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JosephStalinVEVO posted:There's Game Recruiter, they got me a job. Seconding this. They're a pretty sizable org. I also had a really great experience with the guys at VonChurch. They're a pretty smaller group of guys, but they have great connections, and they're incredibly hard working. I landed my current job through them.
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Mar 6, 2013 20:31
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I had the opposite experience with VonChurch. They reached out to me, pitched a job and promised some more information after I said I was interested but wanted to hear more. Cue them dropping off the face of the earth and never responding to emails until I gave up.
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Mar 6, 2013 20:34
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Wow, that's really too bad. I was in contact with them about three different opportunities pretty much constantly through the submitting/interviewing process, probably more so than I have been with any recruiter before.
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Mar 6, 2013 20:37
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I had similar experience with Von Church to Monochrome. They come to me, breathless, with a perfect job offer and I say I'm interested, then they schedule a call with the company, and that gets "Delayed" and then I never hear back from them except for 9 months later when a different recruiter from there does the same thing.
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Mar 6, 2013 21:15
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Holy crap. I just got Jones On Fire in front of Dexbonus (big time Youtube LP type that does Press <3 To Continue). She got the last of 50 promocodes - I actually managed to fire them all off. Yes. Yes, today is a good day. ... relatedly, is there a list anywhere of the "big" LP people? I know it's an emerging form of press that has made or broken a ton of Kickstarters / Greenlights / etc so far, but the only one I really knew of until now was Totalbiscuit ("WTF is...").
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Mar 6, 2013 22:26
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Game Grumps 
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Mar 6, 2013 23:47
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Do you mean you want to reach out to the big YT influencers who have 10000s/100000s/millions of subscribers? And then have them play your game a little bit, and make a video about it? Because most of those guys are pretty well set up and have their own people who handle devs/publishers trying to use them as a engagement/awareness platform. It ain't free, at least not anymore! It's totally free if they see your game and absolutely love it to death and just HAVE to show it to people though.
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Mar 6, 2013 23:48
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devilmouse posted:YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS THE DARK SIDE How in the world haven't I heard of Crashlytics before? I can already tell it's going to make my life a lot easier in the future. Dead simple to integrate as well.
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Mar 6, 2013 23:58
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Aryoc posted:How in the world haven't I heard of Crashlytics before? I can already tell it's going to make my life a lot easier in the future. Dead simple to integrate as well. If we told specifically about it, we'd have assumed the error reporting in ITC or Apsalar/Flurry/<some other solution> was good enough and lived in a sad state of ignorance. Integrating it took all of 10 minutes and now that they've been acquired by Twitter and made their "enterprise" stuff available to everyone for free, you get crash reports in almost real-time. It's great! (Though their website's UI is just... odd.)
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Mar 7, 2013 00:03
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JosephStalinVEVO posted:Because most of those guys are pretty well set up and have their own people who handle devs/publishers trying to use them as a engagement/awareness platform. It ain't free, at least not anymore! Everyone assumes the big press is unapproachable, but they're not. Just gotta get a bit lucky and have a product you can pitch instantly. In my case, my trailer does pretty well for that. EDIT: VV oh, no doubt, but then I need a list of the mid-tier people. 300k subscribers is still a HUGE press bump for me, if she covers it, and they're still the ones that have made funding campaigns in the past. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 00:16
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Eh, I get the feeling it differs. 300k subs isn't a lot compared to personalities like TotalBiscuit or the Yogscast.
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Mar 7, 2013 00:32
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Aliginge posted:Game Grumps Not so grump...
