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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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I think the issue is that the answer to all of those questions is "It depends entirely on personal preference". Some people scrap ideas before they've even started coding them, others prefer to try to massage things that don't work into things that do work rather than get rid of them entirely. Ultimately you're going to want a mix of both, and it just comes down to intuition knowing when to throw something out and when it just needs work. I realize that's not a very helpful answer, so I'd also like to direct you to a blog called Lost Garden which discusses a lot of game design issues from a development perspective, many of which are very similar to the things you're asking about, and reading through the archives may help you get a better sense of what it is you're trying to achieve. Here's a few entries to start you off that you may find particularly helpful: Creating gameplay vs. creating levels The creative process, and sifting through ideas to find the good ones (This one in particular covers a lot of the same ground that you're asking about) The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Jun 5, 2011 |
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Jun 5, 2011 00:42
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mastermind2004 posted:C# is generally used for tools. The core game programming will be in C++, unless you're doing iPhone, which will be in Objective C. Social games will generally be PHP/ActionScript. Note that if you're using a pre-built engine like UnrealEngine, you'll probably be doing most of your gameplay code in a scripting language.
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Jun 6, 2011 02:34
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Whelp, I just applied for a narrative designer position I'm pretty sure I'm totally unqualified for, but it's kind of hard to tell with that sort of position. For anyone out there that might hire for that sort of thing, what would you be looking for? I included samples of my writing and made sure to mention in my cover letter the various highly rated story arcs I've written for City of Heroes using the mission architect (I also included as a reference link the developer post for when my arc was awarded developer's choice), but none of that is really "real" industry experience, it's all just amateur stuff. Do you think they'll even bother to read my work samples if my resume is basically blank (not literally)? I'm probably being overly pessimistic about it but it's a job I both A) Really want and B) Have no relevant work experience for, so I'm trying not to get my hopes up. It's difficult to really feel out what people are looking for when it comes to writing positions, since I honestly have no idea how much experience matters for that. I mean, I'm a pretty good writer, I've received enough feedback from strangers and teachers to feel fairly confident about that (not enough to rest on my laurels though. That's how good writers turn into bad writers), but I've never been published or anything.
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Jun 8, 2011 19:19
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Shalinor posted:I would immediately wonder why you'd never tried the mod tools for something like Fallout, Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc - pick your favorite moddable RPG - and probably bin your resume. I've never seen the mission architect, and would tend to assume that user-facing content creation tools in MMOs are far, far less complex (and I'm absolutely not going to fire up City of Heroes just to try and hunt down your mission - so I'd hope you at least included video of how your mission played out). Hmm, I have messed around with the GECK and... whatever the NWN editor is called (it's been a while), but never really made anything of substance except for a small add-on to someone else's Fallout 3 mod that's mostly only popular because the original mod was popular, so I didn't think to include that as relevant experience. Should I have done so, or should I try to produce something more significant with them first? I think my issue is that I've done a lot of little tweaks and mods in a bunch of different games, but they're all just really minor things; I've got a programming background so modding isn't really that difficult for me, so I just get this feeling of "this is annoying; I'm going to change it", do that, and then kind of forget about it. I'm not really sure about the threshold of what I should consider as "experience" versus "I dicked around in GECK for an hour or so".
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Jun 8, 2011 21:14
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Shalinor posted:You need a portfolio. That portfolio should be full of cool stuff you have taken to completion. If you are applying for design roles, that portfolio should be full of cool design-themed stuff (whether you built the underlying engine or not) like quest-lines and fleshed out worlds and gameplay as opposed to particle demos and BRDF. Well, I knew I needed a portfolio (which is why I included writing samples with my application; not game design stuff but the closest I have, and they are complete works, not just random "I dashed this off 20 minutes before I sent in this application" crap), though it's helpful to know what kind of stuff I should include. Somewhat of a tangential question, but do people still consider NWN mods to be current/relevant? You mentioned it in your previous post. I'm familiar enough with the designer that I could actually put something together if I had an idea, but I didn't realize that people were still playing it. Jumping off from there, how should I present things that require a specific game to play? As I mentioned, I've designed a few missions in City of Heroes that have been very well received, but obviously I can't assume that anyone I'm applying to has the game. Even something more popular like Fallout 3 I don't think I'd want to make that assumption. In that sort of case, what's a good way to show off my work? Would a screenshot/video highlight reel be appropriate, or would it be better to just record a full run through of the thing and send it in unedited? The latter seems like it would be way too long for anyone to actually want to watch. (Also, apologies for being yet another "How do I get into the industry  " poster. I really just wanted to mention that I applied for a position but felt that was a little content-light to be a meaningful contribution to the thread)
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Jun 8, 2011 21:53
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Chasiubao posted:No, game tester does not. A game tester, sure. But maybe the ad is talking about Game Tester, the HR Director. I mean it's not his fault he has a misleading name.
