So incredibly not true. I’ve seen both sides of the coin – I find the “get out of bed in the morning” motivation factor to be about a billion times higher in game development than in an average software development job.
Most of the other advice in this thread, however, has been good. Definitely learn to program – right now the game industry needs more people who can actually implement a design, and less “idea men.”
Even if you don’t want to transition to design from art or code, they are good skills to have. If you have the talent/skill for it, most of the time a little art will help you express your ideas faster. A background in programming will let you make informed design decisions about what is or isn’t likely to be possible. This is less of an issue today, since most of your limitations will likely depend on the engine and how much time the team has to fiddle with it. Still, it will give you an idea of what will be easy/hard to implement or iterate.
But more importantly, work on something. Show your talent, skill, and tenaciousness. If nothing else, you’ll find out just how much you want to go into games. I’ve had a few ideas for games over the past year or so, but only recently started messing around. This has allowed me to realistically asses my abilities/potential. Unfortunately it’s not pretty, but at least now I know to quit while I’m not behind. Hehe.
Lastly, I wouldn’t give up on a degree of some kind, especially if you happen to be lucky enough to not end up in debt afterward.
If you don’t have a degree and are talking about the US, I am going to assume that you have citizenship already?
Yes, I’m a citizen.
work on something.
I’m working right now on a casual game, one for kids. I don’t think it’s that great, but it is a class project, and I ended up basically being designer and programmer both. The player chooses the power level of a mouse’s throw of various objects; choose the correct level and it goes in the coffee mug serving as a basket, choose one too high and it goes over, and choose one too low and it bounces on the table and rolls off. Cute little game, and it is something.
As far as leaving the program, the basic problem is that it’s not a design program per se; I’m learning more about design from my programming instructor than I am from anyone else. And yet I’m only taking one class in programming (and honestly I’d rather learn C++ than Java). Most of my classes are just … useless fluff.
And the second year would be even worse, because I wouldn’t be having the one decent design class.
Lastly, I wouldn’t give up on a degree of some kind
I haven’t given up on a degree, but I would like to go and work for at least a year before going back to school. For one thing, I would like to ascertain whether I really want to be in the games industry, and I figure the best way to figure that out would be … to work in it. True/False?
I mean, the other industry I’m interested in is Tech Theatre, which is about as different from Game Development as it gets. So I’d like to know before I spend four years in college, or two years or whatever, whether I’ll be using that knowledge.
Thank you guys for the advice so far! :D And I’ll read Sloper’s site when I have time; for now, it’s time for my programming class.
[Edit] Oh yeah, forgot. I do have a little background in computer programming, and I coded the mouse game from scratch myself. I haven’t gotten feedback on the final version from my instructor, but he says that I have a decent grasp of OOP, and I understand how to use APIs to figure out how to implement new things. What I do not know, however, is all of the little tricks and methods experienced programmers know (I did a lot of “reinventing the wheel”, as he put it), or how to comment, since - get this - when I asked if our instructor could teach us how to comment, they said no, because when you’re the only programmer on your own game, you don’t need to comment your code!
I’ve also been wondering about a job in games, although maybe from the other direction.
I have a doctorate in mathematics and several years of academic postdoctoral research behind me (in logic and computer science). But I’m running out of places that will hire me for research and I’m not feeling so enthusiastic about teaching. I know very little about practical programming, but I’m guessing it would be a sensible alternative career for me. I am used to doing creative work where I get to use my imagination to solve interesting, abstract problems, and I like games. So, are games the right thing to try for, or should I be looking somewhere else in the software industry?
Anyway, people are always saying that a mathematical background is what a game programmer needs, so I’m hoping that I will be in demand if I play my cards right. I’ve got my current job for a year and a half more and am planning to learn programming in my spare time and see how far I can get with a game project. Also I’m a British citizen (although used to living abroad), which is maybe more of a problem than I thought.
Don’t be so quick to discount doing small games yourself. There’s a bunch of people happily doing this kind of stuff, and paying the bills with it (although it is hard). Working for a big game developer often sucks, but generally, working for someone else sucks in general.
