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So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

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Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#21

Post by ChuckMcM »

When your kid tells you this:

"Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean like a LOT."

It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't any game they like playing alot, it is a particular game or genre they like. The goal of exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are mechanics in computer games that can be found in non-game activities.

It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices down the road.

[1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a lot and supported himself by selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the exception and not the rule.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#22

Post by dlhavema »

rikacomet wrote: post #3

I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre-requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.

i want to be an Entrepreneur too, is anyone hiring?

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#23

Post by SoftwareMaven »

jmomo wrote: post #19

I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online infrastructure kind of stuff. The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what was about…

This echoes my experiences in the game industry to a T.

And I am conflicted, because my son is one of these goobers who want to make video games. :) But if I can use that desire to get him to focus on skills that would enable him to succeed there (and, by association, anywhere), then I'm OK with it.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#24

Post by SoftwareMaven »

BryantD wrote: post #5

That's a great piece. Cranky but good. I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games. There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game (which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but certainly work…

My work on League of Legends came as a direct result of a contract gig building an extranet for a gas pipeline company: Java and Activescript is Java and Activescript.

In fact, you could argue we were solving the much harder problems in that game, since we had to deal with the massive scaling, while the game engine only had to deal with 10 people at a time.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#25

Post by dkersten »

unimpressive wrote: post #2

Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the prerequisites to do it. You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting than the resulting product. I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the r…

Not too different to what happened to me. I'm now technical cofounder of a machine learning heavy analytics startup. I still think about making games sometimes, but then I go back to thinking about and working on data mining and machine learning and I don't regret a thing :)

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#26

Post by auctiontheory »

Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine. Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career.

On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#27

Post by jiggy2011 »

Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev?

I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he was.

Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a lot of heavy lifting for you.

Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#28

Post by runawaybottle »

What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case.

This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#29

Post by gambiting »

"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. "

This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.

Re: So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

#30

Post by asmithmd1 »

gambiting wrote: post #29

"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. " This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.

Where are you "doing Games Engineering"
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