Sorry but I have to throw the B.S. flag here. Anyone who writes code SHOULD know how to use the debugger in whatever IDE they are using. Whether it's Visual Studio, NetBeans, BlueJay,..whatever. As in it behooves them. Not to mention anyone who writes code knows that unless you are reusing code, then you stand a good chance of your code not working the first time you run it. Even if you are reusing modules things very seldom run perfectly "right out of the box". That's just the nature of the beast. If you don't know how to debug, or are not proficient with your IDE's debugger, then you become a liability. Just saying.
If you're writing entry level code you may not need to use a debugger.
If you are professional in the industry you rely on the debugger.
I took QBasic classes back in High School and I hated it, but I decided as an adult that maybe my views had changed. I was allowed to sit in on a college level programming and graphic design class and I still hated it. I decided that maybe gaming would have to remain just a hobby. I don't regret it though, as I currently enjoy my chosen path in the Mental Health field and working in Behavioral Health with troubled and high-needs youth.
I code machines and run them at work, I like making physical items.
I do know someone who works at Massive but while I love computer games I fear that an hobby would turn into work and that I eventually would lose my passion for gaming. Also, the games made in Sweden are genrally not really my type, besides possibly Paradox but that would include me moving to Stockholm and that ain't happening.
I did, but pursuing a career and actually getting one is a different story. Out of my entire class only a handful ever even got a job in the field. Then again 6 years later its probably for the best. Game developers, particularly the artists are expendable grunts with a high chance of being tossed after every project. One guy I knew worked on Overwatch, hes doing ok but another friend (who worked on Destiny) is now in the process of packing up and moving yet again to another state for more work (and he was top of our class). Another one I know worked on The Last of Us though im not sure where he's ended up since. Oh and one got into movies with his name on films like the last Harry Potter and Force Awakens. The rest of the people I graduated with have either disappeared, work other unrelated jobs, or moved on to better, more practical careers.
Anyway, point is, its like acting .... a shitty overpopulated career path thats unrewarding for like 95% of those who try to get in it. If I could do it again id have at least gotten another degree first before bothering and I suggest anyone else thinking about it to do the same.
Edit: Mind you this is more the art side of game development, though from what I hear the programmers got it worse, at least in video games. Luckily they can always fall back developing phone apps or whatever.
growing up I would always see stories about how so and so company has released x-amount of employee's or so and so studios has closed down after putting a game out
It made me not intrested in game development because of how unstable finding and losing a job in the gaming industry is.
This question could be relevant to surprisingly many people here.
Many people who play games have probably thought about that question.
For me it's a simple answer... Being 'old' already (47) and a son of a single-mother we were living from social security allowance. I wanted to become a (game)programmer in the time and go to university, but that same year when I finished HAVO (Dutch secondary education) the rules around scholarship (Dutch Wet Studiefinanciering law) changed. One of the things elementary to obtain scholarship was the income of my dad (who I didn't see since I was 5).
Hopping 30 years into the future to today, I have been busy programming ever since I left school, but for hobby purposes mostly. After 2003 I haven't done anything seriously with programming until 2013 when I wanted to pick it up again to learn to work with OOP and make games and I started to use the Unity engine. In the mean time I've released 1 small Android game in 2014 and am still busy programming for games (mainly mechanics). And while it's still all hobby related, the projects I'm working on right now are pretty big and might eventually lead to an actual full-blown PC game.
...very early stage dataflow chart of one of the projects I'm working on...
[EDIT] I happened to make a newer version (which is already outdated ) earlier this week...
I worked for a software company for 5 years.....It just wasnt a field I ever felt secure in....I watched many programmers come and go.....Most would do a small program, make sure it was bug free, then were let go, and that was in an industry much more safe than the gaming industry.
I live in a nice suburb of London and I don't want to move. If I wanted a career in game development, I'd most likely have to move to Guildford (where most of the games companies are in England).
I wouldn't want to live and work in Guildford. In my opinion, Guildford is a boring and characterless connerbation.
