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So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

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Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#21

Post by SoftwareMaven »

gfodor wrote: post #19
davidsiems wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off your high horse. You could say the exact same thing about books, TV, movies, paintings, etc. Games are just like any other form media. Yes, many of them are superficial, but a lot of them tell incredible stories, teach life lessons, and evoke powerful emotions. To top it all off they can also be incredible teaching tools. Just because you think something's a waste of time doesn't mean other people aren't deri…

This is the inevitable response that I get when I dare suggest that those of us with the gift of being able to program computers in such a interesting time choose wisely where we place our efforts. I'm not saying it's immoral, unrewarding, or not plain fun to play and build video games. I'm saying that in life you get to choose how you spend your time, and in my view building the next killing simulator when you have…

I think the problem is you appear to be judging others by the stick you are measuring yourself with. Everybody gets to decide what they feel is important, but HN'ers don't like others telling them what should be important to them.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#22

Post by lmkg »

kabdib wrote: post #5
acgourley wrote: post #2

It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world. Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly. Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software i…

Most games are trainwrecks inside. They are /just good enough to ship/ and often no better. They are fragile, fickle things that for the most part have a market lifetime much shorter than the time it took to develop the title. You get your money back -- if you do -- in the first few months of sales. Games are pragmatic and hard, cheap bastards that chew up teams and spit them out. It's fun. :-)

> They are /just good enough to ship/ and often no better.

From one point of view, this is viciously optimized. I'm reminded of a quote along the lines of "the ideal racing car would cross the finish line intact and immediately disintegrate." The point being, find the minimum weight necessary to accomplish your goal, and spend as close to that minimum as possible. In games, the "weight" you're minimizing is the effort and focus spent on production quality, in order to be able to spend more on game design and performance, and ship faster.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#23

Post by icandoitbetter »

gfodor wrote: post #19
davidsiems wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off your high horse. You could say the exact same thing about books, TV, movies, paintings, etc. Games are just like any other form media. Yes, many of them are superficial, but a lot of them tell incredible stories, teach life lessons, and evoke powerful emotions. To top it all off they can also be incredible teaching tools. Just because you think something's a waste of time doesn't mean other people aren't deri…

This is the inevitable response that I get when I dare suggest that those of us with the gift of being able to program computers in such a interesting time choose wisely where we place our efforts. I'm not saying it's immoral, unrewarding, or not plain fun to play and build video games. I'm saying that in life you get to choose how you spend your time, and in my view building the next killing simulator when you have…

Speaking of self-reflection: a quick look at your profile revealed that you're working at an e-commence company and previously worked at an advertising solutions company. Do you consider those things less superficial than video games? Honest question.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#24

Post by blackhole »

gfodor wrote: post #8

Video games are an interesting phenomenon. They manage to pack many of the most interesting problems of computer science into one of the most superficial, yet profitable, applications. They're kind of like the warping of space time, an anomaly of extremes that manages to relentlessly suck brilliant minds away due to its siren call. And yes, I love video games, and considered working in the field. But, stepping back y…

While a lot of people inevitably dislike these kinds of high-and-mighty accusations of superficiality, as an aspiring video game programmer whose sole goal in life is to have the maximum positive impact on humanity possible, I have given this much thought. I have a rather interesting combination of analytic and artistic talents that can only be fully taken advantage of in the context of a game and its engine. I have looked at other industries, but in all of them they only utilize a subset of my abilities. In my attempt to optimize my impact to the absolute maximum, I have come to the conclusion that making games is what I am best at doing, and I must use this to push forward society in any way possible, even if it is only to give people a spark of hope when the world seems to be eating itself alive.

Sometimes, games are the most useful thing one could ever work on.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#25

Post by psykotic »

kabdib wrote: post #6
amcintyre wrote: post #3

Thumbs up for telling people they need to know some math. Even if you're not planning to work in the specialized areas that are mentioned in the article, it wouldn't hurt to be more comfortable with math than most developers are, because you may need to step in and help somebody in one of those areas, and (for me, at least), learning stuff like that on short notice is really hard.

You don't really need to know 3D math unless you're working on graphics. It helps. But you don't /need/ it.

