Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

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Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Dr_Amazing posted:

University of PEI in Canada. This is the site for the program: http://www.upei.ca/csit/videogaming

quote:

Concepts in Computer Graphics & Applied Computer Graphics Programming

o 2D and 3D graphics programming using industry standard tools including 3ds Max� and Maya�

The only way a CS/programmer should be using Max/Maya is possibly making tools for it - and that isn't what they're implying.

That sounds like a relatively bullshit degree that's new and still trying to figure itself out. Just get a traditional CS degree whilst teaching yourself games on the side.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 14:49

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 05:15

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Alterian posted:

Isn't the game competition being posted today?

Yes it is. It'll be after I get home from work.

EDIT: or over lunch, or if I get reaaaalllly bored, etc. Just, don't expect it super soon.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Jun 1, 2011

# ¿ Jun 1, 2011 18:54

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Cool people will enter this, or volunteer as judges, or maybe throw up a prize

If I forgot something, say so in the thread. Think I covered everything, but who knows.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jun 2, 2011

# ¿ Jun 2, 2011 00:13

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

mutata posted:

You know you're in games when your new boss tells you during orientation that you need to install Steam on your work computer because the team plays L4D2 and TF2 from time to time.

Our big thing lately is Terraria. The IT guys set up a server that runs mostly 24/7, and one of our QA guys went a bit crazy on it over the weekend, so we came back to chests full of demonite ore and such.

L4D2 would be nice, but we could never get enough folks interested for proper VS play. Alas

Might have to try reviving that soon...

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 04:26

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

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.

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.

Playing games at work is part of having an open, creative environment. When some big game like Call of Duty drops? Yes, people might lose a day to it, it happens. But then they get right back on the horse, kick rear end, and meet their deadline. Not mentioning that, casting the industry in a corporate and straight-laced light, doesn't help anyone - it's just as damaging as painting the industry as a place where everyone goofs off and nobody has deadlines.

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

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 15:49

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

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.

No, the horrible secret is where the catered food on crunch nights comes from.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2011 23:39

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

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.

Yup. I believe I beat most of Diablo II back at my first software job in the dotcom days. Compared to how that was, I work a ridiculous amount.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2011 06:07

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

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.

The UDK thread is here. I've done a fair bit in UnrealScript, so feel free to post there if you need any assistance.

Seconding nFringe. I have tried the other options, and... just, use nFringe, seriously. Everything else out there is complete horseshit, and nFringe is wonderful.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2011 18:27

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Blocko posted:

And it's not like I'm adverse to doing any of those, but a little direction here or there would be nice so I would know when to give up on some stupid mechanic, or more quickly recognize if/when something has promise.

This is pretty much why I have a giggle at most "Game Design" schools. It isn't a trade, it's an art form, and literally, the only way of getting better at it is experience.

Play all the games you can, pick them apart, and learn to feel out your design for fun or consistency or whatever it is you're going for. That's pretty much "it."

As for knowing where to start with a system, or rough rote rules? You develop those by doing stuff you've done before. You've already made a few melee combat systems, so know that X Y and Z never work right. You've already made a 3rd person shooter, so you know to keep in mind A and B. Etc. It's the same for programmers and artists - experience is king.

EDIT: my approach, for whatever it is worth, is to take things to prototype as quickly as possible - but realize that I draw from my background as a programmer, so testing/developing things by building them is just what comes naturally. I have no faith at all in spreadsheets being a way of finding fun. Spreadsheets tell me if my numbers break at level 30,000, but they don't tell me how it'll actually feel in practice. I similarly don't believe in hyper-detailed design documents, but I don't think anyone in the industry does either. You should design out the backstory / anything that isn't playable, have a rough-in of your entire flow, rough plans on level design, backstory for regions, yadda yadda yadda, but think twice the nanosecond you start to write things like "Overhead Hammerthrow - Speed: 6, Damage: 2", and I would be very leery of sketches of level designs that were anything more than grossly symbolic of the level's flow.

To that end, I am seriously in love with Unity and UDK, and Stencyl is courting me lately with promises of uber-fast 2D prototypes.

