Gaming Industry Engages in a Bit of Nostalgia

An anonymous reader writes "At Gamasutra, the latest answers to their Question Of The Week are up, asking game professionals how they got their start in the industry. Answers range from the classic ("While I was an MIT undergrad, a couple of my closest friends were co-founders of Infocom in 1979") to the quirky ("I got into games because my sister complained that I never called her. She set up an account for me on GEnie so I would at least email her. Not long afterwards, she suggested I check out GemStone III... Eventually, I ended up... [at] my current position as a designer for EverQuest II.")"

My Start

[mfh]

I started coding for TI/99 4A and sold cassette tapes around my neighbourhood. I wondered why sales were bad, but since I was only 10 yrs old... I tried to convince people to buy a TI so they could play my adventure games.

23 years later, I'm still not in the gaming industry. I'm not bitter either because the whole thing is flakey anyway. Many companies try squeeze all the good years out of someone until they've got nothing left, and then toss them asside for newer blood.

I'm looking for something more stable and with better hours. Maybe I should take Scott Adams' advice and be a cartoonist. Okay I'd have to be able to draw first.

Re:My Start

[John3]

We sold the TI/99 4A for years at my hardware store. Too bad we didn't get together...we could have bundled your games with the computer and made millions! :-)

Actually, most of our TI sales were to local school districts who used it for the LOGO programming language. It was about a two year run before TI pulled the plug on the computer.

Re:My Start

[the darn]

The first computer I ever used was a TI/99, when I was in kindergarten (c 1983). Those machines hung around the school until I was in 3rd grade or so. I recall the gifted & talented teacher had a voice synthesizer program that went with it. I whiled away several class periods experimenting with it, trying to get it to say "Tyrannosaurus Rex."

Re:My Start

[kaens]

Heh I started coding for the TI/99 4A as well, starting with simple text adventures, and I eventually made a space-shooter. Never even tried to sell any of my creations though. I was about ten then, and this is just nine years later but whatever. Coding the TI/99 4A was (is) a hell of a lot of fun.

Re:My Start

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I should take Scott Adams' advice and be a cartoonist. Okay I'd have to be able to draw first.

Debatable.

Re:My Start

[Burning1]

I hate to break it to you, but Scott Adams can't draw either.

Aaah, those were the days..

[Anakron]

Anybody else think it was easier back in the day to get a foot in the door? Of course, this isn't unique to gaaming..

Re:Aaah, those were the days..

[daniil]

In a word, no.

Or as they say -

[Geshem]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be..

Re:Aaah, those were the days..

[kaens]

Well, of course it would have been. The industry was a lot smaller then, and people with the skill to make games were not half as abundant as they are today.

Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

It was much more exclusive 10-15 years ago, but now anyone with a C.S. degree (that's not Counter-Strike, kids) can get a software engineer position at one of the big shops e.g. EA, EA, or, hm... EA. Back in the day, you had to be really good at something, or know someone, or get lucky.

I'm a programmer in the industry for 11 years with no degree, but I took the back door in--I started as an artist (didn't need quite as much art talent back then, especially if you were dirt cheap).

Re:Aaah, those were the days..

[freidog]

Quite the opposite I would think.
With the shear number of resources and amount of support availible on the internet,
support forums to ask questions from people who have been there done that so to speak
freely availible resouces, 2D, 3D art tools, scripting languages, entire game engines for free download.
ease of distrobution, upload your project to sourceforge, or have your files hosted on a site like fileplanet for basically no cash, no effort. And let people all over the world download your game.
not to me

Re:Aaah, those were the days..

[Mongoose]

I found writing your own game engine, your own 3d modeler, and reverse engineering ~50 AAA titles data formats opens a few doors. I still giggle when people ask me about the OpenGL renderer for Tomb Raider! ;)

Those who program...

[suspected]

Funny thing is, most people who love programming and enjoy games tend to become programmers. Loving games alone is often not enough of an incentive, although some feel it is and later realize it's not.

