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I started as a "scripting intern", making $10 an hour with no benefits. I am one of the only people who started in the games industry due to a lack of other options. 
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Sep 3, 2014 23:51
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Scuzzywuffit posted:As somebody whose experience thus far has focused on designing desktop software for business, I've actually been looking at tools programming positions. Would you mind elaborating a little bit on what experience is necessary for that sort of position, and ways to find it while either in school or working in another industry? It's something I'd definitely be interested in learning more about, but also seems like something that's hard to gain experience in without having a largish team of people with tools that need building. Basically no game timeline/budget allows for Tools/Pipeline development. Only the hugest of the annualized series do that. So every other game studio has to scramble and make things work with a bunch of disparate tools, and hack together 3dsmax importers that output java code to output flash/scaleform and then it renders the avatar back into a Maya 3ds model and then it outputs a jpg to function as the players avatar on the community forums. It's all terrible and when there's budget, a tools programmer comes in and fixes all this poo poo and fixes the art pipeline so people can like export directly from 3DSMax into the game engine without rebooting anything and everyone carries them around on their shoulders for the rest of the development cycle. The experience necessary is "I've worked on getting 80 different system/networks/databases specifically designed not to work together, to work together flawlessly"
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Sep 3, 2014 23:57
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Scuzzywuffit posted:As somebody whose experience thus far has focused on designing desktop software for business, I've actually been looking at tools programming positions. Would you mind elaborating a little bit on what experience is necessary for that sort of position, and ways to find it while either in school or working in another industry? It's something I'd definitely be interested in learning more about, but also seems like something that's hard to gain experience in without having a largish team of people with tools that need building. So there are tools programmers, and there are technical artists, and they cross over rather heavily. TA's are typically writing Python/MEL/MAXscript tools, whereas Tools Programmers are writing things that exist outside of Max/Maya/Photoshop. Both Unity and now Unreal have marketplaces filled to the brim with engine extensions, plug-ins, assets, etc. Go to websites like polycount.com, the unreal and unity boards, tech-artist.org, etc, and you can quickly get ideas (or even just post asking for people to tell you what they want - if you can actually deliver people will love you), and then build those tools into scripts/modules/plug-ins, etc. Give away the first few you're learning on and you can probably start selling later tools straight up. Keep in mind once you start building significant tools that you may want to give them away for free but be able to lock people out of them later - Crazybump did this, becoming an essential part of every studio's pipeline and then a year later becoming a premium product. Obviously you don't have to sell your own tools and can apply to a company once you're good enough, too, but I would recommend giving away early tools to get feedback - I'm assuming you don't have many/any artist or designer friends who would be able to give you good feedback, but people on the internet using free tools will provide a ton. e: Bourbon's explanation is very hyperbolized in my experience, but the core idea of "is able to join disparate concepts and systems together with a unified architecture" is certainly a big part of it.
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Sep 4, 2014 00:01
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Yeah, it's hyperbolized. But the gist of it is basically Tool/Program A that everyone in the studios uses outputs something that needs to get modified in some way, or imported into Program B (or the game itself, etc, etc) quickly and easily in a way that anybody in the studio can use it. You have to make that tool.
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Sep 4, 2014 00:08
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I started as an animator on the cartoon show Jimmy Neutron after going to school for 2d/3d animation, there was a slight recession and there wasn't much work in Toronto so was unemployed for about 5 months prior. Then the company had layoffs when their movie, The Ant Bully didn't do as well as hoped. I went back to Canada and goofed off in Toronto working on horrible children animation and doing some freelance for Reelfx which was pretty fun. I remember the quota for animation was something crazy like 1 minute a week at CORE DP. I think I had to work through one Christmas and I just was fed up and quit since it really didn't seem to be worth it. The animation looked like poo poo and half the time was just thinking of how to crank it out. Quality wasn't even a consideration. That company is gone now. Then I applied and got a job working on game cinematics.
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Sep 4, 2014 00:33
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Thanks for the responses, guys! It sounds similar to what I've been doing at a broad conceptual level, albeit much more complicated. I'll take a look and see if I can find some projects to get me started.