I'm actually considering building future design documents in google docs, with specific hyperlinks to zipped-up tiny prototypes of systems where numbers might have otherwise gone. "Combat System: See [this]". It'd be neat to always know that those tiny prototypes existed to show the system off, and google docs makes collections like that really easy to maintain indefinitely.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Jun 5, 2011

# ¿ Jun 5, 2011 01:53

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Blocko posted:

Is that too detailed? Should I not discuss pseudo-metagame elements in a design doc?

Personal preference

To me, that's fine, but I would tend to drop the numbers, or generalize them. It does more damage to shields, less to health - and then end it, and figure out the precise ratios in prototyping. I like to lean more toward rough valuations, like "little", "average", "lots", "tons", etc. Think like how you bid project length in SCRUM - no precise numbers, just rough guesses that are rough enough to be recognizable as guesses.

EDIT: Oh, I would at least recommend The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses if it hasn't already been recommended. It gives you some handy tools to analyze a design, and some directions to try and push things.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Jun 5, 2011

# ¿ Jun 5, 2011 02:40

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Lord of Sword posted:

I posted my CV in the last thread and got a lot of feedback, and after writing it from scratch I actually got some interest.

I got an email back off Codemasters after a few days and they asked me to complete a level design evaluation and I'd hear back once they received it. It's been almost two weeks and nothing, so should I move on? I've emailed back but I'm not sure if my default email is getting filtered, I was just hoping to hear back because level design + F1 would pretty much be my perfect job.

Standard rule is, absolutely no more than 1 check-in email a week. Typically you want to tart that email up with some reasonably interesting new piece of information... "oh hey so you mentioned X, so I added X to my portfolio" / "I've been tweaking Y" / etc.

The first week's checkin email is easy ("I just wanted to thank you again for the chance to do that evaluation..."), then by the second try and have something new ("So I just added X to my portfolio, thought you might want to know..."), and then it gets a bit trickier but you get the idea.

Generally, just work to make it more than just a please-don't-forget-me email.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 05:48 on Jun 5, 2011

# ¿ Jun 5, 2011 05:45

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

SpecialAgentCooper posted:

I guess what I'm asking is how they stack up side-by-side in terms of how useful they are in terms of bullet points on a resume, as well as what I can actually do with them. They seem pretty similar to me in a lot of ways but I'm starting to feel a bit limited with Unity's shader set, for instance, so I feel like maybe I should try something new.

UDK/UE3 is the industry standard engine, more or less, used by hundreds of studios in thousands of games.

Unity is used by indies, mostly, and almost exclusively on small projects, as it isn't well architected to scale beyond such. It's also much newer, and though it has theoretical console potential, no one trusts it enough for that yet.

So it isn't so much that it's looked down on as they've each got their own use and target market. Unity just isn't a grand fit for most mid to large studios, whereas it is a good fit for micro studios an indies making smaller-scoped games.

Personally? I'd try and have both. Unity is great for prototype, UDK is great for larger-scope projects, and you might as well use both for what they're great at.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2011 19:48

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

The Cheshire Cat posted:

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 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).

EDIT: I would similarly be skeptical of someone who applied for a designer position on the strength of their Little Big Planet level, though I know that their tools are at least quite complicated and capable of depth. So I'd be less skeptical, but that question would still be there - "if s/he really wants to make and design games, why on earth haven't they ever tried making or designing a proper game." (unless I happened to be hiring for people to work exclusively in LBP, which is... unlikely)

Narrative designers don't just sit in a padded room and push manuscripts out from a little slot in the door, they need a very strong concept of how dialog, plot, missions, random events, etc are integrated into game environments, and to write to the strengths of those systems as appropriate. They absolutely need to be able to implement said narrative themselves, at the very least in a prototype fashion, since printed pages don't translate well at all to "is this fun? is it too wordy? how does it flow?".

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 8, 2011

# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 19:27

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

The Cheshire Cat posted:

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".

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.

No portfolio => sad panda.

If you've got that portfolio, then there's your background / that's all you really need.

EDIT: VV No one plays NWN anymore, no, not really. I think even... Bioware, was it?... stopped asking for modules in their applications. Even with Fallout, getting them to download your module would be difficult, though at least more doable. Regardless, yes, video is an easy way of getting around that, and yes, you could simply throw up a complete playthrough video. It isn't the most ideal thing in the world, but Youtube videos make it easy to skip around and get a sense for what is being shown.

