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Indeed. I rarely have to work past 5:30, even now, getting builds ready for E3, and we pretty much choose our own hours and work at our own pace because we always hit deadlines. But at another studio, we had strictly regimented working hours and break times - to the minute - and couldn't slack off or stop paying complete attention for a minute. But we still never worked past 6pm. Obviously you're supposed to make a big effort, but not everyone can (or is expected to) work at their best with eyeballs glued to a screen all day.
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Jun 3, 2011 08:13
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Chasiubao posted:No I refuse to believe that other people aren't also working 80 to 90 hours a week for months on end for zero overtime pay because if they aren't then what did I just throw away my health and I haven't had to work overtime a single time and I have been in the industry for almost a year. Granted, I'm at a casual studio, so it is probably a lot more lax than a big one.
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Jun 3, 2011 08:27
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Clonkers posted:There is a difference between having a laid back, chilled work environment to having a lazy, unproductive work environment. Not saying that this isn't what I'm doing. Given my career, I feel lazy if I'm not doing anything of productivity. But I'm just saying that my previous job was one of constant, never-ending, on my feet for eleven hours a day while still being reprimanded, kind of work. While I may not have the experience you've had with it, I feel I'm in an industry where I can at least actually feel like I'm accomplishing something meaningful and enjoy the work I do. Probably helps that the budget on this game is absolutely gargantuan.
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Jun 3, 2011 08:46
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I think it's best not to give out an inkling of an idea that in game jobs you play L4D2 and TF2 at work and then tighten up the graphics in level 2 because god knows how many people already have that idea. Sure it can be fun, and great to be in an environment with people who are passionate about games, but it's also loving hard work. At DigiPen, there were countless number of people who thought all they were going to do was play video games in a video game college while they were in a programming degree. Well that's also why there's like a 50% dropout rate there. I currently work at a small startup and we don't have the luxury of spreading out our tasks to lots of people so when we have to hit our deadlines we have to bust our asses to get poo poo done.
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Jun 3, 2011 08:56
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My old division of Activision is doing that DS robot dog thing that got announced today. Maybe getting laid off was for the better.
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Jun 3, 2011 09:17
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I'm not going to say that it's why I'm trying to get into the industry, but lunchbreak L4D2 is something I could be down with.  Same with no dress code and being judged on the results you produce, rather than how good you are at giving the appearance of working and how good you are at sucking up.
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Jun 3, 2011 12:01
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Aliginge posted:... being judged on the results you produce, rather than how good you are at giving the appearance of working and how good you are at sucking up. I think there's no industry that doesn't reward sucking up and the appearance of working - just smaller companies can see through that image a bit more efficiently. I never cease to be surprised at people here who make a show of not having the time to eat lunch as if this proves they are busy and thus productive. dylguy90 posted:But I'm so down to do this! Maybe it will help distract me from the depressing fact that I won't be marketing games straight out of college... As usual I will contradict popular opinion on this. There are certain companies where you can get a BD/marketing role straight from college but these are very much the mega-portal sites. If you have a portal with 100 games and a relatively fluid rotation on that, then there is the space and opportunity to recruit untested individuals. I know at least 5 people with this background. It is however very niche as far as continuing in the games industry afterwards is concerned.(on the other hand there are a ton of other industries which will like the experience you gain.) I've had offers to shift from design/monetisation into it and although the business travel is tempting, the long term prospects are a bit volatile.
