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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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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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Blocko posted:
I'd add - play every game you can get your hands on that is relevant to your field (and of you have no field yet, everything) Then while playing them analyse them, look at what works, how you'd improve it, what you like, what you hate. Find the worst, most reviled games of the genre and play them trying to answer "Why was this made this way and what can I learn." Try never to play a game without taking something away as a lesson - and accept that the more you hate a game the more you should try to understand it. Try to write down a brief summary and see whether your logic is defensible when some awkward person disagrees. The old maxim about learning by mistakes is true - but thankfully you can learn a lot through other people's mistakes. Steam specials and sales are a glorious way to obtain total junk for almost nothing  This goes back in part to the other current discussion in the thread, about playing games at work. If you get the opportunity, don't squander it having fun - make yourself miserable with a shocking game or two and you'll learn while being mocked by everyone else :P
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Jun 5, 2011 01:16
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Shalinor posted:
I saw a Bioware job ad late last year that was demanding a NWN module as a prerequisite - though I can't imagine that's very common and may have been the last ever. Something new that involves at least some scripting possibilities is a better bet.
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Jun 9, 2011 09:54
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Lurking Haro posted:This is what I applied with. I've done interviewing for design positions in the past and had to read through a few briefs in my time. I also have a few minutes before I leave work - so you get the arguable benefit of me being nasty. I'm focused on those things we would have picked up on and these issues vary wildly between studios so feel free to take my comments as just that, comments not some rule set. 1) There are some odd turns of phrase and typos which would be picked up by spell check or similar - this would certainly make me irritated before I reached any of the substance. Maybe it is a translated doc though. 2) The game-world map is essentially useless (unless you were applying to a company where everyone can understand Chinese characters which is possible). In any case I'd want more of a sense of how the areas link - what are the transitions and how is gating operated if it exists. 3) There are numerous items mentioned but only passing mentions of where items can be gained and how and what currencies might exist. There is also no mention of whether item load-outs are limited, items are consumable etc. 4) It is mentioned that there is an end-state for the game but no mention of how long that is anticipated being reached in, whether there are scoring methods or just the experience of winning. This makes it hard to judge where replay value might exist. A loose story board would be appreciated - and at least one story-boarded mission would go a long way to expand on what you could design in terms of specific challenges. 5) The target audience is online distribution so it would be good to include what multi-player interaction is possible (coop, duels or simply scores outside the game etc.) 6) Enemies are listed but the description doesn't explain what they do, what special challenge they present. Names aren't really relevant to design at this stage, I need to know what makes pixel group A uniquely differentiated from group B. I also need to know what reason the player would have for fighting them (other than stealth-immune animals and mission targets) given that stealth is stated as large part of the game. 7) Combat moves are listed with button combinations. These button combinations are system specific and not very relevant. The space would far better be used to state what the cost, advantage and disadvantage of each attack is. 8) A mini-game for stealing could be a big turn-off if it is wildly different from other game mechanics - but you don;t mention what this mini-game might consist of so it is difficult to tell whether you considered this. As a summary, you have given more detail than is required in many parts of the document and no or few details in the areas where I'd be looking to judge you - balance, mechanics, flow, USPs and mission structure. I'll now await folk leaping in and critiquing this critique :P
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Jul 1, 2011 17:08
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Rolled Cabbage posted:I am looking to get my foot in the door as an in-house translator doing localization. ... Ideally I'd be looking for a company in Europe, Japan or Australia, (can't drive and not US citizen, so I guess America is out, right?) It depends on the languages - we have 23 people in our localisation department and another 9 in pure text production so it's not so rare a position round here at least If you can do Korean<>German it's probably the most useful language combo we have but there are others that might be going.Tell me which ones you can do and I can ask.
