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I was 30 when I got my first game industry job. I'm older than my boss, but not three others on my team at my position. Nowhere you want to work will care about your age, and I think that's on the list of things they're not allowed to ask you about (that might be a California thing). Any and all programming experience is applicable, but you should be comfortable in the language you're applying to use. You will be quizzed about it. Be honest about what you don't know. Demonstrating that you've learned and used multiple languages is a plus, but you probably won't get the chance to use them. An exception is memory management in C, because many new associates have only ever used garbage-collected languages and haven't been forced to think about call stacks and other words I hear the code team talk about a lot. Getting familiar enough with Unreal to submit bug fixes is probably a really good strategy. It's a commonly used engine and subjecting your work to that sort of review and rigor is also good practice. Working across disciplines isn't common. We have a programmer sitting in our design meetings because we often have to figure out an engineering solution to a design problem, and when they have opinions about design challenges we listen, but ultimately design is design and code is code. There are technical designers and technical artists who blend the two, but usually even they are under the direction of one side or the other. LGBTQ issues are hit or miss. Most game studios are in relatively liberal coastal areas -- generally any city with studios will have a good sized community. As an industry we're also pretty good at letting individualism shine. There are a lot of studios that have really progressive and supportive policies regarding domestic partnerships and the like. There are also a lot of studios that never grew out of the techbro mindset and... aren't so progressive. It takes effort to not fill a position with a white guy with glasses (I say this being all these things), so studios that are better at that will probably be better at inclusion more generally. Sexuality, gender, and relationship status are all protected classes in California and are thus on that list of questions that can't be asked of you.
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Apr 27, 2018 07:26
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Thanks Suspicious Dish posted:Depending on the graphics programmers you meet, this could either be a foot in the door or a ban from ever working there. Don't ever say you "enjoy OpenGL" to a real graphics programmer unless you want to be laughed out of the interview and put in the looney bucket. Khronos is not the well-respected organization you seem to think it is. I, er, wouldn't exactly say I enjoy OpenGL. It's an okay middle layer between software and a raw graphics device but it relies too much on hints it may not even choose to honor and honestly an at times incredibly bizarre API with barely documented behavior, or rather arbitrary implementation details that you just have to know unless you want the card to do something that kills your performance at scale. I'm also not a fan of how much of a pain it is to integrate into parallel systems. Also sometimes like 2-3 slightly different ways to do the same thing. For a small or even medium-sized project it's still probably better than Vulkan just because Vulkan takes a lot of effort to even get something non-trivial running, let alone optimize. The API is still kind of weird in places, but at least benefits from being far more explicit. (Though theoretically someone could probably make a better OpenGL competing middleware in Vulkan, but what with Unity and Unreal being so predominant I'm not sure it'll happen). As for the Khronos Group, I guess I just figured people who are in it tend to have good networks that can lead to other people that work closely with the organizations (such as larger game companies), not that it's some holy organization to graphics programmers. quote:I was asked to write a triangle sort during my interview, and then talk about input systems for a little while. You should be comfortable enough to do both. As a graphics engineer, you should be able to design and architect systems to get certain visual effects. You should know your PBR algorithms, basic physics, and your 3D math. You should be able to tell me what the modern usages of the words "forward" and "deferred" are, and what the tradeoffs are. By triangle sort do you mean those preprocessing clustering+sorting algorithms they do to improve rendering performance (like in this SIGGRAPH paper) or like perspective-based depth sorting? Because I could do the latter on the fly, the former not without some guidance. As for input, I assume you mean the idea of transforming raw user input data into game actions? Or do you mean inputs in some other sense? As for the others, PBR is definitely what I need to get more up to speed on (though I of course know the bare precursor concepts like phong shading, bump mapping, fresnel, and such). On the stuff I've tinkered with I tended to play more with making things more abstract, surreal, and weird by messing with things like filters, noise, on-the-fly geometric manipulation, and so on. quote:1. You won't get your pull request accepted by Unreal. I definitely would never just try whitespace cleanups or a one line fix. Ideally I'd find something of low or medium complexity that they want done but nobody has really felt like tackling due to low priority. I understand it's a large system with much more experienced people than me working on it, including people at major studios likely contributing fixes and additions to things they noticed while working with it professionally, but I feel like an attempt is warranted. Also, thank you for the response Fake edit: Thanks Tricky Ed, that helps too. And yes, I'll be learning C++ more in depth. I just wasn't sure where on the scale of "can use C++ without handholding" to "knows obscure details about sequence points" I needed to be. Linear Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 07:54
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Suspicious Dish posted:Depending on the graphics programmers you meet, this could either be a foot in the door or a ban from ever working there. Don't ever say you "enjoy OpenGL" to a real graphics programmer unless you want to be laughed out of the interview and put in the looney bucket. Khronos is not the well-respected organization you seem to think it is.