Either way, game design jobs are going to require a proper game design portfolio... which, yes, isn't just writing samples. Ideally, you would show entire games too, not just mods, which'd make it a little easier to get people to see your work. Unity and Stencyl would both be simple non-coder options.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jun 8, 2011

# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 21:37

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Black Eagle posted:

The complexity of the software only demonstrates that the user can understand and make use of (often needlessly) complex software. That's undoubtedly an increasingly important skill when dealing with software, but that skill alone makes a designer neither good nor great.

That skill tells the hiring agent how well they're going to be able to figure out the tools. Yes, that is important. (EDIT: I am not making a judgement about designers here, or a statement on how the industry should be, I'm just trying to give Chesire Cat feedback on how he can increase chances of finding a job)

It doesn't matter if it's needlessly complex, they're the tools the studio uses, and they're the tools whoever you hire is going to need to come up to speed on quickly. Experience with LBP or a user-friendly tool doesn't tell me much about how well you're going to handle a complicated tool - using something more industry-standard does. Now if you have a few examples done in one of the typical game engines AND something done in LBP/etc? Hey, that's awesome! But showing that range is still necessary, if you want to stand out next to the guy who can show solid experience with industry-standard tools.

EDIT: And I agree, I have no doubt that NC Soft looks for that. I suspect he's applying to studios other than just NC Soft, though.

EDIT2: Off-forums chats ahoy. To be clear, I am not saying "only complex tools are valid." I am saying "try and show experience with the tier of tools that the studio in question is likely to be using." When you make a level with LBP, for instance, what you're showing competence with is a user-friendly WYSIWYG visual editor, as opposed to competence with scripting. It's, in general, higher level than even Kismet or Stencyl.

LBP is an unfair example, though, because it CAN get quite insane with its logic, so that more depends on how complicated you get. In general, I would simply hedge my bets by also throwing in a UDK example, or something made with Flash/Stencyl or Unity, etc.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Jun 8, 2011

# ¿ Jun 8, 2011 22:42

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

treeboy posted:

IIRC Unity can be used for 2d sprite based work but it requires a 3rd party plugin that you'll need to fork over some cash for. Don't remember how much though...

It doesn't require SpriteManager, that plugin just makes it somewhat easier. All SpriteManager does is give you an easy way of building sprite atlases, and handles the UV flipping/etc for 2D animations.

We wrote our own handler for all of that, and it really didn't take long. What SpriteManager2 does beyond ours, I think, is make the whole process more user-friendly and integrated into the editor, but I haven't seen it recently to know for sure.

(now that said, I'd certainly recommend you go with SpriteManager2 if you can - it'll save you time/money - if but you have more time and no money, just write your own, it is not hard)

... anywho, your other big 2D engine is - well, Flash, obviously. Flash is still the reigning king of 2D gaming, that's what it was built for. Look at Flashpunk and Flixel, or Stencyl if you want a visual scripter for it. (EDIT: and yeah, UDK's fine for 2D gameplay - check out their Wizzle demo)

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Jun 9, 2011

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 15:14

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Sigma-X posted:

Congrats dude! Hope it still feels like a dream when you realize your job is to clean up mo-cap of a dude taking a dump, forever

Think positively - if you bust your rear end in the trenches, and really show your dump-cleaning chops, you'll be promoted to being the guy who animates the facial bones to approximate the live captured constipation face!

... and then you'll be fired a year later once this Team Bondi facial anim tech replaces you with a tool. Or maybe you'll instead become a tool (if you're not already a tool) and clean that data instead.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2011 19:03

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Internet posted:

Does anyone have any comments about the Game Design program at Columbia College of Chicago? I finally got my poo poo together and I'm transferring up there for the fall. I'm not sure if I should go with the Audio, Arts, and Acoustics degree or the Sound specialization of the Game Design degree. I'm leaning towards the Game Design route but the program is fairly new from what I understand.

The only comment I have is "why are you transferring to a new and completely unknown program in a focus (Game Design) traditionally filled with terrible colleges that do little more than take your money and boot you out the door with a worthless degree."

ceebee posted:

I tried to find a mod team but 99% of the time I would be like "hey cool I'll join!" and nothing gets done with the team at all so after working on a model for them they just end up dissolving and my work never gets recognized and eventually the mod site disappears. At least that's been my experience 2-3 years ago.