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Jul 5, 2011 16:57
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I wear my current work-supplied T shirts only when nothing is clean and even then I wear them inside-out. They are the most hideous things I have ever possessed. For the random translator I was looking for stuff for - we currently only have a spot open for German<>Spanish which doesn't seem as if it would suit you 
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Jul 12, 2011 10:49
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devilmouse posted:But it's way more fun than saying "Do you know WoW? Yeah I work on the less popular versions of that." The truth of this statement is something that causes me pain
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Jul 12, 2011 15:04
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wodin posted:Credits in the MMO industry pretty much mean pretty much nothing, unfortunately, because companies do stuff like this (http://www.shacknews.com/article/54263/warhammer-online-not-crediting-all). Your title at the old company, and being able to speak articulately about problems you faced and solved and the responsibilities you had are the major metrics for success in an interview. The 'the game industry is a small place' also goes double for MMOs because it's a relatively specialized skillset and there's a lot of inter-pollination between companies. You have to be a philosophical as well as technical fit, so there's sort of a double bar to cross. I'll second this view. I work in MMOs and I've never been asked for either a portfolio or credits. My references were only taken up once, which as we were a tiny company involved me picking up the phone and all-too-honestly passing it to my business partner when I was asked to give a reference for myself. I've just been through interviews and am moving jobs (yay as I feel under-worked right now*) and I'd go further and say that even job title is pretty irrelevant. So many companies have a flat structure these days - I have the same title as people who weren't born when I had my first design position :P Being able to list what you would do under certain circumstances is the key. *Though with the limitation that the project is so secret that the full NDA came after the contract and was previously also working under NDA so large parts of the interview were "We can't say what you will be doing, tell us what you are doing so we can see if it is relevant" - "Sorry, I can't tell you anything much more specific than that I worked on a game and the results will be seen in 6 months."
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Sep 1, 2011 16:42
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Sigma-X posted:You working at Blizzard? A guy I know went out there and moved his whole family after accepting the job before finding out anything about what he was going to be working on. I'm based in Europe and so it's none of those really big names -- in the end I made my decision based on all the people I met seeming to understand things in the same way I did. I had a pretty good idea on the project from looking at the previous projects the interviewers were involved in too. A chance of messing up to be sure, but I'm more after the right culture than 100% needing the right project to gain adulation from the average gamer. It will be a bit of a shock to actually have to do more than 2 or 3 hours a work a week again though - I swear the company I left must have the least expectations from its employees of anywhere I have seen. It would be perfect there for someone who just wants to go in and get paid - I just get frustrated by that though.
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Sep 2, 2011 11:45
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Watchlar posted:Following this discussion from a non-US perspective is pretty interesting. This is indeed a very US-centric thread but then again the sheer number of US companies is always going to make that the most useful point of view. In Europe as a whole I would say the biggest difference is that companies aren't so reliant on specific qualifications and online portfolios when recruiting - though that is changing and some of the international places now demand a portfolio with all CVs / resumes. I'd also put it as being easier to enter and more accepting of strange entry paths, despite the problem for many with language barriers. This despite the fact also that education and societies are so varied across Europe. I guess that having so many different routes of entry by its very nature means that the companies involved can't set definite "you must have this experience exactly to apply" requirements without limiting themselves to recruiting from a single country. There's also less concern about relocation. To many people I know, moving from the UK to Serbia is less a worry than it seems some folks have in moving from Texas to California. Though this might just be that people in the thread only mention relocation as an issue when they care - the vocal minority and all that. Having said all that, I only have direct experience of Europe - so if I have the wrong ideas about the US, people in this thread are to blame :P
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Sep 6, 2011 12:33
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Watchlar posted:To be honest following the industry from this perspective makes me really adverse to the idea of ever working for an AAA studio, no matter how cool the product is. The European AAA seems maybe to have less crunch on average than the US version -- where I am (France) I am not sure I can crunch by any normal definition of the word. I get a base 37 days holiday (plus 9 or 10 of national holidays) and it is illegal for me to work more hours per week than I do (39.5). Technically I can only average at most 37.5 days a week so I have to take at least a day of vacation per month to take that to the monthly legal quantity. In the UK I could sign away the limited hours right - but here it is pretty much set in stone that I can do no more than 220 hours overtime in a year and all of that is paid as such.