Re:Those who program...

[Rickler]

I'd say it's the other way around. Game designer tend to become less into playing games.

Re:Those who program...

[Silent1]

yeah i agree, i'm into games and all but have no incentive to go into the gaming industry. Guess its just personal preference.

That's exactly the problem

[zippthorne]

The games end up being coded fairly well by competant programmers who enjoy what they do, but fail to be designed by creative authors, artists, and just plain clever people. So we get a programmers idea of a good game instead of actually good games:

technically excellent, visually stunning, boring. I point to `Racing game of the week: Ford car advertisement' and `Madden sells out again! 2005' as evidence. Gone are the days of super mario bros, the legend of zelda, frogger, TIE fighter, space quest and th

Re:That's exactly the problem

[typical]

See, the funny thing about this is that the games from the "classic" days were the ones that generally didn't *have* much of a development staff of authors and artists -- just programmers, some of whom might wear multiple hats.

It seems that your evidence directly contradicts your argument.

Re:That's exactly the problem

[zippthorne]

I don't know, we used to have games that could've been made by the anasazi with "knotted rope map" technology® but they were playable and fun. Now everything seems so bland. There are a few good games out there, but so many pretenders and entire genres have all but disappeared. What happened to the {something} quest adventure games? or the clever puzzle games?

What ever happened to manuals with jokes in them?

And why do people keep buying 'the sims'? It's a "real life" simulator with 4x the frustrati

Philosophy & Games

[typical]

Now everything seems so bland.

I felt the same way. I went back and played some old games, and they actually weren't as good as I remembered. I think that a lot of it was nostalgia, and some of it the fact that *we* change as we age. It's hard to get me excited and enthusiastic about a game now.

I don't think I could stand playing most NES-era games now -- too repetitive.

There are a few good games out there, but so many pretenders and entire genres have all but disappeared. What happened to the {something}

Re:Those who program...

[DrCode]

One thing I've noticed: Practically every ad for game-programmers has the requirement, "Must have a passion for games."

This doesn't sound unreasonable, but it isn't something one sees in other industries. For example, I've worked in EDA for about 15 years, but nobody's ever asked me if I have "a passion for Verilog".

Re:Those who program...

[suspected]

That's because for other programming jobs, it's often unnecessary to say: "Must have a passion for money."

Playing Zork on the MIT DEC machines

[John3]

Zork was my first exposure to computer games. I was at MIT from 1977-79 and spent many late nights exploring the "Great Underground Empire". In those days, they were coding the dungeon so it grew as time went by. There were bugs to fix, and a number of inside jokes (MIT specific) that got left out of the commercial version released by Infocom.

When playing the game, you usually had to use the printing terminals (Decwriters?) and log in via Arpanet to the computer running Zork (command was something like "@o AI" where AI was the machine you were connectint to). If too many people were already logged in to Zork you'd get a message like "A large burly troll hacks at you with an axe and thunders 'None shall pass'" (or words to that effect. Eventually I had a TI thermal printing terminal with a 300 baud modem built in (with the little cups that you squeezed the phone handset into after manually dialing the system). I was able to dial-in and play from the dorm which saved a trek over to one of the labs (where the terminals were often occupied with people doing actual work).

Re:Playing Zork on the MIT DEC machines

[DrCode]

Zork was my 2nd. My 1st was "Adventure" on an HP3000 when I worked a summer job at Hughes Aircraft. The game limited play to the lunch hour and after work, but my boss obtained the source so I could get past the restriction, because he wanted to play it too.

Re:Playing Zork on the MIT DEC machines

[John3]

Yeah, you probably also drank until you puked. The difference was I was drinking Yukon Jack while you were drinking formula. :-)

Gemstone 3 Nostalgia.