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Jun 19, 2011 22:31
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Aliginge posted:oh NO YOU DI'INT. Honestly, being able to work under arbitrary and seemingly pointless restrictions is an important skill to develop unless you want to work for yourself your entire life. Remember: It doesn't matter if it makes no sense. That's just the way they do things and you're easier to replace than corporate standards.
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Jun 21, 2011 03:46
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Essentially what it boils down to is that in a subscription model, you have a fixed amount of income from every player. With a F2P model, everyone can pay exactly as much as they want for a game. If you think about it, the most you can LOSE from a player is the subscription cost which is usually about $10 a month. While the amount you can gain from a player is effectively infinite. In practice, it works out that the people who do choose to pay more for the game pay a LOT more, easily subsidizing players who play entirely for free. Even Blizzard has dipped into premium content despite sticking with the subscription model as their primary income. Now I'm going to stay away from the quagmire of the ethics involved in taking advantage of people with lots of money and poor impulse control, but in general, F2P is about allowing players that really WANT to give you more money to do that. Team Fortress 2 adopted a "Buy content you can get for free in-game" model not because they needed the money (because Valve is doing just fine already), but because players kept asking for it and it would have just been bad business sense for them to turn down a revenue stream that requires very little extra work on their part. I'm guessing the question was probably inspired by the announcement today that City of Heroes is switching to a free to play model, but if you look at their record with the booster packs and other paid "bonus" content, it's not really that surprising that they would choose to go all the way with it. They've been experimenting for a while and it's worked well enough that they feel confident in dropping mandatory subscriptions from their payment model. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 02:42
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Black Eagle posted:Just a random OO programming question: why is it a bad idea to think of classes as functions of functions (i.e., functions in which there are more functions)? Because they aren't. Programming questions are probably best directed towards this thread, where you'll get a better answer, but I'll do my best to give a quick one here. Essentially, classes should be thought of as descriptions of an entity of some kind. That particular entity needs members (variables and methods) which describe how it behaves and ONLY that. The difference really is that functions are generic input->output operations that can be applied to anything with the right data types, while class methods should only concern the operation of THAT particular class. Of course, classes do need to relate to each other so you shouldn't drive yourself insane trying to make every class an entirely self-sufficient entity, but in general the less interdependence you have between classes, the better. An OO program is kind of like a machine with replaceable parts: so long as each part reacts in the expected manner to stimuli, the exact nature of that part shouldn't matter. An magnetically driven piston or a hydraulic system both create pressure, but function very differently. In an OO-type machine, they would both be usable as the same part. In practice, you'll probably find yourself needing some function-like behaviour, which is what static classes (i.e. global classes, or classes with members that can be accessed without needing an instance of that class) can be used for. Things like the Math class that comes built in with most languages and such. What you might find while designing something using OO is that a lot of classes have similar methods that you feel would be more efficient as a generic function, but this is the wrong way to look at it. Instead, you should look at your classes and consider whether they're similar enough to be consolidated into a single class, or a hierarchy of classes. The end result of this latter approach is that you end up with a more efficient class structure, while in the former approach you still have the same mess of classes as the original as well as a function floating around that doesn't give any indication of the classes with which it's meant to be used. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jun 22, 2011 |
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Jun 22, 2011 05:32
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MustardFacial posted:Way off topic but please show me an example of this magnetically driven piston as I have a hard time imagining one that would be powerful enough to create the necessary pressure without it being: I don't think it does, I was just trying to come up with something that would function fundamentally differently than a hydraulic system at 2 AM. You can create a fair amount of force over a small distance with electromagnets but that's about it.
