Ask me about the Video Game Industry

[JuntMonkey]

What are the chances that there is some day a partial return to garage operations? If the technology continues to level out, and more and more simple creation tools become available, could it become once again possible to make a decent commercial game as a small start-up without that much money?

I had heard that Microsoft was developing something that would help this along.

[n.s.]

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What are the chances that there is some day a partial return to garage operations? If the technology continues to level out, and more and more simple creation tools become available, could it become once again possible to make a decent commercial game as a small start-up without that much money?

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I think so, although even if the tech gets to the point where you can just license an engine and use it straight from the box, there's still the issue of content. It's really a lot like movies - digital cameras and other tech have made it viable for small indy films to be made without much money. Many of these movies are really awesome and some will make a lot of money. Even so, there's still just no way that you make another "lord of the rings" without spending a lot of money. I think video games will go the same way - you'll start to see some really fun smaller games that from small development teams, but the next GTA is still gonna take a lot of dough to put together.

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I had heard that Microsoft was developing something that would help this along.

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Yeah, what they're doing is allowing people to create xbox live arcade games very cheaply. Traditionally, xbox dev kits run in the $10k range, but for something like $100 you get can set up to develop XBLA games using a restricted set of libraries (I think it uses C#, but I don't know the details). Then these games can be shared online - if one of them is really good, a team could use that to get the funding (potentially from MS publishing) to make it into a full game, either for download or to sell in a box.

The sad part is that only other developers will be able to play these games before they are properly published, so it falls short of the dream of having true shareware games on XBLA.

[cbloom]

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Do you work in the Seattle area? It seems like you know a lot about the Seattle companies like Valve. Do you have any suggestions for how I should go about getting into the industry? I have started working on simple demos of arcade ATARI games like breakout, etc. Do you think creating simple arcade game demos is a worthwhile endeavor or simply too easy?


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I used to work in Seattle but moved to LA then SF. I have a lot of contact with Valve, Bungie, Surreal, Wild Tangent, Gas Powered, MS Games, etc. in Seattle, all pretty decent companies.

If you're a decent/established programmer and want to get into games, it shouldn't be too hard to get a junior coding job somewhere, just start shotgunning your resume. There are also a lot of job fairs at game conferences where people hire newbies. You might have to take a pay cut from what you're used to, but you should be able to move up fast. Make sure you have code samples you can show that demonstrate your skills, preferably something game guys could understand or appreciate what you did.

If you want to boost your resume you can do some kind of demo. Getting into graphics/engine work is different than getting into generic game coding. For generic game coding you could do a little game demo - but cloning an arcade game won't get you any kudos, you should try to do something a bit clever or different. For graphics/engine work you should try to write a demo of some new algorithm, it can be tiny and researchy, the point is to show you can handle some kind of complex math or coding.

[Dire]

Thanks alot for this thread. It's been really interesting.

If you were twenty again tommorow, but know what you know now - would you still pursue game development as a career?

[cbloom]

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If you were twenty again tommorow, but know what you know now - would you still pursue game development as a career?

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Hmm.. that's a tough question. Probably not, but not because game development is so bad, but more because I now know that I really just don't like working in an office, and it's very hard to own your own business in game development. I now think that being something like a general contractor or whatever is a much better career path.

[cbloom]

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describe your dream game, the game you would design if you had total creative control and lots of resources? not unlimited resources though, just lots. like, imagine you were in sid meier's or gabe newell's position, what would you do next?

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I know there's a lot of questions but it would be really cool to hear your response to this one.

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Going back to take a shot at this...

Just a few random things :

When I got into games, what I really wanted to make was a modern graphical version of "Trade Wars" , the old BBS space trading game. Actually "Eve" has come out sine then and is a pretty decent version of this, but I wanted it to be a bit more action oriented where you can fly blazing fast but also continuously fly down to planet surfaces (this technology is quite possible but has never been done in games).

