated number with the caveat of "Well, this position would require me to move / spend more time away from my family / etc so I'd likely be looking for significantly more than my previous job."

What about cases where they require a company specific application be filled out that requires a salary history(which I had to do for an interview recently). You are kind of stuck in that case right? Can't exactly put "we'll talk about it later" in those sections. Although the application never asked for "expected salary" or anything.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 15:47

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Dinurth posted:

What about cases where they require a company specific application be filled out that requires a salary history(which I had to do for an interview recently). You are kind of stuck in that case right?

I've never had to fill one out (and never had an HR department issue one when I was hiring), but I've known people to leave that field blank entirely (Friend B in that example did just that).

Or just lie to bring it up to slightly below what you want.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 15:55

Rupert Buttermilk: Apr 15, 2007; 🚣RowboatMan: ❄️Freezing time🕰️ is an old P.I. 🥧trick...

Guess I'm not getting the sound tester postion; it's been removed from the company's site, and I haven't heard back from them at all :eng99:

# ? Feb 6, 2013 16:20

FreakyZoid: Nov 28, 2002

Dinurth posted:

What about cases where they require a company specific application be filled out that requires a salary history(which I had to do for an interview recently).

Leave it blank, or make something up (your old companies aren't going to discuss staff remuneration with the competition). Asking for a salary history on the application form is a sly dirty HR trick.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 16:48

Strength of Many: Jan 13, 2012; The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

How badly does the game industry need competent people for UI design? If that fails I guess I could try and do texture art. Ugh.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 17:34

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Strength of Many posted:

How badly does the game industry need competent people for UI design? If that fails I guess I could try and do texture art. Ugh.

If you understand A/B testing, love building style guides, and can implement your designs inside of actual tools (Flash, CSS, Scaleform, whatever) and keep in mind various engine constraints: "OH GOD YESSSSSSSS GIMME GIMME".

If you're aware of user interface conventions and best practices and can deliver a sliced PSD/FLA, "Eh, pretty good yes."

If neither, "Not so much."

# ? Feb 6, 2013 17:48

Doctor Yiff: Jan 2, 2008

I've been in a phone screen with HR before where they adamantly refused to continue the conversation unless I gave them a number. I politely withdrew my candidacy, although later I got an offer that was about 60% higher than what that company was paying testers at the time, so blessing in disguise.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 17:54

Chainclaw: Feb 14, 2009

Strength of Many posted:

How badly does the game industry need competent people for UI design? If that fails I guess I could try and do texture art. Ugh.

Right now good UI artists/designers are in huge demand. It seems like many companies have ever open positions, and even companies that don't will still look at the resume of an experienced UI artist/designer.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 17:59

Strength of Many: Jan 13, 2012; The butthurt is the life... and it shall be mine.

devilmouse posted:

If you understand A/B testing, love building style guides, and can implement your designs inside of actual tools (Flash, CSS, Scaleform, whatever) and keep in mind various engine constraints: "OH GOD YESSSSSSSS GIMME GIMME".

If you're aware of user interface conventions and best practices and can deliver a sliced PSD/FLA, "Eh, pretty good yes."

If neither, "Not so much."

I've been drawing for years, 'seriously' for about 3-4 now, and have a lot of experience with Flash and CSS (scaleform not so much). And at least entry level coding on a decent amount of languages. I've just, uh, never designed for anything serious before. Mostly mock ups to 'see what I can do'.

I've had a few Flash projects in classes that required me to make a complete game with a legible and functioning UI. Lemme tell you that was not fun for someone new to Actionscript and animating.

Chainclaw posted:

Right now good UI artists/designers are in huge demand. It seems like many companies have ever open positions, and even companies that don't will still look at the resume of an experienced UI artist/designer.

That's encouraging, though I lack any professional experience. All of my work has been personal projects to fill out my portfolio (and experiment/learn!), class projects, and helping other students in software/game development clubs on campus (.....when they weren't goofing off playing LAN games.)

# ? Feb 6, 2013 18:06

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Monochrome posted:

I've been in a phone screen with HR before where they adamantly refused to continue the conversation unless I gave them a number. I politely withdrew my candidacy, although later I got an offer that was about 60% higher than what that company was paying testers at the time, so blessing in disguise.