Either way, make sure to learn programming. I’d hire a designer with some code skills way above a non-technical designer. (Although I never ‘hire’ anyone).
The thing is, everyone in the industry thinks they can design games (including me!), so getting a job doing that puts you up against lots of competition. I’ve found the only way to be even vaguely listened to, or given any credit as a designer, is to run your own company.
Anyway, people are always saying that a mathematical background is what a game programmer needs, so I’m hoping that I will be in demand if I play my cards right.
IMO, and IME, yes math, logic and problem-solving skills are the most important skills for a game programmer. If you have that then you should be able to pick up the actual programming bit pretty easily. However you almost certainly will have to do at least a minimum of that to be ready to go for a job. Also, if you have been holding down research jobs for a while, you may find that an entry-level game programming job doesn’t pay that well comparatively. I know that I could be making a lot more had I stuck to research with my comp sci degree.
Unfortunately many people talk about QA being a hellish pit of despair because of stories from a few companies (albeit large ones) and frankly have no idea what they are talking about in the greater sense.
QA was generally a horrible, thankless job at the two gaming companies where I have worked. Yes, it works for some people, but someone who is really after a programming/art/design job is going to burn out on QA very quickly (being a detail-oriented person who doesn’t mind monotony – i.e. a good tester – has rather low correlation with being a good artist or programmer). Not to mention that the pay is generally very crappy. At my two jobs I’ve seen people move from QA to some sort of production or QA lead position but never to art, programming or design.
…
General advice from my own career and a lot of chatting with other game developers:
You have to be really, really good at some aspect of game development to get a job. And it helps a lot to be lucky. If you you aren’t the former then really you should be looking for some other sort of job.
There is no surefire formula and each company is different. Making a mod or doing an independent project is a good way to get noticed but will having varying degrees of success at different companies. Having a university degree won’t matter some places but in a lot of places it will. It comes down to who is doing the hiring there. Having a degree from a decent school with decent grades is important to some people just because it shows an ability to stick with a program for that long.
Knowing someone at a company or getting an inside lead on a job can help significantly. Strangely enough, I got my first gaming job through the mother of the president of the company I ended up working (she was a family acquaintance). She happened to know her son needed a game programmer and, while that didn’t supercede the need for me to have talent, it got my resume to his desk and more consideration than it otherwise would have had. That was incredibly lucky for me, not the sort of thing you can count on. It got me in the industry, got me some published titles on my resume, and my second job was a lot easier to land. Even a perfect candidate may find it very difficult to land a job without any experience if the just don’t catch a break. Have a backup plan.
I believe the only path not mentioned so far is ‘working’ as a player volunteer.
I volunteered as part of a player Strike Team for Rich Goodman on Empire Earth. Many current EA Mythic employees started out as Team Leads on Dark Age of Camelot. We got those gigs by being known and active in the community.
While it didn’t give me any practical experience, it did add one more line to my ‘game company’ resume.
And, honestly, all that working as a player volunteer gets you is an edge in getting that QA or CS job.
Also, if you want to try to move from a QA/CS job to a developer position then make sure you pick a good company for that. Find out how close of a relationship the developers have to the QACS/ staff. If you get a job at a publisher, for example, you won’t even be in the same building as the developers (who are at their own studio being funded by the publisher) and there’s no real chance for you to move up to anything other than some higher QA position. I have heard of people making the switch from QA/CS to development but it was always in a situation where they were working closely with developers, forming relationships with them, and then had a chance to say, “hey, I can do that” when a job position opened up.
Maybe, if you’re doing a quick, throwaway project, you don’t actually need for it to have commented code. But I think it’s a really, really valuable habit to have, to always comment code, because any code that you’re ever going to use needs to be commented. And writing good comments is a skill in itself; if you’re working on a learning project then that’s one of the things you should be learning, IMHO.
The only excuse for not commenting code is in situations when it will never be reread. This means
A) You never generate bugs. Ha!
B) No one is ever going to build on or maintain your work. Possible, but unlikely in this scenario. “No one” includes yourself, because you’re not going to remember wtf you were writing in 6 months.
Might want to read some game industry job postings.