One game pitch that I did which didn't get picked up a while ago I really liked. It was for a persistent MMO future war game. The idea is there are two factions, call them humans and aliens, and they're in a war for the galaxy that would take multiple years in real time. They fight over planets one by one. The idea is that you can just jump in and play for a bit and experience it like a deathmatch game - you get drop-shipped into the fight - or if you want, as you level up you gain ranks in the army and you can choose different "classes" either becoming like a pilot or a strategist, and if you move towards strategist, there's a whole ranking by level of players who actually run the military and make the decisions and can demote each other, etc. It self balances various ways, like when new players join up they go to the side that's losing, or something. One of the key things in the mythos would be that your character is actually just a brain that stays on the orbitting mother-ship and the body that goes down to fight is just a cyborg, so if your body dies you don't die like in an MMO, you just have to wait for the next drop ship to take you down again (and your forces lose the cost of the cyborg and equipment), your experience points and such are in the brain on the ship.

Another one I always liked could never get made. I always wanted to do a co-op game where you're a band of criminals, like Reservoir Dogs or Ocean's Eleven, the whole generic band of experts. The interesting thing in game play is each guy has a different specialty, you know there's the martial artist, the gun expert, the explosives guy, the computer guy, the face/con-man, etc. In order to pull of a caper you all have to work together and plan it out and work as a team. Would be sweet with an online co-op with everyone on voice chat together. In practice, games that rely on co-op don't sell and no publisher would make them.

[thirddan]

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describe your dream game, the game you would design if you had total creative control and lots of resources? not unlimited resources though, just lots. like, imagine you were in sid meier's or gabe newell's position, what would you do next?

[/ QUOTE ]

I know there's a lot of questions but it would be really cool to hear your response to this one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Going back to take a shot at this...

Just a few random things :

When I got into games, what I really wanted to make was a modern graphical version of "Trade Wars" , the old BBS space trading game. Actually "Eve" has come out sine then and is a pretty decent version of this, but I wanted it to be a bit more action oriented where you can fly blazing fast but also continuously fly down to planet surfaces (this technology is quite possible but has never been done in games).

One game pitch that I did which didn't get picked up a while ago I really liked. It was for a persistent MMO future war game. The idea is there are two factions, call them humans and aliens, and they're in a war for the galaxy that would take multiple years in real time. They fight over planets one by one. The idea is that you can just jump in and play for a bit and experience it like a deathmatch game - you get drop-shipped into the fight - or if you want, as you level up you gain ranks in the army and you can choose different "classes" either becoming like a pilot or a strategist, and if you move towards strategist, there's a whole ranking by level of players who actually run the military and make the decisions and can demote each other, etc. It self balances various ways, like when new players join up they go to the side that's losing, or something. One of the key things in the mythos would be that your character is actually just a brain that stays on the orbitting mother-ship and the body that goes down to fight is just a cyborg, so if your body dies you don't die like in an MMO, you just have to wait for the next drop ship to take you down again (and your forces lose the cost of the cyborg and equipment), your experience points and such are in the brain on the ship.

Another one I always liked could never get made. I always wanted to do a co-op game where you're a band of criminals, like Reservoir Dogs or Ocean's Eleven, the whole generic band of experts. The interesting thing in game play is each guy has a different specialty, you know there's the martial artist, the gun expert, the explosives guy, the computer guy, the face/con-man, etc. In order to pull of a caper you all have to work together and plan it out and work as a team. Would be sweet with an online co-op with everyone on voice chat together. In practice, games that rely on co-op don't sell and no publisher would make them.

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cool ideas...did you ever make any moves to get them more developed?

second one sounds like it could be an addon game to TeamFortress...

your comment about co op is interesting since although it is never the main point of a game, if a game doesn't have a full coop setup if often gets some flack for it (online + offline coop)...

[JuntMonkey]

Bump.

A friend of mine insists that working in the video game industry sucks, and that, specifically, you're better off as a programmer for a boring business software company than at a video game company, purely because of the hours (40 vs. 60-80).

Is he right? What makes the video game industry special, if you're not one of the actual designers? As a programmer, would it matter what you were working on, or it would be equally exciting/boring whether it was GTA7 or HP Printer Driver Version 82.16?

[johnnybeef]

How do you like working in an industry in which the majority of your colleagues are males that are both over the age of 30, and haven't had pussy since pussy had them?

[BillNye]

Any single game sticks out in your mind? As far as great games etc.

I also am hoping you answer the dream game question.