To me it's the holy grail of jobs, but I have no coding exlerience aside from coding a few crappy games in Macromedia flash when I was a kid. There's a few things I want to ask if you don't mind. Do you enjoy or even have fun at your job? Do you get to talk to your co-workers alot or is it mostly being by yourself? Could you live comfortably off your income from that job alone? Did you need any specific degrees to get the job? What are some useful skills to have? And would you call it difficult, challenging, or busy? I'm really looking forward to your answers.:icon_bigg
Not sure how qualified I am to answer because I've never worked for a game company but I did get my associate's degree in game design, and in the course of that study we worked together as a class to produce a complete game. Did we have fun while doing it? Heck yeah. Of course some parts were an absolute grind, but they were broken up with occasional shenanigans, and when you see the results of your work in action, it's awesome. It was very much a team effort. When we each had our specific tasks outlined (3d modeler, animator, coder, level designer, etc.) of course we'd mostly leave each other alone, but sometimes one person needed input from another if their sectors had overlap, which eventually they all did. I made 3d models and textures, so ended up working with the level designer and animator for what my stuff should look like. Thankfully I had a lot of freedom in the general look of things, but if one person needed something in particular, they could consult with me. Can't really comment on the income because I got none. :/ From what I've seen though, it's like any career field. You could be a starving artist or a world-famous superstar like Peter Molyneux or Hideo Kojima. Most places don't really worry about what your actual qualifications are, to my chagrin. They want to see your portfolio of actual work (and actual professional experience. This part killed me). In applying for a design job, be sure to specialize your portfolio to the position. If you're applying to be an animator, show them animations, without drawing undue attention to other aspects. Unfortunately there's little room for a jack of all trades. :/ Useful skills: In addition to generally being a team player and highly self-motivated, you need to be skilled in the tools of the trade. That's graphics editing and/or 3d modeling software for art assets (and a sound understanding of design theory never hurts), or programming language(s) in a compiler. We studied C++ and Java. It's just a shame we couldn't pick one or the other, because we didn't have enough time to really get good at either. That's where the self-motivation comes in. You've got to be willing to study on your own to learn this stuff; nobody can master it in class alone and I learned that the hard way. The difficulty ranges from challenging to maddening. While the whole process from idea to complete game is very organized and systematic, it's the little things that will get you. Taking something from concept art to 3d model may prove difficult because of perspective differences making the final shape look weird in comparison, and it may end up having to be changed. There could be an animation rig with a tiny flaw in it that makes natural movement impossible, and it will take you hours to figure out what's wrong. Famously, you could misspell a word in a huge chunk of code and spend that much time again debugging. And of course, with the nature of it, no project is really a lot like any others. It's always different and you can't expect there to be too rigid a formula for what will work. Career viability notwithstanding, I don't regret going into it. Making games is freaking cool and I'm pretty proud of what I've made with that education. A few pics of stuff from my gallery on here: Spoiler I thought the halberd would be tough but believe it or not, this one was a piece of cake. This one was cranked out in a day or so and rendered with raytracing for those nice reflections. But the lighting is still terrible XD What can I say, we were still learning and in a hurry.
Well, I've never worked professionally on It at all, I just used to make a few silly fangames when I was younger. Most of them were never even completed since I did it for fun, I still have this R-Type one I made maybe 4-5 years ago still on my hard drive. While that was one of my better projects, R-Type games have a weapon called a "Force" that is rather simple, yet tedious to program. I did all the spritework myself, but I could never make sounds so my games were either completely silent or with the fangames I had to borrow SFX from the original game and credit it: I hated doing that because the sprites and coding were already made from scratch. I pretty much gave up on it over the years because I just didn't get enough enjoyment out of it, ended up wanting to become an artist instead.
Question is are u into *programming* or *designing* a video game ? two different things. If programming, u can always start with python, its by far the easiest way to create games and by itself python is maybe the easiest language to learn. Do some small games and see if u like it. When u want to get more advanced u can always learn to code in C++ and use OpenGL and use free graphic engines (i think Unreal engine is free, but u can search those up if ur really interested).
I never did anything professionally, but I can reprogram and modify Pikmin 2, an old gamecube game. And I did have to spend weeks learning how to do it all from scratch, so in a *sense* it was work.
