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

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Sigma-X: Jun 17, 2005

I think it is really cynical to say that MMOs as a model are not fun, and that that is the point of MMOs, and that "good" designers would see through the model and determine they're not meant to be fun, but to merely tease the notion that one day this will be fun.

I agree that they are not the same model as single player FPS games, in that they aren't about presenting continually new and exciting content/set pieces/scenarios, but rather they're more similar to open world games, wherein there is meant to be a large number of combined systems built around intrinsically fun systems with gradual increase in difficulty and complexity, an element of player choice / free roam / exploration. And that's ignoring a lot of other things like sense of progression/collecting/customization/social gameplay/etc.

I think Destiny is really successful at being an "MMO" while still being fun, despite it's total lack of content because they correctly spent a lot of time building those core systems to be fun - it's fun to fly around on a sparrow through the levels due to the way it handles, the way the levels are set up, the way it interacts with enemies and combat spaces, etc. Likewise, their shooting/combat is incredibly polished and consistently engaging despite the repetitive nature of their content / lack of content.

# ? Jan 24, 2015 09:21

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 21:30

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

It may be a little unfair, I suppose it's not impossible for an MMO to be fun, though I do think that the MMO/F2P model precludes allowing the player access to all the content they desire, or would get from a pay-up-front game.

If you asked me to design an MMO I would try to cultivate that sense of wanting something slightly better than what you have, while simultaneously trying to convey the idea that the game can provide that, provided you keep playing it.

The feeling is not unique to MMOs, it's found, as you say, in a lot of open world games too, but I find MMO/F2P games to be uniquely stingy with their content in that respect. Some games achieve the desire for more as a secondary or accidental effect, while MMO/F2P games seem far more designed to elicit it, and do so more hamfistedly, often at the expense of immediate enjoyability. A pay-up-front open world game is more likely to give you a decent amount of new content as well, while an MMO is less likely to.

# ? Jan 24, 2015 09:40

Carfax Report: May 17, 2003; Ravage the land as never before, total destruction from mountain to shore!

Hughlander posted:

I'll go, how are you involved?

Personal info involved so I sent you a PM.

# ? Jan 24, 2015 10:27

Sigma-X: Jun 17, 2005

OwlFancier posted:

It may be a little unfair, I suppose it's not impossible for an MMO to be fun, though I do think that the MMO/F2P model precludes allowing the player access to all the content they desire, or would get from a pay-up-front game.

If you asked me to design an MMO I would try to cultivate that sense of wanting something slightly better than what you have, while simultaneously trying to convey the idea that the game can provide that, provided you keep playing it.

The feeling is not unique to MMOs, it's found, as you say, in a lot of open world games too, but I find MMO/F2P games to be uniquely stingy with their content in that respect. Some games achieve the desire for more as a secondary or accidental effect, while MMO/F2P games seem far more designed to elicit it, and do so more hamfistedly, often at the expense of immediate enjoyability. A pay-up-front open world game is more likely to give you a decent amount of new content as well, while an MMO is less likely to.

The sense of wanting something better and getting it later (only to have the stakes increase and thus having a continual cycle of rewards that are then met with increasing enemy power) is not unique to MMOs and it's not inherently un-fun, quite the opposite. It's the "RPG" or more accurately cRPG core mechanic that we've shoe-horned into a ton of modern games, from Narrative Thrill Ride The Last of Us to Multiplayer Shooters Counter-Strike, to Create A Team / Season Mode in every sports game, hell, the entire genre of MOBAs is built around "I can level up better than you."

And there are MMOs that aren't F2P, either. I can understand the feeling that an enjoyable sense of progression needs to be retarded for the free players, to encourage people to spend money, but that's a specific gripe with F2P and not MMOs as a whole.

