Ask a guy who works in AAA anything!

Is it worth it? or should you just go indie?

just how bad is it in there?

where do babies come from?

can you give me a tow, my battery's dead again

is it even worth getting into the industry? i like vidya and programming but i feel like i'm going to want to fucking end myself with the horror stories i hear

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it really depends on the company you work for. crunch is always going to happen at some point (shit needs to get done and out the door), but imo just avoid companies known for 100 hr work weeks with no fair compensation for it. some devs like naughty dog are known for intense crunch, but then they pay you to take a 3 month vacation with your family. so it's a mix of good and bad. like i said, depends on where you go.

also, don't just take a job on a game because you need money. find some other line of work if that's gonna be your route. i have friends who have worked on sports games for a paycheck/experience and have lost all passion for their work as a result.

indie tends to be a bit more of a crapshoot. if you have the money to live off of, or you're in school or whateer and can keep a roof over your head, food on the table and debts paid off, go for it. bigger networking events like GDC are good for finding publishers to throw money at your demo.

any recommendations for people making a game for the first time or just getting started when it comes to the project itself, not so much the financial situation? any preferences such as engines or anything?

unity is really easy to get started in and understand. c# is easy to learn. unreal 4 is pretty great as well. both have extensive documentation, lots of youtube tutorials and asset stores with tons of free shit to get started with.

also, cut scope, cut scope again, and then cut it a third time. you will burn yourself out or never ship anything if you over-scope.

How dogshit is the pay in the industry?

does working in the industry kill any interest in playing games for you

depends on where you go and how much experience you have. i got lucky enough to get my first job at a mid-sized indie studio with a publisher that was willing to pay industry standard rates initially (i made 60k out the door), but a lot of bigger publishers like activision blizzard use their corporate weight and the allure of a dream job at a dream studio to underpay people because everybody wants to work for them. that being said, there are lots of big studios (i.e. the previously mentioned naughty dog) that pay fair rates for work.

the people that often get the shortest end of the stick are the people in QA and often people who only do things like making textures all day. the key there to getting paid well is being able to do multiple things. make yourself hard to remove, and they will compensate you more fairly. the weirdly large pay gaps (sometimes gaps of 40k or more) you see between similarly talented mid-level and senior-level devs in any department are generally caused by bigger companies not planning well and having issues keeping talent around due to burnout, so as a result they underpay mid-level people. again, this isn't uniform across the industry, as there are plenty of ethical big devs that take pride in their work and take care of their employees. Activision, however...

imo, QA needs to be respected more, listened to more and be compensated more fairly across the industry; you can't fix something if you don't know it isn't broken. a lot of devs and QA teams, especially at bigger studios in the middle of crunch, end up at odds with each other because they get pissed off that that thing they worked hard on is still broken, or that that bug still isnt fixed...it can be a vicious cycle.

it hasn't thus far!

i'm not sure how working on lazier kinds of titles like call-of-duty-shoot-a-man and basketball year 2020 edition would affect that, though, if i went that route. dunno if i'd burn out or not. knowing myself, probably, but as of right now even testing stuff daily and then taking an hour to play resident evil doesn't seem like a chore to me.

butts

two things: any general advice/recommendations to college students in cs field and what is your advice to people that want to get into game design specifically

Good games don't sell

unfortunately, i'm a sound designer/implementer so engineering questions aren't my particular area of expertise. :(

a good piece of general advice for all lines of work in starting your career in game development is to just start making stuff. game jams are excellent ways to stretch your muscles and learn what to and not to do. also, having a completed game, even if it's a really shitty one, looks better on your resume than the hundreds of other applicants do without them. just make stuff that allows your passion to shine through!

especially if you want to go indie

send bitcoin then maybe

Why is the industry so stale? It seems as though every must be an ots shooter, fps, or action rpg. Nothing but bland open worlds with no environmental hazards, or extremely linear

do you have a copy of battletoads?

turns out, if a company is run by bastards with nothing but financial ambitions who have never made a game before, the games that end up getting made there are ones that traditionally sell the most and are shitty on purpose to cut costs and boost profits. in my experience, the companies that last the longest (not the biggest companies, granted) are the ones that take measured risks and aren't afraid to spend the money necessary to get things made correctly.

i'm the reason gamestop doesn't sell battletoads anymore. i am king NEET.

Do you and your colleagues still play vidya in your free time? Or does it become a busman's holiday?