EDIT: Ah, right, artist - found your stuff on polycount. Uh, yeah, you're doing juuuust fine dude. Just keep making cool poo poo, put it in a portfolio, and you'll find something. I suppose if you really wanted to be fancy, you could make a quick Unity 3D demo for your website of your fire golem walking around or some such, but... looks awesome, regardless.

The whole "all my experience is retail" thing is how all our resumes looked breaking in. Mine was 3 years of pizza delivery while attending uni, and then this one 1 year programming gig waaaay back from the dotcom days. That and a portfolio.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jun 10, 2011

# ¿ Jun 10, 2011 17:19

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Sigma-X posted:

You haven't even hit the untextured AK-47 'media release' phase yet. Impressive

How are you managing to attract quality folks to the team?

I'm not trying to poo poo on you but as a dude with a few hours a week that he would love to devote to making cool FPS guns for his portfolio I am woefully unimpressed.

END Games was operating under a website that was nothing but an upscaled copy of the "Hopeful Parents" joke image from the Farside comics (ie. http://www.decimation.com/markw/2007/09/18/hopeful-parents/) and some text that was something like "Do you want to make awesome games? Are you awesome like bacon? Email us", for months, and they got quite a bit of interest.

It's all about the networking, and who they knew / people who wanted to work with them already. And bacon, apparently.

Their website is now disappointingly polished. Alas.

EDIT: ... speaking of startup studios, our team is now bigger, will be a further +1 officially in a little while, and some (small) stuff is happening, and we finally have a proper URL on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/glassbottomgames - yaaaay! There'll be some news popping up over the next few weeks. Small news, but hey, news. Bigger news won't be until later this fall.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Jun 14, 2011

# ¿ Jun 14, 2011 04:31

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

devilmouse posted:

The ones you have to watch out for are the black shirt with blue/purple/red logo or a full back graphic. Down that road lies sadness.

Yeah - there are shirts that are just nice shirts that happen to have your company's logo on them, and then there are... shirts.

I like my "Tak <lightning bolt>" shirt, which was designed by an artist based entirely on an internal joke. It looks like a metal band shirt, it's awesome.

EDIT: VV That isn't really weird, that's them trying to get you out the door because of aforementioned crazies policy, and having an existing pipeline focused on resumes not coming in in hard-copy form. It's much easier to work with if it's a digital copy.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Jun 14, 2011

# ¿ Jun 14, 2011 15:10

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Aliginge posted:

Well as a general art thing I like to do, colour and light is something I love being bold with rather than ambiguous and subtle, but they have it dead on when they say it doesn't look photoreal and doesn't meet the brief. Brief comes first in the end.

Good response.

There is sticking to your guns artistically, but there is also understanding that if you're an artist making characters for a gritty space marine shooter drama, and you are tasked with making Gritter Shooter Man Dramatic Dude, that it really needs to be gritty space marine drama-esque and fit the style defined by the director - instead of making a pony that shoots rainbows out of its rear end.

... or you could go work for THQ, where you can stick to the style AND make a pony that shoots rainbows out of its rear end. That works too.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2011 01:36

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Chasiubao posted:

You have a blue star does that mean you can change the thread title at a whim?

Yes, I suppose. Seems decent enough, though.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2011 21:01

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Space Opera posted:

Part of my problem is that I'm a recent grad. I've got a lot of experience leading student projects and working in student organizations, but no real work experience. I don't know if companies even count stuff like that, but at least I have a lot of experience with software development, so I'm hoping that that will get me an entry level job.

... sorry, but no, it really won't. When hiring for a production person, you want, above absolutely everything else, experience shipping games - the more, the better. That is the only thing that makes a qualified producer - you need that + the actual management skill. No certs will fill that role, you need that experience (even if that experience was on a non-producer role, so long as you saw products through).

Thus, breaking into production requires either moving over from another discipline, or a lot of luck / knowing someone, or finding a really, really big studio willing to bring on no-experience PA's and train them up (ie. you might have luck at Zynga given the rate at which they're hiring).

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Jun 17, 2011

# ¿ Jun 17, 2011 05:15

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Sigma-X posted:

Most of my observation skills come from a lot of long walks on campus with my rendering programmer friend. Learning to observe how light interacts with colors, forms, materials, and then moving on to understand the construction of objects, shapes, wear and marking and damage, etc, is a really difficult to learn skill unless someone is walking you through it.