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Jun 3, 2011 12:24
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endlosnull posted:I think it's best not to give out an inkling of an idea that in game jobs you play L4D2 and TF2 at work and then tighten up the graphics in level 2 because god knows how many people already have that idea. Sure it can be fun, and great to be in an environment with people who are passionate about games, but it's also loving hard work. At DigiPen, there were countless number of people who thought all they were going to do was play video games in a video game college while they were in a programming degree. Well that's also why there's like a 50% dropout rate there. Even at a startup, you're probably/hopefully going to have time to chill out occasionally. "Startup" isn't code for bad management - even at a startup, you should have a clear idea of what needs to be done, and scope your projects to be in the proximity of sane for the staff available. It's going to depend a lot on the game, the people, etc, but then it always does. EDIT: (though startups are almost certainly going to be crunching at deadlines, unless the manager is an absolute wizard and possibly psychic, as there's simply less wiggle room in the staff to catch the unplannable stuff - just, hopefully, only at the major deadlines) ... which is really the point - this all varies, heavily, from studio to studio. So long as you're aware of that, you can apply around, find a culture that suits you, and help them make kickass games on something more approaching your own terms. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:52 on Jun 3, 2011 |
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Jun 3, 2011 15:49
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Whew, we just hit the E3 demo deadlines - there were two of us, on separate projects, and we both finished and went to hand them over to the guys that are flying out at the same time, right at the end of the day. Felt good man! Only really had today to port something from iOS to Android. Had to be a bit hacky and strategically leave some features out but thems the breaks. First time I've ever had games at E3! Hopefully a contract will drop in time for us to show one game in particular; it'll make some people pretty happy. If anyone's going you should stop by the DNA Dynamics booth. We're pretty chill. I won't be there, though.
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Jun 3, 2011 17:50
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The art team I'm on hates stopping to play games. We're suppose to play our game twice a week and I can never find anyone to play with me. They're too busy working. Our office does have our own minecraft server, but I haven't ever played on it.
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Jun 3, 2011 18:06
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Chernabog posted:I haven't had to work overtime a single time and I have been in the industry for almost a year. Granted, I'm at a casual studio, so it is probably a lot more lax than a big one. I've been doing 12 hours a day for the last 6 months. Most of that has been learning other stuff/prototyping little ideas I have. But even so I'm young, single and actually don't mind staying so I can afford to do crazy poo poo like this.
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Jun 3, 2011 18:31
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Blocko posted:I've been doing 12 hours a day for the last 6 months. Most of that has been learning other stuff/prototyping little ideas I have. But even so I'm young, single and actually don't mind staying so I can afford to do crazy poo poo like this. And you are why the game industry has a tendency towards the hours it does! (It's ok, I was once like you too!)
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Jun 3, 2011 19:27
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If anyone in the social or casual space is looking for a really senior server side (Java, C++) or client side (Flex/Flash, Unity) developer in or around London... I'm looking for work. My Facebook startup has gone tits up. I'm also open to the rest of Europe, just looking for something cool. Hit me up at sajobs@tamedtornado.com, I'd rather not post my CV to the forum.  I'm going to be trolling the jobs sites in England hard tomorrow looking for the good postings - any recommendations on sites?
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Jun 3, 2011 22:19
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I consider myself to be relatively realistic when it comes to expectations and such regarding the industry, at least among some of my peers at uni. I get the overtime, crunch periods, long hours, annoying suits, etc etc, but on the other hand, I'm not going to stop talking about how awesome it is to work at an awesome place. If people don't understand at some point on the path to making a portfolio and interacting and networking with industry people that work is work, even when it's video games, then that's their problem. Realistic expectations are great, but doom and gloom is just as bad as promising us young people that it's all a big huge bag of fun. You find the place that makes the games you like and has an environment you like, and you do hard work, make cool games, are satisfied with your professional life, wear cargo shorts and a t-shirt to work, and play L4D every once and a while. It isn't some horrible and/or magical secret.
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Jun 3, 2011 23:36
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mutata posted:You find the place that makes the games you like and has an environment you like, and you do hard work, make cool games, are satisfied with your professional life, wear cargo shorts and a t-shirt to work, and play L4D every once and a while. It isn't some horrible and/or magical secret.
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Jun 3, 2011 23:39
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Shalinor posted:No, the horrible secret is where the catered food on crunch nights comes from. It's prison food in takeout boxes. 