The best games company in the UK to work for is probably Frontier Developments, who are based in Cambridge. However, you've got to be very keen and sure of your abilities to make that company a career goal.
When I graduated college, game development wasn't an option. Also, there weren't personal computers and the like in abundance, and Apple was still a few years away. I gave a brief effort at an academic career (Anthropology/Archaeology), but presidential decisions interfered with my plans to work for the TVA to fund my masters and doctorate degrees with the ultimate goal of finding a position as a museum curator. (Thank you, Jimmy Carter). So, I jumped feet first into business IT (with a lot of grovelling and begging) and started a career that traveled through programming to systems software analyst (where I was overspecialized) and ending as a systems/business analyst.
When I did attempt the game developer thing as an independent, I simply couldn't afford to start up a full scale MMORPG development operation. Then my health went bad, and that dream floated away.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
This question could be relevant to surprisingly many people here.
Many people who play games have probably thought about that question.
Awesome question.
I started programming myself at a young age (BASIC on a TRS-80!). I dabbled in C, and more recently, in HTML. Nothing real groundbreaking. I have used "game creators" to make my own games. I'm quite good at art, animating sprites like games of yore.
Do to a combination of factors, I became convinced at an early age that I was terrible at Math. This isn't unusual. My theory about myself was backed up by others. It's a common misconception for people to think, "I'm just not a math person."
Then I read an article by some game programmer in which he said knowledge of math was the most important thing a programmer could have.
Being a naive teenager, I concluded that there was no possible way I could ever be a game programmer.
I went through college as a History major (because... very little math required, right?), became an educator (History/Literature), and now spend my days telling students to never, EVER listen to anybody who says they can't do anything, including themselves. If they want it bad enough, they can make it happen. "Where there's a will, there's a way" so to speak.
Still, I meet with parents who say, "Our family just isn't good at math," or, "I wasn't good at math, so I know my kid isn't going to be good at it."
I'm quite happy. There's no bitterness. I do believe that each of us could become programmers, given time and effort. I am still convinced that I may one day learn more about programming games, but so far, I have not given myself time to do it. Perhaps it'll be a retirement hobby.
You wrote "[I] now spend my days telling students to never, EVER listen to anybody who says they can't do anything, including themselves."
I think you might be living in an ivory tower - in the eyes of many people, enthusiasm only accounts for about 1/6 of what it takes to succeed.
I think it's best to play safe and choose a career that plays to strengths you know you have (and you can easily demonstrate).
I realise that "you've got to have a dream to make a dream come true" but at the same time you have to be realistic.
despite living in the most innovative country in the world (yes NR.1), there isnt a good infrastructure build to teach you how to make games or be competitive with the world.
So i got a bachelor in energy and environment technology instead.
C++ was the very worst thing that ever happened to the game industry. The combination of the worst system for debugging, object orientation, and a language built for portability, and being close to the metal to code things like OSs on a fixed platform... It is just bad. It was better when you could code something in Pascal while using assembly in places where you needed to (Yes I am that old).
The other thing that happened was the expectation of high end graphical assets. As the graphics became more complicated, games went from having more programmers than graphics artists (in fact on some games where there was one or two coders, you would have only part time access to a GA, and sound stuff only went in at the end of a project) to having say 10 times as many artists as coders.
When I did attempt the game developer thing as an independent, I simply couldn't afford to start up a full scale MMORPG development operation. Then my health went bad, and that dream floated away.
Didn't want to mention that in my reason of why not, but I'm in the same boat with a worsening health (physical & mental) and having suicidal thoughts. And yet I have started on my own (MMO)RPG only a couple of months ago with the coding of the d20 Modern RPG rules. Though I realize I'll most likely never be able to finish and release my game it'll keep me busy and those bad thoughts as bay.
Hope your health is good enough to make a start (like I did) and see where things will end up. IMO for an indie/hobby game developer is development and having fun while doing it more important than actually selling the game. Of course, making some money from it is always welcome
C++ was the very worst thing that ever happened to the game industry. The combination of the worst system for debugging, object orientation, and a language built for portability, and being close to the metal to code things like OSs on a fixed platform... It is just bad. It was better when you could code something in Pascal while using assembly in places where you needed to (Yes I am that old).