[dividedsky319]

Ahh, the days of Gemstone 3. I remember my days of living as Lord Sharvan Darvanshire, half elven ranger... I probably spent more time in Elanthia during 9th grade than I did in school. What a big dork I was. But, it was fun for my friends and I. But... I attribute my typing skills to having played GS3 so much. So, I guess it wasn't a whole loss! Thank you, GS3, for my 120wpm typing skills. You're in Town Square Central. nw n n n e n go gate n n go step go hearth Ahh, I still remember my way around W

Re:Gemstone 3 Nostalgia.

[paulsgre]

was?

Re:Gemstone 3 Nostalgia.

[ohjoshdarnit]

I played GS3 for a short while too, and loved it. To this day I still think of it as the best mmorpg I've played (or at least my favorite)... and it's responsible for my typing speed as well!

Text-based worlds still around

[typical]

Yah, enough of proving my dorky love of text based worlds.

There is no shortage of free MUDs [mudconnect.com] out there, as well as extremely-well written and free games in the mature text-based interactive fiction genre.

Try downloading TADS [tads.org], and taking a shot at one of the vast library of games [ifarchive.org] for it. Works on just about every platform ever, and has enough hours of gameplay represented in free games to keep you entertained for the rest of your life.

I'm rather partial to Babel [ifarchive.org], if you're looking for a nice game to start wi

As someone who works in the game industry...

[Guano_Jim]

...just let me say that after the first couple of weeks, the high pay, short hours, easy pace, hookers, and free pot really start to get old.

There are days when I wish I could get my old job at the slaughterhouse back.

Just sayin'.

Re:As someone who works in the game industry...

[Speare]

I wasn't sure if you were describing the actual thing called the "gaming industry" or "games industry," i.e., casinos, or if you were describing your fictitious account of living in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

I think it's cute that those in the software toy field call it the "game industry." Yes, software toys, that's what you're producing; and if you think otherwise, why do you think you ship product in October and get laid off in November so often?

Re:As someone who works in the game industry...

[Rayonic]

...just let me say that after the first couple of weeks, the high pay, short hours, easy pace, hookers, and free pot really start to get old.

You get free coat hooks and cookware in the gaming industry? Bizarre.

irony and conclusions

[SuperBanana]

I got into games because my sister complained that I never called her. She set up an account for me on GEnie so I would at least email her. Not long afterwards, she suggested I check out GemStone III... Eventually, I ended up... [at] my current position as a designer for EverQuest II

The sort of implied-between-the-lines story here is that "I didn't talk to my sister, so I got into game programming a zillion years later". Ah, the irony of this kind of one-thing-leads-to-another stuff from the game industr

Re:irony and conclusions

[back_pages]

The sort of implied-between-the-lines story here is that "I didn't talk to my sister, so I got into game programming a zillion years later". Ah, the irony of this kind of one-thing-leads-to-another stuff from the game industry.

That quote requires a lot of insight.

GemStone III got started circa 1990 and required access through a system such as GEnie or Prodigy. It was a pay-per-hour game and Simutronics didn't have the infrastructure to bill players directly, so they partnered with providers like GEnie.

If GemStone III is famous by any definition, it should be mentioned that the game has always pulled from its players for talent, developers, direction, and decisions. I'm pulling stastics out of the air, but I'd bet 20% of their players are directly or indirectly responsible, on a personal level, for influencing development of the game.

(My claim to fame in that area would have been modifying the magical spell penalties to chain and plate based armor that was implemented as part of the GP2 program. This wasn't some nerfing rant - I presented the charts, statistics, numbers, examples, and argued that a certain 3% adjustment be scaled back to 1% and 2% over a given range. GM Warden thought I was a genius (slight autobiographical liberty taken here) and my suggestion was implemented within about a week. And NOBODY IN THE WORLD CARES which is why I'm telling the ENTIRE Slashdot readership about how geeky I am. RM would have approved, BM would have attempted to murder me, Fighter likes swords, and *yoink* Thief stole my wallet.)

