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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.")"
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.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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..
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
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.
...who got hired for a Net Yaroze game. I used to love those*, but I never knew anybody got hired for one. *When they were on the cover of OPM. In partic. the Boulderdash clone was pretty fantastic.
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
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).
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
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 Wehnimer's. out go step s s go gate s w s s s s (look for massies) yada yada yada. Yah, enough of proving my dorky love of text based worlds.
...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'.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
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.
"John Smith, 18, shot two cops execution-style after getting pulled over for having a broken headlight and speeding. Friends say Smith enjoyed Grand Theft Auto and would play it for hours. The producers of Grand Theft Auto stated it was absurd to imply any sort of connection whatsoever."
(I know it's not even remotely commonplace for this sort of thing to happen, and the story above is fictional- but it happens every once in a while. The rarity of its occurance does not mean it's not a valid problem).
Please help metamoderate.
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.
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).
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.
What a horrible thing the ESRB just did to the game industry.
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.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
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.
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.
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) 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.
sig fault
I started on ZX Spectrum doing some machine-code games and hacking around the assembler. I was then working in a TV studio, programming interactive games. Later I join a game studio of a big company. In two years, after I saw the "inside story", being disapointed, I left that company and the game industry to join automotive industy. Nice try Guybrush!
Oh the memories ...
http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/
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!)
for great justice, this sig has been moved
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.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be..
|| Geshem ||
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.
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 the lot. (Where have all the comic adventure games gone to anyway? I know there's a new leisure suit larry, but is that it?)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
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).
.NET. After that, I ended up at Sierra, working on genealogy, printing and photo editing software.
... and now, I'm at Surreal Software working on Suffering: The Ties That Bind, as a lead engineer in their advanced technology group.
;-)
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
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...
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.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
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.
Indeed... I feel am late for the game industry...
:( ...
I allways made drawings, many of which I have with me still. I dreamed... still do! But, it has taken me so long a time to get a computer... at age 20... By that age many have already learned enough to get you plases... But little old PC with thedevil98 and 32MB RAM, plus my limited experience with PC's proved a handicap... my english was also not as good as it is today... but I have kept hanging on... second PC I got was worsed... thedevel95 extra heavy edition...
Well... that was a pain... Then I bougt a PC, with lindows 3.0... I spend mush time learning how to get things installed the debian (free) way, I also learned of the hardware dificulties with 3D... and modems... plus the morunes didn't gave me a CD (untill I bug them for some time, 6 month later)... During that time I was at the universsity learning "programing" (the way they tech it, makes it only usefull for database)... so I learned a bit of Basic and COBOL... arkkk... learnig old languages can help but it is not so helpfull... and besides... I can't make a program yet... at least I can plan one with flowsharts and know how some thing work...
I stoped my "programing" stodies at the university... and went to learn basic electronic and computer repair at an institude... Now I have an A+ sertification and a good PC, but I feel I'm late... at age 27, it gets hard to learn how to program... though I still try... I just feel that I will end up with remorse... I hate that my game Ideas have not ben able to get anyware... I have lost my art'itude
I will be 28 soon... lets see if I manage something before 40... even if it is opensource... Linux could get some attention with my games... a few concrete ideas... a bunch of dreams...
-iMoron
I just wanted the chance earlier in live, like so many other have had...
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.
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.
How the HELL can I get that job? Who's dick do you have to suck to play video games for a living?
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
Or is this a different game? I couldn't find anything on Gemstone 3/III.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Yah, enough of proving my dorky love of text based worlds.
There is no shortage of free MUDs out there, as well as extremely-well written and free games in the mature text-based interactive fiction genre.
Try downloading TADS, and taking a shot at one of the vast library of games 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, if you're looking for a nice game to start with. Not the easiest game out there, but I love the mood.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
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, and while it's awesome, and pays far far better than any game company, I'm mostly here for two reasons:
* Learn things I wouldn't be able to learn at a games company
* Make a lot of money so I can start my own games company
* Have free time without nasty intellectual property issues so I can work on my first commercial game at home.
In maybe two years I'm quitting and trying to start my own company. Hard? Yes. Insane? Definitely. Worth it, for most people? No way. Worth it for me?
Hell fucking yes.
Ask me again in three years if you want to see if I pulled it off.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
If you're interested in a text-based mmorpg, then Achaea is it. It's free too.
I don't even care if I get modded off topic for this. People have to play it. I've played enough Dragon Realms to uh... fill something really big... but Achaea is it man. Player run everything, great people, good login levels... etc... Go go...
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} quest adventure games? or the clever puzzle games?
They evolved into new genres. I enjoyed the graphical adventure games as well, but honestly, the genre had its share of flaws. A good deal of the gameplay consisted of clicking on just about everything in sight, or trying objects that might be remotely related -- there often wasn't a strong rational correlation between a problem and the solution. It was also possible to get stuck. Sure, funny stories made the games enjoyable, but honestly, I'm not going to kid myself that the core gameplay in Lucasarts' old games was that astounding -- it was the funny story and animations, doled out over time.
What ever happened to manuals with jokes in them?
I've found that game manuals themselves are a dying breed. The newer the game, the smaller the manual -- a new PS2 game may have only a few pages in its tiny manual. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to read a lengthy instruction manual -- he wants to play the game he just bought.
There are exceptions (sims, some strategy games), but in general, manuals were something more suitable for the more literate "geek" audience that used to play video games, and less suitable for a mass market. Plus, there was a time when box and manual art was the best sort of visual appeal that was going to go into the game because of system limitations, and that's just no longer true.
Games now have generally evolved to not need a manual -- they have been architected to have a very shallow learning curve, which usually lasts over the life of the game, and is assisted by in-game mini-tutorials.
I haven't played a video game recently that has quite the subtle, dry, educated wittiness that I remember in some older, independent games. Simple slapstick seems to be more predominant -- but if you look at television, it seems to do the same thing. And it was never *all* games that did this.
If you want excellent writing, you can still get it in the form of text adventures (most independently made and freely distributable).
And why do people keep buying 'the sims'? It's a "real life" simulator with 4x the frustration and none of the "chance for passing on your genes"
I'd say that there are two reasons.
First, it is a "creative tool". It falls into the same category as Legos, building blocks, or a painting set -- it allows exploring a very wide range of ideas and strategies. You have a good deal of replayability because the user can create a great number of variations; this contrasts, say, a simple vertical shmup, where the number of things that the user can do are pretty limited.
Second, I've a theory (but little hard evidence to support it) as to why the Sims did well, particularly among the "non-gaming" audience. Today's "gamers" have generally been playing games for years. Today's game designers, programmers, and artists have been playing games for years. They have all undergone, to some extent, a standard canon of work. They were all influenced by past eras in games, and they have a common body of knowledge to rely upon.
For example, take the "break every crate" phenomenon. In many video games, the player can acquire items hidden in crates or other containers, but to do so, needs to break them open.
Now, back in the day, video game worlds were generally small and fairly static. Allowing the user to change the world (such as by breaking or moving objects) produced a good deal of interest. A good way to show
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.