Game Programming - Waste of Time?
Author
I, like almost everyone else on this board, have become somewhat of an addict when it comes to game programming. Always thinking about how to implement this, or optimize that, and code every free minute you have.
But after reading a few posts on the $$$ involved in game programming, I''m beginning to wonder if it''s worth it. I started programming when I was 15 (20 now) really basic stuff. Never realized it would ldea to game programming, but it has. But since i started game programming, I havent focused on anything else!
All my time and knowledge of programming has been dedicated to games. Ask me to whip up a quick 2d game in DX, no problem. Ask me to program a database using SQL or whatever and I''m lost. Looking through the ads for programming jobs everyone lists requirements like COBOL, SQL, bla bla bla, shit i dont know at all, and therefore cant find a decent summer job so I''m stuck here in a friggin dead end temp job bored out of m mind all day reading posts!!
So I was just wondering if anyone else felt the same way, if game programming is the way they should be going. Dont think of the now, think of the future...
(I highly doubt I''ll ever stop though, I''m already an addict. This shit is worse than crack!)
ByteMe95::~ByteMe95()
Cerebrum Software
quote:Original post by ByteMe95
(I highly doubt I''ll ever stop though, I''m already an addict. This shit is worse than crack!)
Wait... does that mean you''ve tried crack?
lntakitopi@aol.com - http://www.geocities.com/guanajam
Most people I know do it because they love it. If you love it, of course it''s worth it. Money shouldn''t be a concern.
As far as getting a programming job in another field, if you want to get a job doing dbs and SQL, then learn dbs and SQL. If you want to get a job doing MFC apps, learn MFC. You''ve already taught yourself game programming on your own, learning something new shouldn''t be a problem. It won''t take long either. And there is a decent change that you''ll be able to use what you learn in games, too.
As far as getting a programming job in another field, if you want to get a job doing dbs and SQL, then learn dbs and SQL. If you want to get a job doing MFC apps, learn MFC. You''ve already taught yourself game programming on your own, learning something new shouldn''t be a problem. It won''t take long either. And there is a decent change that you''ll be able to use what you learn in games, too.
What a great question! Or perhaps not. But I suspect you are not the only one with the same question.
For now, there may be more jobs out there looking for database experience, SQL, Sybase, etc. Databases are used for many, many differents things, even games---and knowing how to use these technologies can really round out your programming experience. It will make you a more valuable asset no matter what kind of programming you actually do. Databases are used today for e-commerce (inventory, order-status, customer-tracking), and that market is probably still growing, with even very small businesses moving online. I would guess that the best salaries today may very well be in internet database development. I really don''t know for sure, though. I haven''t really looked into it. It is just a guess.
COBOL? I certainly wouldn''t go out and learn *that* language. Pre-Y2K, when we were still working on the Y2K problem, you could make some good money working on old COBOL code, but I wouldn''t consider that career path now.
There are many jobs out there that don''t have anything to do with databases. And I think that will continue for quite a few years to come. On my end, we do scientific and engineering research. Starting to develop some game technology. Sometimes we have to deal with databases (and so knowing how to do it is helpful), but most of what we do is pretty hardcore math and programming and object-oriented software design. If you want to do game-like programming (gaming or science or whatever), I would say hone up on your math skills. Consider looking not only in the game industry but also in the engineering world. My company is primarily an engineering company, but in an office of 40 or so people, about half are computer scientists. Some come from game companies, almost none of them doing database stuff----except just now and then.
You say that you''ve been looking for a summer job, which makes me think you are in school. Is this true? What are you studying? Are you a junior (based on your age I would say you may be)? I would say it is probably quite hard to find the perfect job when you are in school. The job would have to be local, since most companies won''t be that interested in flying you around for just a couple of months. Not to mention that housing can be an issue----where to stay cheap for 2 months? Best thing you can do is finish your degree, study math, constantly try and make contact with companies that you would eventually want to work for, and build up a solid portfolio of example work. Create a web page for yourself and make videos or demos available so when you make contact with someone you can say, "hey, look at these cool examples that I''ve done for the past 5 or 6 years!" You should make sure that you get a handle on how to do formal s/w design. Not necessarily object-oriented or C++, but you need to know how to develop robust software and that starts with a requirements specification document, moves to various design documents (functional specs, test plans, etc.) Its hard to get in the habit of doing these things, but believe me you will be much more happy with your *own* work if you do.
There''s my $0.02 worth.
Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
email: grhodes@sed.ara.com
For now, there may be more jobs out there looking for database experience, SQL, Sybase, etc. Databases are used for many, many differents things, even games---and knowing how to use these technologies can really round out your programming experience. It will make you a more valuable asset no matter what kind of programming you actually do. Databases are used today for e-commerce (inventory, order-status, customer-tracking), and that market is probably still growing, with even very small businesses moving online. I would guess that the best salaries today may very well be in internet database development. I really don''t know for sure, though. I haven''t really looked into it. It is just a guess.
