Working In Games

This is the big one. Are you the type of person that enjoys making games? Making games is fun because: - Working in a team. - The end product is a cool game. - Interesting challenges and new technology. Not so much fun: - Sometimes projects get cancelled and nothing to show for your work. - Making games can be hard and frustrating. Bugs and working with unfinished tools. - Making games can be monotonous and boring. - You spend loads of time alone. What outsiders often don't realize is that game developers spend 90% of their work time alone. Most of the day you will be sat behind your screen with your headphones on working by yourself. I personally enjoy spending a couple of days solving a particular problem. If you are the bubbly sort of person who prefers small well defined tasks you may not enjoy making games as much. Making games is hard work. There is a real contrast between the glamour of the final product and the hard, boring work that goes into making them. Especially with b

Most people in the games industry are passionate about their work. As a consequence there will be many good programmers, artists and level designers to compete with. How do you know whether you're good enough? The good news is that (especially on bigger teams) there are many entry jobs to get started in. You won't be expected to have all the answers on day one. If you have positive attitude and you're willing to learn, you are probably going to be ok. Bigger companies will also move people around if things don't work out in the initial role. People are regularly moved around between code, art, audio, level design and production.

Starting for yourself. It has never been easier to write a game for yourself or with a couple of friends. Unreal & Unity take care of the technical foundation and Steam is a great way to publish. This is a new thing. Up until 2010 it was almost impossible to produce a competitive game with less than a dozen people. So, should you take advantage of this and write your own game? Unfortunately many people are thinking the same thing and competition is stiff. This is a graph of the number of games released on Steam. Clearly there is a lot of competition. How much money can you expect to make? It's complicated but: 68% of titles released on Steam in 2019 have made less than $10k to date. The chances are that your first games on Steam are not going to make anywhere near enough to live off. Here are some interesting videos by CodeMonkey who is experienced and able to eek out a living on Steam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMfT_RqBgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg3Xrv7jUtk Keep

There is a wide variety in team size. Teams can be as small as a single developer or just a few for an Indie title all the way up to over a thousand for the biggest games. Here are some of the pros and cons: Large team: Pros: The game is almost certainly going to be released. Generally good job security, pay and benefits. Many people to learn from. Cons: Work is split up so easy to get pigeonholed. Hard to stand out. Hard to make quick changes to the game. Feels bureaucratic. Small team: Pros: Everybody makes a difference to the game. Talented & hardworking people move up fast. Easier to experiment & make changes to the game. Cons: Lower pay. Worse job security. Game more likely to be cancelled. Personally I prefer teams in the 10-50 range. I would rather be a big part of something small than a small part of something big.

Crunch is what tends to happen at the end of a project when the team is asked to work longer hours to complete the game. Crunch used to be very common and it still happens today. You really shouldn't be asked to crunch for more than say 25% of the time. The thing to remember is that after your current project there will be another one and then another. If you are in constant crunch you will  eventually burn out. If your project is exciting, you will find crunch doesn't bother you that much and you may even enjoy it. Great! No problem then. I'm of the opinion that if you produce 8 hours of focussed work, you've done enough. For programmers, productivity drops anyway. Most people just can't work in a focussed manner for 12 hours/day. When I just started with dma-design, I worked until 3 in the morning a couple of times. The following day I found my code to be riddled with obvious bugs. It just wasn't working. I believe even during crunch there is no need to work d

This blog aims to give people considering getting into the games industry some pointers. What is it like making games? Is it right for me? What company to go for? How to prepare for the interview? Hi, My name is Obbe Vermeij and I make games. I made various shareware games on Amiga. I worked as technical director for dma-design/rockstarnorth from 1995 until 2009. I've made an Indie game on Steam, an educational app on iOS/Android and I currently work on a museum guide app maker.