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Jun 4, 2011 00:14
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Shalinor posted:No, the horrible secret is where the catered food on crunch nights comes from. That's no secret. It's Quizzno's platter subs. 6 nights a week. For 13 months. It took the team YEARS to even look at a Quizno's without turning 4 shades of green.
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Jun 4, 2011 00:18
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Man, to hell with realistic expectations I want a ball pit in my office  Backov posted:I'm going to be trolling the jobs sites in England hard tomorrow looking for the good postings - any recommendations on sites? There's an arse-load of programmer positions going at Playground Games in Leamington Spa. I've got my interview for Environment Artist there in two weeks (got delayed)http://www.playground-games.com/careers.php GeeCee fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jun 4, 2011 |
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Jun 4, 2011 00:48
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Shalinor posted:No, the horrible secret is where the catered food on crunch nights comes from.
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Jun 4, 2011 01:18
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Hughlander posted:That's no secret. It's Quizzno's platter subs. 6 nights a week. For 13 months. Not Chinese food?
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Jun 4, 2011 01:32
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Brag-time GO! Our typical catered lunch, crunch or not (if we're working more than >= 10 hours, we get lunch and dinner): http://www.seasontotastecatering.com/menus/family_style_wedding.pdf
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Jun 4, 2011 01:36
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We seen to get either Pizza Hut or Carolina BBQ from a local place.
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Jun 4, 2011 01:45
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miscellaneous14 posted:That's the one really jarring thing about moving from a food service job to one in the games industry, that you're shifting from an environment of "DO WORK CONSTANTLY ALL THE TIME OR YOU'RE hosed", to one of "eh, just give good results and you can chill most of the time". Actually most offices are like this (though not all officially). I spent about 90% of my last co-op placement playing SLASH'EM, after downloading and compiling it myself. It's not as if I was slacking off work, there just wasn't that much work for me to do. In that respect, the games industry is actually MORE busy than other office jobs, since they tend to work on kind of tight deadlines and have a ton of content to produce.
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Jun 4, 2011 05:30
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Actually most offices are like this (though not all officially). I spent about 90% of my last co-op placement playing SLASH'EM, after downloading and compiling it myself. It's not as if I was slacking off work, there just wasn't that much work for me to do. In that respect, the games industry is actually MORE busy than other office jobs, since they tend to work on kind of tight deadlines and have a ton of content to produce.
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Jun 4, 2011 06:07
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I designed and coded my entire portfolio website at my last job, all on the clock as there was literally no work for me to do.
https://instagram.com/mutatedjellyfish/ mutata fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Jun 4, 2011 |
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Jun 4, 2011 07:21
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So, ArenaNet is hiring for some positions that sound like they might be interesting. But they want a code sample with 2500 lines of C++ that demonstrates your best work. And they are listing the position as "Senior". This strikes me as misguided. A "Senior" programmer is not likely to have 2500 lines of code they're really proud of sitting around that they can or want to give to you. Unless they are unemployed and having trouble finding work, then they will take the time to write something. But do you really want to limit your pool of applicants like that? I find I am too busy/lazy to do much side-project coding at home these days. But when I do, it's not generally in C++. And then in the unlikely event that I have a big chunk of C++ code that I'm really proud of and that I legally own, it's probably part of my awesome game that I'm going to release eventually and I probably don't feel comfortable just sending it to a random game studio for "evaluation". 
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Jun 4, 2011 07:48
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After putting it off for such a long time I finally downloaded UDK and set off to learning how to code in UnrealScript. Is it really true that there's no free UnrealScript debugger? The only things I could find were for an old version, $350, severely out of date, or released five days ago and still very crashy. With how prevalent Unreal is I would think there would be lots of free tools to do something as simple as setting breakpoints.