So you give them a number. I don't get why this is so weird. They ask, you say "well, the latest Game Developer Salary Survey said X was the average - so let's start there."

You need to say that whole thing, though. It gives them a number, AND it gives them wiggle room if you bid too high. They can come back with "well, we agree that's the average, but you see, cost of living in Bumfuck Nowhere is much lower, so we think...". Then you can consider whether their cost of living excuse is bullshit or not, counter offer, and away you go. At worst, they take your offer, and then you're making a decent wage for your job.

Obviously bid higher if you've got the backbone for it, but giving "a fair number" should never be a difficult thing. In other industries, you use Glassdoor to get the average, but we've got a nice yearly magazine that gives us more accurate numbers.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 18:13

Doctor Yiff: Jan 2, 2008

It was weird because we weren't even at an interview stage or even really a point where we were talking about the job, it was the second question in a phone screen with HR to make sure I wasn't a troglodyte. They wouldn't discuss responsibilities or expectations without a number at the beginning of the process, so I took it as a red flag and bailed.

This was about six years ago and I'd be better prepared to give them a fair number these days, but I'd still think forcing the issue that early was bizarre.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 18:32

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

devilmouse posted:

Does a good, free package exist for campaign/source tracking (on iOS)?

Oh snap, Bonertown, USA. Flurry just added User Acquisition tracking to their base SDK and allows you to look at the quality of the installs by campaign against retention, custom segments, and funnels. It's built-in, so anyone (SHALINOR) releasing something soon, you should define your segments and funnels and make your referral links before you start linking people to them.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 19:44

GeeCee: Dec 16, 2004; "You're going to be...amazing."

Strength of Many posted:

How badly does the game industry need competent people for UI design? If that fails I guess I could try and do texture art. Ugh.

The open artist posts I see are 80% UI Artist 20% everything else, 2D, 3D, Texturing etc.

Also look up mobile/ios games jobs dawg, they're the way in for juniors at the moment.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 23:06

Sion: Oct 16, 2004; "I'm the boss of space. That's plenty."

We got a new UI artist recently. She is goddamn amazing and doing some spectacular work. It's all about having a really sound general knowledge and being good at project planning in my opinion. Very difficult stuff.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 23:10

Mr Beens: Dec 2, 2006

FreakyZoid posted:

Leave it blank, or make something up (your old companies aren't going to discuss staff remuneration with the competition). Asking for a salary history on the application form is a sly dirty HR trick.

You can't make up your current salary in the UK. When you leave your old job you get a P45 which you hand to the new company. The form contains all of your tax information for the past year so they can see exactly how much you were earning.

# ? Feb 6, 2013 23:14

Monster w21 Faces: May 11, 2006; "What the fuck is that?"
"What the fuck is this?!"

Sion posted:

We got a new UI artist recently. She is goddamn amazing and doing some spectacular work. It's all about having a really sound general knowledge and being good at project planning in my opinion. Very difficult stuff.

Are you back at Rockstar still?

# ? Feb 7, 2013 00:02

FreakyZoid: Nov 28, 2002

Mr Beens posted:

You can't make up your current salary in the UK. When you leave your old job you get a P45 which you hand to the new company. The form contains all of your tax information for the past year so they can see exactly how much you were earning.

By which point you're already employed? I've never heard of anyone being fired during probation for having told HR they used to earn more than they did. And you're banking on HR remembering the answer to your pre-offer questions at the point they process your P45 a couple of months later (if it's a big enough company HR and Payroll aren't even the same department).

# ? Feb 7, 2013 00:13

Monster w21 Faces: May 11, 2006; "What the fuck is that?"
"What the fuck is this?!"

Speaking of salary, I recently learned that a cm is the States makes about $20 grand more a year.

What a world.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 00:17

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Monster w21 Faces posted:

Speaking of salary, I recently learned that a cm is the States makes about $20 grand more a year.

What a world.

20k salary difference could mean nothing in the states depending on the cost of living. CM in Austin vs a CM in SF making 20k more is probably losing out.