I think "all the content players desire" is not an immediate reward in any game with an RPG mechanic game, and that's kind of the point. I didn't get all the fat loot in Diablo at level 1, I'm still trying to hit 31 in Destiny, etc. The player motivation of "some day you will be powerful, but not yet" is intrinsic to most videogames, and there are very few videogames that give the player all of the content/power at the beginning. I don't start out with the fire flower in Mario, I don't have Options in Gradius, I don't have line blocks in Tetris from the get go. These are things that are earned as I play the game, and are motivation to keep playing the game, but the core game mechanics are actually fun to execute and the challenges presented are fun to solve along the way.

# ? Jan 24, 2015 21:53

SurrealityCheck: Sep 15, 2012

Out of interest, if you guys were looking for freelance 3d animators (for paid work), where would you consider looking other than 11 second club and polycount?

# ? Jan 24, 2015 22:11

Mr Interweb: Aug 25, 2004

I've been posting sparsely in this thread for the past 2-3 years, so apologies if I got a response for this question before (I most likely may have missed it), but as someone who would want to design side scrolling platformers, what would be the best way to go about doing that?

# ? Jan 25, 2015 11:33

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

Just sidescrolling platformers? Why so specific? You may be seriously limiting your job opportunities by focusing purely on that.

Do you have any design work under your belt? In any case you might want to learn programming or art since most (small) studios I know who do only platformers are fairly small and it'd benefit you to have more skills than just being a designer since they either have very few (if any at all) or their staff do two or more aspects of game development (any combination of design/art/code/audio). If you don't want to learn programming or art you could probably get some portfolio work going with Unity or Stencyl, but you won't get far without additional skills outside of design unless you want to hire people to work for you or spend a decent chunk of money on premade assets.

Spine and other skeleton based animation systems are becoming popular in platformers so you might also want to check those out.

From this:

Mr Interweb posted:

Okay haven't been in this thread in a while. I'd like some clarification. It seems I was under the (mistaken) impression that software like Unity and Unreal were level/stage editors, but they're not. So if I want to learn level design, what software should I be using?

If you haven't already learned from this already Unity and now UE4 are both quite practical for side scrollers so if you missed the opportunity to learn them then you should probably try it out. It's definitely not as easy as level design used to be back in the day with what you're thinking of but if you want to be a designer in the industry whether it's platformers or AAA it'd be in your best interest to learn the technology everybody is using.

There is no easy way to design for games if you have no experience and no portfolio from personal work. Unless you manage to work your way from QA (which you've posted in this thread about) into a designer role, which does happen but does not happen very frequently.

In any case, I'm just an artist, but I have done work for platformers and they usually don't even have designers, the designers are usually the owners/artists/programmers of the project.

ceebee fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Jan 25, 2015

# ? Jan 25, 2015 11:53

mutata: Mar 1, 2003

His language is unclear, but maybe he's not looking for employment and just wants to make a sidescroller?

# ? Jan 25, 2015 16:19

Paniolo: Oct 9, 2007; Heads will roll.

Is there any job more subject to Dunning-Kruger than game designer?

I'm having a hard time thinking of many other occupations where people who have never done it before have such a high degree of confidence that they're any good at it.

# ? Jan 25, 2015 19:37

Lieutenant Dan: Oct 27, 2009; Weedlord Bonerhitler

Paniolo posted:

Is there any job more subject to Dunning-Kruger than game designer?

I'm having a hard time thinking of many other occupations where people who have never done it before have such a high degree of confidence that they're any good at it.

That, and acting. It's a little great watching the life drain from someone's eyes when I tell a game design hopeful I spend 90% of my time writing a chart about the weights of different potatoes or whatever and then writing a different 20-page document on potato behavior.

(Joke's on them, though, my potato GDDs are off the chain)

# ? Jan 25, 2015 19:46

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

Mr Interweb posted:

I've been posting sparsely in this thread for the past 2-3 years, so apologies if I got a response for this question before (I most likely may have missed it), but as someone who would want to design side scrolling platformers, what would be the best way to go about doing that?

