Hey guys!
I was reading what you all had said about career counselors. Well, I live in West Virginia and I am attending a community college right now (West Virginia University at Parkersburg) and my counselor isn't really knowledgable about much. There are others I could ask and will ask...but I was wondering something. What classes should I take? I know this is basically a "more you know, the better off you are" situation, but I can't help but feel that are certain classes that I HAVE to have. What would you all say is the highest math I should go to? How about science? I stayed at this community college so I could have a better start with my core classes that I needed such as my college algebra, biology and biology labs, history, english etc. etc. Now that I will be leaving next year, I was wondering...what classes should I take that deal with becoming an executive producer/game designer? Is there a single string of classes that I need to follow or are there some that are more important than others? Believe me, you guys on this forum know a thousand percent more than any counselor at my school, and I appreciate it so much that you all are helping me out!
Edit:
While I am pretty sure that right after I get out of school with my degree, I won't be able to waltz into a company and expect to be offered a job and given a Half-Life 2 $40 million budget, is it possible to become an executive producer and game designer on day 1? I mean, I haven't seen much about company policies on how the status of their developers works, but if you submit an idea of a game and it is approved by, lets say, Sony, does that mean you are automatically the head hancho for the project as long as you are certified?
[Edited by - krackerjack411 on October 11, 2005 11:10:14 PM]
confused and desperate on how to become an executive producer/game designer (help!!!)
Quote:Original post by krackerjack411
While I am pretty sure that right after I get out of school with my degree, I won't be able to waltz into a company and expect to be offered a job and given a Half-Life 2 $40 million budget, is it possible to become an executive producer and game designer on day 1?
No. Nobody hired game designers, and nobody hires executive producers. Those are roles arrived at through promotion, and they're often recruited.
Quote:...if you submit an idea of a game...
Companies don't accept idea submissions. Not worth the hassle. If they make a game similar, though not based on your submission, then they have to prove that they didn't "steal" your idea. Further, given that everybody both within and outside the game industry has an idea, they're not exactly hurting for ideas.
Quote:
What classes should I take? I know this is basically a "more you know, the better off you are" situation, but I can't help but feel that are certain classes that I HAVE to have. What would you all say is the highest math I should go to? How about science? I stayed at this community college so I could have a better start with my core classes that I needed such as my college algebra, biology and biology labs, history, english etc. etc. Now that I will be leaving next year, I was wondering...what classes should I take that deal with becoming an executive producer/game designer? Is there a single string of classes that I need to follow or are there some that are more important than others? Believe me, you guys on this forum know a thousand percent more than any counselor at my school, and I appreciate it so much that you all are helping
Well, computer programming doesn't, in general, require much math beyond trig. What you will need is experience programming. This means, if you are like me, many, many hours in front of your computer learning pretty much by yourself, from books and the internet. I recommend you start with python as your first language, and then learn C++ afterwards, which is pretty much the industry standard (although not without exception) for professional games these days. Python is easier to learn, I am told. I started with C++, though.
In college, Comp Sci seems to be the major of choice for game-programming-destined people. As you learn to program better, you may find a specific interest, like networking, graphics, or AI, that you are particularly interested in/good at. You can take courses focusing on those areas, but CS tends to be more oriented towards general concepts, I think. Again, most of the work of learning to program is done on your own time. Anyways, I'm in high school, so take this with a grain of salt.
I do know for sure, however, that you can pretty much give up hope of becoming a professional game designer. Sorry, but that's life. If I could take all the ideas I've had for a game, and sell them for a nickel apiece, I would be rich. Either learn a real skill in the field, or you won't be in it =)
Good luck if you do decide to start programming!
Oh yes - I can't recommend any books on python, since I haven't used it before, but I will recommend a starter C++ book, if you decide to start with that language. I started with Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, from Addison-Wesley. Also, check out the For Beginners section. Have fun =)
It's actually quite rare that you can join a game development studio as a games designer. Usually, you join as something lower down such as a 3D modeller and then showing that you have what it takes to become a designer.
Ideas are cheap and everybody has them, actual output isn't though.
Ideas are cheap and everybody has them, actual output isn't though.
Author
Hmm that part about how I shouldn't expect to make it in the field...haha real momentum booster.
But basically, I should major in Computer Science and take the classes that pertain to game development, right?
