Do you/have you worked in the Games Industry?

[gunrock]

I used to work in the game industry. I worked as a programmer on several Playstation games and did a little PC game programming too. I left the industry for two reasons:

1) Financial: Small developers setup and go out of business at an alarming rate and often take your last months wages with them. I was getting old, I had responsibilities and I needed something more stable, so I jumped into the burgeoning Internet development industry shortly before the dot com crash....

The pay sucks in games too (though it has improved). You either have to be a genius (Which let's face it, few of us are. You may think you're the next John Carmack or Warren Spector but trust me, the industry has many very, very clever people, and it's more likely you'll end up being the next faceless "UI/Peripherals programmer" or "Internal Producer"), or you have to have been working in the industry since the 8 or 16 bit days and have lots of respect.

It doesn't help that making games can be interesting and exciting work(unless you're working on Barbie Fashion Designer 4) and many people will work long hours for little money, just to be a part of it.

2) The industry is very immature. Whilst it's got more professional with the consolidation and large sums of cash required, a lot of companies have people in middle and upper management with little or no management training, who were probably victimised at school and are intent in wreaking vengeance on anybody who disagrees with them or reminds them of the bloke who gave them a wedgie behind the bus stop circa 1985.

When I joint the industry I saw found it be a spoilt 8 year old, who had learnt enough to know the difference between right and wrong, but still got overexcited and greedy on occasion. Nowdays, I see the industry as a petulant 14 year old, who wants to be grown up and be given responsibility but still can't help sulking and throwing tantrums when things don't go their way.

Anyway, I've left it now and I don't intend going back. But trust me, if you've got the skills and the determination, then it can be a really rewarding career. Just don't expect to get rich doing it.

Gunrock

[KempStar]

I kind of worked in the game industry. Around November 2001, when Sega announced they were to stop supporting the Dreamcast, I decided to see if I could make some money. As most of you know, a lot of high profile releases (shenmue 2, Headhunter, Rez) and a few low key ones (90 minutes soccer, freestyle scooter) were not released in the US, and most of the world, but were released here in UK. So I set up an account with Big ben interactive and started selling them on ebay. Ended up selling 1200 units of DC software

I also tried to set up an online import store back then when they werent ten a penny, but none of the banks would lend me the money i needed. Having just graduated, I had no money of my own ;(

[Spatial]

I am also a presenter on Game Network

Get away

Which one ?

That way I'll know not to go shooting my mouth off and upsetting anyone

Oh, and I've created several well known games series, I won't mention any of them but one involves a virus and some zombies, the other a man with devestating combos and a bloody big sword.........



..... nah, didn't think any of you would actually buy that

[Edame]

I once thought about going for a testing/QA job at Codemasters, and also made a few games on Klick & Play

[Dezm0nd]

Does being a manager of an independent game store count?

Well... that's me

[vic_viper]

Used to work at an Indie Import Shop back in the early Ninties.

Go Games in Dewsbury West Yorkshire if any of you guys / gals remember it.

[JU!]

I don't actually work in the games indusrty, but i'm starting one of those new degrees just invented. That have games components in them, they had a big feature in EDGE a while back it had Mario on the front, and mentions all the Degree courses with games componets in it apparently these help u get into the industry and are well recognised. I'm gonna try to get into the games industry, it may never happen, but i'm determined and hope it will someday.

[phillai]

Yes, I remember Go Games.
It was actually quite good.
I even won a Street Fighter II Turbo competition and won ?100!
What was the name of the geezer who ran/owned the shop and what does he do now?
Wasn't his name Mark?
And has Dewsbury got a good import shop as yet since?

[Tom Salter]

I am also a presenter on Game Network

Get away

Which one ?

That way I'll know not to go shooting my mouth off and upsetting anyone

I do the Game Guru show a few nights a week. Nothing impressive I assure you!

[vic_viper]

Yes, I remember Go Games.
It was actually quite good.
I even won a Street Fighter II Turbo competition and won ?100!
What was the name of the geezer who ran/owned the shop and what does he do now?
Wasn't his name Mark?
And has Dewsbury got a good import shop as yet since?

And looking at your username, i remember you too

I'm the one who used to have long hair and a beard if you remember me? It was Mark who owned the shop, i still see him a bit but since i've moved to Doncaster a few years ago not as much as i used to.
I remember the SF2 competition well. It was on a Sunday and i got knocked out first round (some things never change ) Didn't we also give away a full set of super deformed Streetfighter 2 characters too?

I've not been into Dewsbury town centre for ages, but last time i looked there was a game shop in the same place as Go Games, but no import stuff was onsale...it was all battered PSone / PS2 games and DVD's. Certainly not the high quality PC Engine / SFC / MD / Neo stuff that we used to sell.

[Mervin]

I used to work for games sites freeloader.com and Gamesdomain. I used to do Business Development and Ad Sales (does this count as games industry??!!), so it's me you can thank for all those bloody pop ups!

[unklematt]

I love the idea of working in games, on something like MGS that has a really cool, richly designed environment. But as people have already pointed out, I reckon you're more likely to end up on an Army Men game than something really ground breaking. Not going to let that stop me dreaming though

Also, one of my best friends works for a big UK developer, and he's always moaning about how things are run. Think he would echo your views, gunrock.

[slider271]

I used to work for DMA Design (until Rockstar took them over) - I was a tester on GTA, tester on GTA2 (plus some very minimal design on bonus levels), and I was a fully-fledged level designer on Body Harvest.

For the most part, it was fun working in the games industry: some of the people were great, others weren't, as you can imagine. A tester's pay was atrocious but it got better once I was a level designer. And I keep in touch with some of the people who went to Rockstar North and I think the pay's a lot better now

And yes, the way things are run within projects (and outwith them) can often be a source of immense frustration. From my own point of view, being a level designer was much more interesting than being a coder, purely from watching the hassle they had fixing problems and implementing changes (the big one being when Nintendo changed Body Harvest from an arcade shooter into a semi-RPG).

It's something I'm considering trying to get back into at the moment, as my current job isn't the most stimulating...

Oh, one last thing - the hours can be hell towards the end of a project, something worth bearing in mind if you've got a family.


Cheers,
Mike

[Nikorasu]

I've written for three notable videogame magazines, and part of my current job means I review games each month.

[MonkeyWrench]

I'm getting deja vu, I'm sure I'll already posted in a thread like this somewhere

Anyway. I've worked as a contract level designer on a couple of well known PC FPS. After that I worked for a couple of years as a journalist running a bunch of websites for an establisted network.