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Mar 7, 2013 00:35
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Shalinor posted:Well, the one I just found has 300k subscribers and happily responded to a polite tweet / was totally down to try the game, and I didn't pay her a dime, soooo... probably gonna call bullshit on that. I don't know any of them who take cash, that's not what I'm saying. Some of them want swag, or giveaways for their own fans. Some of them want the collector's / limited edition signed by the devs. Some want a call out on your social media channels to their content they create for you. If you're on mobile, it's a different ball park and a different audience, and you're dealing with a different influencers as well. Also, I'm not talking about Press, that's an entirely different ballgame. I'm talking the non-press YT-centric people. The VampyBitMes and iJustines and Freddie Wongs and Rooster Teeths. All of them are total gamers who love games of all kinds and that's what they do, but they have huge audiences that a lot of pubs/devs would kill to have, so you have to compete with those guys on your indie game! A lot of them are down with indie games, but you might have to have some give and take. So my advice is if you want to reach out to those influencers, be prepared have something for them. Not cash obviously, but something that they can turn around and give away to their fans or an exclusive of some sort. Some of them will do it because they see an awesome game and want to help out, but some might not see it that way. Have them give away 10 beta codes to their fans, or DLC codes or a 24 hour exclusive on something. Or a Q&A with the Designer live. There's a lot of "free" stuff you can do that will help get these guys to help you out.
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Mar 7, 2013 00:56
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JosephStalinVEVO posted:So my advice is if you want to reach out to those influencers, be prepared have something for them. Not cash obviously, but something that they can turn around and give away to their fans or an exclusive of some sort. Some of them will do it because they see an awesome game and want to help out, but some might not see it that way. Have them give away 10 beta codes to their fans, or DLC codes or a 24 hour exclusive on something. Or a Q&A with the Designer live. There's a lot of "free" stuff you can do that will help get these guys to help you out.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:00
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Dinurth posted:I think I'm done with the games industry, as much as I love it there are far more lovely situations than there are good ones. I think you can say, no thanks I don't want to crunch and still have a job. If people want to mistreat you then you don't want to work for them anyway. There are good companies out there that do very little or no crunch. It's worth finding a company like that, one that actually respects you. I won't excuse the industry's issues, but it's not all the same everywhere. It's sad to hear that the conditions are so bad you want to leave though, shows that there are serious problems.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:04
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Resource posted:I think you can say, no thanks I don't want to crunch and still have a job. If people want to mistreat you then you don't want to work for them anyway. There are good companies out there that do very little or no crunch. It's worth finding a company like that, one that actually respects you. I won't excuse the industry's issues, but it's not all the same everywhere. It's sad to hear that the conditions are so bad you want to leave though, shows that there are serious problems. I know these companies exist, I've worked for one. It's very easy to say "those companies exist", but it's a matter of 1. finding that company 2. getting the job 3. moving (which I really don't want to do, but would) and even after all that there is a good chance a project will get canceled or a studio will close. 7 years in the game industry and 4 jobs, I'm just sick of it. I want a place I can actually grow and move up. The best way to move up in the game industry is to jump ship for more pay and a title bump. :/
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Mar 7, 2013 01:08
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Dinurth posted:I know these companies exist, I've worked for one. It's very easy to say "those companies exist", but it's a matter of 1. finding that company 2. getting the job 3. moving (which I really don't want to do, but would) and even after all that there is a good chance a project will get canceled or a studio will close. 7 years in the game industry and 4 jobs, I'm just sick of it. I want a place I can actually grow and move up. The best way to move up in the game industry is to jump ship for more pay and a title bump. :/ Yeah, that's true. And it sucks.  You could work a normal job and do hobby games on the side, that seems to be common for people who are burned out on the bullshit.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:11
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Resource posted:Yeah, that's true. And it sucks. Yeah I think that's the plan. Looking at a place that makes "normal" apps at the moment. I'm working on publishing a comic book in my free time so at least I have the creative outlet still. Still makes me super depressed, games was what I wanted to do since I was a wee lad. I just can't take the BS anymore. I'm sure I'll come back someday.