Could not agree more! Until 2003 I've been working with Borland Pascal (still have the books & 3.5" discs - no drive though ) and in 2013 I started with Unity/C# (first time ever I touched OOP - in between I used PHP/MySQL a bit). C# felt pretty easy to use after Pascal (and PHP) and in the 3 years I'm using it I think I'm on the same knowledge level as I was with Pascal back in the days. Recently a (Steam) friend who is 3D designer of mine said he wanted to make a game and made a start with Unity and then hopped to Unreal (for the better graphics). For the 1st time in my life I've bought a book to get to know a language (C++ obviously) and started reading it. And while I do think I can master C++ like I mastered C#, I gotta say that the whole syntaxing of C++ is just plain horrendous. C++ clearly shows that it's an evolved relic from the early 90s that has been kept compatible with older (ANSI) versions of itself...
I'm honestly thinking about starting now. I recently quit the programming industry, because I feel it's taken a direction that is completely unprofessional. I'm going to be working on my own startup. First I have a few languages I want to master, then some disciplines I need to master. After that I'll be researching what it takes to build a game. I figure I'll start small first (like armor games), then work my way up in projects.
<kind of derail topic here, but explains why I am afraid to invest any time into it>
Aside from that I have a major problem going on with the government who is stealing (garnishing) 50% of any paycheck I get (before taxes). They do this based on a payment that was never actually payed to me and I never signed up for. No matter how many times I clear up their mistake for them (showing them bank statements, letters, work statements, and other proof) and get them to agree they made a mistake and will clear it up, nothing ever happens except the harassment year after year. Dealing with this has become a full time job in itself, and I will probably die before it's ever solved. So I'm skeptical about making a game that would make me lots of money. The government might just dive into my bank account and take everything (like they did before).
A good example (read second sentence):
Unfortunately since the government has denied me my judicial rights (ignoring my filing for a waiver or appeal), and there are no lawyers to defend me, it looks like I'm stuck here. The worst part is, no matter how much they steal from me, their magical debt number never goes down. So far they stole around $15,000 from me, and the amount I owe has increased from $8,274 to $52,854
I recall a distantly similar case. I'm not sure if I heard it from someone in real life or read about it somewhere online. Some person decided to become an entrepreneur. He had to close the enterprise because the government taxed him based on a predicted evaluation of his potential earnings which he didn't earn in practice. The taxes from predicted earnings were higher than what he was actually earning from the business. Without more capital and with complex and long bureaucractic paperwork it was impossible for him to continue running the business.
Hmm that sounds pretty bad too. What is happening to me personally is extortion and fraud committed by my government. They claimed to have paid me a bunch of money. Where is it? They can't provide paper trails, and all I can do is show them my bank records of all my deposits. Basically they are flat out stealing from me and nobody cares. I hope this starts happening to lots of other people too. Let me be clear this is not about taxes or the IRS. Strictly "owing a delinquent nontax debt to the united states". They can't even provide paper trails on how or why I was paid that money.
So basically they are trying to recover student loan money from you?
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
books sux! used to cut middle school for a whole day of gaming w/ friends.. over 2 decades later, books still sux & pretty sure being a game dev requires ppl to read more useless books for yrs. no thx.
Because as with most jobs, only a few rise to the top and get to be the decision makers, so I made a decision based on the likelihood that I would be someone's underling for most of my career. Writing code to achieve someone else's (budget and programme obsessed) vision, with very little long-term job security and a high-risk of failure, seemed like a lot of risk for very little reward.
SO instead I went into construction and became a project manager, a lot less risk and better rewards.