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Sep 6, 2011 14:03
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Honestly, it seems that the people who bitch the most aren't actually the people who HATE the game. I've run the stats on this and also seen them mentioned by other MMO companies - if a player posts on an MMO forum "I quit" or such, there is a 90% or greater chance they will be playing the next month. This is in some cases lower churn than the population who are apparently contentedly playing and not posting.
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Sep 13, 2011 10:01
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Watchlar posted:Thinking about possible future career progression, I would love to work in the MMO field. What sort of possibilities exist for this in Europe? The MMO business in Europe is a bit of a mixed bag - main three divisions I would use are - Developers of Client based MMOs - you are looking at CCP, Funcom etc here. There are plenty of secret and not so secret projects in the area too (oddly many of them also in Scandinavia) which may or may not make it to full production. There's a lot more competition to get in to this category than the others I list - as they are the most likely to be awesomely pretty and try to release as AAA. - Developers of Browser based MMOs - Sulake, Jagex etc etc. There is always recruitment going on for these guys. You'll especially find a billion studios if you are willing to work in Germany. Ubisoft/BlueByte are moving all their FTP browser dev there and recruiting massively right now. - Publishers / Portals - BigPoint, Gameforge etc. Again there are a billion jobs going in this sector and again Germany is pretty central - though being publishing oriented rather than primarily developers you need to be absolutely sure of what your job will comprise. "designer" in these companies can range from combat system designer to an almost pure marketing job depending which games you are on and how close the dev links are. Obviously these divisions are more or less arbitrary - 90% of all the developers with more than one game mix and match their stuff. Short version - there are a lot of MMO jobs in Europe - and if you can rustle up a decent LinkedIn profile it's not hard at all to find them (If I don't get a random new headhunter a week I sulk). You may be hard pressed, however, to know what you will be doing in a particular position (even if the name seems to make it obvious) without a lot of specific questions during the application process.
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Sep 15, 2011 10:53
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Necron Vs. World posted:I have a few questions but I guess the most important ones are. How much more difficult is the interview process going to considering they're on the opposite side of the world? It seems obvious but it'd be nice if someone that's relocated internationally could give me an idea of what the actual hiring process on through to relocating consists of. I know Ubisoft Paris reasonably well - so Ubisoft do one or two conference call interviews first - their HR department is pretty much fully bilingual (and more organised than most games HR setups) - if they like you they'll fly you over for the final interview but you'll possibly have to pay travel up front and claim it back from them. If you do get a position you will have a month of company sponsored hotel for you and any partner/children you have. During that time you'll have a company subsidised property agent to help you find somewhere, and their success rate is close to 100% within that month. In other words, not much difference to any other major company. In general terms - moving wise, your biggest issue will be a visa if you are not an EU citizen somehow. I know people this has taken 6 months for and others who had to work as a 'consultant' while they waited for a visa which was delayed*. This does give more time to work with the property agent though *Or in my case in Korea - be a tourist for a year and go on fully paid vacations overseas every three months to prove I was not some working type.