Found out this week there's 5 Goons at my job not 2, but I only know 2 user names.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 04:55

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

devilmouse posted:

Oh snap, Bonertown, USA. Flurry just added User Acquisition tracking to their base SDK and allows you to look at the quality of the installs by campaign against retention, custom segments, and funnels. It's built-in, so anyone (SHALINOR) releasing something soon, you should define your segments and funnels and make your referral links before you start linking people to them.

That sure is a lot of words. I kind of wish I understood some of them. I think you're telling me to get a funnel or something, but I really don't want to do a keg stand.

(I don't have a clue what one does with funnels or why I would care - I really don't expect I'll have the kind of multi-million user counts where flow optimization matters all that much, and I don't have the experience to know what Flurry events I'll need to have in place to generate a useful funnel)

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Feb 7, 2013

# ? Feb 7, 2013 06:18

Damiya: Jul 3, 2012

devilmouse posted:

If you understand A/B testing, love building style guides, and can implement your designs inside of actual tools (Flash, CSS, Scaleform, whatever) and keep in mind various engine constraints: "OH GOD YESSSSSSSS GIMME GIMME".

If you're aware of user interface conventions and best practices and can deliver a sliced PSD/FLA, "Eh, pretty good yes."

If neither, "Not so much."

What does the landscape look like for Flash/UI Engineers in the industry? Moreso than the UX side of things.

I'm looking at making a move up and across into the Front End Engineering role at Riot, and I can't help but wonder if working exclusively with ActionScript would be limiting compared to say.. Strapping on my Java shoes and joining our Platform team.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 07:13

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Shalinor posted:

That sure is a lot of words. I kind of wish I understood some of them. I think you're telling me to get a funnel or something, but I really don't want to do a keg stand.

I'm not sure if you actually want to know, but I figure someone might, so I'll give a 2 second explanation of why this is rad. And I fully understand some people might find this deplorable / big brother-y / etc.

First, on funnels... Let's say you have a tutorial in your game that lasts a few steps. In free games, people will generally drop off pretty quickly if they get bored / they don't understand something / etc when they're in the tutorial, but once they make it to the actual game, they're more likely to stick around. So while the user is playing, you can look at how far they make it, and fix up any steps that show problems. The reason it's called a funnel looks like this:

code:

\        / -- The top of the funnel. This is people who install and launch your app. 100% of people make it here! Yay!
 \      /  -- Now the player launches from the title screen into the first step of the tutorial. 98% of people make it here. 
  \    /   -- The second step of the tutorial. There's a lone dialog box that they click OK through. 95% of people make it here. 
   \  /    -- The third step of the tutorial introduces some crazy game mechanic in a non-obvious way. 80% make it.
    \/     -- The last step of the tutorial has a bug occasionally causing the game to crash out. 75% make it. 
    ||     -- Bounce back to the start screen with the completed tutorial, the player is now ready to play.
           -- This player now (in theory) understands and is playing your game. 72% of people make it here.

Looking at this, you can see that maybe you should look into the 3rd and final steps of the tutorial to see what's wrong since you're losing 28% of your players before they've even started the game. Even without giant user counts, that's a pretty sizable chunk to lose off the top.

Further, you can see how long each one of these steps takes a player and if you see one taking an unusually long time (compared to how long it should take), you can look into why this might be happening.

Adding funnel events is pretty easy / simple and ours are literally as simple as "Start App", "ftue_1", "ftue_2" ... "ftue_complete", and finally "game_start".

Second, segments in Flurry (sometimes called 'slices' elsewhere), allow you to slice up your userbase based on pre-defined (or custom) parameters. So you could say, "Hey, I really want to know about heavily engaged users (ones that play more than once a day) who are payers" (aka the people giving me the $$$) and then query against them. How long do they play? How are they playing? Do they play with friends? etc.

What the new Flurry feature does is allow you to see where users are coming from. So for example, if you set up a segment to find payers, and you're running an ad with TapJoy, you'll quickly see that TapJoy's incentivized users don't monetize for poo poo and barely play the game, whereas users that come from a Facebook feed leaderboard challenge retain much better (and therefor you should stop paying TapJoy and focus on getting existing users to post more challenges).

As for general instrumentation, that's a much longer post...

Damiya posted:

What does the landscape look like for Flash/UI Engineers in the industry? Moreso than the UX side of things.