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Jun 22, 2011 18:15
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Chasiubao posted:Which is worse, that one or Sony's QA 'reality' show? The QA one, if only because at least these people are competing for a position that's actually worth competing over. Seriously, game tester is not exactly a job worth fighting tooth and nail for. I mean sure the contestants are worse but that's not the premise's fault. Just the people who picked them.
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Jun 26, 2011 06:27
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Whalley posted:I'm going to jump all over this; the way the engine handles lighting and terrain just gets me so excited. Yeah, I read this announcement a while back and after tooling around in UDK for a bit I'm really interested in the release. I've had this idea for a Robinson's Requiem survival sim kind of game forever and CryEngine 3 is just the perfect thing to build the kind of outdoor environment I'd want for it. FreakyZoid posted:Ha, I've seen plenty of shipped games that have that particular oversight in them. Clearly, the crate was brought into the room in pieces and assembled in the room! After all, making transportation more difficult is the intended purpose of a crate, right? The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jul 2, 2011 |
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Jul 2, 2011 00:37
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Aliginge posted:Try level design. The whole 3d modelling thing is very much about producing high quality assets and there's no real aspect of game design in there. I've been dabbling in level design lately, and one thing that's really helpful is the fact that it doesn't require nearly the level of artistic ability that modelling or concept art does. You probably shouldn't do it if you have absolutely no artistic inclinations at ALL, since you'll still need a good eye for aesthetics, but you don't need to be able to draw or know how to make even the most basic 3D model, thanks to all the pre-existing assets that exist in the engines Aliginge mentioned. Hell, if you ever play TF2, you can see how most maps are built using the same core set of assets, so it's easily possible to make a fully playable TF2 map without having to create a single original model or texture. With something like UDK, if you've got some programming ability you can take the extra step and design a whole new game. If your intention is just to show off your design chops for a portfolio, then there's nothing wrong with using base UDK assets for the game (there are lots of freely available models and textures out there if you want to branch out a bit, too).
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Jul 3, 2011 13:03
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AntiPseudonym posted:Does anyone games development forum recommendations, especially ones that focus on programming? I need something to read while I'm waiting for lengthy recompiles and brushing up on new techniques seems like a good way to get around the internet-browsing guilt, but gamedev.net really seems to have gone to poo poo over the past couple of years (Either that or it was always terrible and I only just noticed recently). The CoC thread is great but it just moves too slowly. It's not really a "forum", but do you check out gamasutra? Sometimes the comment threads there can actually be really good, since most of the people posting there are actual industry people rather than random internet nerds with opinions about video games. (note: I did say "sometimes")
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Jul 15, 2011 02:47
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Amrosorma posted:You wouldn't happen to know of any good firearms sound libraries, would you? Someone really should make one of these at some point. Every game going for "authenticity" always advertises that they went out and recorded the real gun sounds. I wonder how many times people have recorded a Beretta 92 or MP5 firing. It seems like a waste of effort (also bullets). Though I suppose the audio guys really just want an excuse to go play with some fancy guns. I guess I can't blame them for that.
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Jul 17, 2011 17:26
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One of the mission arcs I've written for City of Heroes was featured in the latest issue of PC Gamer. What's a good way to represent this on my resume when I'm applying for industry positions? I still have no professional design experience but the fact that my amateur work has gotten attention from the gaming press seems like something I should play up.
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Jul 24, 2011 19:17
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Solus posted:He reminds me of myself when I was 12 and really really really really really really really really really really really really really wanted to come up with ideas for a game. I emailed a local company and the HR head gave me protips on how to write stuff but couldn't look at them. I think a lot of writers go through this stage. I was like that too (though I never sent e-mails out to anyone). I guess you can take comfort in the fact that (most) people grow out of it eventually. I think as a kid you always dream big, so you come up with a ton of ideas for AAA games that you would never be able to make on your own, even if you did learn to program for a real engine and how to do modelling and texturing. The biggest hurdle is learning to scale down your ambition to a scale where you can actually take your ideas from concept to execution entirely on your own. It's possible to some day get to head up a studio and make your big ideas a reality, but not if you never produce anything to show people and get hired in the first place.