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Sep 19, 2011 10:29
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I'm surprised that so many folk here see such a massive divide between "creative" and "business". The two cross over at all levels - when placing e.g an art asset you have to balance effort vs reward on both a "how will this affect a player aesthetically" and "how will this affect the sales of the game" level. In many cases the same logic applies in both cases - what separates the business decision from the designer decision is that a designer operates more on a case by case basis while a business type is better served by providing an overall generic rule set to guide the process. On smaller teams or with specific roles such as monetisation design* the two positions are required to be served fully by one person but I'd say it's a mark of failure to be a designer with no business sense or a business operator without any design understanding. As a caveat, I'm not suggesting that a business head needs to have the ability to micro-manage but they should have enough design skill to recognise that they can trust those who are more on the asset production end of things. Their job is to make it possible and efficient for asset production, not to be the eternally irritating (and all too common) manager who gets bogged down in the details that are really someone else's speciality. Veering wildly off at a tangent - that sort of manager is far more likely (in my experience) to also be deluded in quite how much they know. If they were going for a job in the business side of selling obscure widgets, they would sure as hell do research into that - but playing games has led them to believe they are experts at the design too. Thus you so frequently end up with micro-management since their ideas are so divorced from good practice and they see the asset produces as a bunch of simple-minded folks who need to be guided - in that sort of case you are indeed better off with someone who knows nothing and interferes less as a result. * Yes I am biased because that is what I do, guilty as charged.
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Sep 23, 2011 22:52
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Not sure I've talked enough to be included in the big list - but in case I work in a large European Games company specifically in monetisation. I started with my own RPG company out of University, and have done design, scripting and all the standard industry stuff (well, no QA I guess) until I drifted into my current position by being earlier in free to play than most. I've worked in 4 countries in the last 10 or so years, not all in games so have experienced the joys of changing location and international recruiting (which seem to turn up here a ton.) I'm not so keen on giving exact company names - so I can refer to previous companies in general terms without damning either myself or anyone else involved. Besides that my current project is under so much NDA that I'm possibly saying too much by stating it is under NDA.
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Nov 4, 2011 19:08
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Jan posted:In a way, this is why I haven't explicitly mentioned where I even work. When my game comes out, then I'll reconsider, but apart from a few instances where I'd love to say something, it's easier this way. floofyscorp posted:I derailed the Runescape thread for a couple days by semi-accidentally revealing that I worked at Jagex(someone thought our CEO's APV was a tank, man it's not a tank it has no gun!), but it died down once they realised I knew absolutely nothing about Runescape itself. Maybe someday there'll be a Transformers Universe thread... The adulation you get from working on Runescape tends to be from 9 to 14 year olds, so is positively bizarre in social situations. Every time I would meet someone's family I felt like the design version of Justin Beiber. If Transformers finally makes it out of the door I am sure you'll learn to love it in its own bizarre way MMOs tend to be slightly more frightening than most other genres though, so I feel a bit justified in paranoia in keeping my past swathed in mystery. I'll only mention Runescape because this was close to 5 years ago now and my 'inside info' is less accurate than a fansite guess. It's not every office that has people travelling half way across Europe and camping outside in tents in order to complain that they were banned or nerfed.
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Jul 14, 2012 00:48
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Revitalized posted:Is there any trick to standing out when applying for QA with entry level experience? Actually wanting to do QA and being able to give good reasons why that is the case. If you aren't angling for a job in design/production/art you will be considered a pearl of great price by any decent QA recruiter. I'm not saying it isn;t a valid path to do these things - but as a designer I have always had the best relationships with QA who like being QA. Some went on to being awesome designers, balancers and developers but it was obvious that they enjoyed QA and grew in breadth of skills while doing it rather than always looking for a way out. Resource posted:So I was comparing Europe and U.S. designer salaries, and I guess they are a lot lower in Europe. Is this because no one likes designers in Europe? Do the salaries offer comparable lifestyles or will I be poor if I moved to a position in Europe? It's a mystery to me and I have only ever worked in Europe (UK, Germany and France) and Asia. I'm fairly convinced that the companies don't know what they are basing it on either. I've had offers of between $40K and $120K for exactly the same job just in different locations in Europe. Given that the low and high offers were both in fairly expensive capital cities, that's quite a difference in standard of living. Property is generally more expensive over here, but again that's location linked. What will get you a 200 sq ft apartment in London will get you 1000 sq ft in a provincial town in France. Converted to US measures for your convenience :P 19orFewer fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jul 17, 2012 |