You don't need to know much mathematics, but a solid practical understanding of 3D geometry is a bread-and-butter skill in game programming, no matter your speciality.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#26

Post by withad »

gfodor wrote: post #19
davidsiems wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off your high horse. You could say the exact same thing about books, TV, movies, paintings, etc. Games are just like any other form media. Yes, many of them are superficial, but a lot of them tell incredible stories, teach life lessons, and evoke powerful emotions. To top it all off they can also be incredible teaching tools. Just because you think something's a waste of time doesn't mean other people aren't deri…

This is the inevitable response that I get when I dare suggest that those of us with the gift of being able to program computers in such a interesting time choose wisely where we place our efforts. I'm not saying it's immoral, unrewarding, or not plain fun to play and build video games. I'm saying that in life you get to choose how you spend your time, and in my view building the next killing simulator when you have…

And what is the "so much more" that these talented programmers could (and, in your opinion, should) be doing instead? I'm genuinely curious, since most programming jobs that I can think of aren't exactly world-changing.

Yes, a programmer in the video game industry might spend their days debugging the mammary physics of "the next killing simulator". But they might also create the next Braid or Minecraft, helping a lot of people connect and have fun in the process. Similarly, a programmer outside the games industry is much more likely to be tweaking some bespoke piece of accounting software than they are making the next Facebook.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#27

Post by agavin »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #16

I've worked for a couple of game studios over the years. Unfortunately, conditions were atrocious at both, something that seems to be fairly common in the industry. My hypothesis is so many coders spent their teen years playing video games, wanting to write them, that they are willing to work in sub-par conditions. I won't work at another one, unless it's my own. Sadly, I'm not skilled enough to start my own.

All the studios that consistently turn out brilliant games: Naughty Dog, Valve, Epic, Blizzard and many many others are really well run. Working there might often be brutal because of how hard the job is and pressure, but they know the process of making great games and the quality of employees is very very high.

It's less so at the big corporate studios where marketing and big company policy has heavily infiltrated the system.

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#28

Post by acgourley »

angrycoder wrote: post #4
acgourley wrote: post #2

It's worth reading this even if you're not interested in games or the industry that makes them. The game industry is one of the most mature industries in software and it offers a possible future for YOUR corner of the software world. Besides being one of the longest running industries in software, it iterates teams and products rapidly. Because of this it has performed a gradient decent more than any other software i…

Unless your definition of mature is old, I'm not sure what you are talking about. At the large publishers stuff like unpaid overtime is built into the budget from day 1, game developers are typically paid quite a bit less than their counterparts in the business sector, and agile development practices are rare. They build very expensive, monolithic pieces of software. It is pretty much the exact opposite of where soft…

Earlier in the history of the industry games were ligher weight, more iterative and more exploratory. Over time that changed. Sure thats changing back again with indie games, but that's still a small part of the market.

I'm just wondering out loud, could your corner of the world be moving in that direction?

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#29

Post by [deleted] »

blackhole wrote: post #24
gfodor wrote: post #8

Video games are an interesting phenomenon. They manage to pack many of the most interesting problems of computer science into one of the most superficial, yet profitable, applications. They're kind of like the warping of space time, an anomaly of extremes that manages to relentlessly suck brilliant minds away due to its siren call. And yes, I love video games, and considered working in the field. But, stepping back y…

While a lot of people inevitably dislike these kinds of high-and-mighty accusations of superficiality, as an aspiring video game programmer whose sole goal in life is to have the maximum positive impact on humanity possible, I have given this much thought. I have a rather interesting combination of analytic and artistic talents that can only be fully taken advantage of in the context of a game and its engine. I have…

[deleted]

Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs

#30

Post by matusz13 »

gfodor wrote: post #8

Video games are an interesting phenomenon. They manage to pack many of the most interesting problems of computer science into one of the most superficial, yet profitable, applications. They're kind of like the warping of space time, an anomaly of extremes that manages to relentlessly suck brilliant minds away due to its siren call. And yes, I love video games, and considered working in the field. But, stepping back y…

I'm a fan of this subject and I think that it's a relatively easy to associate the video game industry as something meaningless. (that doesn't mean that it's correct)

Anyone else a Jane McGonigal fan? http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_be...

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