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If Marin counts, there are several AAA studios up here
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Jun 1, 2016 07:07
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DancingMachine posted:If you must go to SF (don't) By living in San Francisco, I meant the bay area in general -- I'm still mixing up the two.  I'm personally interested in San Mateo -- close to some nice bike rides , halfway between SF and Stanford... But my partner worries that it's a boring commuter town. To which I say it's going to be the lot of basically any "affordable" location in the area...
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Jun 1, 2016 15:27
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Jan posted:By living in San Francisco, I meant the bay area in general -- I'm still mixing up the two. Come up to Seattle! We're way cooler! There are actually places to live where you can have downtown access AND enough money for food!  EDIT: xzzy posted:I mean, not as bad as SF, but still pretty bad. All the major cities are going to slowly suck the life out of you by forcing you to deal with crowded roads or cumbersome mass transit. I have no magical suggestion for how to deal with getting to east side without living in a boring commuter town, though. The bridges suck, and I-5 is just haha. So if you want to work for one of the AAA devs over there... whelp.  (though if you're down with living in a boring commuter town, the rents over there are still going to be lower than Cali, etc)
Shalinor fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jun 1, 2016 |
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Jun 1, 2016 15:41
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But commuting in Seattle is pretty lovely too. I mean, not as bad as SF, but still pretty bad. All the major cities are going to slowly suck the life out of you by forcing you to deal with crowded roads or cumbersome mass transit.
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Jun 1, 2016 15:47
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Jan posted:By living in San Francisco, I meant the bay area in general -- I'm still mixing up the two. I lived near San Mateo for a while when I worked on RIFT and it was fine, but it depends a lot on what you're looking for in a local area. Food's good, at least! It's also very close to EA's Redwood Shores location.
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Jun 1, 2016 16:08
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Asked in Slack, buttttttt..... Has anyone heard of any companies who go above and beyond with the perks during crunch? e.g. in addition to normal food provided, taking care of people's laundry, giving them a stipend for Ubering to and fro, a childcare stipend, organizing grocery delivery, etc? Basically taking care of all of the life poo poo that falls by the wayside when you're in the office too drat much. Or any other ways to make crunch less awful?
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Jun 1, 2016 18:15
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devilmouse posted:Asked in Slack, buttttttt..... Thought crunch was awful by definition. I've never worked anywhere where it was explicit, but at one place you could bring in dry cleaning and that only ever seemed used during busy periods. They also had a couch (bed) in every meeting room. At another place my boss let me choose how to comp out the crunch time myself; eg if I wanted to stay late vs come in other days. Didn't make it much less awful, but I was at least able to schedule a semblance of a life around it. The best thing to do is organize your schedule, team, and scope such that you don't need to crunch. The literal worst thing is to crunch more than ~2 weeks because then you're less efficient than just not crunching anyway (according to the literature; substitute 2 wks for whatever the real value is, can't be bothered to look up the studies). The best places I've worked treated crunching as the failure of management it is and brought it up in project retrospectives with why it happened and how to avoid in the future.
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Jun 1, 2016 19:17
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devilmouse posted:Asked in Slack, buttttttt..... I seem to recall Blizzard doing laundry service and a few other similar things during Burning Crusade crunch. Mind you, I can't remember it clearly due to, y'know, the crunch.
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Jun 1, 2016 19:19
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I think Dundee in Scotland is one of the major (if not the major) European hubs. Or at least used to be.
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Jun 1, 2016 23:25
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Joda posted:I think Dundee in Scotland is one of the major (if not the major) European hubs. Or at least used to be. It still is
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Jun 1, 2016 23:41
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Seattle/ Bellevue is probably the biggest game dev hub in the US.
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Jun 2, 2016 00:10
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I'm surprised I never seem to read posts in here from Montreal
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Jun 2, 2016 00:17
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zolthorg posted:I'm surprised I never seem to read posts in here from Montreal Are you kidding? Have you seen the amount of stairs in Montreal apartments? This is no place for goons.  There just aren't many SA users around here.
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Jun 2, 2016 01:08
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Seattle, Montreal, LA - that's it that I can think of for sizable AAA hubs in North America. If you expand to the entire world I would add... uh... Stockholm and Tokyo I guess? Maybe Kyoto.