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Apr 27, 2018 10:16
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Akuma posted:Either you’re joking or being a dick. Either way this paragraph sucks. the part about opengl being a joke, or the part about khronos being a joke
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Apr 27, 2018 10:33
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Akuma posted:Oh also being in the UK where we have good labour protections is a boon for all of the poo poo I've said that involves taking risks because they're way less inherently risky than in the States. Ummm not these days. For the first two years you're in a job in the UK you can't go to an employment tribunal for anything except the same sort of stuff that's federally protected in the US (e.g. an employer firing you because you're black and being dumb enough to actually say so). This means you can be fired for any or no reason and have no comeback, just like in the US; the only difference is you'll have a month's notice period (depending on your contract) rather than the US two weeks. Thanks New Labour/Tories!
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Apr 27, 2018 10:52
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feedmegin posted:Ummm not these days. For the first two years you're in a job in the UK you can't go to an employment tribunal for anything except the same sort of stuff that's federally protected in the US (e.g. an employer firing you because you're black and being dumb enough to actually say so). This means you can be fired for any or no reason and have no comeback, just like in the US; the only difference is you'll have a month's notice period (depending on your contract) rather than the US two weeks. Thanks New Labour/Tories!
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Apr 27, 2018 13:50
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So I was laid off recently from my last game programmer job, and I’m starting to look for work. I’m just barely over the 3+ year bracket at this point, and I have a published title under my belt, but because I was originally self-taught, and because I’ve only worked with one other programmer on a very small indie team, and because so much of our work was “just get it done because we have no time” work, I still feel green in a lot of ways. My main goal right now is to land a job where I can get some serious mentorship and industry experience. Does it make sense to go after junior positions, or is it okay to pursue jobs in my experience range? I really wish I had more perspective on this, but I’ve been pretty isolated from the industry at large for the duration of my career, and I don’t have a good handle on what the standards for expectations are. Doctor Soup fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 27, 2018 |
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Apr 27, 2018 20:08
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Akuma posted:Shiiiit, that had totally passed me by. The last time I had to take an employer to a tribunal for anything was in 2012. I'd have taken one of my employers to a tribunal but had been there 18 months so was poo poo out of luck
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Apr 30, 2018 12:16
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We’re hiring an associate game designer at Turbine/WB Games Boston if anyone is in or wants to move to Boston to stare at excel documents. Not yet posted, PM me etc.
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Apr 30, 2018 22:38
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Linear Zoetrope posted:...I'm a bit curious if my age for an entry level will be a showstopper though, if they're looking for fresh out of college people. I'm not a programmer, but I'm another person who can address this bit, having switched to game dev (initially designer, then artist) from a completely unrelated career in my mid-30s. It's been a little interesting at times, through three different positions/studios on both coasts and now in the midwest, and being surrounded by a lot of folks who were quite a bit younger than I (especially when they're in a senior position), but it's never been a problem for me or them, and overall the field has felt fairly age-blind to me (in both directions). I say go for it. I've certainly never regretted it, although I've arguably been lucky at times.
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May 1, 2018 00:06
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Suspicious Dish posted:1. You won't get your pull request accepted by Unreal.
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May 13, 2018 06:07
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Love Stole the Day posted:Why do you say this? I've ever only hear positive encouragement from that community about trying to contribute PRs to the engine on Github, know people who work with Unreal and have gotten PRs accepted by those guys. Suspicious Dish is just talking out their rear end. Every release you can see that they are taking in pull requests. That said, the Unreal repo is currently sitting at over 600 PR's and growing, the oldest dating back to 2015.
