Ask me about the Video Game Industry

[mistermuni]

How big a deal is confidentiality in your business? Can you tell your family/friends like what games you're working on, or what games are in development, etc?

[Reef]

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do you know cliffyB?


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I met him a few times. I'd always heard he was a pompous ass so I was prejudiced and yeah, he came across that way. At the time he was wearing a leather trench coat and had a hot chick on his arm. I hear he's melowed out a bit now.

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[i]I hate your face

[CrushinFelt]

Starcraft 2.... whennnnnnnn

[thirddan]

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How big a deal is confidentiality in your business? Can you tell your family/friends like what games you're working on, or what games are in development, etc?

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when i interviewed i had an nda (non disclosure agreement) for anything we discussed or anything i saw on monitors when i did a tour etc...when i was hired we had packets of nda's and non-compete agreements etc...when press walks through we turn our monitors off if working on things that have not been released...but all my friends/family know what projects i am working on, they may not know the details of exactly what i do, but for the most part a lot of games that are in full production are known and have been released to the public...

[Stellastarr]

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i disagree that programmers working on games are working on cutting edge software. a very few individuals are at the cutting edge of 3d engine design, but for the most part, games programming is a well understood design space with little room for innovation.

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[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] I disagree with this completely, and don't understand why you are compelled to post this. If it has been settled down it's only happened in the last few years.

Most of the fundamentals comes out of academic research, but those guys never do functioning real time implementations. The first ever practical implementations of real time 3d algorithms are pretty much always done in games.

There will continue to be huge innovations in the next 20 years. Any time you look at the real world and look at a video game and see a difference - that's an area where people will be working.

Even companies that do a lot of licensing still generally do their own AI, animation system, path finding, & lots of other things where people are doing lots of innovating.

Sure you need a lot of coders doing relatively simple tasks, but even those guys have the opportunity to move into more interesting work very easily if they have the talent and desire.

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Also disagree. DX10 slowly making its way out. Im sure programmers are working with that now.

Here's my questions. Why don't you work for EA anymore. Do you still work in the industy?

[Clan Macleod]

will STALKER ever be released? [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
and when it does will it have lost its edge considering how long in the making it's been??

[cbloom]

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How big a deal is confidentiality in your business? Can you tell your family/friends like what games you're working on, or what games are in development, etc?

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Like dan said, you have to sign NDA's. Generally I tell friends/family what I'm doing if they're not big gamers & internet people, I just don't want my retard little brother posting it on the net or something.

Once in a while you have things that you need to keep super-secret, like when you're trying to find a different publisher and you really don't want your original publisher knowing until they give you some more money.

Also when you're pitching games you want them to be totally secret until the publisher makes the first official announcement, so that it can be a big deal unveiling and surprise people & nobody else can get the jump on copying you.

[cbloom]

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Here's my questions. Why don't you work for EA anymore. Do you still work in the industy?

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I never worked directly for EA, I worked for an independent dev that was published by EA. They were a really [censored] publisher to work for. The nice thing about them is they have the #1 shelf space allocation which can be a huge boost to game sales (the way game retail works, the big publishers make shelf space arrangements with the retailers, so EA is gauranteed the best/biggest displays). The bad thing is if they don't think your game will be huge they just totally submarine it, they don't really support the small devs. Also their test department & game testing and such were awful. I think their internal support is better but their external support blows.

I'm semi-retired at the moment.

[thirddan]

I went to school up in the bay area near EA and a ton of students used to test there...pretty much every one of them hated it and couldn't wait to leave, said that overall they were treated terribly and it was a [censored] place to work...

[talentdeficit]

i work at a startup populated by ex-EA, radical and rockstar employees.

i'm not claiming there's zero innovation in games programming, but it's almost all at the library level, over which only a very few people will have any real input. dx10 is interesting, but for the people actually making games, it's just another api.

valve, which is probably one of the better places to work if you're interested in innovation, recently 'innovated' spin locks for threading!

i'm not trying to claim games programming is on par with writing intranet web clients to payroll databases or anything, but it is not the field to be in if you want to work in unsolved design space and emerging fields.