Get a portfolio of work that shows you can do the job, first. For designers these days, that generally means Unity / you're going to learn C# or UnityScript. But please go C#, it isn't any harder. Make some games, make them fun, and then start applying for design gigs. No one expects your code to be perfect, and you'll almost certainly do a ton of stitching stuff together that you found from tutorials, but we DO expect to be able to get at least that far. That "I can play this, and see the fun, but holy poo poo there are a ton of points of polish / why did you code it THAT way / this takes a supercomputer to run" point.

You're really, really unlikely to get a job designing JUST platformers, but you could certainly hunt around and try and find studios known for doing platformers. There are certainly some indie outfits that are that way, and there's a bunch of middle tier mobile developers that do platformer'y stuff too, especially if you broaden "platformers" to include vertical jumpers and the like. That kind of specificity will hamstring your jobhunt, though, and make it harder to find a gig.

In short, the answer is: "exactly like you get a job as a game designer for everything else." You can probably find tons of posts and responses on that question if you scroll back.

EDIT: and I'm not even going to bother talking about how to get a job as a pure designer that can't even script, because it's soul destroying. Just be a tech designer.

Lieutenant Dan posted:

That, and acting. It's a little great watching the life drain from someone's eyes when I tell a game design hopeful I spend 90% of my time writing a chart about the weights of different potatoes or whatever and then writing a different 20-page document on potato behavior.

(Joke's on them, though, my potato GDDs are off the chain)

Pretty sure all the specializations get to do this. I'd always assumed even baby artists got the "this is not like sketching in your babby GAMEZ BOOK, you'll have to draw the same stupid mascot character 30,000 times and be told to use a style of ear that you know looks idiotic" talk. Or however that talk goes for baby artists, but, I assume it exists?

Actually, I'd really like to hear how that talk goes. That's a complete blind spot for me. Any artists feeling cranky and want to vent? :haw:

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 25, 2015

# ? Jan 25, 2015 19:46

mutata: Mar 1, 2003

Shalinor posted:

Pretty sure all the specializations get to do this. I'd always assumed even baby artists got the "this is not like sketching in your babby GAMEZ BOOK, you'll have to draw the same stupid mascot character 30,000 times and be told to use a style of ear that you know looks idiotic" talk. Or however that talk goes for baby artists, but, I assume it exists?

Actually, I'd really like to hear how that talk goes. That's a complete blind spot for me. Any artists feeling cranky and want to vent?

In game art, you get NOTHING for free. NOTHING. Someone has to make everything on the screen. You want to work on big awesome AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto? I hope you get excited and jump out of bed every morning ready to model and paint textures for loving weeds and trashcans that no one will ever give a poo poo about and that you can't put on your portfolio. I knew a guy who made rocks for 2 months. Livin' the dream! Oh, you're a character artist? Welp, here you go, your assignment is random shlub pedestrian number 45 and all of your poly/texture res budget has been given to the seniors who are making the heroes, so you have 2000 polys and you have to share a 512 sheet with 4 other character artists.

The real useful skill for being a successful commercial artist: The ability to find the excitement and interest and fascination in the stupidest poo poo.

# ? Jan 25, 2015 20:07

Stormgale: Feb 27, 2010

Lieutenant Dan posted:

That, and acting. It's a little great watching the life drain from someone's eyes when I tell a game design hopeful I spend 90% of my time writing a chart about the weights of different potatoes or whatever and then writing a different 20-page document on potato behavior.

(Joke's on them, though, my potato GDDs are off the chain)

Speaking of for my portfolio work as a designer, is it worth doing them for the things i'm making? I was currently thinking of doing a short pitch document that people would read and a longer GDD just to show that I can?

Stormgale fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jan 25, 2015

# ? Jan 25, 2015 21:06

Mr Interweb: Aug 25, 2004

ceebee posted:

Just sidescrolling platformers? Why so specific? You may be seriously limiting your job opportunities by focusing purely on that.