Cousin has been a software engineer in the industry for 15+ yrs and my nephew just got hired as animator last week. I think that is enough representation. I thought about it at one time, but joined the military instead and did 20 yrs in that. Not much different in some ways I guess.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
It's kind of strange my family has a long history of military service, my grandfather was OSS during WW2. I heard so many war stories as a kid would watch all the old black and white war movies with him over and over, there was one movie in particular that shaped my life. The fighting seabees with John Wayne. Was 9 years old when I saw it, and I knew right then I would be a Seabee when I grew up. However my parent's were hippies and raised me to be their sunshine flower child. I love my parent's and the life they gave me, the culture ( was at woodstock ) was only 3, but I was one of those little naked blond kids playing in the mud. Anyway, after two years of family debate over freedom and liberty, peace and war, service and sacrifice, I finally convinced my parent's that they raised me to believe freedom was a good thing worth fighting for. At 17 my father signed for me to join the Navy. Served for 22 years and retired at 39. Now I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, Joshua House, and other area charities putting all that the Navy taught me to work where it really makes a difference. For a young man or woman with no direction or purpose in your life, I can not say enough good things about what the military or even civil service can offer you. Education, discipline, a real skills set, a personal sense of achievement, and an unwavering sense of self worth. Not to mention the security of retiring at or before 40 with a full pension and benefits package for you and your family for the rest of your life.
Because if you want to live with stress for awesomeness...
You could just be a field tech(traveling) somewhere. Have higher starting pay, much much higher "max" pay, travel the country/world on someone else's dime, and get to see business/industry/work practices of a different company every day/week/month.
You could go Military. If you're versed enough in core math/high-school reading/general sciences to be a game dev hopeful, you'll score high enough on the ASVAB to get into the college equivalency rates like being a Navy-Nuke/Drone-Pilot/Cryptotech/whatever. But you'll probably hate life for 3 to 4 of those 6 years.
You could get an utterly normal job, but end up spending your freetime volunteering instead of monitor staring.
_________________
Also on a side note for the 20 year military and retirement. They took that away now, and new people enlisting are only given the option to have a matching 401K instead of the old 20 years and out.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Also on a side note for the 20 year military and retirement. They took that away now, and new people enlisting are only given the option to have a matching 401K instead of the old 20 years and out.
Not enough demand for game developers and it's very competitive. I'm in the IT field and it's more practical to not limit yourself to just games. There are many companies to choose from that need programmers, especially in the Java and .NET space. If you truly want to develop games, you're going to have to move to specific locations.
I found there's a lot more money to be made in the finance sector than games if you're a programmer.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. -- Herman Melville
Whilst i remember using the "spectrum" magazine to write their basic programs back in the early 80s, i would hazard a guess that 80% of time the code was wrong, and whilst sometimes i could figure it out, it wasn't something that came naturally to me. Fast forward 30 years, i work in the IT industry but I am one of hte least qualified IT guys i know, The fact is 8 years ago i went back to university to get a Bsc, and actually qualified as an Archaeologist, that basically means that i can dig holes, tell you about the stratigraphy , my holes are tidy, they might be very square, but damn im not qualified.
Comments
If you are professional in the industry you rely on the debugger.
I do know someone who works at Massive but while I love computer games I fear that an hobby would turn into work and that I eventually would lose my passion for gaming. Also, the games made in Sweden are genrally not really my type, besides possibly Paradox but that would include me moving to Stockholm and that ain't happening.
Anyway, point is, its like acting .... a shitty overpopulated career path thats unrewarding for like 95% of those who try to get in it. If I could do it again id have at least gotten another degree first before bothering and I suggest anyone else thinking about it to do the same.
Edit: Mind you this is more the art side of game development, though from what I hear the programmers got it worse, at least in video games. Luckily they can always fall back developing phone apps or whatever.
or so and so studios has closed down after putting a game out
It made me not intrested in game development because of how unstable finding and losing a job in the gaming industry is.
Hopping 30 years into the future to today, I have been busy programming ever since I left school, but for hobby purposes mostly. After 2003 I haven't done anything seriously with programming until 2013 when I wanted to pick it up again to learn to work with OOP and make games and I started to use the Unity engine. In the mean time I've released 1 small Android game in 2014 and am still busy programming for games (mainly mechanics). And while it's still all hobby related, the projects I'm working on right now are pretty big and might eventually lead to an actual full-blown PC game.