Hopeful graphics programmers, I hope you are doing this. A lot of my understanding of light and shadow, and the "sense" you get for when something looks right or wrong, and the gut instincts on what is wrong and what to try - I got it from this, right here. Walking around in the world, hiking, whatever'ing, with eyes wide open to what's around you.

If you're not stepping to the other side of little dividers so that you can look particularly closely at a bush in a pedestrian mall that's lit in a funny way, seeing how the shadow is cast from it onto your hand, laying on the grass under it so that you can get a better angle on how the light works through the layers of leaves, etc - you should be. Exploring the world around you is what will inform an instinctual approach to making things look awesome, unique or realistic as necessary.

You should also be staring at your hands and wiggling your fingers to get a sense for how the skin warps around the bones as you flex, getting a sense of how fabrics feel and how that feel translates into how they're lit / how the light scatters. That's how you get better with surface modelling and animation systems.

AI programmers should similarly pay attention to how people walk in groups, and how those groups interact. Physics programmers should be fascinated by how things move. Etc. You should be informing your approach to simulation with real-world experience, NOT just with books and equations that approximate something you've never looked closely at yourself.

(which means, amongst other things, if you ever find yourself modelling a gun or simulating its use, for pete's sake, go find a firing range and at least SHOOT A GUN already, consider playing a bit of paintball or laser tag, something, anything - the number of artists and programmers on combat systems that have never tried anything related boggles the mind...)

... and apparently this is how artists get it too, so yay artists, do this too I guess.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jun 17, 2011

# ¿ Jun 17, 2011 20:46

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

RoboCicero posted:

Shalinor, is your new position what you mean by game mod experience?

I feel that the leadership experience I have gained in giving people rude titles will apply well to your Producer position, and look forward to talking with you. Please see enclosed resume written in silly string and crayon.

mp5 posted:

Fairly selfish request incoming

Shalinor now that you're a mod and this thread has been around for a while we should make gang tags for the industry people/thread regulars who've been offering advice and criticism. It'd be cool to identify the games biz people in other threads.

The name should be "Idea Guys" or something.

If this were to occur, an artist would first need to do a gang tag. Unless you like the aforementioned crayon and silly string approach.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2011 15:50

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Note that if we do any kind of gang tag, it will be purely opt-in. No outing of folks that don't want to be outed. It may also be tied to SA GameDev. Hmmm. We shall see.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2011 19:29

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Diplomaticus posted:

Meh on the SA GameDev tie-in. Seems to me like they should be two different things for two slightly different groups.

Meh on your meh.

It is unlikely to happen anyways, as gang tags are looked upon less favorably these days.

We shall see what fanciness can be done, though.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2011 23:49

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Aliginge posted:

Sucks how you personally got leapt on by goon after goon after goon for the company failures.

You publicly align yourself with your company's product at your own peril. It's usually a good idea to keep some distance between yourself as a developer and the fans of your game, and for pete's sake, stay out of threads/forums for it unless you've got really good reason to be there. Jeff Vogel has a really great article on that.

There is a fine line between "sharing news and opinions with your fans" and "defending your game / trying to change opinions," and you will almost certainly cross it, resulting in something unfortunate

# ¿ Jun 20, 2011 01:17

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

I don't have any of my truly old stuff, but as the programmer, this was the centerpiece of my portfolio when breaking into the industry. Predictably, it was a massive RPG with a massive design document and... we got as far as the basic world and combat :v:

(and then I got a job and abandoned my partner - sorry dude, but, :10bux:

)

Feast your eyes on "Elium" (built over about 2 years by myself and an artist in Mexico):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROOfXEoN6LI

... but I'm still proud of it technologically. Do you see where I roll under the AI's sword swings, or where I get hit in an arm and the arm moves? That's because all the damage modelling was physically accurate and animation synced. You're a living ragdoll that syncs to the animation position, with each limb reporting damage accordingly.

The skill system I made was capable of being fully scripted and was very flexible, the terrain system had an insane view distance, etc. It was cool for the time dammit

Also proud of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHvJqPxXUXM

That was our dynamic weather and cloud system. The clouds were based on animated perlin noise. Hotness. This was also around about where I started listening to Philip Glass. The video syncs so well because I sat there with the track playing and synced what I was doing to the music.