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May 13, 2018 15:57
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Love Stole the Day posted:Why do you say this? I've ever only hear positive encouragement from that community about trying to contribute PRs to the engine on Github, know people who work with Unreal and have gotten PRs accepted by those guys. Full disclaimer: I work at Epic right now, but before then, I had four small fixes accepted via PR's on github (#1540, #1835, #1922, #2166). That said, I would not suggest large refactors, or huge new features through that mechanism, but to say that PRs just won't get accepted is untrue; I've had to integrate some.  I would avoid changes that don't add obvious value, or changes that only make sense for one platform/workflow. Because all integrated PRs need to be supported till the end of time by Epic, it may be a good idea to reach out and talk to someone before doing any real amount of work, to ensure that it is something they would be likely to take in a PR.
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May 14, 2018 01:54
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Speaking of Unreal, any idea where the best place to be to pick up on more recent blueprint video tutorials? A lot of the ones I've been watching feel a bit dated.
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May 14, 2018 02:00
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ceebee posted:Speaking of Unreal, any idea where the best place to be to pick up on more recent blueprint video tutorials? A lot of the ones I've been watching feel a bit dated. Look up Matthew Wadstein on Youtube
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May 14, 2018 02:11
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Granted I knew this from AAA game developers trying to work on Unreal and a lot of their changes were to the renderer. Perhaps the render team has a bit more iron grip around their components but none of them were able to reintegrate their work.
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May 14, 2018 02:14
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So, I've worked in AAA for three years now as a more backend focused engine/graphics tech programmer, on four different titles, and I wanted to apply to a specific company soon. I'm in the UK, for reference. So, my biggest issue is I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place right now and I'm not sure what to do. E3 is in a month, so I wanted to apply before E3 and they're in the spotlight again with a lot more applications; and they're currently hiring a bunch of people from sources I've talked to. However, my house contract has 5 months left, and it's a job I'd need to relocate for. Take away a few weeks for me to get my application ready, a few weeks for interview, and one month notice from my current job, I'll have prrrrrobably about 3 months of time unaccounted for? So my biggest issue, is, like. Do I risk waiting until after E3 and getting washed into the new applicants? Is asking for 4 months time from acceptance to working way too much, even though some jobs have 3 or rarely 6 months notice period? I know it scales up in how long is considered acceptable the more senior your position is but I'm really not sure. My biggest fear is I apply too early and get locked out.
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May 14, 2018 10:49
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Jewel posted:So, I've worked in AAA for three years now as a more backend focused engine/graphics tech programmer, on four different titles, and I wanted to apply to a specific company soon. I'm in the UK, for reference. So, my biggest issue is I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place right now and I'm not sure what to do. Just apply. Maybe try to find a sublet if you get the job.
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May 14, 2018 13:52
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leper khan posted:Just apply. Maybe try to find a sublet if you get the job. Live with a roommate who's a dear friend and could never leave them with some rando 
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May 14, 2018 14:09
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Jewel posted:Live with a roommate who's a dear friend and could never leave them with some rando Good news is that after you jump over the pond you’ll be able to afford your on apartment. 
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May 14, 2018 17:48
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My experience is obviously not everyone's experience, but even when the hiring process is moving quickly, it's at least three months from callback to day one on the job. Apply now.
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May 15, 2018 04:32
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So I've come to the conclusion that becoming a game designer by working your way up from QA isn't the most efficient way to achieve your dream (especially if you're not even in QA). After getting rejected from a major developer I've been trying to join for literally over a year, and the fact that for some reason there haven't been any open QA jobs near my area all year, I've decided that it's time I took the initiative. If I can't be hired as a game designer by a company, than I'll just become a game designer on my own, using Game Maker! Change my mind.
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May 17, 2018 11:06
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Mr Interweb posted:Change my mind. I am not going to try to change your mind overall but I sort of feel like if you are going to learn a thing you might as well learn one that is used in the industry to some degree. Eg, Unity. It's honestly not that hard to use and there are tons of courses that will teach a complete non-programmer how to both use Unity and how to code. If that is not at all your thing then sure, making something is better than not making something.