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Jul 27, 2011 06:45
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BizarroAzrael posted:It's fake, but has on occasion been reported as being the comments of the real P-Mol (when the account was "petermolyneax2") even though the account blurb has always stated it was fake. A few posts up: devilmouse posted:http://gamerdork.net/?p=9286 is the one. Kind of hilarious! Also one of the tweets quoted in the interview is both hilarious and actually kind of a neat idea: "Why are there always MASSIVE monster bosses in modern games? Would it not be so refreshing to fight a very cunning ant?" I just picture this fight where a tiny enemy keeps pushing stuff over and setting up big chain reactions in the environment to try to take you out.
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Jul 27, 2011 18:36
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M4rk posted:The only [sane] people who like the fine art scene are the people rolling in it for fun, or folks who have too much money and too little common sense. When it comes to fine art, there's really two different kinds of artists involved: There's the true artists that really are so far ahead of their time that what they're doing seems like nonsense for years until people finally understand it, and there's the bullshit artists that are just doing nonsense and trying to pass it off as being more like the first group to people who don't know enough to tell the difference. Naturally, the second group is much more common than the first. If you were to commission something though, then yeah, I'd also much rather get a commercial artist to do something for me. A private fine art commission is pretty worthless from an artistic perspective because it's being created solely for the money rather than to express any sort of emotion or message. They're only actually worth a bunch of money when they have a famous name attached to it, and then it's really just paying for the "brand" rather than the art. (I suppose this is a bit of a tangent for the video game jobs thread, but I think that artists working in game development don't get the respect they deserve, just because they aren't making "art" doesn't mean they aren't talented)
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Jul 28, 2011 06:38
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jBusy posted:We also have several full time writers at Riot. These positions are out there, but far more rare than others. It strikes me a something that would be hired from within the company when the opportunity comes up - there are a lot of people who WANT to write but as you've said, not that many positions out there. I think most companies would rather put someone they know in the position who's shown an interest and aptitude for writing rather than having to go out and review the work of a bunch of strangers to try to fill the job. The closest I've seen is a narrative designer position offered at Ubisoft Toronto (which I applied for ), which isn't really the same as "full-time writer".(tangent: Is there anyone in this thread working at Ubisoft TO? I know there are a few people working at other Ubisoft branches, and the Toronto one is fairly new so odds are slim, but I figure I'd ask anyway)
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Jul 28, 2011 21:15
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It's all a bit pedantic, but even though Gamestop sells mostly games, it's more a part of the "retail" industry than the "games" industry. I mean if you want to include distribution, then shouldn't all the people who work in factories producing DVDs also count? As well as the various delivery people that physically move those game boxes to the stores? Think of it from another angle: is Blockbuster video a part of the "film" industry because it mostly rents/sells movies (let's just ignore the fact that they're facing bankruptcy at the moment for the purpose of this example)? Or when you think of the film industry, do you really only think of like, Hollywood, movie stars, directors, etc.? If you want a more concrete definition of working in the games industry, just ask the question "Do I sit down at my job?" If the answer is "no", then you're working in retail/distribution. If the answer is "yes", then you're probably working in production/development/design. It's the latter that people think of when they talk about the "games industry". (Also, I personally worked at Blockbuster, but I don't consider myself part of the "games industry" just because I rented/sold games to people. I come to this thread because I'm much more interested in discussion about design and such than I am in discussion about up-selling and customer rewards programs).
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Jul 28, 2011 22:35
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Archetype posted:The best dev diary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-5kvqZBRVg Okay I've seen that before, and I'm pretty sure it's fake (or at least HEAVILY edited). Who is the guy in the video? Is he an actual games industry guy, or just someone that made a weird video?
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Jul 29, 2011 04:24
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Alterian posted:Or they might not actually like you. I had a guy try to name drop me that we were friends even though I never met him and he was acquainted with my husbands from school. He was only civil to the guy cause they were classmates, but he was a pretty big douchebag. They asked me if I knew the guy and I told him the truth. Honestly I've always though name dropping to be kind of douchey in general. Even if you're best friends with someone in the industry, if they think you would be a good hire, THEY will mention YOU. At the very least, ask the person first if you can mention them as a reference. Don't just go "Oh yeah, X knows me, they can vouch for me."
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Jul 31, 2011 22:20
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Shalinor posted:Long Island ice tea. Probably the best option for drinkability and high alcohol content. Fitting, considering it's a prohibition-era cocktail. It's basically designed to get you as drunk as possible with as little booze as possible!
