I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
31–40 of 84 posts
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#32I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
It's the lead position. My lead at work (MS) works more hours than me, too; and, so far as I know, knows what all of us are working on at a pretty considerable level. He does testing for some of the things that we can't, or that need to be done immediately if we're doing higher priority things, and so on.
I'd like to think he still gets at least 6 hours of sleep a night, but I wouldn't know. The synopsis of the lead, I read, was reasonable, especially remembering what sort of lives the people that worked for EA had.
In short, I don't think this was trying to glorify the hours worked, and instead alerting would-be leads to understand what they're committing to.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#33I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
Agreed, a good lead would be doing everything within their power to _prevent_ this from happening to themselves and the rest of the team.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#34Earlier 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…
building the next killing simulator when you have the talent and means to do so much more
Possibly. But can you say that about building the video game equivalent of Citizen Kane, The Battleship Potemkin, or La jetée?
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#35I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
Agreed, a good lead would be doing everything within their power to _prevent_ this from happening to themselves and the rest of the team.
But if things start to go bad, they will probably be the first ones to start staying late.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#36Earlier 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…
building the next killing simulator when you have the talent and means to do so much more
Such a shame that you claim to have the talent, but obviously don't have the imagination, to build something better.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#37I'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 t…
It could be the personalities of the people I make contacts with (I'm a researcher who works with research-interested game-industry people), but the burnout rate seems really high, even at the well-run places. More than half the people I've met in the last 5 years have quit their jobs within that timeframe! And a lot cited the working conditions: more or less that the pressure-cooker environment was cool in their 20s, but not a long-term career path. Some have gone the indie route, some to consulting, some back to grad school, others just left the game industry entirely for a job somewhere like Lockheed.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#38I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
Have people already forgotten about the EA Spouse?
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#39I wish people would stop glorifying how many hours they work and how little sleep they get, "You need to live without sleep (4 hours a night every day for years baby!)." Sounds juvenile to me.
Read the last sentence before taking quotes out of context - "being a lead is all about responsibility".
If you're the lead and things start going south on your project then you'd better be prepared to start leading and taking on whatever is needed to get your game shipped.
I know it's cool to preach about working smarter instead of harder, but getting a game out of the door and into a box usually requires large doses of both.
Re: So you want to be a video game programmer? - The Specs
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably being unfair there. The programmers who work on games are often very smart, very capable people who genuinely want to make a good product. A lot of so-called professional programmers could learn a thing or two from games developers about everything from writing high performance code to co-ordinating large development teams via the value of developing in-house tools to make development work more effici…
I'd have to content that my own games (Crash + Jak) are far far less buggy than the typical web or desktop application. We had a VERY low tolerance for bugs. I NEVER EVER shipped with a known crash bug (there were some I didn't know about of course). As entertainment we always felt that the consumer had zero tolerance for bugs. Something like MS Word is riddled with serious bugs that don't get fixed major release aft…
Well, FWIW, I'm glad someone is still making games with some eye on quality.
Personally I basically gave up AAA games around four years ago, after three big disappointments.
Crysis should have been great but had all kinds of problems even on high-end hardware.
Supreme Commander should have been great, except that a major selling point was its world-scale maps but if you actually played a full on game on such a map you went over 2GB RAM and crashed it on 32-bit XP.
Oblivion should have been great, with a lot of power in the game engine and some interesting ideas, but they forgot to bring the fun part.
Those were probably the three most eagerly anticipated PC titles of their generation, and while I did complete Crysis and have spent plenty of time on Forged Alliance, the enjoyment was severely damaged by the frustration with all the problems.
Since then, it seems like all I hear about is ever more intrusive DRM screwing things up and ever more profiteering via DLC and exclusive content deals. I've given up on contemporary AAA titles entirely until this sort of silliness goes away, and I content myself with things like puzzle games and titles from GoG that are actually fun to play.
The sad thing is, I'm betting the programming teams behind Crysis and SupCom could have improved the trouble spots and given everyone a much more enjoyable gaming experience with a bit more time, but I bet the suits pushed them to ship when it was "good enough". As for the DRM and DLC in more recent titles, that's just management madness through and through.