:love:

Philip Glass :love:

EDIT: Trivia - we actually submitted this to a 4 Elements competition back then, with the theme "Ninjas, Pirates and Zombies." We made specific ninja meshes, built a simple level, and cobbled together a basic demo. We made it to the second round by virtue of being very pretty, but didn't go beyond that given that there wasn't even an end state / nothing about it was a polished game, it was just a slice of a game. The eventual contest winner was Ninja <3 Pirate (looks like they ran with it after winning) which they'd made in loving GameMaker with a team of 6 artist. We were bitter over that for months, and was when I started to understand why building your tech up from nothing wasn't always a good idea.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Jun 20, 2011

# ¿ Jun 20, 2011 23:28

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

devilmouse posted:

FROINLAVEN!

... drat, I wish I could find my old RPG from those days. Built out a tile-based RPG in the style of FFIV, and it was surprisingly cool.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2011 15:33

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Yaaay, they finally dropped the press release (LEGO Universe is going free-to-play): http://universe.lego.com/en-us/community/newsnetwork/story.aspx?id=329745

EDIT: VV Yeah. Should be pretty sweet. It'll get more kids (and adults) into the game, and be plenty of fun just as-is for many of them... but quite a few are, most likely, going to want to see what those other zones have to offer.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 01:15 on Jun 22, 2011

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 00:53

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

As I'm pretty sure LEGO has a special hell for those that say much of anything without PR sign-off (and I bet that hell involves being barefoot in a room full of LEGOs... *shudder*), I am just going to quietly hum and point upwards at those many fine possible explanations. That's all the reasons that other MMOs have gone F2P, and now so are we.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 02:39

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Backov posted:

Personally I say gently caress Blender. No studios use Blender. Learn Maya or Max, it'll look a lot better on a resume.

Second. gently caress Blender. It isn't a tool that studios use, and it's an awkward piece of crap that will make learning harder.

Going to school isn't a bad idea, just don't go to school for games specifically. If you want to be an artist, go find a degree program for "just artists." Fine art, whatever, something relatively respectable. THAT has value. Just not games-specific degrees.

... and yes, probably plan on leaving New Zealand. We're a hub-based industry, and you will probably (but not necessarily) have to move to break in. Sorry

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jun 22, 2011

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 16:30

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

mutata posted:

What about Animation/Russian Language double-majors?

You can be the equivalent of that guy at EA who made nothing but noses for 7 years. Enjoy your future career as "the guy who made nothing but Russian lip sync phenomes and moustaches for 7 years."

EDIT: Having a degree in Russian qualifies you for moustache work, doesn't it?

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 17:52

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

EDIT: ^^ For an example of a magnetically driven "piston", look at Gauss guns. They typically only have the one stroke, but in theory you could reverse the field. What you'd run into is massive inefficiency as the field collapsed and reformed, and at that point what you have isn't a piston so much as a converter or a transmitter.

Rail guns are another one to look at, where you'd essentially pulse a projectile back and forth along a reaaallly long barrel.

... neither would be efficient in the least, afaik.

aas Bandit posted:

(Or you can just blame producers and lovely planning. )

Self-effacing is often a good tactic... but directing dissatisfaction at your management, even without specifically pointing at a given manager, can and will create a pretty negative culture fast. It generates the "management is disconnected from what we're doing" meme very quickly.

I realize it was a joke, just - something to keep in mind.

If you do pull that card, assume the blame yourself with a commitment to doing better. "Yes, I hosed up. Not 'the management,' me. I made a mistake, and I will make sure it doesn't happen again." Don't pass the buck, give a specific target for the vitriol, and defuse the vitriol with confidence and passion. (and then back it up by actually doing what you say)

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jun 22, 2011

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 18:25

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Sam. posted:

Does whether it's a Bachelors or Masters matter much, and what kind of portfolio should a programmer have?

Nope. Experience is king. A masters will get you a bit more notice, but not more notice than having spent an equivalent 2 years in the industry or working on your portfolio. Do at least have the CS BS, though.

A programmer's portfolio should be full of small demos focusing on specific things they've built (a cool shader, a sky system, a ray tracer, a flocking AI demo, a physics system, whatever) and then a few large demos of finished, polished games they have built alone or on a team.

Generally, a programmer's portfolio should not involve Stencyl / GameMaker / etc, and should focus on C++. If you use pre-existing engines, I wouldn't go much higher level than OGRE.