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Aug 2, 2011 02:30
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I think an important question to ask about the constant online connection DRM that's been cropping up lately is have no-DRM games been wildly less profitable than games with DRM? It's a difficult comparison, since of course each individual game is going to have its own level of popularly and sales. I guess the constant online connection is also meant to curb hacking, since with a real money market in the game, cheating not only becomes a gameplay issue, but an issue involving real world dollars. I don't think it will actually do anything to reduce hacking itself, but it means that they can ban people from the game entirely. Though I suppose that raises the question; why not simply ban people from using the auction house if they're caught cheating? That would take away the need for the constant connection while still allowing them to purge hackers from affecting the game economy. It strikes me as something that's going to piss people off, though, and it might have been a better move, at least from a PR perspective, to make the auction house an "opt-in" option. So you could play the single player game offline as with the previous Diablo titles, but characters played offline would be barred access from the auction house - only those that are played entirely online would be eligible. Which is essentially just how multiplayer from Diablo 2 works, so I'm not sure why they felt they needed to reinvent the wheel. *edit* It strikes me that it might have come off better if instead of talking about "requiring a constant connection", they should have just said the game was "entirely multiplayer". Most people already played Diablo 2 like that anyway - even if they soloed, because Battle.net characters had access to some content that didn't exist in single player. The way they've phrased it, it sounds like intrusive DRM rather than just the exact same way that Diablo 2 already worked. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Aug 2, 2011 |
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Aug 2, 2011 06:23
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Sigma-X posted:The indie experiments with/without DRM have shown that about 90% of your calls home will be from pirate accounts no matter how much or how little DRM you have. Whether or not those people were 'lost sales' is a different argument and one we really should avoid. Well, what I was going for is that "lost sales" is completely irrelevant if there's no significant difference between piracy rates for DRM and no-DRM games. If DRM literally makes no difference in how much something is pirated, then why bother with it at all? I think that's kind of a different discussion though; for Diablo 3 I think their goal is to defeat hackers rather than to curb piracy.
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Aug 2, 2011 06:45
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AntiPseudonym posted:I'd love to know where they get the RAM for that there unlimited detail. Notch posted a blog about this video, which does a bit of explaining as to both why it doesn't take up nearly that much memory, as well as some of the key weaknesses of the technology that the video doesn't mention. The heavy amount of instancing you mentioned is the key thing - they talk a big amount about "unlimited detail", but how many unique objects do they really have in there? Sure, each individual object can have basically as many polygons as you want, but if you're limited to having 10 different kinds of object before you run out of memory, that's not very useful. It is an interesting technology, and I have wanted to see voxels get more recognition as a viable alternative to polygons (since they're so much better for deformable/destructible environments, and I love wrecking stuff), but I think there are a lot of limitations to the rendering engine they've built that they just aren't talking about.
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Aug 3, 2011 00:29
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"I would say my greatest weakness is kryptonite, which nullifies the powers granted to me by Earth's yellow sun." Some day I want to use that as an answer in a job interview. Because I would love to work at a place where that line would get me hired. Nobody ever uses the phrase "weakness" anymore, though. They always say "Areas of improvement" or some other HRspeak term for "Say something bad about you, but not something so bad that it would affect your ability to perform this job in any way."
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Aug 3, 2011 20:42
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Shalinor posted:"In what areas do you feel you could improve?" "You know what they say. You can't get exp without grinding jobs, you can't grind jobs without enough exp."