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Jul 17, 2012 02:42
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floofyscorp posted:Well, we've had two projects shuttered this year and a lot of layoffs as a result. Off the top of my head I could only think of about five people still around from the ~40 person department I started in two years ago When I was there, a few years back, we had what amounted to crunch for a bit, but I was paid overtime and I know I wasn't the only one. When I had handed my notice in I even managed to have a month notice removed because I was asked to stay late when a bug was noticed on live and I was asked to fix it after hours. Some guy mentioned Ubi as being a crunch horror - I think that varies with studio since Paris had nothing mandatory which I was involved in and it should be against French law to impose it. Similarly in other European places I've not experienced any, which has been overall good news. It's been more the case to see places which have flexible core hours - in one awesome case 11am to 3-30 pm and noone would mention if you krept to those hours only, as long as you were absolutely on time with every project. The last time I in fact did stupid hours was when I was doing computer security and even then 'only' managed 84 hour weeks once every couple of months. It was one of the main reasons I returned to games and I've been very up-front and firm on the limits of what I will do in terms of hours during every interview since. This may have scuppered some interviews but has certainly resulted in some better chances to have useful amounts of free time. Shalinor posted:This is true even if your experience is limited. Your salary will likely double over your first 3 years, if you bounce between studios between projects instead of sticking with just one. Absolutely the case - the best pay rises are from moving companies. I even had a pay rise leaving company A for B and then another when I returned to A from B, despite them being sister companies with shared HR. 19orFewer fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Jul 31, 2012 |
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Jul 31, 2012 21:30
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Shalinor posted:Hrm. I need some input on a thing. This is mostly targeted at the couple of people in here that have done casual games, but everyone's welcome to an opinion. The biggest factor in my mind is what sort of deal she can manage with GameHouse, especially if you are going with an exclusive deal for bigger percentages. The visibility difference between something a portal features and splashes or just goes through the motions on is what can make or break. I've not dealt with them so can't give any useful numbers - but she should be able to tell you what their uptake rates, percentage of payers, ARPU etc are on games with similar expectations (I've no idea on your monetisation model - again, she is going to know - I hope ) and specifically those numbers with marketing campaigns at the level that you'll be getting. The art isn't something I can look at without going 'argh, big head models' but I'm pretty biased on that front - otherwise it's not bad enough in my opinion to make a vast difference on the initial monetisation despite it not being absolutely deluxe. It could be that Spry Fox' experience etc have inspired with paranoia rather than the lack of confidence, though with 2 months time required for a finished product, that would seem to me that you could be first to market whatever happens. Maybe she's just lured by the thought of no publisher cut and this is a convenient smokescreen? Not being in a position to judge character, however, I'll stop doing the amateur psychologist thing.
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Aug 1, 2012 01:42
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Catagorical posted:So I parted ways with my last job about two months ago and in the intervening time I've been doing a lot of UI work on The Secret World. The game doesn't really have a modding interface, but the base interface is open source. As a consequence, I've taken my Actionscript and Flex experience and stepped back and started learning my way around the Scaleform library and Flash Professional. Quick end of lunch reply - I don't know whether you have any experience with formal UI design, wireframing, user path etc - but that would be something to check if not. The production chain is possibly something you are exposed to at Funcom but while you are talking to them it is is good time to get familiar with the way at least one big house does it. Places vary wildly but having seen it in action in one place you'll have a percieved more valuable opinion (stress on the perception as you seem like you have done enough privately to know the chain already.) If I were in a position to recruit a UI guy now, I'd also be asking how you would go about tracking user path, implementing A/B and multivariate testing and input/output checking in case of a user using the APIs you are exposing in unintended ways. This is pretty specific to what I do so can be considered as what one person might want but I would guess you'd get 100 different answers from 100 different folks. It depends also to an extent also whether you want to really specialise in design or implementation or feel happy trying to do it all.