How often, on a daily basis, do you think about killing yourself? I figure it's gotta be at least once or twice a day because your job is so aweful

69 times a day, duh

fr tho i like my job

i'm playing one right now, if that answers your question :)

is rule 34 actually capable of harming a company's reputation? e.g. does peach porn really affect nintendo or are they just being cunts when they hit someone with a C&D?

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I dont work for nintendo but I'm just gonna take a wild guess that their marketing team doesn't like their IPs that are targeted at kids being spammed with bowsette loli vore porn on twitter.

First, get a standard calculus text and dive in. You should also get linear algebra and discrete math books as well; make sure the discrete text is proof based.

Once you're a couple chapters in to your discrete book (you will want to have covered basic proposition and higher order logic, and basic proofs), you may begin learning programming and computer architecture. As a litmus test, if you don't know what this statement is

∀P((0∈P∧∀i(i∈P-->i+1∈P))-->∀n(n∈P))

you aren't ready to take the reins of a computer.

Now, forget what you do know about computer programming:

First, you learn boolean logic operations
then, you learn transistor logic
then, you learn how to build functional units from logic gates
then, you learn CPU design
then, and only then, you learn assembly language
then, after you have mastered assembly language (not dabbled, but mastered it), you learn C
then, after you have mastered C, you may learn the higher-level languages of your choice, but you will always use C and assembly as your primary languages because everything else is unnecessary bloat.

By this time you should be finished with your first wave of math and ready for the next: abstract algebra, analysis, multivariate and vector calculus, and, after you have progressed a way in those, topology.

Finally, you become familiar with topoi, and study the internal logic of categories
then familiarize yourself with (general) type theory, and its applications to programming. I also recommend studying how to reformulate mathematics in terms of globular categories for use in automatic theorem proving, because there is an inherent programming-like 'feel' to it.

why do you faggots incorporate forced diversity?

Could you guys stop doing idiotic focus testing?

How does it feel to be a victim of white genocide?

>implying it's the devs and not the corporate fat cats

It completely depends on how prevalent it is mixed with how well people understand the original content.

Everyone knows Mario is meant to be family friendly so it's not really going to do much if there's a big stash of porn that's decently out of sight.

If you have it everywhere though that's what people are going to slowly associate it with which is harmful for people who barely understand your stuff to begin with.

im never going to make a game

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it's definitely us devs too.

if the brainlets that think "forced diversity" is a real problem haven't figured out that every demographic of people both make and buy video games yet, that's on them. let them go back to eating glue.

this is all complete bullshit. Notch, Toby fox and ConcernedApe knew nothing of what you just mentioned except programming (Toby just hired one)

How many titles have you worked on where it's blatently shite but everyone is too caught up in some mad cult positivity groupthink to admit any of it until some outside source gets to play it and breaks the illusion?

Because whites let them in their countries and take part in their cultural achievements, not on their own accord. What's really bullshit is when they force it in historical games like battlefield's ww1.

Maybe you didnt read the post. He said "make and play". How the fuck is someone not part of a cultural achievement when they made the thing, faggot?

>asm is acceptable in the industry

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0.

Game devs know when a game is bad.

lmao

NO GRILL IN MY VIDYA REEEEEEEEE

Whats the real turnover rate in the industry?

roughly 15.5%.

burnout is real.

crunch needs to stop because it doesn't work and is the most expensive way to get games made.

igda.org/resources-archive/why-crunch-mode-doesnt-work-six-lessons-2005/

Why did your teams get so immensely bloated? There used to be a time when 50 competent people was enough to produce a decent game. Whenever I hear about 100+ or even 200+ teams I just get flabbergasted how you think that's sustainable or even manageable. Not to mention it compromises your creative vision.

Despite what it looks like, since the HD era of games hit, AAA games have become harder and harder to make. All those prettier and prettier pixels year after year dont just land there.

Hopefully you guys start putting less priority on "prettier pixels" going forward. Its really becoming pointless when your games are streamlined and oversimplified. They have little lasting presence in community and cultural zeitgeist due to how unmemorable and mundane they are, despite whatever narrative the industry wants people to believe.

CMLL is better faggot

BASADO

More people making more games each year in a medium that has always been disposable contributes more to their diminished cultural impact, imo.

Star Wars is memorable for being the first big summer blockbuster. There are plenty of great summer blockbusters that have come out in the past decade, and they often disappear into a sea of noise now because everyone is making them. Same goes for games.

How many times a day do you have to jump start cars?