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.

Playing Zork on the MIT DEC machines

[John3]

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).

As someone who works in the game industry...

[Guano_Jim]

...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'.

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 Path...

[okayplayer]

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.

How I Got My Start!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

My start...

[kreyg]

I was always the person in my family with an interest in computers, and fortunately my dad had access to the earliest Commodore microcomputers in his line of work. This landed me a Commodore 64 at home in 1983 or so, and I started working in BASIC, trying to put a few games together, but not getting very far.

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.

my "start"

[sm.arson]

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!)

Or as they say -

[Geshem]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be..

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...