Do you have any design work under your belt? In any case you might want to learn programming or art since most (small) studios I know who do only platformers are fairly small and it'd benefit you to have more skills than just being a designer since they either have very few (if any at all) or their staff do two or more aspects of game development (any combination of design/art/code/audio). If you don't want to learn programming or art you could probably get some portfolio work going with Unity or Stencyl, but you won't get far without additional skills outside of design unless you want to hire people to work for you or spend a decent chunk of money on premade assets.

Spine and other skeleton based animation systems are becoming popular in platformers so you might also want to check those out.

From this:

If you haven't already learned from this already Unity and now UE4 are both quite practical for side scrollers so if you missed the opportunity to learn them then you should probably try it out. It's definitely not as easy as level design used to be back in the day with what you're thinking of but if you want to be a designer in the industry whether it's platformers or AAA it'd be in your best interest to learn the technology everybody is using.

There is no easy way to design for games if you have no experience and no portfolio from personal work. Unless you manage to work your way from QA (which you've posted in this thread about) into a designer role, which does happen but does not happen very frequently.

In any case, I'm just an artist, but I have done work for platformers and they usually don't even have designers, the designers are usually the owners/artists/programmers of the project.

Shalinor posted:

Get a portfolio of work that shows you can do the job, first. For designers these days, that generally means Unity / you're going to learn C# or UnityScript. But please go C#, it isn't any harder. Make some games, make them fun, and then start applying for design gigs. No one expects your code to be perfect, and you'll almost certainly do a ton of stitching stuff together that you found from tutorials, but we DO expect to be able to get at least that far. That "I can play this, and see the fun, but holy poo poo there are a ton of points of polish / why did you code it THAT way / this takes a supercomputer to run" point.

You're really, really unlikely to get a job designing JUST platformers, but you could certainly hunt around and try and find studios known for doing platformers. There are certainly some indie outfits that are that way, and there's a bunch of middle tier mobile developers that do platformer'y stuff too, especially if you broaden "platformers" to include vertical jumpers and the like. That kind of specificity will hamstring your jobhunt, though, and make it harder to find a gig.

In short, the answer is: "exactly like you get a job as a game designer for everything else." You can probably find tons of posts and responses on that question if you scroll back.

EDIT: and I'm not even going to bother talking about how to get a job as a pure designer that can't even script, because it's soul destroying. Just be a tech designer.

Pretty sure all the specializations get to do this. I'd always assumed even baby artists got the "this is not like sketching in your babby GAMEZ BOOK, you'll have to draw the same stupid mascot character 30,000 times and be told to use a style of ear that you know looks idiotic" talk. Or however that talk goes for baby artists, but, I assume it exists?

Actually, I'd really like to hear how that talk goes. That's a complete blind spot for me. Any artists feeling cranky and want to vent?

Thanks. And just to clarify, I didn't mean I'd only want to design side scrolling platformers, just that those happen to be my favorite genre. I'd be totally fine with designing open-world adventure games, or puzzles or almost anything (except FPS titles. Can't play those, sadly).

And I've also done some design work in the past. They were for both decent and terrible games, but still, a credit's a credit!

# ? Jan 25, 2015 21:31

baby puzzle: Jun 3, 2011; I'll Sequence your Storm.

Adolescent me found grid paper to be a great design tool.

# ? Jan 25, 2015 21:37

Brackhar: Aug 26, 2006; I'll give you a definite maybe.

Paniolo posted:

Is there any job more subject to Dunning-Kruger than game designer?

I'm having a hard time thinking of many other occupations where people who have never done it before have such a high degree of confidence that they're any good at it.

I'd be hard pressed to name one. It also doesn't help that, since the profession is so new, there aren't anywhere near as established benchmarks for success as for other disciplines. Or that games tend to suck until they suddenly don't in production, so without some nuanced understanding of design it can be tough to seperate a design that is bad from a design that is super promising.