COBOL? I certainly wouldn''t go out and learn *that* language. Pre-Y2K, when we were still working on the Y2K problem, you could make some good money working on old COBOL code, but I wouldn''t consider that career path now.
There are many jobs out there that don''t have anything to do with databases. And I think that will continue for quite a few years to come. On my end, we do scientific and engineering research. Starting to develop some game technology. Sometimes we have to deal with databases (and so knowing how to do it is helpful), but most of what we do is pretty hardcore math and programming and object-oriented software design. If you want to do game-like programming (gaming or science or whatever), I would say hone up on your math skills. Consider looking not only in the game industry but also in the engineering world. My company is primarily an engineering company, but in an office of 40 or so people, about half are computer scientists. Some come from game companies, almost none of them doing database stuff----except just now and then.
You say that you''ve been looking for a summer job, which makes me think you are in school. Is this true? What are you studying? Are you a junior (based on your age I would say you may be)? I would say it is probably quite hard to find the perfect job when you are in school. The job would have to be local, since most companies won''t be that interested in flying you around for just a couple of months. Not to mention that housing can be an issue----where to stay cheap for 2 months? Best thing you can do is finish your degree, study math, constantly try and make contact with companies that you would eventually want to work for, and build up a solid portfolio of example work. Create a web page for yourself and make videos or demos available so when you make contact with someone you can say, "hey, look at these cool examples that I''ve done for the past 5 or 6 years!" You should make sure that you get a handle on how to do formal s/w design. Not necessarily object-oriented or C++, but you need to know how to develop robust software and that starts with a requirements specification document, moves to various design documents (functional specs, test plans, etc.) Its hard to get in the habit of doing these things, but believe me you will be much more happy with your *own* work if you do.
There''s my $0.02 worth.
Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
email: grhodes@sed.ara.com
Well, ByteMe95, I was almost in the same situation as you... I''ve been programming since I was around 13, and I''m 20 now. (If you count BASIC and a little Pascal, then I''ve been programming since I was 7). I got my first game programming job when I was 17, and stayed at it for a year and a half. I left because I was about to take a pretty heavy course load, and needed to improve my gpa a bunch.
When it came time to start looking for a summer job, I noticed the same thing you did... most jobs that advertise positions request knowledge in COBOL, or SQL, or UNIX... things which I hardly even knew concepts for. I couldn''t keep working at a restaurant, it wasn''t even barely paying my bills (I was surviving on a student loan). So I cracked down on learning about relational databases, garnered all the material I could remember about UNIX, and brushed up on my Java... it wasn''t long before I landed a job contracting for GTE for 6 months with an option to roll over.
Passing a technical interview for a database-mining job isn''t incredibly difficult, if you know your C/C++ really well. SQL is actually really easy to learn, and there are lots of companies that want this kind of talent. The pay is better in a database mining company than you''ll find at a game company, and a lot of companies like this will help you pay for school. I have yet to see any game company that was willing to help pay for college.
But this is the thing: even though I like my job alright, and even though the people I work with are good people, and the money is great (twice what I could find working for a game company), I still want to program games. No, the addiction doesn''t go away. In my spare time I try to work on a side game project that I started not long after taking this job. And I still want to get back into working for a game company, eventually. I''m bound to a contract right now, and even after that, the money will probably be the thing, and I may or may not go back to games immediately after the end of this year.
As far as finding a game company advertising a job opening: a lot of game companies are in the middle of a big project right now. Most smart game companies slate the release of a game to be around Christmas time... so start looking for a game programming job in middle-late December. Even if a game company is looking for someone to hire right now, a lot of them won''t advertise too much (it''s not like they have a huge amount of money allocated to advertising for themselves, unless they''ve got in-house publishing)... Those game companies that I have seen advertise expect you to have more than a few years of professional game programming experience under your belt. But it never hurts to just keep sending your resume'' out to every game company you see, along with a copy of your demo.
Oh, and you won''t ever find yourself feeling like you''re in a dead-end job, bored out of your mind, if you work for a game company. Most of the time is crunch time -- and when it''s not, there''s always time for Research & Development
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
When it came time to start looking for a summer job, I noticed the same thing you did... most jobs that advertise positions request knowledge in COBOL, or SQL, or UNIX... things which I hardly even knew concepts for. I couldn''t keep working at a restaurant, it wasn''t even barely paying my bills (I was surviving on a student loan). So I cracked down on learning about relational databases, garnered all the material I could remember about UNIX, and brushed up on my Java... it wasn''t long before I landed a job contracting for GTE for 6 months with an option to roll over.
Passing a technical interview for a database-mining job isn''t incredibly difficult, if you know your C/C++ really well. SQL is actually really easy to learn, and there are lots of companies that want this kind of talent. The pay is better in a database mining company than you''ll find at a game company, and a lot of companies like this will help you pay for school. I have yet to see any game company that was willing to help pay for college.