Anyway, my point is that it's hard to "just play" GemStone III (now GemStone IV). Many serious players become developers (all of my friends from GemStone are now developers of some sort) and that led this guy to Everquest II. Of course, none of this was clear from the quote, so I guess I'm informative (and self-promoting. MAN I was smart and right about those armor numbers!)

Re:irony and conclusions

[rakslice]

This just in: 100% of people who don't understand the difference between correlation and causation eventually die!

Games ain't what they used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, i wouldn't like to develop games today, nobody makes 'em the way they used to be any more.

Games today are subject to the same problem that's ruined contemporary movies: Special effects. For some reason they (the developers) think that a game is better just because it looks good. Sure: They can be a nice touch - but they don't make the game (in fact, too many details ruins your ability to imagine what's going on the way you could in old text based games).

It's funny how they managed to squeeze more joy into one 1440 KB 3.5" floppy than they do in a 4 GB DVD these days.

And suddenly yelling at some kids to get off the lawn felt compelling. I must be getting old.

Re:Games ain't what they used to be

[MrShaggy]

Almost creeping into codgerism. :)

Re:Games ain't what they used to be

[typical]

Games today are subject to the same problem that's ruined contemporary movies: Special effects. For some reason they (the developers) think that a game is better just because it looks good. Sure: They can be a nice touch - but they don't make the game (in fact, too many details ruins your ability to imagine what's going on the way you could in old text based games).

They don't make the game for a certain class of people.

If you're into dedicated game-playing, then replayability and gameplay and whatnot may in

My Path...

[okayplayer]

I consider myself lucky to be part of the games industry at this point. How did I get in? Well actually it was quite simple.

1)Saw a posting on my current employer's website.
2)Responded by faxing in my resume.
3)Had an interview in which I convinced my boss it was in his best interest to hire me.
4)(And I'm refusing to slack and just say "Profit!") Worked my ass off to prove they had made the right choice.

And here I am, 2 1/2 years later, still working at the same (great) company doing more of the stuff I love to do. Last time I checked that path to employment wasn't anything amazingly hard or unusual. So, what does it take to get a job in the games industry today? The same thing it's always taken to get any job in any industry, drive.

it's best not to ask

[llamaxing]

For some reason, I was hoping to see one of the guys say something like "I was walking down the road and saw a penny face-up..." To my disappointment, I didn't.

Online gaming

[dj245]

I first got a taste of online gaming in Monster Truck Madness 2, a rather pointless game which consisted of ramming other trucks on the top of a large hill. It really emphasised to me that it was the social interaction not the actual game that I was after. Then came Tribes (whose server-based administration services are unmatched even today), Call of duty, and finally NovaLogic's passably ok Joint Ops.

I kind of miss the amount of customization found in Tribes and Tribes 2. Chances are if you wanted a hud, or a script to rotate a weapon after firing a grenade, there was one, or it was easy to write yourself. And there were 64 player FPS servers years ago. BF2 is just now catching up.

Re:Online gaming

[ZeroExistenZ]

You're like 15 years old? MM2 came out in 1998 I believe.

I feel old playing space invaders on a commondore.. I remember turning the pc on, loading the gigantic floppy, running out to play with things other then electronics (matches or something like that) and come back hoping the game loaded and we could play.

Re:Online gaming

[dj245]

Internet access was not widespread in my area until then. You think internet in rural areas is spotty now? at least dialup is available nearly everywhere now. Back then if you didn't live within 15 miles of a 10,000 person town you very well could have been out of luck.

Re:Online gaming

[Halfbaked Plan]

A strong number of the early BBSers (people who dialed up 'online services' before the dialup Internet existed) were rural folks. Farmers are/were small businessmen, and early adopters of the personal computer.

How I Got My Start!

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to be a laid-back, likeable guy. I met girls and got laid often. I put in a hard 40 hours a week and was compensated generously for it. I knew it was time for a change, so I applied at Electronic Arts, and my life has changed for the better as a result! I work three times as much and haven't been laid since the Clinton Administration. As you can see, it is a real privilege.