Good, I imagine. It's hard to find engineers that actually enjoy working with / coding UIs, regardless of language. ActionScript is fine and good and it's rare to find GOOD AS engineers, so there's double value there (more so if AIR catches on on mobile).

devilmouse fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Feb 7, 2013

# ? Feb 7, 2013 14:15

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Damiya posted:

What does the landscape look like for Flash/UI Engineers in the industry? Moreso than the UX side of things.

I'm looking at making a move up and across into the Front End Engineering role at Riot, and I can't help but wonder if working exclusively with ActionScript would be limiting compared to say.. Strapping on my Java shoes and joining our Platform team.

In the game industry good AS engineers are a goldmine right now. As an over-all career path platform/Java experience will serve you for the rest of your career.

But then again even when working on FPSes I always preferred the interesting problems on Infrastructure/Platform.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 15:05

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Kinda curious what folks in here think of Gabe's plans for Steam.

Personally, it has me wondering if I'm shifting to the PC market a year too late. I've got other angles to try and hit, to capitalize on other emerging markets, but PC there for a long time was still a great place to be. What he's discussing will turn it back into a money-driven content-lite cesspool, playing by rules similar to those of the App Store.

EDIT: but it could also be cool, so long as Valve maintains a curated store of their own to act as the continued "big" store, at least until other curated shops step in. I'm just skeptical that Valve understands the importance of that, given their track record lately.

Also,

devilmouse posted:

Thanks for this. Yes, I know funnels that way, I just figured you meant something more. If that's all the further I need take it, I suppose I can add the hooks no sweat. (I still see F2P optimization as this arcane black magic that involves thousands of metrics and some sacrificial virgins)

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Feb 7, 2013

# ? Feb 7, 2013 16:15

Monster w21 Faces: May 11, 2006; "What the fuck is that?"
"What the fuck is this?!"

PC seems like a constant safe bet for small scale stuff since the the rise of internet acceptance. I guess you'll know one far or another 100% once E3 rolls by and we see if consoles are done or not.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 16:29

Odddzy: Oct 10, 2007; Once shot a man in Reno.

Kinda disappointed it wasn't a literal explanation of what a keg stand is, I dont live in the States and it looks like a supremely decadent party move.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 16:33

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

Shalinor posted:

... arcane black magic that involves thousands of metrics and some sacrificial virgins...

Ah, yes, some people call these "players".

(I KID)

# ? Feb 7, 2013 16:43

FreakyZoid: Nov 28, 2002

Shalinor posted:

involves thousands of metrics

I think the problem is most people look at analytics and think "okay, what do I want to capture?" but they don't really know, so they capture everything they can, and you end up with horrible unwieldy data sets, 95% of which are interesting vanity statistics at best.

Knowing the smallest amount of stuff to capture for the greatest return is half the battle.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 16:57

devilmouse: Mar 26, 2004; It's just like real life.

FreakyZoid posted:

I think the problem is most people look at analytics and think "okay, what do I want to capture?" but they don't really know, so they capture everything they can, and you end up with horrible unwieldy data sets, 95% of which are interesting vanity statistics at best.

Knowing the smallest amount of stuff to capture for the greatest return is half the battle.

I'll half-disagree here. People are way too fond of vanity metrics ("There have been 1MM kitties saved from fires!!" is not a useful metric, though it is cute and makes for fun press releases...), but you still want to capture EVERYTHING because you can't go back and add it later. You can, however, still write new queries against old data. It's always better to overlog than underlog. Our small soon-to-be submitted coop/multiplayer word game, for example, has ~65 unique events, broken down down into 10 FTUE events, 15 UI events, 10 FB events, with the remaining around the game itself, and it feels manageable for me to do part-time without being overwhelmed. I'm sure SOME of those events will rarely get looked at, but adding them was a few minutes of work and I'd rather spend that time now than be in the position later where I was really curious, for example, about how many users played with sound/music on/off.

That said, it's what you do with that data that's the important part. Asking the right (and, more importantly, actionable) questions of your mounds of data is hard and requires discipline to not fall down rabbit holes or draw spurious/incorrect conclusions. Some things (funnel analysis) are so easy that they're no-brainers, while others (death/lapse analysis) are really tricky and have to be taken with large grains of salt.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 17:39

Monster w21 Faces: May 11, 2006; "What the fuck is that?"
"What the fuck is this?!"

