I'm talking about /prog/ related jobs obviously. I mean, it's one of the most demanding in terms of work and one of the least secure in terms of profit whether you publish the games yourself or through a known publisher.
They work you like a slave
You wikl never finish the game completely because of deadlines and publisher demands
You'll never enjoy your own creations because you'll realize they missed their potential
but you'll be rich, r-right guys?
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Anonymous2013-01-16 11:22
learn some graphic design and sell assets if u want to have a dynamic work schedule as freelancer working in a company can be a pain but in some country´s the avg for a developer is 80k so in 2-3 years u have enough reputation and money to make your own project and if u have not enough motivation to work 10/7 for your own project you should go back making webpages for 14 years old and there CoD clans
But here's right. There is an abundance of web developers and web designers but graphic guys, whether they do simple logos or 3D animations seem to be preciously few and far between. At least in my experience.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 14:31
It depends on your motivation to work.
If your primary motivation is money, go and maintain disgusting code for the financial sector written in COBOL.
Working in game development (particularly as an indie) is more of a lifestyle choice, and the job is a trial by ordeal. It's true that after completion of the game you don't feel satisfaction at first, but in the weeks and months afterwards you realize the process was an experience of purging a creative accomplishment out of your body, no matter the emotional or physical cost.
In short; working in game development is an epiphany I would like everyone to experience. Because none of us really gives a shit whether Jim in accounting gets his latest TPS report, whereas when a game is the outcome you are synthesizing enjoyment for thousands of people through the electronic pulse of your fingertips.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 14:43
I am an amateur game developer and I would absolutely hate doing it as a job, for several reasons. First and foremost, all games being released by big mainstream publishers are mass-produced garbage. Many of these publishers are also notorious for treating their employees badly and making them work ridiculous hours to meet unrealistic deadlines. As a job, programming games is horrible. As a hobby, though, it is a lot of fun (if you are into that sort of thing) and if you write something good you might be able to turn a profit from it.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 15:16
Playing your uninspiring games would be far worsen job, fucktard.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 15:20
>>9
Wrong. To creating competitive games, one should have artist talents. I.e. if you are some autist nerd, who haven't spent his school years doing sketches and composing music, then game design isn't for you.
And no, you cant write games in Lisp.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 15:27
>>Wrong. To creating competitive games, one should have artist talents. I.e. if you are some autist nerd, who haven't spent his school years doing sketches and composing music, then game design isn't for you.
All good game designers are musicians and sketch artists. Fact.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 15:28
>>12-13
fuck you artistic faggots, scientists shall prevail
>>12
Rubbish. Think about all the work that goes into designing file formats, network protocols, rendering techniques, game physics, etc. Unless you're yanking all that from another game and simply replacing the assets, how do you expect to get anywhere with your project?
If you don't have the assets developed by artists, you don't have a game. If you don't have a way to tie those assets together, you don't have a game.
Unfortunately, a lot of indie game developers share this imbecile's viewpoint that good games are made by artists rather than programmers. You can see their creations all over Kickstarter; ambitious projects destined to fail, with zero donations and horrendous concept art featuring anime dragons and furries shooting laser beams out of their assholes.
On that note, are there any talented programmers here who want to join my devteam? I am the lead designer of an indie first-person open-world non-linear MMORPG project that I haven't even come up with a title for yet. I made a few blender models and drew some concept sketches, now all I need is a programmer to handle all the technical stuff aka WRITE THE ENTIRE GAME FOR ME.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 16:13
>>18
We don't need artists. We can always steal assets from the kikes at deviantart.
>>18
I'd join, but I'm more of an idea guy, you know? I'm good at managing people and I'm good at attracting venture capital. I've helped create famous games like `Zippocat World', `Revenge of Staphylococcus Aureus: The Methicillin Resistance', and the unforgettable `Maiden Rape Assault – Violent Semen Inferno'.
If you ever need someone to manage you, PM me on /games/.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 16:49
>>19
Deviantart dragon assets licensed under the Ahmed General License
>>23
No, I am not. It is considered standard practice in the managerial field to lie on your resume. I am simply following established industry procedure.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 18:51
Remember that there are three very different worlds of game development: the massive, soulless corporate game development world which focus most of all on making money, medium to low sized game development companies and the indie/startup world.
In a large corporation you're a cog in a machine with little creative input, but depending on the place you can be a happy cog and specialize your work in some tiny little niche area like writing test suites for graphics engine code or scripts that generate pretty rock geometry or AI logic programmer. The problems you solve are tedious, but not truly hard (requiring more time than thought). You take in requirements from your higher-ups, managers, designers and the design document, and convert it into code.
As the team size gets smaller you get more responsibility and more hats to wear, but you probably gain more creative input. You're also going to have to significantly contribute to the team in some way.
Don't even think about money if you're going into indie. There is absolutely no money in it unless you actually care about the product you're making, and even then it's usually up to luck whether or not you sell more than 1000 copies.
If you just want to get a job, this industry probably isn't for you. It's hard to stay motivated making games when you don't want to make games. There is plenty of engineering work though if you want to work on middleware or engines.
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Anonymous2013-01-16 20:05
Don't even think about money if you're going into indie. There is absolutely no money in it
Failed game designer logic
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Anonymous2013-01-17 0:36
>>18
No, I'm not interested, but an artificial intelligence I created would happily write your entire game within 30 minutes at a rate of $160/hour.
Actually scratch that. I just told it about the game and after pondering for 2 minutes, it quickly found an exploit in a driver and committed suicide by destroying my computer.
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Anonymous2013-01-17 5:22
>>1
If there's one thing that I got from reading the Post Mortem articles in GDM, it's that when it works (even when not according to plan) the feeling is awesome. Conversely, when it doesn't work, it's like having a kid with a terminal illness. You pour your life into it for 3 years only to have it die before it even had a chance.
Game dev. in a huge clusterfuck company is not that different than working on COBOL code for a bank or whatever. You have no creative input, you don't really do anything besides being a code monkey translating the ideas of some into a formal language.
Being an indie dev is... like making a movie. You need passion and creativity beyond your coding skills.
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Anonymous2013-01-17 8:41
>>32
PROTIP:programming isn't system design. Programming is churning out code that follows the spec written by the system designer.