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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?
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 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