My start...

[kreyg]

I was always the person in my family with an interest in computers, and fortunately my dad had access to the earliest Commodore microcomputers in his line of work. This landed me a Commodore 64 at home in 1983 or so, and I started working in BASIC, trying to put a few games together, but not getting very far.

Then I met a friend in high school who had a C64, and together we learned assembly language and tried to put a few things together, without a great deal of success (using a debug monitor rather than an actual assembler can do that, I now understand).

Then VGA came along and made the PC a viable game system, and I switched over to that. After various false starts joining small game companies destined to failure, and trying to get into shareware, I finally got my BSc. in computer science, and put together a game / advertisement on contract: Humpty's Scramble [humptys.com].

That led to a job with EA where I stayed for quite some time, primarily on SSX. I recently left as part of a new startup (Blue Castle Games [bluecastlegames.com]) and things are going well there.

Ultimately, I got my start by loving games, and loving programming. Being smart and actually being a good programer also helped of course. :-)

My advice to anyone thinking about the games industry would be the same as it would be for any field: love what you do (and hopefully be good at it). If I didn't love games, I could probably find a more comfortable job programming something else, but it's been in my blood for as long as I can remember. If I was only a mediocre programmer, the games industry would be a meat grinder. If you can handle it though, it can be an immensely satisfying experience.

my "start"

[sm.arson]

Like many game programmers, I decided my career path early on in childhood (thank you nintendo). Unlike many programmers, however, bad, bad, really bad grades in high school and college discouraged me from the whole field of computer science (again; thank you nintendo).

During my last semester at school, when I knew that I would not be welcomed back for another semester, I decided to NOT go to any more of my classes and I spent every waking moment in the university computer labs working on my own video game. After entering the game at the school's computer science showcase at the end of the year, I attracted a lot of attention and got a few job interviews. A few months after "finishing" school, I had a job in the game industry.

Actually, my employers only recently found out that I don't have a degree! Lucky for me, I had already proven myself to be a dedicated programmer long before that. Drive and desire count for a LOT. (But drive and desire usually lead to a college degree of some sort!)

Re:my "start"

[ErikZ]

Well, yeah. If you actually desire a college degree you'd get one.

But you don't. So...

Accolade...

[__aaclcg7560]

I got started at Accolade (which eventually got bought out by Infogrames to morph into Atari and I was there for six years) by sending in my resume since it was located down the street. I got an interview and was interviewed by a half-dozen people.

One guy asked me with a straight face what I would do if two of my co-workers were having a fist fight in the hallway. I almost blurted out, Does that happen a lot around here? I gave a neutral answer that I would get a supervisor. (No reason to put my neck on the line.) Anyway, the correct answer was to start taking bets. Go figure.

a fist fight in the hallway?

[ChipMonk]

Hose them down. If they're gonna be immature twits, treat them like immature twits. And if the company has a problem with that, point out that you can end the fight safely, without endangering anyone else, thereby protecting the company's interest against really big lawsuits.

Re:a fist fight in the hallway?

[__aaclcg7560]

I think the worst incident we had at Atari was when an supervisor totally destroyed a keyboard by slamming it against his desk repeatedly until all the keys went flying out of his cube. Of course, to make sure he didn't do that to any of the employees, someone blocked the opening of his cube and filled it to the top with packing popcorn. The supervisor calmed down after that -- probably because it took three days to clean out his cube by himself.

My start...

[Skraut]

In 1980 I got my Atari 800, played star raiders and desided I wanted to program games. Sure, I was only 4 at that time, but it was a dream that stuck with me. I finished all of my High School's computer and programming classes, by the time I was a Sophomore. I spent the rest of high school teaching myself C++ and Assembly.

In college I had a cocky attitude. When I had to write a word processor, my word processor was texture mapped on a spinning cube. I would do other dumb things like that to show off, and spent so much time writing "Fluff" for my programs that I didn't actually finish the assignments.