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Jun 2, 2016 05:26
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While we're talking cities, anybody in here from the Minneapolis/St. Paul area? I know we have a sum total of no studios, but we've got at least a tiny community and I like to get to know people in it. Also, I've seen it mentioned a couple of times-- is there a specifically SA game dev/game jobs Slack?
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Jun 2, 2016 06:11
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DancingMachine posted:Seattle, Montreal, LA - that's it that I can think of for sizable AAA hubs in North America. If you expand to the entire world I would add... uh... Stockholm and Tokyo I guess? Maybe Kyoto. Orange County has a poo poo ton of developers. Amazon, Blizzard, and used to have Red 5 and Ready at Dawn until they stopped being AAA.
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Jun 2, 2016 06:58
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Sigma-X posted:Orange County has a poo poo ton of developers. Amazon, Blizzard, and used to have Red 5 and Ready at Dawn until they stopped being AAA. Orange County is LA to people who don't live in LA or Orange County
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Jun 2, 2016 08:32
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Joda posted:I think Dundee in Scotland is one of the major (if not the major) European hubs. Or at least used to be. It still kinda is, though it's definitely not as big as it used to be. In UK terms it pales in comparison to the likes of Guildford, Brighton, Manchester and a bunch of others. Which is a shame, it's a really nice city and there's a wealth of talent there.
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Jun 2, 2016 10:12
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Smegbot posted:Manchester  Though funnily, I live in Manchester and travel to Sheffield (an hour train) every day I don't know of many in Manchester other than Traveller's Tales actually? I'd say Guildford is the biggest hotspot, even bigger if you count all of London (since it's close enough to work in London without the expenses).
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Jun 2, 2016 10:32
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The big ones are TT (two of them), Foundry 42, Playdemic and Chillingo. Plus the BBC's in Manchester, who do a pile of game stuff. In the surrounding area you've got Sumo in Sheffield and Evolution in Liverpool as well.
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Jun 2, 2016 11:11
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Smegbot posted:The big ones are TT (two of them), Foundry 42, Playdemic and Chillingo. Plus the BBC's in Manchester, who do a pile of game stuff. Yeah I'm at Sumo, travelling isn't too bad.
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Jun 2, 2016 11:51
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Aha, I'm at Foundry 42, just down the road. I've got a friend at Sumo, Callum. You'll probably know him for the ridiculous hours he does and the sheer amount of rum he can drink.
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Jun 2, 2016 12:08
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Jewel posted:Yeah I'm at Sumo, travelling isn't too bad. Sumo are good people.
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Jun 2, 2016 13:30
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Shal did you actually move to Seattle now? If so should do a lunch sometime or knowing interests you've posted a weekend family hike. I'm moving into my new Bothell/Woodinville McMansion today. (3500 sq ft on 9700 flat lot) San Mateo is a great place to live. I've lived there twice and Redwood City once. There is no way you will be sane if you commute to double fine and you SO is commuting to Stanford though. I spent 6 months doing San Mateo to Emeryville and it about broke me. Finally mobile games are awesome if you are in the tech side. All the fun of MMOs without the 500 person teams.
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Jun 2, 2016 14:23
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zolthorg posted:I'm surprised I never seem to read posts in here from Montreal Or Toronto  come on goons come work for Ubisoft or Rockstar so that in a couple years when I'm ready to apply I have a good, solid internet posting pal reference
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Jun 2, 2016 14:29
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Sigma-X posted:"I'll need to look into that for you. I'll let you know by EOD." You forgot your required 2000 hours of "Just following up on this" and "We'll look into this for a later update"
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Jun 2, 2016 14:56
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:You forgot your required 2000 hours of "Just following up on this" and "We'll look into this for a later update" Mate I'm just looking for certification, not an advanced pass.
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Jun 2, 2016 15:14
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Hughlander posted:There is no way you will be sane if you commute to double fine and you SO is commuting to Stanford though. Huh, in what way? From what I could tell, the caltrain commute from San Mateo to downtown SF looked reasonable. I mean, obviously it's worse than anything I'd currently get in Montreal, but I've come to accept that.
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Jun 2, 2016 15:35
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Smegbot posted:Aha, I'm at Foundry 42, just down the road. Ahah, he works upstairs, so I don't know them super personally yet, but they were the first person I met; we started on the same day! Sion posted:Sumo are good people. Definitely recommend them if you don't really know what you want to do specifically! They have a ton of different stuff they're always working on and it seems you can pretty much work on any part of the process (engine, tooling, gameplay, networking, etc) if you can show you can do it.
