Hiring Developers

I don't work in the game industry, but in software, and if you are a programmer programming anything you are going to work long hours, if can't handle 12 hour days don't look at getting into it, not many places are you going to be working 8 hours a day and doing anything fun. I could be wrong but most everyone I know in the software industry says the same.

I thought about going into the games arena as a programmer for a while but I just wasn't up for the hours. I prefer to do my 40hrs a week. That gives me time to do lots of stuff outside of work like PLAY GAMES!

I just have a question for the insiders. When you're working on a game do you know it sucks before hand but you're powerless to do anything about it? Or do you think "it will get better at the end. all games start out like this". Or something else? I just wonder how so many crap games get released.

For anyone trying to get into the games field, there's good and bad news as far as that article is concerned. The good news is that's a Dallas based article and almost everyone related to it is on the Dallas scene, or at least the Quake/UT related scene. Dallas is definitely hurting right now, I know people with years of experience and solid contacts with company owners are having a hard time sitting on people's waiting lists. But, the good news is that the games market is bigger than Dallas and the opinions of the Dallas Morning News "experts". California and Seattle and many other places have big game markets that are not included in the inbred soap-opera state of Dallas games. The article said something about "Dallas is fairing better than most areas", that is simply not true, it is among, if not the worst case.

The bad news is that in my 8th year now of game development, including Square, Art Director / Lead Level Designer on Anachronox for over three years (moved on about 9 months back), and console work on PS1 and PS2 games in the LA area, you WILL NOT, repeat WILL NOT find a job where working 40 hour weeks is considered acceptable, much less actually progress in your field. It sucks, but it is the cold truth. Expect 60 hour weeks on average. They love to tell you on interviews how "yeah, we're not big hour crunchers around here, come on down".... don't buy it, just accept that it will happen. If you're not up for that, do web design or some shit cause games (or visual effects of any kind) are not going to afford you any real free time. If you're married and looking into it, I would advise people to make sure your spouse is not completely time-dependant on you, they better have a hobby or career or your relationship will suffer greatly as the years pass.

A lot of people apply where I work. We get resumes from all over the world, I would say at least 100 per month. Problem is that hardly any of these people have any game industry experience. So to say developers can be picky is a bit misleading. In fact we hired a programmer from England and a few people from the Phillipnes and Korea because the talent pool is so low.

Thats why I am interested to see how the www.garagegames.com thing works out. I would love to work in games but extra long hours for minimal pay is not something I am willing to do. Great pay for extra long hours is ok, so is ok pay with short hours. I like working on games but I will not be an endentured servant.

Bleah, better get a CS degree in case game making doesn't work out.
I wanna start small. You can get a flash card reader for Gameboy Advance for $130, that'll let you interface with the unit. Compilers, tools, docs, and everything else are free. Maybe after a few tries, I'll make a game worth publishing.

This is what I like about mod-making...I enjoy it, but I wouldn't want to do games for a living (I want a boring job with job-security, or high pay). With mods, I can have a creative outlet to mess with in my free time (and I have no life, so the couple of hours I have doing nothing can be put to good use). And, I can work on whatever I want rather than ending up working on "DeerHunter666:TheNextGeneration...DolphinHuntingSmartyManWhalerShip."*

*note: I have nothing against hunting, I just find it to be a bad idea for a computer game :).

This article makes me cry. Makes the future look pretty bleak for me :(

I debated wether or not i ought to post my experiences here, but for those of you who are looking at this article and getting nervous...

Don't give up if you know its something you want to do.

If you have talent and can prove it, AND if you can work with a team, and if you have backup on that, AND if you can deal with someone else being your boss .. and telling you to toss a months worth work and start over, .. and telling you that the games plot shifted a bit in a direction that isn't appealing to you..

You have a shot. ;)

I worked on Gunman Chronicles. I am proud that we finished, and I am really happy that some of our guys went on to better things. People picked up large ammounts of experience on that project, and others did find out it wasn't what they were meant to do.

Those of us who looked for jobs else where for whatever reason have managed to find jobs. Nice ones that we are happy with. No, we don't make dream salaries, and we definitely aren't rich, but we are living and creating games.

It can work. Don't lose faith because of what that article said. Its all about skill, proof and taking risks.

"the fact that there are so many more people than jobs, developers can be picky"

Really? Judging from the preponderance of crap games, they're not being picky enough.

Executive positions were the first to be eliminated, she said. "We're hardly seeing any marketing positions at all," Ms. Cambron said.

Guess who has a marketing degree? doh... :(

All talent based careers are extremely competitive, the best people get the jobs tho, thats how it works.

I guess it's time for alot of people to find something else to do.

first post ;)