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Sep 4, 2014 00:49
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Does anybody else have to do this yearly self-review nonsense? I want to to my job, not invent retarded bullshit about myself. I have absolutely no idea what to write.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:23
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baby puzzle posted:Does anybody else have to do this yearly self-review nonsense? I want to to my job, not invent retarded bullshit about myself. I have absolutely no idea what to write. I had to at a previous company. Use the opportunity to remind them of all of your accomplishments, especially the ones that are not very visible.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:31
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The year was a blur. Maybe I'll just browse my commit history and see what the heck I did.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:42
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baby puzzle posted:Does anybody else have to do this yearly self-review nonsense? I want to to my job, not invent retarded bullshit about myself. I have absolutely no idea what to write. I'm not at a game job right now, and I have to do them quarterly.
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Sep 4, 2014 02:47
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Use that space to show how you helped your projects succeed, as well as how you helped other people succeed. Make yourself as invaluable as possible!
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Sep 4, 2014 02:56
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theflyingorc posted:I'm not at a game job right now, and I have to do them quarterly. I wrote one of these reports at a job once. I accused myself of having unmanned flights of fancy.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:00
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Do not be modest.
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Sep 4, 2014 03:07
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I could use some advice about job hunting. For the past ~3 years I've done programming for a couple of indie games: my own classically over-ambitious project, then doing contract work for other indies' classically over-ambitious game projects. While I learned a ton, and even made some money from the latter projects, none of the games reached actual publication and none matured into a steady job. I want to shift into something steadier, something with experienced management and with coworkers from whom I can learn. Yet I'm not sure how. All of my prior jobs have come from some form of networking rather than formal applications - even the indie contracts came out of discussions at PAX Dev last year - but I've found that method to be unsustainable since I'm terrible at networking (and show minimal signs of improving). Heck, I've never even written a resume in my life. What I'd like is some strategic advice. Since none of the games I've worked on actually got finished, there are no published products that I can point to and say "I made this." While games are a part of my educational background - I studied games as a form of media - my degree is not in computer science. Aside from basic programming classes in college, where I did well, I'm self-taught. So I assume that I need to write some form of programming and design portfolio before anyone would take me seriously. There are also a few things that I want to brush up or learn, the pursuit of which would dovetail nicely with this strategy. In theory. Things I have built in the past using Unity and C#: - A multithreaded, terrain generator based on meshes, textures, and prefab scatter terrain like trees. It can run in real time and expand the map on demand. - A simple political history generator that simulates past wars and creates nations for the above terrain map. Like the above, it can freely expand rather than having a fixed size in generation. - A 2D tile-based terrain generator for a side-scrolling shmup. - Using Unity physics and writing my own AI for both 3D and 2D games. Things I would like to practice: - Using NGUI. I've historically been quite frustrated dealing with UI in Unity, but NGUI has been very nice to work with in the limited time I've spent with it so far. - Interacting with external file formats in Unity. Importing and exporting data for having more flexible, moddable games (and potentially for writing tools). - More work with 3D pathfinding techniques for things like FPS games. I could do a lot more with my environment creation experience if I had a better grasp of how to write AI for it. Is this background saleable? Are these skills actually valuable to a non-indie company in the first place? Some of what I've heard suggests yes, which is why I have this trajectory in mind, but... I'd really like to know. Corbeau fucked around with this message at 05:15 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 04:17
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baby puzzle posted:Does anybody else have to do this yearly self-review nonsense? I want to to my job, not invent retarded bullshit about myself. I have absolutely no idea what to write. Yep. You get out what you put in, basically - if you're candid, good at highlighting strengths and weaknesses, and approach it with a positive attitude they can actually be sort of useful in terms of charting what you're going to be doing for the next six months to a year or so as far as professional development (as opposed to, you know, shipping the game which is a different set of stuff). You can also, as one of my coworkers notoriously does, write nothing but single adjective responses to the questions, and use the associated sitdown as a bullshit session to talk about the latest game he's played. I had a particularly awesome boss who really cared about my improvement as a designer though so admittedly I'm somewhat biased as to the value of these things. Easiest way to actually generate answers to the questions is to write down a list of the 3-4 things you're most proud of and the moment where you felt like you hosed up the most, then use those to inform your answers to the questions (e.g. if the question is 'what were your greatest strengths in the last year?' you talk about the fact you delivered a system that should have taken a month in a week through creative re-purposing of a different system or whatever).
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Sep 4, 2014 07:00
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baby puzzle posted:Does anybody else have to do this yearly self-review nonsense? I want to to my job, not invent retarded bullshit about myself. I have absolutely no idea what to write. Your manager/project lead/studio head do not psychically know your aspirations, and the more often you talk about them and opportunities you have taken, the more opportunities you get given. Seize the chance to communicate upwards.