I ended up flunking out of college, and working at a Babbages. I'd go home from work and spend all night playing in a Quake I Team Fortress Clan. I didn't have "The Skillz" anymore and got tired of getting beaten by 13 Year Olds, so I hacked the quake models and cheated... I shared the cheat with my clanmates, one of whom unbeknownst to me worked for a game development company.

He shared the cheat with his bosses, and I was called for an interview, and eventually had a job. It took me a few years to realize it really wasn't what I wanted to do, but it was a fun ride getting there.

How I got in...

[spectecjr]

When I was 15, I got myself a SAM Coupe home computer (this was the UK, and yes, no-one has ever heard of it).

I'd been programming before then on the BBC Micro, ZX81, Commodore 16 and ZX Spectrum +2... (I was programming a BBC Micro at school when I was 5, and I got my ZX81 when I was 6, and wrote a pacman-like cops & robber's game - the only flaw was that it was impossible to catch the robber - because he moved in lockstep with you). On the Spectrum, I wrote a tile-based game called "amazed in a maze in a mazda", which was a cross between bomberman and minesweeper, as well as a few tape loader tricks that did interesting things like countdowns while the something loaded. On the C16, I wrote a few BASIC games - nothing special.

But when I was 15, I got this computer, and started coding for it... ended up writing all kinds of flashy demos... and wrote a fader routine for and helped debug a port of Prince of Persia.

Since then, I worked on ports of Zub and Bubble Bobble (both never completed, but Zub was mostly done - flawed compression routines killed my source code, and Bubble Bobble was unfortunately stored on tape, so one day the tape glitched and I lost it), port of Lemmings, Exodus (a SmashTV rip off), port of Populous, Parallax (a sideways scrolling shooter). There were all kinds of other bits and pieces and projects, which I finished to various levels of completion.

Because of what I was doing on the SAM Coupe, I got a regular column in Your Sinclair magazine - a games and tech mag in the UK for the Spectrum and SAM home computers (although the SAM only came along at the end).

All of this took a back seat for a while when I went to college, and did a physics degree. I almost dropped my degree and went to go work for High Voltage software in Chicago doing GameGear games, but something stopped me (glad it did too - getting a visa with no degree can be painful in the US).

For a while I worked as a software consultant for a small firm, then got moved to the US working in their newly acquired Mainframe Capacity Planning division. That went south quickly when the parent company went bust, and I went to work for Microsoft on .NET. After that, I ended up at Sierra, working on genealogy, printing and photo editing software.

Sierra died, laying off people (it would be another 2 and a half years before it died entirely), so I ended up working at a small startup in Seattle working on Mass Spectrometers. That also died after 3 years... ... and now, I'm at Surreal Software working on Suffering: The Ties That Bind, as a lead engineer in their advanced technology group.

So somehow I went full circle, and ended up back in the games industry. The hours can be long (the past three months were hell - I lived at the office only going home to sleep and eat) - but on the whole, I love the people I work with, the things I'm working on... it's all worth it in the end.

Roll on Next Gen. ;-)

My atari video game at Sirius Software for 20th C.

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved from a job as systems programmer at Apple Computer to game programmer for Sirius Software. Many twelve hour days later, 20th C. Fox bought my game and three others for $1,000,000. When it was time to cut the check to me, Sirus Software went bankrupt. I became unemployed.

Years later I got my job back at Apple.

Ahhhh, Gemstone III...

[Twintop]

At the time when I got my start I was 9 years old. I still remember finding this when AOL only gave you 20 hours per month, and playing it about 140 hours the first month. You should've heard the lecture I got from my dad about the outrageous bill he received because of that.

Is this game related to Gemstone Warrior?

[antdude]

Or is this a different game? I couldn't find anything on Gemstone 3/III.

Re:Is this game related to Gemstone Warrior?