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Mar 7, 2013 01:15
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Hey there, This is slightly off topic, but I know a bunch of you all are Indie Game Developers. Amazon Digital Video Games is launching a TON of stuff around the Indie space this year. One of the first things we've done is launch an "Indie Spotlight" on https://www.amazon.com/gamedownloads (our PC Digital store). I wanted to ask if any of the Indie folks in this thread would be interested in helping design the image we use for this vehicle, I thought it would be cool for some of the members of the community to get to have input in how we're representing the games you make. Note, I vetted this idea through a couple of folks, and one of the pieces of feedback I received was that, sometimes large companies will ask for stuff like this in an attempt to just get free art/work from people looking to build a portfolio. I want to address this upfront and let you know that isn't the case here, we have a full design team that can crank out the image for us, I actually asked them to hold off on doing so until I had a chance to ask you all if you'd be interested. We'd be happy to call out the contributions of the people that participate (we'll need to limit it to 3-4 people) on the detail pages for our Indie games. If there isn't any interest in this, let me know and I won't bug you all with similar ideas in the future. NOTE, because we don't have an image set up for the Indie spotlight yet we are only merchandising it on that page I linked to above. Once we have artwork it will be featured on the homepage of Amazon.com as well in the "Digital Games and Software" section(s) of the homepage. Simcity and some big fashion ad are currently in both slots. AmazonTony fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 01:26
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Shalinor posted:... relatedly, is there a list anywhere of the "big" LP people? I know it's an emerging form of press that has made or broken a ton of Kickstarters / Greenlights / etc so far, but the only one I really knew of until now was Totalbiscuit ("WTF is..."). All (well, most) of the Yogscast are goons, and depending on the game, interest, scheduling, and whatever else, they've checked out games from other goons in the past (Hello there Icarus Proudbottom!).
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Mar 7, 2013 05:14
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On the off-chance anyone is skeptical or thinking "SHILL!", AmazonTony is a good dude. He's worked with the moderation staff to be honest about what he's doing here, and he's already helped a few of us out with our indie projects (including mine, Jones On Fire), done some cool stuff for getting goons discounts, etc. I can't vouch for him as blood or anything, but he seems like a cool dude, so this offer is less iffy than it'd be coming from any other random dude.
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Mar 7, 2013 05:17
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So do game companies hire UI specialists or is it something a random artist gets stuck with during the project? I ask because I've been doing UI/UX work for about 10 years and some of the stuff I see in game design (menus, navigation, etc) just boggles the mind.
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Mar 7, 2013 06:18
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The guy who made UI art at my company absolutely hated it but he was the best choice for it because of the nature of the project. He still made good stuff though.
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Mar 7, 2013 06:22
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OptimusWang posted:So do game companies hire UI specialists or is it something a random artist gets stuck with during the project? I ask because I've been doing UI/UX work for about 10 years and some of the stuff I see in game design (menus, navigation, etc) just boggles the mind. Boggles the mind with their brilliance or their awfulness?
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Mar 7, 2013 06:26
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OptimusWang posted:So do game companies hire UI specialists or is it something a random artist gets stuck with during the project? Yes
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Mar 7, 2013 06:51
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SynthOrange posted:Boggles the mind with their brilliance or their awfulness? Think about the inventory system for 99% of RPGs on consoles. Now ask that question again UX testing with 5 people will catch ~80% of the problems a piece of software will run into, but it seems like it just doesn't happen with a lot of games. I'm not trying to bash the people in that field, I'm just curious as to what goes into it. I get a call from Tiburon (their office is basically in my backyard) about twice a year asking me to come work on different projects but the horror stories have always kept me away. Also, from what I've read Scaleform seems like the standard tool for huds, menus, etc. Is it basically a Flash front end with Autodesk's framework under the covers or is there more to it? About a third of my current gig is working in WPF, designing interfaces for public safety & justice apps like event security tools, command and control centers, building crazy poo poo using surface (the table, not the tablet), etc then coding up the visuals in xaml before handing it off to a c# team to wire up. Is that even remotely close to how a UI flows in game development? e: vvvv Thanks, a team spread out over multiple projects makes sense. OptimusWang fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 06:53
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This is such an accurate post. Typically a game that has enough UI to merit a full time position will have a UI artist (or maybe even two!). Back at my previous job, we had 3-4 UI artists and 2 UI programmers spread over 2 concurrent AAA projects. UI Artists would have to create and script assets, with the UI programmers providing hooks to gameplay for their scripts to read from and providing more engine-specific functionality, etc. Both games were pretty robust, UI-wise, being a studio that made open world games with lots of pickups and customization/upgrade systems, etc. For something more straightforward you might just need one guy. For something not AAA, you might have a concept, texture, or lead artist do the UI. OptimusWang posted:Think about the inventory system for 99% of RPGs on consoles. Now ask that question again Got some examples of things that are sneaking through that 20%? We did a lot of UX testing at my former job, and I'm curious as to what sort of issues would potentially sneak through. Scaleform is basically a flash front end that lets you render flash as textures onto 3d objects or to screenspace, I believe. Your current gig is kind of similar, with the caveat of UI being pretty engine specific, so the amount of scripting vs hardwired code is subject to change per project. Sigma-X fucked around with this message at 06:59 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 06:57
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Sigma-X posted:Got some examples of things that are sneaking through that 20%? I've been running a biweekly usability lab for the last 5 years, where would you like me to start?  We generally don't have the time or budget to do things like heat mapping, eye tracking, etc, so it's mostly based on Neilsen's Usability Engineering At A Discount which is where that number comes from. Honestly, Steve Krug explains it better in his book Don't Make Me Think. If you want to get the general idea, that chapter of the first edition can be read for free here: http://sensible.com/downloads/DMMTchapter09_for_personal_use_only.pdf
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Mar 7, 2013 07:10
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Bringing back fond memories here, buddy.