Brackhar fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 25, 2015

# ? Jan 25, 2015 22:55

Leif.: Mar 27, 2005; Son of the Defender
Formerly Diplomaticus/SWATJester

Paniolo posted:

Is there any job more subject to Dunning-Kruger than game designer?

I'm having a hard time thinking of many other occupations where people who have never done it before have such a high degree of confidence that they're any good at it.

Literally any creative field, law enforcement, military, politics, science......

# ? Jan 26, 2015 09:29

Hughlander: May 11, 2005

Leif. posted:

Literally any creative field, law enforcement, military, politics, science......

I'm having a hard time picturing someone saying, "You know, I've seen a lot of stars in my time, I could hold the chair at Cambridge like Stevie Hawkins"

# ? Jan 26, 2015 15:53

OneEightHundred: Feb 28, 2008; Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Leif. posted:

Literally any creative field, law enforcement, military, politics, science......

Referee.

# ? Jan 26, 2015 16:03

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

Hughlander posted:

I'm having a hard time picturing someone saying, "You know, I've seen a lot of stars in my time, I could hold the chair at Cambridge like Stevie Hawkins"

See anti-vaxxers and/or climate change deniers. =(

# ? Jan 26, 2015 16:34

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

Mr Interweb posted:

I've been posting sparsely in this thread for the past 2-3 years, so apologies if I got a response for this question before (I most likely may have missed it), but as someone who would want to design side scrolling platformers, what would be the best way to go about doing that?

The easiest way to do this is to invent a time machine and return to 1993.

I love platformers, they're absolutely my favorite genre, but we aren't exactly in a golden age for them right now.

# ? Jan 26, 2015 17:24

Explosive Tampons: Jul 9, 2014; Your days are gone!!!

---

Explosive Tampons fucked around with this message at 06:05 on May 1, 2019

# ? Jan 26, 2015 18:47

Frown Town: Sep 10, 2009; does not even lift
SWAG SWAG SWAG YOLO

mutata posted:

In game art, you get NOTHING for free. NOTHING. Someone has to make everything on the screen. You want to work on big awesome AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto? I hope you get excited and jump out of bed every morning ready to model and paint textures for loving weeds and trashcans that no one will ever give a poo poo about and that you can't put on your portfolio. I knew a guy who made rocks for 2 months. Livin' the dream! Oh, you're a character artist? Welp, here you go, your assignment is random shlub pedestrian number 45 and all of your poly/texture res budget has been given to the seniors who are making the heroes, so you have 2000 polys and you have to share a 512 sheet with 4 other character artists.

The real useful skill for being a successful commercial artist: The ability to find the excitement and interest and fascination in the stupidest poo poo.

I hear that.

Getting out of AAA and into mobile/social was really good for me; I decided, as fun as making every rock and flower in a level was as an intern, I didn't want it to turn into my career.
Coming out of school, I accepted a job as a social games artist because that's who was hiring, but thought it'd be a stepping stone to AAA development. After a number of years in social/mobile (going on 6?), I love the kind of ownership and artistic freedom I get on a smaller team, without having to climb to Art Director status - I've got no plans to leave that structure.

I feel like I have a significant stake over the overall look and feel of a mobile game because they are typically much smaller in scope and team size. I can stretch my generalist muscles a bit more and hit UI, concept, and a little 3D. Lots of hats! I learned that I'd rather be a huge cog in a tiny machine rather than the opposite. My day-to-day is significantly more interesting this way.

# ? Jan 26, 2015 20:10

mutata: Mar 1, 2003

My post was only bitter because that was the writing prompt, though. Given my age in the industry, I've actually been very lucky to have been placed on smaller art teams where I've been able to influence disproportionately large swaths of a very big game. Infinity's modular nature kind of lends itself to that, actually. There's well over 250 people working on it, but since it's always split up into multiple "standalone" games, the actual project teams are small- to medium-sized. The entire Toybox mode in Infinity 1 was made by as little as 3 and as many as 5 artists!