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Aug 6, 2012 12:34
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Juc66 posted:Apply for those jobs anyway. The years of industry experience is usually just there to reduce the number of applicants. I definitely agree with the international suggestion - as long as you have done something that is directly applicable to the job obviously. Germany for example is still rich in games jobs, the culture in studios is very English speaker friendly and Europe is no-visa-required if you have a UK passport. For me - another year, another country to work in:) I've done permanent positions in UK, Germany, France and Korea with my next stop being Denmark in a couple of months. One thing I have learned in this travelling (and is an area some people find theoretically offputting) is that even the countries which are advertised as high tax aren't that shocking if you are from the UK. If you budget at most 40% for normal levels of pay that's about right, even for countries which have ridiculous 75% top rates. UK would be comparably 30% so it's not the end of the world, especially if you are getting good work benefits or work rather than nothing.
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Aug 22, 2012 20:58
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devilmouse posted:If it's anything but a pre-funding startup, you should be getting at least USD $10K for relocation costs and probably way more given that it's an international move. Don't pay out of pocket for ANYTHING that's not reimbursed and make sure all this stuff is written in to your employment contract! For international moves in Europe $3000 +airfare is far more likely than $10000 for expenses - though I've hopped around Europe I'm relying on the experience of US folks who came into Germany while I was there. It's also very likely that this will turn up after you submit expenses, which can take some time. On top of that the German standard is 1/2 months in hotel/company-owned apartment and usually limited help sortimg out the burgerburo/finanzamt for residence and taxes. I know people who turned up from the US and weren't allowed to set foot in the offices because the paperwork hadn't been started quickly enough and this was at VP level. Having said all that, German games firms have a habit of treating people very well. Free beer, breakfast, lunch and afternoon cake meant I almost never had to buy food for any reason other than gluttony. Resource posted:Awesome, congrats There are a ton of companies hiring who spam me on a regular basis through UK based recruiters, so if you are wanting a constant stream of positions I'd suggest linking up with one of the European based agencies. You might have resistance if you aren't an EU citizen but you'll at least have more places visible. There are a regular ton of UK based ones who deal in German positions - the ones with whom I've had decent experiences are change-job.com they have been very pro-active in offering me interviews in a nice variety of places opmjobs.com - have come up with a good number of positions mainly tailored to me but some obvious desperate attempts amiqus.com - mainly quantity rather than quality datascope.co.uk (though some of their people are blithering fools there are good ones who make up for it) I only had contact with one German agency - https://www.ganz-stock.de they got me my first German position and were very happy to shop me around to suitable looking places. They do, however, work on the basis of only dealing with companies who contact them with specific positions to fill, so are far from complete in their coverage and will never land you speculative positions. Also putting your location in LinkedIn as Germany or having it as a tag will guarantee you search hits and offers from within the country 19orFewer fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Sep 18, 2012 |
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Sep 18, 2012 16:31
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devilmouse posted:What's the over/under on the time until they put up a Kickstarter? It wouldn't shock me if they had a 'no compete' clause in their original buyout agreements - so their amicable retirement may be the quiet way of following that. I can't imagine it is too much fun to have a good reputation and brand which is then applied to totally unrelated and uncontrolled projects, some of which have been controversial in terms of success (SWTOR) or evolution (DA2) and the new Ultima may not be something that they would want to be associated with. Better to burn out than to fade away and all that.
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Sep 19, 2012 00:30
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devilmouse posted:I feel bad that you guys aren't going to be able to leverage our engine guy to fix up your loading/perf issues. There was a joke about how his work alone on your game and Farm2 would have paid for our studio easily for a few years, but OH WELL! I get the feeling that you've also been victim to unreasonable expectations shareholder wise and this is an attempt to say to shareholders 'hey look we are doing something here'. It looks a case of finding stuff that can be cut without direct short-term cashflow loss rather than actually looking for a long-term strategic shift, so you get inefficiencies like that coming up.