Something like a Unity project or two on the side as some of your specific-thing demos would be fine, but don't put a Unity project as your primary project.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2011 21:34

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Sigma-X posted:

Alterian is right, for art, a website is fine. Video is really, really overrated and still pushed by schools that started their curriculum when VHS demo reels were the loving rage.

I imagine video's still important for animation, though, no?

Video is also critical for programmer portfolios. Do NOT assume that people are willing to download your shady exe and run it - even if they're willing to take the risk, they may simply not have the time. A FRAPS video of your game running and doing its thing embedded from youtube fixes this problem nicely.

... this is also why, on designer portfolios, Flash or Unity's a half-decent idea - instantly playable, no fuss, no muss.

Mind, I don't means reels, those are kind of stupid. But a bunch of individual videos peppered over your portfolio, all with youtube-side descriptions that inlcude your page's URL, etc, this is nice.

EDIT: VV The interview will be longer at studios that really care about culture. Part of why they keep you around that long, beyond getting value out of them flying you out, is to sound you out as a person. After a few hours, you loosen up, start chatting, and they can get a feel for whether or not you're a good fit as a personality.

In hiring, the kind of person they are matters more than their skill. An average-but-driven student artist can be brought up to speed quickly, and will make a much better long-term team member than a self-important jackass (that is also really good, but knows it / is unwilling to flex to the needs of the studio). Never even mind what it'll do to your culture if you hire a prick of a lead and let him poison the pond.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 23, 2011

# ¿ Jun 23, 2011 17:05

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

Any casual developers in here?

I'd be curious to hear opinions on how that sector of the market is doing these days. It still seems to be growing nicely, and now even blossoming onto iOS.

EDIT: There just isn't much press about it - core games don't really care, and casual gamers don't engage as much with the developers as core gamers do. Though that's slowly changing, as quality continues to go up.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 01:46 on Jun 27, 2011

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 01:38

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

devilmouse posted:

From talking to my friends at Big Fish and Hoyle's, they're still raking in the money. They, however, have very different work environments where everyone puts in their time and goes home. There's very little passion (other than the passion for money) or creativity, it's just churning stuff out and cashing in. Despite making gobs of revenue and profit, they're super risk-averse places to work where even a few million dollar bet is looked down upon and they want to mitigate them as soon as possible.

But yes, there's still gold in them thar hills.

This is true (the risk stuff and kind-of the passion stuff), but I'd still call the games more fun to work on than "the lovely GBA port that no one cared about of that one marginally good primary console game based on a franchise."

It seems like it'd be worth considering as fill work in a small studio, as opposed to leaning on work-for-hire. Flip-flop from core to casual to build up reserves if a core game under-preforms, etc. Pretty sure there are studios out there that do this, just no idea which ones.

EDIT: VV That was an unpleasant read

All of these hellish stories from the staff, and the CEO is asked to respond, and every time it's just "that's how I do things, that's just how it works - this is GAMES, and that's the price you pay to make GAMES!".

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jun 27, 2011

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 15:07

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 05:15

Shalinor: Jun 10, 2002; _{Can I buy you a rootbeer?}

devilmouse posted:

I know you'll hate this suggestion, but if you've already "stooped" to considering casual games to cover burn and shore up against risk of your core titles, you should also think about tossing something up on Facebook. A good arcade game can happily stay up for months without an update and pull in a pretty penny with no further work required once it's fun, stable, and shipped.

True, but Facebook apps do require support and some back-end work, and need more of an ad spend to get them up to the point of traction - casual games are fire-and-forget and relatively well supported by Gamehouse/Big fish themselves in terms of ad spend (afaik).

... and I mean, it really isn't stooping. Every studio does some degree of poo poo work in lean times, whether it be contracting or acting as an outsourcing studio or work-for-hire or whatever else - and casual games (and, yes, even social) are at least more entertaining and original than those things. I don't know if this is an uncommon view, but I'd rather have creative and scheduling freedom but have to make a game in some way about shopping/serving beer/etc, than be locked into a death march with no IP flexibility but on a game with guns/explosions/core stuff.

Shalinor fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Jun 27, 2011

# ¿ Jun 27, 2011 15:31

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Game Jobs Megathread: Wear clean underwear to avoid the smellz.

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