# ? Jan 26, 2015 22:07

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

mutata posted:

My post was only bitter because that was the writing prompt, though. Given my age in the industry, I've actually been very lucky to have been placed on smaller art teams where I've been able to influence disproportionately large swaths of a very big game. Infinity's modular nature kind of lends itself to that, actually. There's well over 250 people working on it, but since it's always split up into multiple "standalone" games, the actual project teams are small- to medium-sized. The entire Toybox mode in Infinity 1 was made by as little as 3 and as many as 5 artists!

Working on a team that is entirely too small for whatever you're currently doing is awesome and fun and frustrating.

But mostly awesome.

# ? Jan 26, 2015 23:35

Forti: May 5, 2009

Hey, Polycount just added a new animation forum today, that's neat. Hello new homepage..

# ? Jan 26, 2015 23:37

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

Sympathies to all who lost their jobs/worked for a piece of poo poo at Frontier:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-26-redundancies-at-elite-dangerous-dev-frontier

Hate to say I told you so.

# ? Jan 26, 2015 23:58

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

Frown Town posted:

I hear that.

Getting out of AAA and into mobile/social was really good for me; I decided, as fun as making every rock and flower in a level was as an intern, I didn't want it to turn into my career.
Coming out of school, I accepted a job as a social games artist because that's who was hiring, but thought it'd be a stepping stone to AAA development. After a number of years in social/mobile (going on 6?), I love the kind of ownership and artistic freedom I get on a smaller team, without having to climb to Art Director status - I've got no plans to leave that structure.

I feel like I have a significant stake over the overall look and feel of a mobile game because they are typically much smaller in scope and team size. I can stretch my generalist muscles a bit more and hit UI, concept, and a little 3D. Lots of hats! I learned that I'd rather be a huge cog in a tiny machine rather than the opposite. My day-to-day is significantly more interesting this way.

Yeah - getting into the industry I was all "GONNA GO WORK FOR SUCKER PUNCH" but... now? I'd go mobile, definitely. Sure, sometimes the Freemium poo poo they're making sucks, but it's even odds someone in your family will actually recognize the name if you mention the game you just released, AND you get huge ownership. Also, saner working hours, shorter project cycles mean even if death crunch hits it can't realistically stay for very long, etc. Just, "better."

Any hopefuls/students, definitely apply to mobile studios too. They can really rock, and even if the game isn't ideal, the increased ownership makes it a hell of a lot more satisfying sometimes. Also way easier to get a job with, compared to <that one AAA studio whose games you loved as a kid>.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 04:23

aas Bandit: Sep 28, 2001; Oompa Loompa; Nap Ghost

mutata posted:

In game art, you get NOTHING for free. NOTHING. Someone has to make everything on the screen. You want to work on big awesome AAA titles like Grand Theft Auto? I hope you get excited and jump out of bed every morning ready to model and paint textures for loving weeds and trashcans that no one will ever give a poo poo about and that you can't put on your portfolio. I knew a guy who made rocks for 2 months. Livin' the dream! Oh, you're a character artist? Welp, here you go, your assignment is random shlub pedestrian number 45 and all of your poly/texture res budget has been given to the seniors who are making the heroes, so you have 2000 polys and you have to share a 512 sheet with 4 other character artists.

The real useful skill for being a successful commercial artist: The ability to find the excitement and interest and fascination in the stupidest poo poo.

Holy poo poo this is a good post.

And yeah, this is perhaps a bit more cranky/bitter than is realistic for what the average game artist might expect most days, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 04:37

Bicuspid: Aug 18, 2008

BizarroAzrael posted:

Sympathies to all who lost their jobs/worked for a piece of poo poo at Frontier:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-01-26-redundancies-at-elite-dangerous-dev-frontier

Hate to say I told you so.

goddammit i just bought this poo poo last weekend

# ? Jan 27, 2015 05:34

DancingMachine: Aug 12, 2004; He's a dancing machine!