Go to college. Get a degree in something fun. Worry about finding a job in four years. If you start working now, you’ll find it really hard to go back to school, and you’ll discover that you’ve missed your only chance of ever getting a general education or spending time around girls. Don’t do it.
And if, like millions and millions of other guys your age, you “want to be a designer,” learn to program or use 3D Studio Max. There are lots of people who can imagine fun games. Ideas are a dime a dozen. If you don’t have the skills to realize those ideas, then you don’t have a lot to contribute.
Rick, not Rich. I was lead tester on that for a while.
I worked QA for two years and I enjoyed it, for the most part. Then again, Impressions had a permanent QA department (to the chagrin of Sierra) and employees of all levels were treated well and with respect.
Oh, yeah: get a college degree. Later in life that will provide flexibility should you decide to abandon the game development bandwagon, like I did.
I’ll second that. The degree may not teach you a lot, but it means that you can stick to something and finish it. It’s going to help a lot if you decide later that the games industry isn’t for you. For programming, most businnesses want a degree, and will pay more for it.
The other thing you need to do is to network, make lots of friends and keep in contact. That’s still the best way to land a job.
You think that’s because of something inherent in game software or something inherent in the companies you’ve worked for?
I have a hard time swallowing that game development is any more fun on a day to day basis than any other software. I know the stuff I work on, telco software and databases, is pretty dry and boring stuff but I enjoy my work because I work with good people and management who rewards and respects me for the value I bring to projects. I think the key to job satisfaction in a development job is having good management and good co-workers as opposed to anything inherently exciting about a project.
++ to this. I’m not a programmer, mearly a system/network admin that knows how to write a loop, but writing commented code/configs is very important. Coming back to something 6 months after finishing, and God knows how many projects later and wondering ‘wtf was I doing here?’ isn’t a good feeling.
Go to Sloperama and read everything there.
Done?
Ok. Odds are you will spend less than 5 years in the game industry.
Therefore, if you like programming, get a CS degree from as good a college or university as you can afford. If you think you’d only like programming when it involves making games, don’t bother. If you don’t enjoy the act of programming for its own sake, you are highly unlikely to succeed as a professional programmer (in the games industry, or any of the competitive portions of the job marketplace).
If you aren’t going to be coming from a programming perspective, you had best be an artist. Even there, a good grounding in the arts from a good school (with a degree) will help.
If you are neither a top flight programmer nor a top flight artist, breaking in is going to be a lot more difficult. You will be looking at either QA and hoping to jump out (which is doable in some cases), or getting a level design or scripter job and working from there. That means you need to be able to work with existing tool sets and build amazing things (because that is the credential you’d need to get in).
Ok, so, a few replies…
1 - I am most definately not a top artist, and while I do appreciate programming for its own sake and the beauty of optimization, I’m not that good at it. Heh.
2 - While I may get a degree at some point, and I do very much understand your advice about it, I am utterly sick and tired of school, and I feel I need to go out there and work and make some money before I go back to school. I don’t care about being a few years older than my classmates; I care about staying sane.
3 - Walt, I know what you’re saying; as well as being a hardcore player in Guild Wars, I also am in the Alpha Test. I intend to try and get a QA job there, and I’ll shamelessly try to lean on any of the staffers there that I know to get it! :D Though thankfully, it’s a less … thankless task than being a TL seemed. No feeling of crushing responsibility to represent your class!
4 - Re: Commenting code… I really, really want to learn how to do it properly. I absolutely do not agree with the decision by the course manager to have us not learn to comment code, and it’s an example of why I’m leaving the course at the end of the year. Heck, I just went through the game I am writing, which I started two weeks ago, and I have to rewrite significant sections because I have no clue what I was thinking!
Ok, back to the grinding… gotta get this game done!
Then you aren’t ready to get a job as a game programmer in any way. You can either teach yourself how to program, or you can go to school and learn.
The eternal caveat for being self-taught is that you are learning from someone who doesn’t know what they are doing (by definition).
I know from experience that my programming skills aren’t that great. My big final project in a programming class was to write and design a maze and then have the computer find the best way out. I needed to get a friend who knows programming to help. I am better using Flash and hopefully after this next course I’m taking , should be able to make stuff thru it.