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Jun 4, 2011 08:06
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Diplomaticus posted:Write me something up and I'll put it in! The OP posted:Q:The Dream: I wanna work in QA because I think this will allow me to get past the rigorous hiring process for higher positions including, but not limited to: artists, programmers, designers and producers. This basically boils down to denouncing all QA as poo poo work for poo poo people with no opportunity for advancement. Some of this is true, but there's a few things that should be clarified. The first and probably most important thing is that there's different types of QA out there. I got my start in this industry doing Publisher QA. This sort of thing is what the OP's quote basically refers to. It was contract work that left me unemployed for 1-3 months at a time, it was kind of thankless, and at times it was very difficult because there wasn't a lot of direction. My work basically boiled down to Localization testing, but I didn't really know what that meant going in. There wasn't really a test plan. We had to design our own test cases on the fly and that can be really difficult for someone just starting out who has no idea what the hell a test plan even is. I did become pretty good friends with someone who moved out of QA into PR after I had been there for 2 days, but he had been there for at least 2-3 years doing testing. "Sucking poo poo in the QA pit", as the quote says. There was no place for me to grow professionally there, no larger role I could fill. I do genuinely like every single one of the people I worked with and worked under, that was just the reality of the situation. This is what can happen when you work at a small studio (20 or less in my case) that is not developing its own games and cannot afford to keep you around. One of the positive things I will say for the publisher I was working at: they gave me a chance when nobody else would or could, including the AAA developers in one of the largest hubs of game development in North America. I will always be grateful for that. In summation: If you are desperate then publisher QA is a possible option, but know what you are getting into and make plans to branch out elsewhere ASAP. Developer QA is where I'm at right now, and if you want to get a good start in QA and make something of yourself through it, that's where you probably need to be too. You need to be working at a place that will not lay off the testers when a project goes gold because (speaking for myself) if you're living contract to contract you spend a lot of time worrying about basic survival needs instead of learning and growing. You need to be at a place where you can work overtime if you want it (sometimes even if you don't want it and they make you) because yes, the basic tester's pay can be kind of crap! Developers will often promote their testers internally once they have proven themselves because it's usually easier to do that than it is to hire people from the outside who don't know the culture (just like other jobs in this business). Someone who starts as a tester at a developer can move into management or supervisory positions naturally if he's good at it. A really good tester can be a valuable asset in teaching new hires the best way to analyze a developer's products. People like that can make a very good living for themselves. If you want to be a tester, aspire to be that kind of person. Actively work for it. There are also external QA studios (sometimes called "QA farms") which handle contract work for developers that don't want to hire their own staff for a few different possible reasons. You'll see them advertised in places like Game Developer Magazine. I've never worked at one of these organizations so I can't offer any firsthand insight, but it seems like advancement there would be possible albeit limited. I know a couple of people who have been working at places like that for a while and seem to be doing alright for themselves, but I can't say for certain. Being at a good studio is only one part of it, though. You are absolutely not "better off working retail" (trust me, I know), but you need to be in the right kind of place making sure you are doing the right things. It's like any job. Put in the work, be reliable, take ownership of things you are responsible for which have had a positive influence and follow up with people on them, and always be willing to learn without being a judgmental prick to the developers whose work you are exposing flaws in. These things will help you get ahead even as a tester, and they will get you noticed by people. You don't want to be a grunt-level tester all your life. You don't want your career to become one big "Grandma's Boy" reference. It doesn't have to be that way. The OP was right about one other thing, and that is that QA will not allow you to just "sidestep" the hiring process for other jobs in a company, not even at a developer. You still need to kick rear end and/or make cool poo poo. You will simply be in a better environment to learn about what kind of cool poo poo might get you noticed, and can maybe pick the brains of people who are already being paid to make cool poo poo. You don't necessarily have to make cool poo poo as a producer but you have to kick rear end in other ways. Anyone who is serious about QA should also check out this here sweet book. You'll learn a lot from it. It's given me a great basis to work from. mp5 fucked around with this message at 08:49 on Jun 4, 2011 |
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Jun 4, 2011 08:44
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Vino posted:After putting it off for such a long time I finally downloaded UDK and set off to learning how to code in UnrealScript. The UDK thread is here. I've done a fair bit in UnrealScript, so feel free to post there if you need any assistance.