Shalinor posted:

Yeah - getting into the industry I was all "GONNA GO WORK FOR SUCKER PUNCH" but... now? I'd go mobile, definitely. Sure, sometimes the Freemium poo poo they're making sucks, but it's even odds someone in your family will actually recognize the name if you mention the game you just released, AND you get huge ownership. Also, saner working hours, shorter project cycles mean even if death crunch hits it can't realistically stay for very long, etc. Just, "better."

Any hopefuls/students, definitely apply to mobile studios too. They can really rock, and even if the game isn't ideal, the increased ownership makes it a hell of a lot more satisfying sometimes. Also way easier to get a job with, compared to <that one AAA studio whose games you loved as a kid>.

I mean, if you're going to make games that suck why not just go write insurance industry software or something? For programmers anyway. The hours and pay are even better. You can feel ownership over what you're doing in lots of kinds of software.

(disclaimer: of course not all mobile or free games suck.)

# ? Jan 27, 2015 05:54

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

How many mobile studios actually offer ownership? I've never heard of any except for the small ones.

Royalties and profit share are dope though, I'm down to work at any company that is successful and has that.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 05:58

That Gobbo: Mar 27, 2010

When a listed requirement is along the lines of 'At least one shipped game title' what exactly is the extent of this? There's a big gap between a shipped game on a personal site, itch.io, or desura and boxed copies in retail stores.

I know it's where are all the junior level positions (gameplay programmer)? Seems that every studio with openings is looking the aforementioned shipped titles and 2+ years in the industry, ignoring a few outliers that actually offer junior positions. Obviously internships are a good way to gain the experience. Being from central Virginia and attending a university that only taught Java for the majority of their classes did not help at all when I went to pursue them. I have been doing some small game projects in free time but I'm not sure how much that translates to the professional experience these studios are seeking.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 06:02

Bicuspid: Aug 18, 2008

ceebee posted:

How many mobile studios actually offer ownership? I've never heard of any except for the small ones.

Royalties and profit share are dope though, I'm down to work at any company that is successful and has that.

I believe 'ownership' as they're using it means you can personally make decisions that affect the game without having to get it approved by a bunch of gatekeepers. Not actual company ownership, but "there's 2 designers total so unless the other guy is vehemently against this idea it's going in baby" ownership. Although mobile studios that have not been acquired yet do offer shares quite readily in their early stages like any other startup.

That Gobbo posted:

When a listed requirement is along the lines of 'At least one shipped game title' what exactly is the extent of this? There's a big gap between a shipped game on a personal site, itch.io, or desura and boxed copies in retail stores.

I know it's where are all the junior level positions (gameplay programmer)? Seems that every studio with openings is looking the aforementioned shipped titles and 2+ years in the industry, ignoring a few outliers that actually offer junior positions. Obviously internships are a good way to gain the experience. Being from central Virginia and attending a university that only taught Java for the majority of their classes did not help at all when I went to pursue them. I have been doing some small game projects in free time but I'm not sure how much that translates to the professional experience these studios are seeking.

If you made a game on a personal site I'd go ahead and apply, especially as a programmer. 1 shipped game is not something to be afraid of. If they said 5 shipped games, managed a team, 10 years experience, etc then that's a different matter but 1 shipped game is almost a token requirement just so they look like they have *some* standards.

Bicuspid fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Jan 27, 2015

# ? Jan 27, 2015 07:41

mutata: Mar 1, 2003

I list every title I've ever worked on that has been released as a shipped title. I don't care if it was AAA or on Newgrounds or whatever, if it finished and is available, I count it.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 09:31

theflyingorc: Jun 28, 2008; ANY GOOD OPINIONS THIS POSTER CLAIMS TO HAVE ARE JUST PROOF THAT BULLYING WORKS; Young Orc

That Gobbo posted:

When a listed requirement is along the lines of 'At least one shipped game title' what exactly is the extent of this? There's a big gap between a shipped game on a personal site, itch.io, or desura and boxed copies in retail stores.

