Information on the game industry

[baconhawka7x]

I am currently a sophomore in High School. And being a high schooler, I am being faced with a lot of questions about my future.

I am hoping to get into the game development industry (as you could imagine) and I was wondering if there was anyone on the forums that had any basic advice for me. I am currently planning to attend Digipen, a college for game development, and hopefully breaking into the industry shortly there-after.

I am posting this not only to benefit me, but because I think it could benefit some others on the forums as well.

Thanks in advanced.


Also, thought I should mention. I just recently job-shadowed/toured a studio near my town called Super Genius (http://supergenius-studio.com/), they did art for quite a few famous games. I learned quite a bit from them.

• •Being able to communicate/work with a team is one of the most valued things in the industry
  •Education itself is not very important to the industry, but it can be a good tool to learn
  •Having some form of previous work that you have done (outside of school) to show is important

Again, thanks in advanced.

[ivan]

First of all, it should be pointed out that the gaming industry is quite varied so there are many ways to work on games without getting a 9-5 job at a large studio. If you do want to work for a big game company that's fine and yes Digipen is definitely one of the best ways to go. Personally, I would be more interested in working as an indie or on a very small team because then you get a lot more creative freedom.

Some other things I would point out:
-if you want to work as a programmer, a degree in computer science will come a long way, this will allow you to work in other areas in addition to gamedev
-if you are an artist or sfx guy then it's probably more about your portfolio and previous projects

[Ranguna259]

SuperGenius is near your town , they made Broken Age man, they are awesome !

Anyway, as ivan said the game industry nowadays is very big and has quite a lot of variaties in terms of actualy making games. Here are some:

Games fappy bird where you just make games to win money.
Broken Age or CaveStory and lots of other indies where you want to put your work out there and want to show other people a great story/game mechanics not thinking about winning lots of money.
Flash-game-like are fast games coded in a few hours/days that are usualy prototype to bigger projects (or just something that you do to kill time) and of course,
The triple A (AAA) games like AC (Assassins' Creed), GTA (Grand Theft Auto), GT (Grand Turismo) or any other game alike that you can think of, these AAA games are usualy made under a budget and you can't express yourself in your code or art (well code is art so..), you are just there to do what the boss tells you to do and nothing else, AAAs are games to make profit of and are, in most of the times, big games with lots of visible things, big story or huge detailed maps among others.

With the ever growing factor of the industry more and more people of all ages are appearing so you'll also have to make a game based on a certain target age whether if it's for five year old kids or for 30 year old guys.

If you want money then make fast games that people can pickup on the go and leave whenever they want, once you've got a strong game portfolio try to join a big Studio that makes AAA games, I've read somewhere that a programmer's yearly salary is about 45.000$ or so so that's about 3740$ a month however you will have little time and space to work on your projects, to be creative and if you want that then you should make indie games where you do whatever you want however you want (it'll have to be profitalbe too, we don't live solemnly out of air, do we now ? ), you'll win your own money it might be 50.000$ a day or 0$ a month you won't really have a fixed quantity of money per year but you can enjoy a little more of what games has to give, if you are successful you'll even make a studio of your own or you could join one like the Super Genius guys.

It all depends on what you want and what your current economic status is like.

Good luck to you and to your gamer future

[Plu]

If you want to make money, avoid the game industry like the plague. Especially if you're a hired help, your pay is mediocre at best and your hours will be really, really long. (45.000$ is pretty weak for a programmer, especially if you're regularly expected to do unpaid overtime like most gamedevelopers)

There are thousands of people lined up to work in the games business and do long hours for little money because they love working on games, so if you're in it for the money you're never going to be hired over the cheap and abusable labour

[kikito]

My job is web development. There's more demand than programmers right know. You can get enough money to live comfortably, and to have hobbies. I don't enjoy it as much as doing games, but almost as much (let's say, 80%).

Making games is one of my hobbies. When I was younger I wanted to be a game developer, until I learned about how most of them live. It's the opposite than in web: lots of programmers, and not enough posts for all of them. So you get bad salaries, bad conditions, and pretty miserable lives. Sure, some people do fine, but they are a small minority. So I chose the easy path. And I am happy.

But that's how the market is now anyway. It could be different when you get out of school.

This might also help you:

[nuno]

This might also help you:

thanks kikito, nice one!

[baconhawka7x]

Wow! Thank you all for the input, it helped a ton. Definitely making me rethink some of my goals.

[Karai17]

That. Video.

*ponders life*

[davisdude]

I'm assuming you're referring to the one posted by kikito, but the one in baconhawka7x's signature is also that way, just for another reason.

[Tanner]

Working in the games industry does not necessarily preclude you from making good money or having a good work/life balance. I joined a small, social games company when they were less than 10 people and they have grown to more than 60 now. I never work weekends and have plenty of time for side projects. I get paid significantly more than the average Canadian salary. When I first started we were making HTML5 games but I've been working in Unity for the past year. I know that this isn't necessarily the norm in the industry but I just wanted to share that there isn't one universal experience of unpaid overtime eternal crunches.