...very early stage dataflow chart of one of the projects I'm working on...
[EDIT] I happened to make a newer version (which is already outdated
I wouldn't want to live and work in Guildford. In my opinion, Guildford is a boring and characterless connerbation.
The best games company in the UK to work for is probably Frontier Developments, who are based in Cambridge. However, you've got to be very keen and sure of your abilities to make that company a career goal.
When I did attempt the game developer thing as an independent, I simply couldn't afford to start up a full scale MMORPG development operation. Then my health went bad, and that dream floated away.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
You wrote "[I] now spend my days telling students to never, EVER listen to anybody who says they can't do anything, including themselves."
I think you might be living in an ivory tower - in the eyes of many people, enthusiasm only accounts for about 1/6 of what it takes to succeed.
I think it's best to play safe and choose a career that plays to strengths you know you have (and you can easily demonstrate).
I realise that "you've got to have a dream to make a dream come true" but at the same time you have to be realistic.
So i got a bachelor in energy and environment technology instead.
The other thing that happened was the expectation of high end graphical assets. As the graphics became more complicated, games went from having more programmers than graphics artists (in fact on some games where there was one or two coders, you would have only part time access to a GA, and sound stuff only went in at the end of a project) to having say 10 times as many artists as coders.
Hope your health is good enough to make a start (like I did) and see where things will end up. IMO for an indie/hobby game developer is development and having fun while doing it more important than actually selling the game. Of course, making some money from it is always welcome
Could not agree more! Until 2003 I've been working with Borland Pascal (still have the books & 3.5" discs - no drive though
Recently a (Steam) friend who is 3D designer of mine said he wanted to make a game and made a start with Unity and then hopped to Unreal (for the better graphics). For the 1st time in my life I've bought a book to get to know a language (C++ obviously) and started reading it. And while I do think I can master C++ like I mastered C#, I gotta say that the whole syntaxing of C++ is just plain horrendous. C++ clearly shows that it's an evolved relic from the early 90s that has been kept compatible with older (ANSI) versions of itself...
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
SO instead I went into construction and became a project manager, a lot less risk and better rewards.
I'm not an IT Specialist, Game Developer, or Clairvoyant in real life, but like others on here, I play one on the internet.
You could just be a field tech(traveling) somewhere. Have higher starting pay, much much higher "max" pay, travel the country/world on someone else's dime, and get to see business/industry/work practices of a different company every day/week/month.
You could go Military. If you're versed enough in core math/high-school reading/general sciences to be a game dev hopeful, you'll score high enough on the ASVAB to get into the college equivalency rates like being a Navy-Nuke/Drone-Pilot/Cryptotech/whatever. But you'll probably hate life for 3 to 4 of those 6 years.
You could get an utterly normal job, but end up spending your freetime volunteering instead of monitor staring.
_________________
Also on a side note for the 20 year military and retirement. They took that away now, and new people enlisting are only given the option to have a matching 401K instead of the old 20 years and out.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
(wanted to specialize in ICT)
also i'm fine with alpha/betatesting ;-).
Sway all day, butterfly flaps all the way!
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
Fast forward 30 years, i work in the IT industry but I am one of hte least qualified IT guys i know, The fact is 8 years ago i went back to university to get a Bsc, and actually qualified as an Archaeologist, that basically means that i can dig holes, tell you about the stratigraphy , my holes are tidy, they might be very square, but damn im not qualified.
This post is all my opinion, but I welcome debate on anything i have put, however, personal slander / name calling belongs in game
where of course you're welcome to call me names im often found lounging about in EvE online.
Use this code for 21days trial in eve online https://secure.eveonline.com/trial/?invc=d385aff2-794a-44a4-96f1-3967ccf6d720&action=buddy
On the other hand, I don't see what anyone should become a game dev just because he/she enjoys games.
I enjoy movies too and I have zero desire to become a movie star, director, or script writer.