I know it's where are all the junior level positions (gameplay programmer)? Seems that every studio with openings is looking the aforementioned shipped titles and 2+ years in the industry, ignoring a few outliers that actually offer junior positions. Obviously internships are a good way to gain the experience. Being from central Virginia and attending a university that only taught Java for the majority of their classes did not help at all when I went to pursue them. I have been doing some small game projects in free time but I'm not sure how much that translates to the professional experience these studios are seeking.

This is the known issue of the industry. They get more people who want to make games out of college than they can possibly handle, so they have to weed people out, and "previous shipped titles" is the way it's done, creating the obvious Catch-22 of needing to have already had a job to get your first job.

Make some stuff and be willing to move is the only things that will improve the situation.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 18:17

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

theflyingorc posted:

This is the known issue of the industry. They get more people who want to make games out of college than they can possibly handle, so they have to weed people out, and "previous shipped titles" is the way it's done, creating the obvious Catch-22 of needing to have already had a job to get your first job.

Make some stuff and be willing to move is the only things that will improve the situation.

The typical dodge is a mobile/smaller PC/etc studio. They're easier to get into, and shipping a game with a real proper studio (that did at least "ok" in the market) generally gets you past the "must have shipped 1 game" filter. Though I feel like there's probably some conversion going on, where X mobile games mentally translates to 1 "AAA" shipped. I wouldn't suggest going to a mobile studio, shipping 1 game, then immediately quitting and applying to Bungie.

It's where the vague industry tiering matters. Smaller PC / mobile / yada studio experience gets you into console studios making B games / larger PC studios, and experience there gets you into the console studios making A games. People jump steps or skip to the end all the time, depending on the strength of their portfolio, but that's the general sequence if you want to work for a Blizzard or a whatever.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Jan 27, 2015

# ? Jan 27, 2015 19:25

Brackhar: Aug 26, 2006; I'll give you a definite maybe.

Do you guys know of any good resources, be they blogs or books, for melee combat design? I'm realizing that I don't have a real consistent vocabulary when talking about this stuff, so it'd be worth me brushing up.

# ? Jan 27, 2015 23:00

anime was right: Jun 27, 2008; death is certain
keep yr cool

Brackhar posted:

Do you guys know of any good resources, be they blogs or books, for melee combat design? I'm realizing that I don't have a real consistent vocabulary when talking about this stuff, so it'd be worth me brushing up.

playing fighting games for 15 years helps

also try derek daniels, a designer of GoW and also an ex competive fighting game player. he wrote some solid articles

http://derekdaniels.com/game-design/

# ? Jan 27, 2015 23:30

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 21:30

Lieutenant Dan: Oct 27, 2009; Weedlord Bonerhitler

Stormgale posted:

Speaking of for my portfolio work as a designer, is it worth doing them for the things i'm making? I was currently thinking of doing a short pitch document that people would read and a longer GDD just to show that I can?

If it's going in your portfolio you're using to get a game design position, yes, definitely! Especially if you mostly work and design by docs rather than have prototypes to show (like me). The important thing is to prove you can do the nitty gritty of design, and actually define functionality and have thought out all possibilities and edge cases of a feature or mechanic. Prototypes are still the way to go if you can script or program and are doing anything but content design, but a good, detailed design doc vs a pitch with just big picture ideas makes a huge difference I think.

Edit: I'm one of those crazy idiot designers who can't code, so going overkill on GDDs helped immensely.

Also, nthing what everyone's saying about mobile - I have WAY more creative leeway working at a mobile company, and designing gesture based mechanics is a total delight. :haw:

Lieutenant Dan fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jan 28, 2015

# ? Jan 28, 2015 01:42

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

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