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May 17, 2018 12:11
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Mr Interweb posted:So I've come to the conclusion that becoming a game designer by working your way up from QA isn't the most efficient way to achieve your dream (especially if you're not even in QA). After getting rejected from a major developer I've been trying to join for literally over a year, and the fact that for some reason there haven't been any open QA jobs near my area all year, I've decided that it's time I took the initiative. If I can't be hired as a game designer by a company, than I'll just become a game designer on my own, using Game Maker! Learn Unity instead. What do you want to make?
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May 17, 2018 20:13
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Mr Interweb posted:So I've come to the conclusion that becoming a game designer by working your way up from QA isn't the most efficient way to achieve your dream (especially if you're not even in QA). After getting rejected from a major developer I've been trying to join for literally over a year, and the fact that for some reason there haven't been any open QA jobs near my area all year, I've decided that it's time I took the initiative. If I can't be hired as a game designer by a company, than I'll just become a game designer on my own, using Game Maker! I honestly don't see how you can go from QA to design. If you want to design, then you need to design. Like, now. The exact toolset that you choose isn't going to be your limiting factor.
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May 17, 2018 20:21
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Mr Interweb posted:So I've come to the conclusion that becoming a game designer by working your way up from QA isn't the most efficient way to achieve your dream (especially if you're not even in QA). Change Game Maker to Unity or UE4 and you are exactly correct. QA jobs working for developers are few and far between and Managed Service and CSG vendors simply do not care about you as a person other than to do the job they hired you to do for the lowest pay they can get away with. I might be a little bitter about it. I have trouble doing the work on my own time when I'm tired from working and would rather relax and play video games. I've been putting in an hour a day in UE4 for the last week though, hopefully that's a habit I can keep up. baby puzzle posted:I honestly don't see how you can go from QA to design. If you want to design, then you need to design. Like, now. The exact toolset that you choose isn't going to be your limiting factor. I had a QA position working on the level design tools for an FPS and it was awesome because I got to create objects and levels each day to test functionality. Apparently, the guy I replaced got picked up as a Level Designer so he got to live the QA dream and I was so loving jealous. D1Sergo fucked around with this message at 21:04 on May 17, 2018 |
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May 17, 2018 20:29
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baby puzzle posted:I honestly don't see how you can go from QA to design. If you want to design, then you need to design. Like, now. The exact toolset that you choose isn't going to be your limiting factor. Some of the designers at my company got their start in (developer-side) QA. Usually the first step is they get handed some design grunt work, like punching in a bunch of first-pass values in a spreadsheet, because it's the kind of work that anyone familiar with games can theoretically do and we just need an extra pair of hands. If that goes well then they'll gradually get more design responsibilities over time until they're designing whole systems.
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May 17, 2018 23:12
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baby puzzle posted:I honestly don't see how you can go from QA to design. If you want to design, then you need to design. Like, now. The exact toolset that you choose isn't going to be your limiting factor. Surprisingly a fairly common thing for in-house developer QA. A guy that started in QA right around the time I started as a junior artist at Rockstar was a Senior designer by the time I left years later. It's also a fairly common trajectory for producers to come through QA. If you're at a QA house or outsourced QA company then it's a completely different story. There's almost never a path out of QA in those places. Edit: That said the best path is to just design stuff and get hired as a designer.