FreakyZoid posted:

I think the problem is most people look at analytics and think "okay, what do I want to capture?" but they don't really know, so they capture everything they can, and you end up with horrible unwieldy data sets, 95% of which are interesting vanity statistics at best.

Knowing the smallest amount of stuff to capture for the greatest return is half the battle.

Especially since most services charge by the event.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 17:48

Chasiubao: Apr 2, 2010

Shalinor posted:

Kinda curious what folks in here think of Gabe's plans for Steam.

Personally, it has me wondering if I'm shifting to the PC market a year too late. I've got other angles to try and hit, to capitalize on other emerging markets, but PC there for a long time was still a great place to be. What he's discussing will turn it back into a money-driven content-lite cesspool, playing by rules similar to those of the App Store.

EDIT: but it could also be cool, so long as Valve maintains a curated store of their own to act as the continued "big" store, at least until other curated shops step in. I'm just skeptical that Valve understands the importance of that, given their track record lately.

It sounds like he's aiming at having the worst of XBLIG and the App Store combined in one big mess. Not exactly thrilling.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 18:33

Super Slash: Feb 20, 2006; You rang ?

Every time I post in here it's always about interviewing, so here I am again.

Team 17 want me in for a Junior Game Design position; and I'm wondering besides usual interview antics, would it be worthwhile to pitch a mini design doc of sorts? I'm trying to think of ways to be a bit more proactive than just selling myself on words and portfolio.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 19:43

Mr Beens: Dec 2, 2006

Super Slash posted:

Every time I post in here it's always about interviewing, so here I am again.

Team 17 want me in for a Junior Game Design position; and I'm wondering besides usual interview antics, would it be worthwhile to pitch a mini design doc of sorts? I'm trying to think of ways to be a bit more proactive than just selling myself on words and portfolio.

Don't do this unless they ask for it. By all means include it as part of your portfolio.

# ? Feb 7, 2013 20:04

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Chasiubao posted:

It sounds like he's aiming at having the worst of XBLIG and the App Store combined in one big mess. Not exactly thrilling.

... actually, I went and listened to his full DICE keynote and - the press on it is completely misrepresenting what he's driving at. He isn't talking about the death of the Steam store, and I think even mentioned it'd still be there. All he's on about is removing gatekeepers and allowing anyone to sell to anyone. Basically, decouple the "ability to sell to people" and the "curation." In practice, all it means is that instead of a SellBox-powered store on my website, I might have a Steam-powered store, and instead of the goal being to just get on Steam, the goal is to get into the curated Steam store (or similar).

I'm pretty jazzed to move into PC dev, after listening to that. The market's fixing to get really interesting. I'm willing to bet the first non-Steam Steam store will relate to the Steambox, with a splinter store giving the Steambox its own marketplace. Right now, it's a mess, trying to sort out what games might work on a set-top box and which never would.

(so if anyone else was an idiot like me and just relying on the press due to limited free time - just take the half hour, watch the talk, it's worth it)

# ? Feb 7, 2013 23:32

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 01:48

Chasiubao: Apr 2, 2010

Shalinor posted:

... actually, I went and listened to his full DICE keynote and - the press on it is completely misrepresenting what he's driving at. He isn't talking about the death of the Steam store, and I think even mentioned it'd still be there. All he's on about is removing gatekeepers and allowing anyone to sell to anyone. Basically, decouple the "ability to sell to people" and the "curation." In practice, all it means is that instead of a SellBox-powered store on my website, I might have a Steam-powered store, and instead of the goal being to just get on Steam, the goal is to get into the curated Steam store (or similar).

I'm pretty jazzed to move into PC dev, after listening to that. The market's fixing to get really interesting. I'm willing to bet the first non-Steam Steam store will relate to the Steambox, with a splinter store giving the Steambox its own marketplace. Right now, it's a mess, trying to sort out what games might work on a set-top box and which never would.

(so if anyone else was an idiot like me and just relying on the press due to limited free time - just take the half hour, watch the talk, it's worth it)

I'll never get a job at Valve after GabeN reads my quote :argh:

# ? Feb 8, 2013 01:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

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