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Oct 24, 2012 09:06
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:This is a stretch, but I don't suppose there's anyone who knows of a sound design position available in Montreal? 2+ years (industry) experience here. Randomly turned up in a LinkedIn feed today - just after you posted http://www.gameloft.com/corporate/jobs/job-opportunities/38/2122?loc=1&goback=.gde_1842071_member_178339053 I have nothing to do with gameloft or sound, so if it is a bunch of junk I am not to blame :P
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Oct 24, 2012 16:05
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Rupert Buttermilk posted:Greatly appreciated, I just started with LinkedIn last night, so I'm not sure if I've set myself up yet to be notified of this sort of thing. Working on it, though. I have a slightly pro-view of it since I work in monetisation/design which is a hot keyword pairing and it makes me feel popular being contacted by people wanting to headhunt me. I'm not sure whether it is as good for general design work or other more specialised fields though - it would depend how good you are at having the right keywords, skills, contacts etc. What it most definitely is good for is seeing which recruiters are active in your particular field and might be worth contacting. The biggest problem when using it to keep up with jobs is finding the right groups to join so that you get the useful notifications and discussions without the horrendous spam (do not ever join social game developers unless you want to see 500 scam job offers for example.) I must admit it's also been really nice at times as a social tool to track old colleagues in their careers and have a chat when they change jobs. I'm very keen to keep my real social networks all neatly separated though, so if you have colleagues on facebook as well as friends this may be a bit pointless. Edit: and yes, the endorsement thing is a pointless irritation and it seems I am indeed more positive about the overall career usefulness than most :P
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Oct 24, 2012 16:29
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mutata posted:They're struggling to stay relevant and hip by introducing cheeseball features like how other people can "endorse" the skills you've listed. This has been slightly interesting to me if not for any employment-related reasons. My best subject for endorsements is apparently 'scripting' which I haven't done in any public way for years. Certainly I write Excel VBA stuff but no-one but me ever sees it. Much of it is coming from people who maintain my code though, which is gratifying but the sort of skewing that makes this a pretty pointless feature even if it isn't warped by the mutual back-scratching it all inevitably descends to.
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Oct 24, 2012 18:08
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Rough precis - Comedy journalist writes a serious piece pointing out that journalists should be more careful to be seen to be unbiased - with a couple of examples. One of the examples (it is presumed with some evidence to support it) threatens legal procedings so the examples are removed from the article. The writer says he understands why the editing has been done - but has to quit as a result of his principles. The internet goes wild at the drama. It's the sort of thing that isn't really that epic in scope to be fair - but as it involves half the most blatant publicists and self-publicists in the business (most of whom have easy ways to publish quickly in popular places) it is getting a ton of coverage. If someone wants to improve on my version with names and details feel free - I am not impressed enough by it as a scandal to do a real effort post. Edit : British Libel Laws tend to favour those with both deep pockets and experience in Libel procedings. Since Eurogamer has neither they are likely to find it far easier to censor than to defend. 19orFewer fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Oct 25, 2012 |
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Oct 25, 2012 21:17
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Jetfire posted:Well, if the general state is "games journalism is poo poo," I personally applaud anyone who calls it out on a regular basis. Of course some of the regulars are offended by this, say they're not really doing anything wrong, and then this happens. While that's largely true for PC/Console site, mobile reviews are a horrible area for trustworthy reporting. I found this article to be pretty depressing http://www.altdevblogaday.com/2012/09/29/would-you-pay-to-have-your-app-reviewed/
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Oct 25, 2012 21:35
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Namen posted:As someone who works there, I can confirm this (though it's all over game news at this point). This seems like horrible timing when the press releases the last week were about hiring Ken Rolston and some others who can't have been cheap.