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Sep 4, 2014 09:14
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Shalinor posted:That... is a loving fantastic idea. I'd been holding off on PayDay 2 thinking I'd be a drag on my team or something, but gently caress it, there are drooling morons out there that'd play way worse than I ever could anyways. Ditto for L4D2, which was my absolute favorite FPS on the 360. Warframe is a little janky but I really dig it, it's also a really good example of a F2P marketplace that's not exploitative or unfair.
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Sep 4, 2014 13:45
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baby puzzle posted:The year was a blur. Maybe I'll just browse my commit history and see what the heck I did. Using this method apparently I did "bugfixes" and "important stuff".
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Sep 4, 2014 13:46
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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:Using this method apparently I did "bugfixes" and "important stuff". Give with the left hand, take with the right in terms of bug count, I guess?
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Sep 4, 2014 13:57
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Welp, just got laid off. Anyone mind having a look at my design blog/portfolio and LinkedIn page and offering feedback? Or pass them along? I figured I'd be moving on from the company sooner or later, but I didn't expect it under these circumstances. I talk mostly about F2P stuff, since I don't see too many other blogs talking about that, but I'm not especially attached to working in that field. demota fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Sep 4, 2014 |
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Sep 4, 2014 15:03
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demota posted:Welp, just got laid off. Anyone mind having a look at my design blog/portfolio and LinkedIn page and offering feedback? Or pass them along? I figured I'd be moving on from the company sooner or later, but I didn't expect it under these circumstances. Your midnight mansion project reminds me of Betrayal at House on the Hill.
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Sep 4, 2014 15:40
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Beast of Bourbon posted:The experience necessary is "I've worked on getting 80 different system/networks/databases specifically designed not to work together, to work together flawlessly" This is what I did during my first job out of school and it's still the most impressive sounding thing I've done. Only about a dozen systems though. It was actually a lot of fun, but I ran into various political troubles by making people unnecessary.
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Sep 4, 2014 16:14
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Oh man I got an interview with Stardock next week I really hope it goes well  
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Sep 4, 2014 17:00
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I really need to stop trying to put all of my overtime in on the first few days.
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Sep 4, 2014 18:00
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Well, it was a good run and we held on for more than a year before I saw this file in P4: "_inprogress_<featurename>_UI_<artistname>_final_working_v2.prefab" 
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Sep 4, 2014 21:25
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Ridiculous naming conventions 4 lyfe.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:28
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devilmouse posted:Well, it was a good run and we held on for more than a year before I saw this file in P4: So it's the Final In Progress Working AI, what's so odd about that?
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Sep 4, 2014 21:34
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Version 2.
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Sep 4, 2014 21:37
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devilmouse posted:Version 2. All it's missing is DO_NOT_USE or NOT_FOR_PRODUCTION
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Sep 4, 2014 21:41
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devilmouse posted:Well, it was a good run and we held on for more than a year before I saw this file in P4: I hate to tell you this bud but you just leaked that your game is about quantum flux states where prefabs are only defined in a final state when they're observed by the player.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:23
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Leif. posted:Your midnight mansion project reminds me of Betrayal at House on the Hill. Yeah, that was one of the influences on the game.
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Sep 4, 2014 22:33
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milquetoast child posted:I don't see it... How is the plan not to see how big a prank you can pull on minor press? Or to sneak into parties as Tim? Pitch a game that everyone goes wild for, then reveal that it is you who is behind the great work? There is a reason I look like Macaulay Culkin and not anyone who I could cause trouble pretending to be, I would cause so much terrible things in lighthearted attempts at fun. I would frame that photo in my office, or heck I would autograph it and send the photo to Tim.
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Sep 5, 2014 01:04
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So Minecraft on Xbox One is out. My colleague bought it and created a new world with the seed word 'test'. Having never played Minecraft before, I asked him, "Why the gently caress is it so dark? Did the textures fail to render or something?" Nope, apparently he started so deep underwater it was almost black. He swam all the way up to the surface and it was nothing but water with a tiny mountain far off in the distance. Did one of you leave some debug code in or something? There are weird mushroom trees and it's very weird 
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Sep 5, 2014 01:35
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Sigma-X posted:
Can you talk a bit more about this? I stumbled in to an Associate Producer role for my first gig in the Games Industry and am starting to look at moving on. Do you mean just finding work in general? Because dear god there never seems to be any Production jobs on Gamasutra. Is there a better avenue that you can think of or is it always this dry for that particular field (especially in a junior level)?