[Twintop]

It is now known as Gemstone IV, and is produced by a company called Simutronics [play.net]. It's your typical MUD (and one of the most successful ever at that), except it was on AOL, Genie, and Compuserv before they moved to being their own website/independant of these ISPs in the late 90s.

Re:Is this game related to Gemstone Warrior?

[antdude]

Twintop: Ahhh, MUD style. Thanks! :)

Networking

[Anonymous Coward]

I was a self taught programmer and loved to get on early PDP-11 BBS's and write little multiuser programs. I learned C this way and wrote a chat forum (early IRC like program that used shared memory for interprocess communication).

Meanwhile an older friend on that PDP-11 was writing a full blown text-based multiplayer RPG- one of the first VT100 massively multiplayer (ok, at the time only 7 people could login to the PDP) games I had ever seen. I offered him my forum as a chat area for staging before launching into the game.

Later, he was approached by someone who was starting a multiplayer games company and wanted him to bring the game to that company. He took the job and I got my first paycheck for writing software when he gave me money for using the chat program. The game went on to be a huge success and has been revised with Graphics and still has a large following today.

I thought it was great getting paid to do what I enjoyed, so I continued working on my skills and got better and better at C, wrote a few demos, and got a job interview at a company that was putting Spear of Destiny in arcades with a VR helmet. I happened to go for the interview when they had John Carmack in town helping them code support for the helmet. I got to spend a short time talking to him about the game and was further inspired. I didn't take the job though because it was an operator job, not a programming job.

A short time later I got a call from my pal who asked me to come to Key West and interview for the company for which he was now the Director of software development. I went, but was still a bit too young, hadn't finished my degree, and declined the offer.

2 years later I met an exchange student, fell in love, and we decided to get married- but I had no real job. I gave them a call back and asked if I could be considered again and they did. I sent them the demos of stuff I had been writing, and a short time later accepted my first real game developer job working in Key West Florida and making $30K/yr.

I went on to cofound a couple companies and help other people make a lot of money, but now I work in IT and do game development on the side. I miss the work and find IT to be such a waste of energy- but the money is great.

My only regret is that I declined to go out on the town after the interview with John Carmack and the guys who had interviewed me. I really didn't know who John was at the time, but had played his games and remembered seeing his name in the credits.

When Doom came out, I really knew who he was.

Game testing

[fsterman]

How the HELL can I get that job? Who's dick do you have to suck to play video games for a living?

Re:Game testing

[typical]

You really sure that you want to be a game tester?

Think about it, first.

You don't make *that* much money.

Part of what makes video games fun is that you *can* do them -- that you don't *have* to play them. That isn't the case here.

You don't get to do things that are the most fun. If it looks like there's a bug involving walking around a translucent pillar in a game, you may be walking around the thing and modifying the environment slightly each time for hours. When you finally find the bug, you get to write up a report on it and figure out how to reproduce it.

It's not quite the same thing as just dropping into a fragfest with your friends.

The other problem with game design -- a lot of people think "I love playing game series Foo, so I'd love to work *on* game series Foo". That doesn't necessarily hold; as a matter of fact, if I really liked playing a game, I'd deliberately want to avoid working on the team that makes it. Why? Most games have finite replay value, and if you work on the game, you know the whole game in advance. All you've done is ruined your favorite game series for yourself; you can't play it.

Game development takes place on a tight timeline, and can be high-stress and demanding of hours.

There isn't much job security, as game development houses don't have a very long life expectancy.

For all I know, you may like game testing, but you shouldn't be walking into the thing under a bunch of illusions...

My story

[ZorbaTHut]

I dropped out of college after a year and a half. I'd been competing on an online programming site named Topcoder - a games company was searching for people through that same site, and I was in the top ten, and I managed to get the job. I worked there for about a year and a half, released a game, and went back to college.

That lasted precisely one semester. I still haven't seen my report card, I suspect I failed everything, and I don't care - I'm done with school.

I went off to work at a non-games company, an