Feeling disillusioned with video game industry

[AssKoala]

There's entire fields dedicated to the study of Physics.  It does not take a week to learn the field.

You can easily learn the necessary basics to build some simple Physics, but you won't be writing Havok-level Physics without some serious time and effort.

[Snipe[LAN]]

You can easily learn the necessary basics to build some simple Physics, but you won't be writing Havok-level Physics without some serious time and effort.

Well, that's kinda what I meant to say ... intensive meaning almost completely dedicated to it for some weeks/months depending on how serious the physics you need are.  Besides, I didn't read the post correctly the first time ... I thought they were referring to the HL2 programmers, not the creators of the physics engine they used.

[iGame3D]

If poor poop is still around, and still listening then here's my advice.
(edit: I see his post count of one, so, here's my advice for the next guy)

Continue to pursue your interest in games, you can be an independent game
designer just like people are independent movie makers,
and the game industry is bigger than the movie industry worldwide.

Pursue your interest in art vigourously and do not exclude any media from your experience,
stick your hands in clay and mud, bend metal, whatever. But the definition of "artist" is amorphous.

I wanted to be a comic book artist when I was your age, well, a game designer too,
but I didn't have a computer, and I did have a pencil so...

By the time I got out of high school I didn't want to be a comic book artist anymore,
I barely read them. I wanted to work as a graphic artist with computers as I'd been trained for three years,
but that wasn't the way things were done yet, so I was stuck cleaning toilets, selling cigarettes and coffee,
and working in the textile industry until  I went back to school for graphic design where
I fought tooth and nail against half of everything they tried to pollute me with, like lame old school graphics production techniques.

After ten years as an "artist" in the graphics industry I can tell you know that it is "commercial" beyond your imagination.
 Imagine being someone who hates chemical pollution with a passion, hates the oil industry more than evil itself,
looks at gambling as pathetic addiction for the week, sees automobiles as a plague on the planet and  then having
to promote that kind of garbage for twelve to twenty hours a day to get a paycheck!

You are were I was 15, damn , 20 years ago.
My teachers advice was not to learn programming but to learn the Mac.
In all it turned out ok, but man, I wish I could code more than the high level stuff I currently am learning.

I can't change the past, but your future is wide open in front of you, seize it, spank it, make it your bitch!


And, yah, I too am disillusioned with the industry at times, but besides being a hemp farmer,
or an old old actor playing the mean old madman in some Lovecraftian film, its the only career desire left on my plate.
So I will chase it around the table until I've stuck my fork in it, bit off its head and sucked out its juicy insides.

There are plenty of tools for you to learn game design, start small, move slow, I know some kid who started about your age,
released a golf game at about 16 or 17,and has made $17,000 on it!!!
Another guy who won contest after contest starting at your age (he was programming at 12 or something).
When I met my team mate from germany he was only 17.

You can do anything, just take the lows with the highs and enjoy the trip.

Game Design is a Journey, not the Destination.

Hope that was inspiring.  

[tweakman]

@iGame3D - Wow! that was a great post. Loved how your words painted a visual picture in my mind of you chasing your career desire (I pictured a big juicy heart) impaling it with your fork and biting the head off! Great stuff! You have inspired me to really get focused on my mission!

Ever since I played the first pong game and all of the Atari games I've wanted to be a game programmer. Between the early seventies and the present, life continually got in the way. Back before there was even a thing as a First Person Shooter, I had the vision for that genre, but I was beaten to the punch by you know who, the three Johns. I also play the drums and had the idea, first, of playing them in a cage that was manipulated by hydraulics so the drummer could actually be suspended over the audeience. Well, right after I told a friend about the idea, he showed me and article about Tommy Lee doing what I had invisioned! There was also the idea of the worlds first heated butter knife ... but I'll save that for a later time. Oh, well, life goes on.

But now I'm in a position to actually realize becoming an indie game developer. With the power of PC's today and the abundance of really good free and inexpensive tools, there is no excuse anymore. I have actually created some games with Java, C++, and Visual Basic. They are all 2D games but it was a good learning experience.

I am now learning to make 3D games using the Torque engine and scripting language. Maybe while actually making some games I will work on programming my own 3D game engine.

Thanks for the colorful injection of pure inspiration. I needed that!

[adamoore]

It's the companies that are after the money -- not the game developers themselves. First off, a game is proposed to a publisher, and they have to figure out whether or not funding the game will cause them to file for bankrupcy and hope they guessed right. Good games don't always do great commercially (Katamari, anybody?) and even if the publisher of the game collapses, the creators of the game stay in the industry and have the recognition of making an awesome game.

I recommend going to school for game design or programming (whatever floats your goat). I attend UAT as a game design major -- excellent place.

I'm looking forward to the GDC, I'm going to try to go.

[Josh1billion]

(whatever floats your goat)

LOL

Good advice though.  I recommend learning to program even if you're going to be a designer, though.. it can help you understand how to design because if you're designing, you're mostly pitching ideas to the programmers.. so knowing how they work will help you be a better designer.

[Stage-It]

um... hi

I'm 15 and for the past few years I have wanted to make games and eventually have a career in the games industry. I've had lots of ideas and, although for personal reason I haven't actually been able to complete any of them, I have still planned and planned out my ideas. They aren't deep, and they aren't that clever, but it's a start, lol

But just recently I have felt like the games industry is just too commercial and superficial, with the PlayStation Portable just crystalized it for me, an empty corporate attempt to cash in on a lucritive market with no care for the artistic possibilities of an interactive medium.. I worry I could never achieve a level of expression and philosophical learning that I want to do with my life, and so I have thought about becoming an artist, I wouldn't mind being poor or whatever, as long as I could express myself and learn I would be happy, I guess, and maybe less numbed by society.

Reading the Hiroshi Yamauchi interview was a little reinvigorating, he sounds pretty crazy and a little proud but felt like he had heart too. But I was wondering if any of you guys ever felt like this and hoping you can help me out cos I'm really torn on this.

Thanks

Hey hey hey, I'm 17 and you sound like my clone.  PM me with your AIM/MSN address, I'd love to talk to you about this.

[Kartzan]

Masters of Doom is a really inspiring book, you should deifnetly check that out, and as far as developers and publishers go... yeah publishers suck.  Unfortunately the industry has become very profit driven and thus only games which are surefire money makers get good contracts, that and sequels.  

Unfortunately for most aspiring game developers these days, the budgets for current blockbusters are in the tens of millions, and to create truly amazing games one typically needs a huge team of people working on everything from modeling to audio content.

However, I believe things are going to be changing in the near future.  With downloadable content available on the next gen consoles, and with high speed transfers becoming more common, hopefully publishers will be eliminated as the middle man and developers will be able to sell their games directly via the internet, thus allowing for a greater profit margin, which means more money, to make better games.

In other words, dont get your hopes down, read masters of doom, and most importantly get a good education.

Just my two cents worth

[Kartzan]

As far as programming goes, it really helps to know a language and most importantly the fundamentals of high level languages.  With the fundamentals, it makes it real easy to just pick up a book and in essence pick up a new language.  I have a good foundation in C, and from there its helped me tremendously in all sorts of programming I've done from VB to Java.  

A good understanding of logic is also important...