261–270 of 392 posts
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What state do you live in?! I make 20k less than that as a junior dev.
What state do you live in? Mississippi or Puerto Rico? 20k is far too low, you can make more than that waiting tables. Jesus 9.615/hr. I made about double that as a waiter in Oklahoma in the mid 1990s. Update your resume sir/ma'am!
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I think part of the problem is that they vastly underestimated the logistics of getting these physical items produced, and I think the GP's point is that you're doing exactly the same thing. You don't just go to a local printer and say "make me a booklet" and write a check and you're done.
Indulge me? I've done it plenty of times :-/
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Lol. I work as a programmer in one of the largest studios in the UK and make $30k/year. Games industry is brutal with wages.
That'll be why every non-gaming software company has a bunch of ex-game developers who now make indie games in their own time...
This sounds ideal for me, but I like low-level C/C++/assembly programming and wouldn't want to give that up for the web.
I wanted to believe that a team of 6 to 10 people could make a game that looked and felt AAA. Boy was I wrong! When we made Crash Bandicoot (with a team of 7), it was already virtually impossible to make a AAA game with 6-10 people, and that was 20 years ago. I tell inexperienced entrepreneurs to take their honest best estimate and multiply by 10. Or, as Mark Cerny (our producer on Crash) used to tell us, "add one an…
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$30k USD, converted from GBP for the convenience of US readers ;-)
That is a very low figure (more than 3x lower than early-career programmers where I work) for what is probably very hard work. I hope you've considered all options.
For example I work in France and I keep approx $36k after all taxes (but still not taking VAT into account, which is 20% on most products). This salary costs around $78k for the company I work for. Approx breakdown: 25k in employer taxes, 12k in employee taxes (the distinction is rather arbitrary, but sometimes the government changes the rate of one or the other...) and then 5k in household income taxes (if you have some capital gains it also goes to income, but actual work is taxed over and over and over... :p )
Also I work full time: 218 days a year (with no fixed number of hours per week, but it is very reasonable). That's more than 6 weeks of paid vacation + a dozen of holiday here and there. And when I was sick for 3 weeks last year, it was not deduced from my vacations (but the sickness indemnity during those 3 weeks were less than my usual rate, maybe 60% but I'm not sure)
I also sometimes work on the side as an independent and on the monetary side the end result is roughly the same: if a client pays me X, at the end I keep approx X/2 and the other X/2 goes to various taxes (but it is better to be salaried, because those X/2 in tax provides you virtually no security as an independent, whereas they do when salaried)
Now to compare anything you'll also have to at least convert in PPP, and also consider what is provided to you (and even to others!) for "free" with your taxes. This is arguably not reducible to a single figure; I would rather make a "little" less if that lets other people have better health care and if that means that nobody will ever ask me a fucking ridiculous amount of money if I need a really expensive medical treatment (not that the French health care system is the best, but I guess it is not that bad compared to some other countries...). Also a lot of social and related services are provided for completely free to the users. And even in areas where housing is expensive you would find it insanely cheap compared to NYC or some places in the silicon valley.
And to finish remember that the value of the Euro has decreased a lot the last few months compared to the USD. That make all the amounts even more difficult to compare: one year ago I would have told you that I keep maybe $47k after all taxes (from an amount in € that was actually a little lower than what i have now...)
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Stupid, deceptively-simple question: Why can't you do something like "Game on Rails", where you set up a basic framework that has all the stuff a game normally needs, and then you only have to layer your assets and logic on top of it? Do game devs already use something like that and still have these delays?
There are lots of frameworks for game development, but the problem is exactly in what you've described: rails. You can only get so far within the constraints of those frameworks before you need something it just can't do, and have to develop yourself. Depending on the framework, this may not even be possible (which is what leads to creation of new frameworks). With that said, a lot of great (albeit typically somewhat…
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The artists have no right to complain. They were the ones asking for money in the first place. They promised the public they would deliver on the "toy." They underestimated what it would take to make the game. The backers are not free of responsibility, but the artists also have to accept blame.
Keep in mind the game was delivered, and is available for purchase on Steam.
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Issues with estimating, particularly something like this, mostly comes down to meta-ignorance: you don't know what you don't know. Given a particular problem of a similar sort to something he's worked on, an experienced engineer will be able to list 10 different issues that might crop up. An inexperienced engineer won't know of those potential problems and will just see the most optimistic path possible. When you're…
I think that the longer I've worked as a developer, the more inclined I am to be a pessimist. Sometimes projects look so freaking easy but then you realize you've just spent 3 weeks working on one feature out of a dozen and you're about to hit your first deadline. I definitely do the "manager doubling" when it comes to estimates. If I think it'll take a month, I estimate 2 months to my boss. If I have to report sever…
Hah, I like this. Every level up that sees it is also a potential for more scope creep, as each person will have their own vision of what's being produced.
One of my favorite estimating guidelines from a mentor was that development tasks are either 2, 4, or 8 hours. If it's more than 8 hours it can be broken up into smaller tasks.
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That'll be why every non-gaming software company has a bunch of ex-game developers who now make indie games in their own time...
Are there any other fields where employers specifically seek out game engine programmers? This sounds ideal for me, but I like low-level C/C++/assembly programming and wouldn't want to give that up for the web.
Compilers, JIT compilers
Maintenance of old software