You’ve been doing this for quite some time now. Does it ever get tedious?
-- No. The worst mistake anybody could ever make going into game dev is to think they know everything. You never stop learning stuff, and that’s actually why I keep doing game dev. That’s why I keep finding it interesting after doing it almost 17 years. There’s always new things to learn, new problems to solve and new game hardware to learn.
How would you describe the relationship between designers and programmers?
-- In my experience it’s never been difficult. If I ever have to tell a game designer 'no' or 'there's no time' or 'I need more information', I will put a lot of effort into making him or her understand why. So like the designers here, like Alan Kertz, he comes over and says 'I want this sort of thing happen with the rendering and the gun when you go to scope' and then we have a rational and deep discussion about that. What is the value add for the game? What are the technical hurdles to implementing it? It’s not something that just shows up in my department on a game designer wish list. There’s a lot more deep conversation and understanding between us both. A designer that feels like a programmer is not holding back their creative vision is a happy designer
How would you recommend budding programmers and designers to get into the industry?
-- As long as you have a computer and some kind of program -- it doesn’t matter if it’s Flash or some kind of game maker program -- just start making games. Don’t wait until you finish college or wait for some pre-packaged knowledge to figure out how to make games. The people that I think really end up being hired are the ones who just find some way to do it.
What are the most common pitfalls for amateur game developers?
-- It’s kind of disheartening to see the people who want a job in games that don’t actually work towards something, or make the unfortunate mistake of choosing to do an MMO or some other grand project over four years with ten people they know informally through the Internet. All the odds are stacked against that.
-- The act of even doing the most simple game start to finish is a lot more work than people think. My recommendation is you work on something really small and you finish it, and then you do it again, and you do it again. What happens then is that you reinforce the aspect of finishing something that you start, which is one of the hardest things in game development.
-- What often happens with hobby game making is it becomes something where you have a little moleskine notebook sketching art or whatever, and then you just say "whatever" and turn the page and start something new. That sort of start and stall and jump to something else can become a pattern.
Nice deferred shading!
-- It’s totally okay to start with mimicking really simple games that have been done before, even like Pac-Man or Space Invaders. After you do a couple small projects, try something a little bigger.
-- Being able to show a game or two that you wrote on your own free time speaks volumes to people that do interviews. They will look at your small but actually finished games and say "Okay. This person is passionate about making games, they know how to do something from start to finish, they know how to apply what they've learned to make something." Having a degree isn't enough. You have to prove you love making games, and there's no better way to prove that than by making games before you actually get a game development job.
(Computer Software Development) Career/Education advice requested
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think is a good school to go to?
isn't it the truth of dev's jobs and what consumers dont understand about how much work goes into video games