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Mar 7, 2013 07:17
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Shalinor posted:On the off-chance anyone is skeptical or thinking "SHILL!", AmazonTony is a good dude. He's worked with the moderation staff to be honest about what he's doing here, and he's already helped a few of us out with our indie projects (including mine, Jones On Fire), done some cool stuff for getting goons discounts, etc. I was actually the one that informed him such posts had the reputation they do, and he was utterly shocked that some companies would exploit artists in such a fashion. It was almost kind of sweet in a "Aww, bless your pointed little head, I could just pinch your cheeks  " kind of way.But yeah, dude's legit, he just wanted to give some artists something neat to point at on a major, major website and say "I did that!" GetWellGamers fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Mar 7, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 07:27
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OptimusWang posted:So do game companies hire UI specialists or is it something a random artist gets stuck with during the project? I ask because I've been doing UI/UX work for about 10 years and some of the stuff I see in game design (menus, navigation, etc) just boggles the mind. We are always, always looking for UI artists. The mobile games industry especially has seen a giant boom in UI artist stock.
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Mar 7, 2013 09:41
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Today, I am officially responsible for my very first game  (EDIT: well, first indie / all-by-my-lonesome-to-market game)Jones On Fire is now on the app store, and the initial nasty crash bug has been patched out. Working on a less shotgun patch as we speak (had to disable leaderboards temporarily), but still, the game is solid as-is, AND it got featured, and people are loving it. I've been basically doing this, all day long. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 03:53
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Between that and this Letter Rush game I've been playing the poo poo out of, it's a good time for goon game designers. On a separate note, I'm completely loving croggled that anyone ever could run out of work for artists to do. If I could zap every single one of our artists with a clone ray I would do it in a goddamn heartbeat and probably keep pressing the button like that one terrible Simpsons episode. Edit: had a funny bug kill one of my runs in Jones on Fire. I aircharged into a seam in the ground and ended up under the world (complete green screen). No threats down here as I'm regenerating health, but also can't go anywhere and the ending music has played a couple of times. Reset hazard level kills you I guess?
wodin fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 8, 2013 04:26
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Shalinor posted:Today, I am officially responsible for my very first game Huge congrats! That is super awesome!
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Mar 8, 2013 04:48
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So what is going on over at Epic? Mike Capps left the advisory board, from which he recently retired to.
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Mar 8, 2013 06:12
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nolen posted:Bringing back fond memories here, buddy. Haha, I forgot you were a goon. It is sad being the only one here now  ... and not having dedicated actionscripters any more
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Mar 8, 2013 06:16
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AmazonTony posted:Hey there, I'm interested, wouldn't mind getting in something like this. Helps the portfolio too
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Mar 8, 2013 06:32
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Shalinor posted:Today, I am officially responsible for my very first game My own mobile title wasn't nearly as good(or successful) as yours, but I know that feeling well. I'm four major updates in and I still get a little flappy-hands every time I pass certification again. As an aside, I'm not sure if I missed it, but what are you using for your metrics?
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Mar 8, 2013 07:46
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Shalinor posted:Today, I am officially responsible for my very first game I have been playing it for a while. Nice job!
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Mar 8, 2013 08:32
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waffledoodle posted:... and not having dedicated actionscripters any more I wonder if people with ActionScript experience will become more or less valuable with Flash being on its way out.
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