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How Do You Become A Console Game Programmer?
sknja writes "I am currently a junior in college and am about to begin the last 2 years of a 5-year electrical engineering program. I have a concentration in computer engineering, and a minor in Japanese. Right now, my life revolves around classes, video games, and learning Japanese. Since I am passionate about all three, I want to try and combine the three, my goal being to become an engineer working on game consoles. Since the end of school is drawing near, what steps should I take toward achieving this goal? Do gaming companies ever have co-op or internship positions open?" Is Japanese a practical or useful skill in this context, and how should/do game companies value internships and programming degrees vs. practical experience on game mods?
Hopefully the original asker will answer this question, but from what I read, it seems like he's more towards the hardware end of things (working on designing the consoles) than on the software (working on games for them). There's some crossover, but he's in computer engineering: hardware with a bit of software. Nowhere does he mention programming.
So, is it really wanting to be a programmer, or is it wanting to be a designer of the hardware?
Ability is best demonstrated with a showcase of a playable game or at least a prototype that shows you "get it". If you specifically aim for the consoles, then Game Boy Advance is a good place to start as it has a healthy and active indie/hobbyist developer community.
Game companies often find interns who have no skills to be a mere distraction, they rarely train people to become games programmers although I've seen this happen too! Not many remain with that company today.
As for Japanese, the skill is handy in the first months of development on new platforms when technical documentation is scarce and most of it in the original Japanese form. While this would make platforms like PlayStation 3 theoretically applicable, you'd also have to have serious PlayStation 2 experience to be useful in such teams.
You can program any of the current generation consoles without knowing a word of Japanese. Also for most games localization into other languages is generally done with language experts and little to no specific programming is involved in making each of the language versions.
Perhaps there are opportunities to look into for translating existing Japanese games to the American market. As the popularity of the manga culture seems to be on a constant rise, it's very likely that we will see more of the older Japanese games which were originally never planned to be localized. The code and comments for these are likely to be Japanese, or Engrish at best.
The one advantage you have from your lingual ability is that you can play rare Japanese games and thus expand your knowledge and understanding of the art. Play those games, and make sure you mention it on your resume!
Jouni
Jouni Mannonen | Game Designer, Consultant
I can talk from experience about hardware:
You'd need to get into one of the semiconductor houses that do design work for the gaming companies in order to be a part of this. Not sure who does what for Sony, Nintendo and M$, but you can bet that whoever did the design work (and whoever has a manufacturing contract) has a place to work overseas, quite possibly in China or Japan.
Good luck.
There's this thing that goes "the games industry is hard to get into". You know, get yourself a good degree, maybe a masters, start as a tester and maybe after a few years scraping by... etc etc. Does anyone's experience actually tally up with this? In my experience its easy to get into the industry, provided you can show some basic ability (via a game or tech demo) and have a demonstrable love of games. If you've got a solid academic background, then its even easier. My advice: don't sweat it, just go for it!
Jouni already posted some great tips, but if I may add:
Don't forget to keep learning! i.e. Subscribe to the Game Dev Algorithm Mailing List Pick up the "Game Programming Gems", volumes 1 thru 3.
Put your knowledge into practise. Write demos. Pick up the Linux PS2 kit, and start learning how the hardware works. Each successive console builds upon the previous one.
Don't forget the general comp. sci. knowledge. Master C++. View the assembly code the compiler(s) generates. Learn STL, specifically what it's strengths and weaknesses are.
Best of luck!
Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of devkit advance and start hacking. Many, many success stories of breaking into the industry have been heard from hobbyist hackers who produced a tiny demo showing promise, even on the GBA. You'd be surprised how many 2D game programming techniques translate almost unchanged into the 3D realm. If you're interested in 3D console programming, tho, pick up a dreamcast and get the devkit for that.
On hardware design: I have no idea.
On Japanese: Another big move in the industry is to have localised versions of games come out closer and closer together. Wouldn't it be nice if a game could hit a Japanese market at the same time it hits the American and European ones? This requires knowledge of internationalization practices. Japanese is one of the harder languages to support, programmatically, so building support for it into your games will give you a good grounding and excellent experience. Release a demo that parses and displays UTF8 strings on the gameboy advance. You'll be hired, I guarantee it.*
(* not a guarantee.)
- Cloud
I'm not a console programmer, but I am (well, will be) a developer doing dev tools and kernel stuff for Xbox.
I personally just went the "obvious" route: gave my resume to my closest Microsoft recruiter and interviewed, etc. I do consider myself the luckiest SOB ever in terms of positions I got to interview for, however.
If you feel you have an awesome game idea, Microsoft actually does make it tons easier to become an Xbox developer than it is to become a developer for other consoles. MS has the Xbox Incubator Program, which takes what MS feels are very good ideas and basically becomes your publisher. They will buy the dev kits and resources you need to finish your game.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to finish my thoughts at the moment... Perhaps later.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I was in almost the exact same situation about two years ago. I graduated with degrees in both CS and Japanese and headed straight for the game industry.
Most of the important stuff has already been said, but I'll add a few more comments. First of all, you must start writing games during your free time. A GBA demo is great, but a PC demo is fine too. If you do a PC demo, your work will probably be more impressive if you minimize your reliance on 3rd party APIs like DirectX and OpenGL. On the other hand, if you can demonstrate a knack for quality game design, good AI, and/or good character handling, writing a demo in DirectX won't be detrimental.
Secondly, pick up some books (somebody mentioned the Game Programming Gems series, which are great) about game development and familiarize yourself with common methods and algorithms. This will help you at interview time when they ask you to implement A* on paper or to explain how you would write a 3D renderer on a platform that does not support floating point (like the GBA).
You've missed the Game Developers Conference this year, but if you are still looking next year it is a great place to hand our resumes and make contacts. You can apply to be a volunteer, and they'll give you full access to the conference in exchange for about 20 hours worth of work.
Finally, there is your Japanese skills. If you are interested in working in Japan as a programmer, I should warn you that you'll face lower pay, the annoying Japanese seniority system, and possibly even longer hours than here in the states. However, it can be done, even by foreigners with very little Japanese under their belt. I'd suggest checking out this article (especially the last 1/3rd or so) concerning (among other things) a professional console developer went to work for Sega in Japan. Also, Tokyopia is a great forum run by foreigners with gaming interests in Japan.
One other thing to consider: Many Japanese game companies have American offices, but most of them only localize and distribute games developed in Japan. Do you want to write code, or perform translation/localization? If your goal is code and you end up working in the States, I am sorry to say that you probably won't have many chances to use Japanese professionally.
waka