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Aug 3, 2011 20:51
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That's actually a pretty good answer. I find I'm the same way, though not quite as proactive as you are (though granted I've only worked in one job that really had downtime, and it was a heavy corporate environment where everything was strictly scheduled so walking around looking for something to help with just meant I got back to my desk 10 minutes later with tired legs). A lot of people have "workaholic" as their joke answer, but you've phrased it in a way that makes a lot more sense. It's sort of like "If you don't need me to do anything, I'd rather just be at home. So keep me busy, or let me work from home." Though bear in mind that while a good answer, it might not be appropriate for everyone. Some people like having a bit of goof-off internet/NetHack time in the office, and those people really shouldn't be saying they want to be busy all the time when they don't actually mean it. *edit* And as I see you edited in while I was typing, some companies accept that they just can't keep people busy all the time and will expect you to have downtime, so telling them that downtime bothers you might end up being a negative. Still, that's the point of asking the "weakness" question; they want to ensure that you're a good fit for the company, both your perks AND flaws. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Aug 3, 2011 |
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Aug 3, 2011 21:05
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Fishbus posted:Urgh workin' the Brink threads is a harsh mistress. I'm not a PR guy, I don't even need to be there, but I care about our fuckups so much but I'm alone on that quest against a lot of angry internet people. Anyone have such fun? I think you're just suffering fatigue from taking your work home with you. It's fine to be passionate about something you've made, but you can't please everyone, and you should focus your energies on fixing the flaws rather than tiring yourself out fighting with the implacable internet. You need time away from whatever you do, even if you love it, to recharge and let you re-examine things in a different light. Now, bear in mind I'm not a professional game developer or anything, so obviously I'm in no position to tell you what working in the industry is like. But by all accounts, it's draining enough even without having to read all the horrible things the fanbases say. Since you aren't a PR/CM guy, it's really not your job to deal with it, and you probably don't need the extra stress. Think about which would make you happier - fixing a problem in a game, or convincing someone on the internet that you're working on fixing a problem in a game? For me I think it would be the former - I feel much better if I can produce something that satisfies my OWN high standards, as opposed to trying to satisfy the whims of strangers. You can never convince someone to like something if they just don't like it. Even people that DO like a game seem to like bitching even more. Have you ever read the WoW forums? The biggest complainers are also the people that have had unbroken subscriptions since launch and dozens of max level characters (I do not envy the Blizzard CMs). If someone just has a bad first impression with a game, then no matter what you change in the game, they will probably always dislike it - that bad initial impression will stick with them and colour their perceptions of everything else. You're better off winning over people unfamiliar with the game than you are trying to change people's entrenched opinions. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Aug 3, 2011 |
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Aug 3, 2011 22:37
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I think if you're looking for feedback, the best thing you can do if you think someone has a legitimate complaint is to ask for elaboration. Getting them to think about WHY they dislike a particular aspect of a game is going to me much more informative than just having them say THAT they dislike a particular aspect of a game. Even if you disagree with their opinions, don't try to counter them - just mentally make a note of their feedback and move on. Sometimes you might find later on that hey, they actually DID have a good point! I've done this with some of my story arcs in CoH in the past. Comments I initially disagreed with I later ended up putting in the arc because after thinking about it, it really WAS better the way they suggested it. Plus it's a good anti-troll measure. The best way to defeat trolls is to try to engage them in a conversation that's not an argument. *edit* I was just thinking that but couldn't find a good way to phrase it. People caring enough to complain is much better than just having them forget the game. Complaining means they're emotionally invested enough to want to change it. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Aug 3, 2011 |
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Aug 3, 2011 23:01
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Job hunt related question here. I found this job offer for a 4 month co-op placement as a Java game developer (which is the kind of thing I'm looking for), but it seems a little iffy since the ad doesn't list the company. Should I apply for it? Does anyone in this thread know the Toronto game development scene and might know what company this is? If it's on the level it's a good job for me - the location is very close to me and Java is my strongest language, but I don't want to end up getting hired to some scam where I get screwed out of my pay or something.
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Aug 4, 2011 04:13
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Solus posted:multiple levels and game modes Honestly, it doesn't surprise me that much that people well into their 30's still think like that. Design is a skill, and like with any skill, you won't really develop it unless you actually make the effort to practice it. It's very easy to end up with a job that doesn't require an analytic mindset, even within the games industry itself. It's difficult for designers to fathom because it's the kind of skill that once you've developed it, you start to use it intuitively. It's impossible to see things from a shallow perspective once you've gotten used to looking deeper, since that's just how your thought process functions now (this is why tvtropes has the motto "TV Tropes will ruin your life"). ...Actually now that I think about it, this might be why game designers are always crying for more depth in games, when the sales numbers clearly demonstrate that what the general public wants is "dumber and simpler"; designers just can't fathom the idea that someone might not derive enjoyment from something incredibly deep and complex, because that's how they're used to playing games. They like to tear games to pieces and get disappointed when they discover there's nothing much below the surface. Meanwhile, the rest of the world never looks past the surface and gets frustrated when a deeper understanding of the game is required to succeed.