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Sep 5, 2014 16:38
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Corbeau posted:I could use some advice about job hunting. Needing a portfolio will probably depend on what kind of position you're going for. None of my engineer friends have portfolios, but I certainly do as a TA. If you do decide you need a portfolio, you can probably use some of the systems you created for those unpublished projects and breakdown what they are and how they work to get you started. Experience with Unity and C# are going to be pluses/requirements with a number of studios, particularly those in mobile development. Which doesn't necessarily mean indie studios. EA does a lot of mobile and can safely be considered not-indie. From a quick glance at their jobs page it looks like all of the entry-level software engineer positions in mobile mention both. I doubt you'll find anyone using Unity on AAA projects, but at least it shows that you've worked with an engine. Take a look around at different job postings, try to find something that looks like what you do, and then start filling in any gaps (probably going to be C++ and/or LUA).
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Sep 6, 2014 02:05
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:Can you talk a bit more about this? I stumbled in to an Associate Producer role for my first gig in the Games Industry and am starting to look at moving on. Do you mean just finding work in general? Because dear god there never seems to be any Production jobs on Gamasutra. Is there a better avenue that you can think of or is it always this dry for that particular field (especially in a junior level)? I've been a producer for 2.5 years now and I kind of stumbled into it. It is relatively dry as a market and building a network is rather critical because so much of what you do is difficult to demonstrate, so having someone who can vouch for you is important to getting noticed. I knew Megashark through SA and through him I was able to hand my resume in and build a conversation about what the position entailed (I actually applied as an artist originally). I've interviewed a number of production candidates and their ability to explain processes and think critically is what sells it during the interview, but to get to the interview stage they need a decent resume and a reference really helps. It's a dry market because you don't need as many producers as you need, say, environment artists, and it's a job, especially at the junior levels, that doesn't have any sort of "filter" the way an art portfolio provides, so there is a lot of (unqualified at times) competition. The worst thing you can do in an interview is answer a "how would you solve or address X problem" with "I would use the process you have in place."
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Sep 6, 2014 02:17
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Sigma-X posted:I've been a producer for 2.5 years now and I kind of stumbled into it. hi5 stumbling producer buddy. Sadly sounds like all my instincts were dead on with regards to scarcity/hard to demonstrate tangible skill. Welp.
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Sep 7, 2014 21:57
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:hi5 stumbling producer buddy. Sadly sounds like all my instincts were dead on with regards to scarcity/hard to demonstrate tangible skill. Welp. I've been doing the producer thing for about 8 years and everything Sigma-X said is spot on. My first job I got lucky and managed to snag it from an application on the studios website, the next 4 gigs were all through friends and previous coworkers (and also consulting gigs on the side). You will never seen much for job postings for producers, and I actually find this site: http://orcahq.com/jobs way better for finding production jobs, although still extremely scarce. Interviewing producers flat out sucks. Again to parrot Sigma-X's point: Sigma-X posted:...their ability to explain processes and think critically is what sells it during the interview, but to get to the interview stage they need a decent resume and a reference really helps. I actually require any producers I'm hiring to do a test, and I time-box it to 1 hour. It's something a producer could spend a week on but this forces them into that critical thinking mode, and more importantly, allows them to explain themselves and their thought process when you review the test with them. It really forces lots of great questions and explanations.
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Sep 8, 2014 02:39
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Producer and game designers are very similar jobs in some respects. They are both jobs that almost anybody can do at least at a minimally competent level, and are extremely hard to interview for beyond total incompetence. There are also lots of opportunities to do "producer stuff" and "designer "stuff" when you are on the team in another capacity. It's much safer for a team to identify somebody already on the team demonstrating the necessary skills at a high level and move them into the position than it is to bring in somebody from the outside and hope they work out. This means even when you have "broken in" and got some experience, nobody is still going to want to hire you unless you happen to have previous experience working with people already on that team in a position to strongly recommend you. (this only partially applies to game designers, as once you are credited with specific design duties on a specific well-known good game you're set for life) So my advice to folks is the same whether you want to be a designer or a producer: learn to art or code and contribute to teams that way first. Be prepared to go back to arting or coding when your current gig flames out.
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Sep 8, 2014 04:59
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So... my first game launched today. I worked on it for slightly over two years. It is a pretty good feeling.
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Sep 9, 2014 17:47
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