Working in the Games Industry?

[Sean]

After some questions on my introduction entry on the GA forums, thought I'd start up a new thread about working in the games industry. I'll start by answering the questions raised by BlendedGenius and Alexinator.

Firstly, is it profitable? Well, that depends on what you actually do. Coders and Artists generally get similar wages these days, with *perhaps* Coders getting slightly more. Certainly a junior coder will probably earn more than junior artist, but the disciplines tend to level out the higher up the ranks you go.

Why would you choose Games coding over more, shall we say, business orientated coding? If you've always loved games then creating them can be a real eye opener. The average console title takes around a year and a half to develop, so you'll be working on the same project for quite some time. Having said that, there's usually so much to do that it's pretty fast paced on a day to day basis.

Games creators quite often end up working long hours to squeeze everything in, although that is slowly changing - I've been pretty lucky in that respect so far and I work normal office hours most of the time.

It's hard work, but a lot of fun too. Any further questions or anything more in depth anyone would like to know?

[Alexinator]

Yes, how is the community/workplace? I hear in most offices such as your own there are couches and napping rooms and other stuff such as that. I also hear it's a very upbeat mood and people tend to have fun whilest working on their current task.

I know computer programing/software development can be fun at times, but when I hear people talking about it, it sometimes makes me want to work from home -_-

-Alex

[Sean]

Couches maybe, but not napping rooms in my experience. You certainly hear stories of developers having a sleeping bag under their desks in case of late nights, although I've never come across this personally.

It certainly can be fun, but not when you're forced into a 7 days per week 12 hours a day (or worse) crunch mode for several months. Luckily I've never experienced that.

Having coded in the office and from home I can say there's good and bad in each. Going to the office means you can talk to people face to face to sort problems out, but it does involve the travel. Working at home means you can pretty much work your own hours, but you can feel a bit separated from proceedings.

[Shwaza]

I think it would be really fun to be a game coder (I'm not much of an artist type :P). How long have you been doing this?

[Sean]

Professionally (i.e. paid to do it!) for about 8 years, but I wrote my first game on the Commodore Vic 20, ooh :rolleyes: , nearly 25 years ago now. I would have been about 8 at the time I guess, and it wasn't very good! You had to guide a frog from the bottom of the screen to the top avoiding stationary trees and a single randomly moving fly. Gripping stuff!

[Shwaza]

Eek, when I was 8 I would've been lucky if I could turn on a computer :P

[Sean]

Well, in those days computers were so much simpler and had things like BASIC built in. The average modern PC on the other hand has a minefield of stuff that must be learnt before you can even get some text on the screen, and then you have to spend extra to buy a programming language usually!

10 PRINT "HELLO";
20 GOTO 10

Ah! Those were happy times... :)

[lexia]

Hi Sean. Nice to read your posts. The VIC20 was my first computer. Glad to see that at least one person I read has used it too. I loved the little tape drive and light-pen.

I read that you code. I assume it's all hardcore cCC++? Is there a smatter of ASM in there too?

[Sean]

Hi Lexia! Yeah, I have fond memories of my VIC20 with it's 3.5K of RAM as standard. Though I did have a nifty 16K switchable RAM pack too!

Coding wise I use C++ these days for pretty much everything. When I did PS2 coding I did still use a bit of assembler, but now I'm doing mobile phone stuff you can't really use assembler for various reasons.

[lexia]

What kind of games do you find yourself working on, Sean? Strategy/Puzzle/Shoot'Em Ups?

[Sean]

Current game is a weird hybrid racer/shooter. I've also done puzzle, sports (bowling, golf and wrestling!) and arcade adventures is the past.