I was part of a small project that became nothing but vapourware since everyone was just there for kicks, but I didn't get involved in anything technical. I was the person who writes dialogues and background and story. Got nowhere fast, but it was kind of fun.
I'm not working in the industry, but I have a degree in games design and production and develop games in my own time. I know/was taught by quite a few people in the industry too, so just for a broad picture, here are some things they've told me/I've learned It is an industry that relies on hugely passionate people. The pay is crap for the amount of work you do; and crunch time can be hellish depending on the kind of place you're at. It's not uncommon to end up working loads of extra unpaid hours around crunch time. It's hard work, very challenging and can be exhausting, but it's great fun and people usually still love it. It's not a solitary job at all, you need excellent communication and team working skills as you'll be talking to people a lot. They seem to pretty often have pretty fun, informal office cultures with nerf guns and movie days out, and they tend to use "Agile/Scrum" workflows. There are a lot of disciplines involved (I've heard it pretty accurately described as the "Avengers" of media). Think about what it is you'd like to work on, if you were making a game. A strong portfolio can trump any qualification - question is whether you can achieve a strong enough 'folio without the experience gained form the degree. Programming jobs are always going but you won't get a look in without a good degree in Games Programming, Software Engineering, etc. Artists tend to need relevant degrees too. 3D modelling positions don't require it so much, but concept artist jobs always require a degree in fine art (unless you have a mindblowing 'folio) Designer jobs are pretty rare at entry level. low level designers will do things like adding/balancing the stats on all of the weapons and armour. That awesome game idea you have? You'll have to forget about that until you're a Lead Designer, which takes about 10 years :| Jobs like SFX artists, composers, writers and marketing also tend to ask for relevant degrees. If you have no skills needed, QA (testing) is a common route in, and people often work their way up to being designers. you can see average salaries for developers here: Revealed: Average game developer salary falls to £32,500 | Latest news from the game development industry | Develop If you ever apply to be a programmer or designer, you need to show them playable demos. You will get rejected a lot, you have to be very tenacious! Last thing - and its an important one - Who you know really matters. If you know someone in a company who can put in a good word for you you're much more likely to be hired. They get so many applications that they won't even look at most of them. My lecturer from Ubisoft said he'd get a stack of CVs about 2ft high, he'd take out any with demo disks to look at, and usually never looked at the rest. So, you need to go to networking events and conferences as much as possible. They're expensive but they're good fun, just turn up and go and start chatting and you'll meet lots of really interesting people Take loads of business cards and give them to everyone you speak to; they'll tend to do the same - and add them on linkedin. Everyone uses Linkedin. Sorry if this post is disorganised, it's 2AM. I hope some of this is helpful in giving you an idea of the industry though!
Sorry for the double post - forgot to add: If you want to get into developing, downloading Unity is generally a great place to start. Its a really flexible/user friendly game dev kit. If you want to make shooters specifically, UDK is ideal for you (you can make anything you like in it, but as it's geared for shooters it's more of a barrier to beginners who want to use it for something else. They're both well documented/have plenty of tutorials for absolute beginners and have active communities for users to ask for help with any problems they have. And they're both completely free Unity - https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download UDK - https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4
My dad is a coder and as a bonding-thing he codes with me. I'd love to be a coder when I get older...
I've worked as a designer for over 10 years I do enjoy the job, and you do have fun - but only because the environment tends to be relaxed and you can chat to your colleagues about whatever, it's not inherently fun BECAUSE your working in videogames - I found the team you're working with has a lot to do with how much fun you have. I earn a decent wage in the UK, but it's not crazy like in the u.s, can make a fairly comfortable living as long as you can remain employed (which is becoming increasingly difficult) As a designer I was hired at a time where no qualifications where necessary, just knowledge / enthusiasm / and the ability to demonstrate you understood the workings of game design were all that was needed - I can't say for sure how much that has really changed - certainly for coders qualifications are necessary - if your an artist your portfolio will speak for itself but it's not uncommon for programmers and designers to have to complete tests before they're hired - regardless of qualifications or how well you do in interviews. Even with my experience I still find that I don't get hired for jobs, sometimes ones less senior than my previous one It's a challenging job, lots of problem solving - working with other people, mentally draining and long hours.
I was considering doing video game design at college but I'm useless at maths and coding (I do have IT qualifications, though) and so I would have no clue about half the stuff involved in making video games.