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May 18, 2018 00:34
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baby puzzle posted:I honestly don't see how you can go from QA to design. If you want to design, then you need to design. Like, now. The exact toolset that you choose isn't going to be your limiting factor. I've seen this happen at many of the developers I've worked at. In fact, at one of them, I myself was able to contribute to some of the game design for one of games, and would have went further if the company didn't go under. Shemp the Stooge posted:I am not going to try to change your mind overall but I sort of feel like if you are going to learn a thing you might as well learn one that is used in the industry to some degree. Eg, Unity. It's honestly not that hard to use and there are tons of courses that will teach a complete non-programmer how to both use Unity and how to code. If that is not at all your thing then sure, making something is better than not making something. Siljmonster posted:Learn Unity instead. What do you want to make? D1Sergo posted:Change Game Maker to Unity or UE4 and you are exactly correct. QA jobs working for developers are few and far between and Managed Service and CSG vendors simply do not care about you as a person other than to do the job they hired you to do for the lowest pay they can get away with. Two things about Unity. While I would totally be down with learning that 1) my computer sadly can't handle that program at the moment and 2) I think it's better if I start with some more simple stuff like on GM before I move on to Unity. As for what kind of games I want to make? There's a lot of genres I like, but at the moment, I'd like to make something like either a sidescrolling platformer (like SMW or DKC) or a top down adventure game (like Zelda: LttP or Goof Troop for the SNES).
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May 18, 2018 01:11
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Current designer hired out of QA chiming in. QA didn't teach me anything about design, but it taught me a lot of valuable lessons that make me a better designer, if that makes sense. Breaking games and isolating problems taught me how to make more robust systems. I implement failsafes first and try to catch every point at which the player can do something stupid to break it. It's made me a much more meticulous with my design docs and my release notes, too. But yeah, if you haven't ever designed something you need to do that because your early stuff is going to be terrible and some player is going to break it over her knee. Gamemaker isn't going to impress anyone but if that's what it takes to get you making things and letting people play them, that's better than not doing anything.
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May 18, 2018 08:34
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Tricky Ed posted:Current designer hired out of QA chiming in. QA didn't teach me anything about design, but it taught me a lot of valuable lessons that make me a better designer, if that makes sense. Breaking games and isolating problems taught me how to make more robust systems. I implement failsafes first and try to catch every point at which the player can do something stupid to break it. It's made me a much more meticulous with my design docs and my release notes, too. But isn't GM used in a lot of professional titles?
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May 19, 2018 23:25
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Mr Interweb posted:But isn't GM used in a lot of professional titles? It is, it's more about increasing your odds. There are a lot more companies that are using Unity than Gamemaker. Even a lot of non-games / games-adjacent companies are using Unity nowadays.
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May 20, 2018 02:38
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Almost every GM title ever made, the famous ones included, were all one (or one with a few external help that didnt touch gamemaker itself) person jobs. It won't help you get hired as a skill in itself, but if you can show you can make a cohesive thing it could help. I'd still recommend learning unity because you can get hired to use unity at jobs, whereas you'll never get hired to use gamemaker itself in a company setting.
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May 20, 2018 15:20
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I'm a software engineer in Boston who is thinking about switching gears to game dev. Aside from the obvious, what are the things that someone with little prior experience can do to make the switch?
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May 22, 2018 02:27
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Baaulp posted:I'm a software engineer in Boston who is thinking about switching gears to game dev. Aside from the obvious, what are the things that someone with little prior experience can do to make the switch? What field are you specifically interested in? Tools? Engine? Graphics? Something else?
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May 22, 2018 17:43
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Baaulp posted:I'm a software engineer in Boston who is thinking about switching gears to game dev. Aside from the obvious, what are the things that someone with little prior experience can do to make the switch? I'm also in Boston and spent almost a decade at Rockstar Games. If you'd like to meet up for lunch or grab a coffee and chat about switching to game dev I'd be happy to accommodate. Feel free to PM me if you're interested and we can set something up.
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May 22, 2018 18:28
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Baaulp posted:I'm a software engineer in Boston who is thinking about switching gears to game dev. Aside from the obvious, what are the things that someone with little prior experience can do to make the switch? I think we’re looking to fill some back end positions at Turbine. Sending a resume is a start.
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May 22, 2018 18:32
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If anyone is hiring (Senior) Producers/Project Managers, I'm back on the market.
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May 22, 2018 22:47
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Leif. posted:If anyone is hiring (Senior) Producers/Project Managers, I'm back on the market. I’m looking for a technical producer for a shared tech team but doesn’t sound like that helps.
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May 24, 2018 12:03
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Leif. posted:If anyone is hiring (Senior) Producers/Project Managers, I'm back on the market. pm'd you.
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Jun 2, 2018 05:54
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