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Aug 17, 2011 02:00
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Vino posted:I don't think those are niche roles. They maybe don't have to be full time but I would definitely want someone who's highly skilled in each of those things. A team of artist needs a strong direction and an art style goal, and unless you have the next Minecraft you're going to need some good PR. I think his point wasn't so much that they're "niche", but that they're the kinds of roles that only exist in larger companies. They are absolutely important, but if your budget is such that you can only afford to hire three people, it's unlikely that a dedicated concept artist or PR director will be one of those three.
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Aug 17, 2011 04:44
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cgeq posted:Eh, that sort of thought seems like it could lead to a "Our customers are idiots" mindset. That doesn't seem like the right approach to take, though I do agree a game's design should be easy to understand. That doesn't mean a game can't have depth, though! It's all about creating layers, like an onion. My favorite moments in games have been when I did get curious, scratched the surface a bit, and instead of hitting a wall, was rewarded. As long as I can go beyond the surface and get moments like that in a game to inspire the next generation of idea people (and have made my company/myself a lot of money) I'll have done my job. I agree with this, but in practice it's VERY difficult to design a game that rewards multiple levels of depth equally, so I don't blame a lot of developers for not being able to pull it off. The main problem is that if you have a game that can easily be completed without learning any the intricate details, it raises the question of whether or not those details actually contribute anything meaningful to the game. Difficulty levels are usually used to counter this, but then you run into the problem of stubborn people refusing to play on "easy" because they feel like it's an insult to the skills they don't actually have (and then complaining that the game is too hard).
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Aug 17, 2011 05:27
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I think an interesting approach to difficulty settings would be to break out of the "easy/medium/hard" mold and instead allow the player to set individual features. Dungeon Hack is a great example of this, where it had presets for easy, medium, and hard, but then you could go in and set a whole bunch of different custom options like "food rarity" or "underwater level" or "enable undead enemies". The Civilization games have a similar setup with custom games. I think part of the problem is that while designers recognize the problem (that being that there is no one difficulty balance that will appeal to everyone), they end up deciding to just cater to one specific crowd rather than allowing players to customize their preferences according to how masochistic they are. Even something as simple as New Vegas' "Hardcore" mode, that enables certain features independent of the actual difficulty setting can work.
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Aug 17, 2011 07:40
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AntiPseudonym posted:Completely agree that this should be an option, although a lot of designers tend to get uppity about overloading the user with options and blowing out the QA workload exponentially for every new option, which is fair enough. Well, with this sort of design I think part of it would be admitting that the game just won't be balanced with every possible permutation of options, so trying to QA test it all (beyond basic bug checking) is just a way to drive yourself mad. If someone was going to give the player these options, it would be best to just try to balance the game for the middle of the road settings, and then just let users tweak to their preference. The issue of game difficulty is actually kind of interesting to think about with regard to how the industry has evolved over time. The real shift happened when gaming shifted from arcades to home consoles - games became less about providing a challenge and more about providing an experience. In an arcade, you HAVE to make the games hard, because if players don't die, they don't spend more money on the game. It was a sort of balancing act between providing a difficult enough game to make money for the arcade owner, but not so difficult to drive players off in frustration. You had to make the game JUST hard enough that it felt challenging without feeling impossible. With home consoles though, the arcade owners no longer factor into the equation, and thus the only person you have to please is the player, which led to a trend of games getting easier to actually finish since there was no longer any reason NOT to let players be able to finish in one go.
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Aug 17, 2011 09:41
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The Oid posted:You don't necessarily need to study C++ at university, but if you want to get into game programming, you'll need a strong grasp of C++ and the low-level programming knowledge that comes along with that. As a current compsci student I can confirm that this is indeed the case. C++ is taught but Java is the core language most courses use. *edit* It might not sound like it in my post but I agree with everything you've said here. Learning individual languages is really easy and not something worth dedicating an entire degree towards - most programming languages are fundamentally similar so once you've learned a few, it's really easy to pick up others (especially considering how many languages are based on C syntax). Much more important is learning how a program actually works - learning about interfaces, efficiency, all that stuff. A good CS degree should teach you how to PROGRAM, not how to CODE. That said, C or C++ should be covered at some point, since pointers are something you just won't get any practice with if all of your courses are taught in Java. VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Aug 18, 2011 |
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Aug 18, 2011 02:29
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