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Oct 25, 2012 21:42
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quote:I feel like if anyone wants to be a games journalist, they should be given the shittiest games first and told to review three a week. "Oh you want free games, do you? Here, take this." mutata posted:Hey, I legitimately want Farming Simulator 2013. I want it for learning reasons. Indeed - there's a big difference between a bad game and a niche game. I'm really glad that the XXX Simulator games exist and do well, even if I have no real interest in playing them. Also having a genuinely bad game to review is much more rewarding to write than a good game with the bonus that deconstructing it is a real learning experience. A good journalist would fall upon such an opportunity so it is possible that having a few stinkers reviewed intelligently is a good filter to determing which journalists deserve at least a little attention.
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Oct 25, 2012 22:18
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Acethomas posted:Anyone going up to Game Monetization USA next week? I'll be there all week for meetings. I will be there, though I'm flying out in 12h, have a stinking cold and am just about to hibernate in peparation, so exchanging details may be a little too much for me. If you want to catch me, hunt down the guy from IO who does not have a beard. If the other guy shaves while we are there, confusion may result.
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Dec 3, 2012 16:40
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devilmouse posted:Some years ago, when 1M MAU seemed like an astronomical number, our CEO promised to get us a Royal Dandie if we hit 1M MAU. Well, we hit it but no miniature pig ever materialized. These promises seem to too often be made in vain I am owed a trip to Hawaii for having a million euro weekend on one game. Not that I really want to go there but the principle has to be upheld. However, that's two companies ago so I feel it may be beyond the realms of fantasy now.
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Dec 13, 2012 15:23
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Sigma-X posted:General advice and interview advice. At the risk of being unduly harsh, if you can't work out how to say you want to be a producer I would want you dead after a day of you trying to produce me. Clueless producers who think it's a breezy way into the industry are a horror I've experienced far too often - good producers are the subject of love of an almost carnal nature, which might be why the bad ones stand out so starkly.
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Dec 17, 2012 01:41
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Sexpansion posted:Does anyone work in the game industry and actually have time to have a life outside of work? Like hang out with family, etc. It's always been good except (spot the link with my last post) when we have had producers or similar people who were either incredibly keen on 'pressure as a motivator' or just wanted the directors to be happy at the expense of the designers and coders. Other than that, as much as you can expect in any job in similar industries (I worked in computer security for a few years and it was pretty equivalent in number of times extra hours appeared.) I think we hear about the bad guys disproportionately just because the effect when it is shockingly bad is upon a whole studio, whereas a good work hours regime feels so natural that noone is inspired to talk about it. I'm currently incredibly happy with the producers I work with - they are solely interested in making time scheduling work effectively and very good at deflecting requests from anyone not supposed to be allocating work but with delusions that they can get away with sneaking in their pet projects. If I am doing overtime I know who messed up - it was me, which alleviaters the sadness somewhat.
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Dec 17, 2012 21:52
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 11:50 |
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Sigma-X posted:A friend of a friend told me that the real issue is that while they're easily going to hit their 5-6 million, and hit a reasonable ROI, Square is disappointed because their three pillars for the year were Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, and Tomb Raider, and one of those went budget quickly (Sleeping Dogs), one of those was a franchise nobody has given a poo poo about for a long time (Hitman), and the other one is doing amazing but only had two weeks of sales for the fiscal year, meaning it can't make up for the loss on Hitman. Next year will look better - but not mainly due to the lack of big expenses in the year compared with this - the income doesn't look likely to be deferred if you look at the released accounts. The loss wasn't that huge in the grand scheme (the years of FF and DQ boom sales have left SE as able to absorb the numbers easily) but the reorganisation for trying to make the future have no losses is the big expense this year. I'd like to comment more but am pretty directly affected by the changes, working as I do in an Eidos company, so I can't speculate and only use the publicaly available data in that last statements. What I can say, however, is that the company does seem to be trying to deal with the problem areas rather than laying the blame in places where people had little to no no control. The atmosphere is as a result pretty decent despite the data being released being a bit doom and gloom. (edited to make sense of a sentence I hacked apart to make it totally respecting every possible thing I shouldn't say and made incomprehensible as a result) 19orFewer fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Apr 11, 2013 |
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Apr 11, 2013 21:43
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