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Jun 4, 2011 08:50
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mp5 posted:I'll offer my two cents on the subject. I feel like it's important to establish the distinction between different types of QA, and maybe this will allow me to give back to a thread that has helped me pretty significantly in getting to where I am. Developer QA is where it's at. I started there, as noted in my "how I got into the industry" post, which is not linked in the OP. I'd link it but I don't have archives access. Put it in the OP plz, I am needy for recognition.
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Jun 4, 2011 09:10
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DancingMachine posted:So, ArenaNet is hiring for some positions that sound like they might be interesting. But they want a code sample with 2500 lines of C++ that demonstrates your best work. And they are listing the position as "Senior". This strikes me as misguided. A "Senior" programmer is not likely to have 2500 lines of code they're really proud of sitting around that they can or want to give to you. Unless they are unemployed and having trouble finding work, then they will take the time to write something. But do you really want to limit your pool of applicants like that? Definitely going to be applying to ArenaNet as soon as I'm done with my portfolio/reel. Would love to work over there, have a friend there so hopefully they can give me some suggestions.
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Jun 4, 2011 11:07
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wasabimilkshake posted:nFringe is absolutely wonderful, and as far as I know it's the only good UnrealScript debugger out there (and it makes a fine IDE overall). You only need a license if you're developing commercial projects: if you're just doing personal or mod work, it's totally free.
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Jun 4, 2011 18:27
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OP updated.
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Jun 4, 2011 19:14
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nFringe is nice but it doesn't debug unless you have a commercial license. Otherwise it detaches from UDK as soon as it boots. Says so right on the nFringe website. But yeah this belongs in the UDK thread.
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Jun 4, 2011 20:41
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edit: removed
Vodvillain fucked around with this message at 06:34 on May 6, 2012 |
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Jun 4, 2011 21:46
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Vodvillain posted:My portfolio is on my site: marcusroth(dot)net. Any constructive criticism is totally welcome.
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Jun 4, 2011 21:57
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Vodvillain posted:
You need to work on your normal maps. Most of them are unnecessary and I could tell you use crazybump. A lot of your normal maps are way too strong. The table and chair you did looks like a dollhouse table and chair. The head you have looks like its mushy and lumpy. Most of your characters have unnecessary normal maps.
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Jun 4, 2011 22:24
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So I took an engineering/programming test for some entry level c++ game programming jobs I applied for, and my programs worked and my resume is pretty good (for an entry level position at least), and I've even tested for the company and have a good reference from my test lead there, so I had high hopes- I wasn't expecting to get the job or anything, but I figured I'd at least get to an interview. Want to know whats worse than being rejected for an interview for a job you thought you had a shot at? Having those same jobs re-posted on gamasutra.com the same morning. Sigh, time to figure out what's wrong with my code.
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Jun 4, 2011 22:43
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Vodvillain posted:My portfolio is on my site: http://www.marcusroth.net/ Any constructive criticism is totally welcome. I think if I were to suggest anything, it would be to consider re-rendering some of these with better lighting and probably in a game engine. The majority of the images look washed out or unlit altogether. The cowboy character in particular is let down by dull lighting and black ambience. Let some nice lights with subtle colour lightbouncing play on the forms of your characters and for the beauty shots don't worry about making everything be visible all at once. EDIT I mean hell, D1Sergo's avatar is a good example  Fill light up front, strong rim lights around the side and back, just one of many combinations of lighting methods which will present your characters a lot more attractively. EDIT 2: But more than anything, put these in a game engine. GeeCee fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 4, 2011 |
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Jun 4, 2011 23:19
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D1Sergo posted:
Sites like to have a rolling set of ads, give ads as packages and autorefresh stuff randomly to get new eyes - I'd be willing to bet they had those ads ordered weeks ago (and no solace admittedly) may have filled the post weeks ago too. Or they could just be messing up - When I was looking to change jobs I had rejection mails which had the wrong name in the subject and body despite my mail address having my name in it.
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Jun 4, 2011 23:52
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