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Jun 2, 2016 16:06
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Hughlander posted:Shal did you actually move to Seattle now? If so should do a lunch sometime or knowing interests you've posted a weekend family hike. I'm moving into my new Bothell/Woodinville McMansion today. (3500 sq ft on 9700 flat lot) Same invite for anyone else out here that walks to hang, btw. I'm not much for "go to internet friend's house BBQ and awkwardly avoid holding their babies", but "let's get together and do X" works great. Speaking of, I don't suppose anyone else is part of LONIN? If so, you'll eventually see me there. We can swing heavy lengths of steel at eachother, it'll be fun. Gearman posted:Seattle/ Bellevue is probably the biggest game dev hub in the US. But we're comparing to California, I guess, so - no contest. Still better than that. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jun 2, 2016 |
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Jun 2, 2016 17:18
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Can we have a moment to appreciate the majesty of the new surgeon simulator DLC? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnnREKQ8EtQ
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Jun 2, 2016 17:58
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Sion posted:Mate I'm just looking for certification, not an advanced pass. Can I perhaps interest you in my eight DVD series "This is Going to be Late and Here's Why That's Good (In Fact It Was Your Idea)"
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Jun 2, 2016 21:27
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:Can I perhaps interest you in my eight DVD series "This is Going to be Late and Here's Why That's Good (In Fact It Was Your Idea)" That time when your publisher producer explicitly tells you to stop working on a feature, yells at you because one of your engineers merely sent an email to marketing *asking* about the feature out of curiosity, and that must mean he's been working on it, which he absolutely Must Not Do (tm) -- and then two days before soft launch "Uh, why isn't that feature in? We didn't tell you to stop working on it. "
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Jun 2, 2016 21:47
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Vote Sweeper 2000 posted:Can I perhaps interest you in my eight DVD series "This is Going to be Late and Here's Why That's Good (In Fact It Was Your Idea)" Holy poo poo this is like- 90% of what I've ever seen producers do. There is this one guy who is just the best producer because he laughs in the face of reality, spits in the eye of absurd demands and always sees the best silver lining.
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Jun 2, 2016 23:36
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Are there any companies in Guildford I'm missing? It's EA, Hello games, Supermassive games and Molyneauxs whatever the gently caress that is company right? Lionhead until recently as well I guess. I assume there are some indies I'm missing but that's about it. Just trying to get more info about places near me and that's harder than I thought, one website supposedly has every game dev place in the UK but then there are bunch I know about that aren't on there.
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Jun 3, 2016 00:28
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Jan posted:Huh, in what way? From what I could tell, the caltrain commute from San Mateo to downtown SF looked reasonable. I mean, obviously it's worse than anything I'd currently get in Montreal, but I've come to accept that. My bad. I thought they were up in Marin still. Cowtrain is only annoying for how it doesn't quite line up with Bart. But you do get to walk by my SF offices each day.
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Jun 3, 2016 01:35
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I'm surprised that there's still people dealing with San Fransisco but to be fair, Los Angeles is quickly catching up in terms of cost of living.
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Jun 3, 2016 02:12
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Sion posted:Holy poo poo this is like- 90% of what I've ever seen producers do. There is this one guy who is just the best producer because he laughs in the face of reality, spits in the eye of absurd demands and always sees the best silver lining. Harnessing and managing cognitive dissonance is a necessary component of successful project management.
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Jun 3, 2016 03:30
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thebardyspoon posted:Are there any companies in Guildford I'm missing? It's EA, Hello games, Supermassive games and Molyneauxs whatever the gently caress that is company right? Lionhead until recently as well I guess. I assume there are some indies I'm missing but that's about it. Just trying to get more info about places near me and that's harder than I thought, one website supposedly has every game dev place in the UK but then there are bunch I know about that aren't on there. There's also Media Molecule, Fireproof and Wonderstruck(hello!), as well as Flaming Fowl who I assume are in or around Guildford somewhere. Lionhead's death will result in a couple more indies popping up in the area in the next few months, most likely.
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Jun 3, 2016 09:14
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I've been doing mockups and system design for webstuff. Now my boss wants me to do game system designs and prototyping for VR stuff. I've been reading Jeremy Gibsons Intro to Game Design, Prototyping and something else oh yeah development. How can I do this better? I feel massively under-qualified for a lot of this.
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Jun 3, 2016 09:39
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