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.")"

Comments

My Start

[mfh]

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.

Aaah, those were the days..

[Anakron]

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..

Those who program...

[suspected]

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.

Games ain't what they used to be

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

My start...

[Skraut]

In 1980 I got my Atari 800, played star raiders and desided I wanted to program games. Sure, I was only 4 at that time, but it was a dream that stuck with me. I finished all of my High School's computer and programming classes, by the time I was a Sophomore. I spent the rest of high school teaching myself C++ and Assembly.

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.

Re:Game testing

[typical]

You really sure that you want to be a game tester?

Think about it, first.

You don't make *that* much money.

Part of what makes video games fun is that you *can* do them -- that you don't *have* to play them. That isn't the case here.

You don't get to do things that are the most fun. If it looks like there's a bug involving walking around a translucent pillar in a game, you may be walking around the thing and modifying the environment slightly each time for hours. When you finally find the bug, you get to write up a report on it and figure out how to reproduce it.

It's not quite the same thing as just dropping into a fragfest with your friends.

The other problem with game design -- a lot of people think "I love playing game series Foo, so I'd love to work *on* game series Foo". That doesn't necessarily hold; as a matter of fact, if I really liked playing a game, I'd deliberately want to avoid working on the team that makes it. Why? Most games have finite replay value, and if you work on the game, you know the whole game in advance. All you've done is ruined your favorite game series for yourself; you can't play it.

Game development takes place on a tight timeline, and can be high-stress and demanding of hours.

There isn't much job security, as game development houses don't have a very long life expectancy.

For all I know, you may like game testing, but you shouldn't be walking into the thing under a bunch of illusions...