But this is the thing: even though I like my job alright, and even though the people I work with are good people, and the money is great (twice what I could find working for a game company), I still want to program games. No, the addiction doesn''t go away. In my spare time I try to work on a side game project that I started not long after taking this job. And I still want to get back into working for a game company, eventually. I''m bound to a contract right now, and even after that, the money will probably be the thing, and I may or may not go back to games immediately after the end of this year.
As far as finding a game company advertising a job opening: a lot of game companies are in the middle of a big project right now. Most smart game companies slate the release of a game to be around Christmas time... so start looking for a game programming job in middle-late December. Even if a game company is looking for someone to hire right now, a lot of them won''t advertise too much (it''s not like they have a huge amount of money allocated to advertising for themselves, unless they''ve got in-house publishing)... Those game companies that I have seen advertise expect you to have more than a few years of professional game programming experience under your belt. But it never hurts to just keep sending your resume'' out to every game company you see, along with a copy of your demo.
Oh, and you won''t ever find yourself feeling like you''re in a dead-end job, bored out of your mind, if you work for a game company. Most of the time is crunch time -- and when it''s not, there''s always time for Research & Development
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
Well, ByteMe95, adding another response to your question would do little more than echo the words of Myopic Rhino, grhodes and void*.
I can only think of one thing that they left out: Everyone knowns that crack is much better than game programming, and no dealer will refuse to sell some to you if you don''t know COBOL
. Good luck.
I can only think of one thing that they left out: Everyone knowns that crack is much better than game programming, and no dealer will refuse to sell some to you if you don''t know COBOL
. Good luck.
Author
Hehe, thanks graylien, that''s always good to know.
Well, here''s my situation. I am a comp sci major/math minor at NYU. I will be a junior this coming semester. I want a full time summer job that''ll roll over to part-time during the school year in programming. Any kind of programming will do, game programming would be preferred of course. I''m really good at 2d programming, but just started 3d which I think is (almost)necessary to get a game programming job nowadays. It doesnt look like anyone wants to hire someone with no real world experience in programming, and I havent seen one game programmming company yet (in NYC) looking to hire anyone.
And I dont really have any demos. I have a game I made 2 years or so ago and am selling, but it doesnt show my skills that well. It was the first and last game I actually finished. (If you wanna take a look, you can get it right here:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~rba203/wham.html
Besides that I''ve never really tried making a demo to show off my skills, never really thought about it. So what kinds of demos should i be looking into? Must it be 3d? If not, what could i possibly do in 2d that is in any way impressive? And the only kind of demo I could really code would be a game/graphical demo which wouldnt help at all in other types of programming jobs.
To make a long story short (too late), I want to pry myself into the programming worl already and get some experience before i graduate, but how????
Any ideas? Dont forget, NYC area only
ByteMe95::~ByteMe95()
Cerebrum Software
Well, here''s my situation. I am a comp sci major/math minor at NYU. I will be a junior this coming semester. I want a full time summer job that''ll roll over to part-time during the school year in programming. Any kind of programming will do, game programming would be preferred of course. I''m really good at 2d programming, but just started 3d which I think is (almost)necessary to get a game programming job nowadays. It doesnt look like anyone wants to hire someone with no real world experience in programming, and I havent seen one game programmming company yet (in NYC) looking to hire anyone.
And I dont really have any demos. I have a game I made 2 years or so ago and am selling, but it doesnt show my skills that well. It was the first and last game I actually finished. (If you wanna take a look, you can get it right here:
http://pages.nyu.edu/~rba203/wham.html
Besides that I''ve never really tried making a demo to show off my skills, never really thought about it. So what kinds of demos should i be looking into? Must it be 3d? If not, what could i possibly do in 2d that is in any way impressive? And the only kind of demo I could really code would be a game/graphical demo which wouldnt help at all in other types of programming jobs.
To make a long story short (too late), I want to pry myself into the programming worl already and get some experience before i graduate, but how????
Any ideas? Dont forget, NYC area only
ByteMe95::~ByteMe95()
Cerebrum Software
Man, I am totally in the same boat you are, but in Minneapolis there are less game companies then the east coast. And all those database jobs -snore- I would just fall asleep at my computer on the job and get fired, thats if I could ever get one of them because its very hard to learn that SQL stuff on your own because its boring, and hell would freeze over before my university would actually teach any kind of "real world" usefull programming. So I may just end up moving to the west coast 
Possibility
Possibility
Author
Even when you know what you want to do in life and know that you enjoy doing it and it is possible to be very lucrative you realize something...
Life sux and then you die
what could u do
ByteMe95::~ByteMe95()
Cerebrum Software
Life sux and then you die
what could u do
ByteMe95::~ByteMe95()
Cerebrum Software
I think companies need to know one thing... As programmers, we program therefore we are, we are NOT MADE FOR DATA ENTRY! That''s what secretaries are for!
-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)
Check our site:
http://www.crosswinds.net/~dwarfsoft/
Check out our NPC AI Mailing List :
http://www.egroups.com/group/NPCAI/
made due to popular demand here at GDNet :)
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