Oh, by the way. I was talking with one of my buddies on AIM whose brother owns a software company up in Pittsburgh. I was telling him how everyone here was helping me out on how I should go about starting my career and what not. I was talking to him about how I would want to submit an idea so I could be eligible to purchase a dev kit. Apparently, he talked to his brother about me and my situation. According to his brother, theoretically, if I wanted a dev kit after Playstation 3 production was in full steam and I produced $30,000 cash to purchase one, Sony wouldn't mind selling me one as long as I have certification...good idea or not. I don't know how well put that is, but I just thought I'd pass it along. One point he brought up though was this: "If Ed Boon can create games that have mass amounts of clipping, horrid physics, reviews that are average by the media, and typos inside the game text itself, then why is it he can get dev kits? Because he and his team had the funding to purchase them and they are certified."
While some of this I'm sure isn't correct "by the book", I can certainly see how sometime people can "slip through the cracks." I also pretty much figured that it would be extremely rare for somebody to be hired for executive producer/designer. However, if you were to start your own company (with proper funding, of course) wouldn't you be the person in charge of the project? Just curious by the way...how much do you guys think Kojima or the dev. team and Bungie make? Haha these are just about all the questions I can think of for the moment, I'm sure I will have more in the morning!
But basically, I should major in Computer Science and take the classes that pertain to game development, right?
Oh, by the way. I was talking with one of my buddies on AIM whose brother owns a software company up in Pittsburgh. I was telling him how everyone here was helping me out on how I should go about starting my career and what not. I was talking to him about how I would want to submit an idea so I could be eligible to purchase a dev kit. Apparently, he talked to his brother about me and my situation. According to his brother, theoretically, if I wanted a dev kit after Playstation 3 production was in full steam and I produced $30,000 cash to purchase one, Sony wouldn't mind selling me one as long as I have certification...good idea or not. I don't know how well put that is, but I just thought I'd pass it along. One point he brought up though was this: "If Ed Boon can create games that have mass amounts of clipping, horrid physics, reviews that are average by the media, and typos inside the game text itself, then why is it he can get dev kits? Because he and his team had the funding to purchase them and they are certified."
While some of this I'm sure isn't correct "by the book", I can certainly see how sometime people can "slip through the cracks." I also pretty much figured that it would be extremely rare for somebody to be hired for executive producer/designer. However, if you were to start your own company (with proper funding, of course) wouldn't you be the person in charge of the project? Just curious by the way...how much do you guys think Kojima or the dev. team and Bungie make? Haha these are just about all the questions I can think of for the moment, I'm sure I will have more in the morning!
To be a top games designer, you need to be able to sell your ideas.
I don't mean get a few dollars for a design. I mean you have to get people to buy into your ideas. You have to make them believe that you have something that will make them lots of money.
It's just not enough to have the ideas if someone won't take them and run with it. You also need them to invest a lot of money into talented developers, otherwise your great idea may get destroyed and muddied by a poor implementation.
You then have to sell you game to your marketing people. It's them who go out and get your games into the shops so that people can buy it. There's lots of great games out there that have languashed because no-one either knows about them, or can actually buy them.
As to classes, you can't learn all that from classes, they will just give you a starting point. As I think someone has said though, drama, english and creative writing will all help you to sell you ideas. See if you can get into some sort of marketing or business analysis classes so you understand how this side works.
Don't exepct to be able to walk into a top job straight away. Reputation is important and takes time to build.
I don't mean get a few dollars for a design. I mean you have to get people to buy into your ideas. You have to make them believe that you have something that will make them lots of money.
It's just not enough to have the ideas if someone won't take them and run with it. You also need them to invest a lot of money into talented developers, otherwise your great idea may get destroyed and muddied by a poor implementation.
You then have to sell you game to your marketing people. It's them who go out and get your games into the shops so that people can buy it. There's lots of great games out there that have languashed because no-one either knows about them, or can actually buy them.
As to classes, you can't learn all that from classes, they will just give you a starting point. As I think someone has said though, drama, english and creative writing will all help you to sell you ideas. See if you can get into some sort of marketing or business analysis classes so you understand how this side works.
Don't exepct to be able to walk into a top job straight away. Reputation is important and takes time to build.
Quote:Original post by krackerjack411
But basically, I should major in Computer Science and take the classes that pertain to game development, right?
That's for you to decide. All people can do for you is recommend, but you have to have the drive, determination and purpose to eventually select the path that's rght for you.
My degree is in Cinema and Cultural Studies. I'm planning to get an MFA in Industrial Design. Then again, I don't want to work in the game industry as a career, so why should you listen to me? (See what I mean about choosing what's right for you?)
Quote:According to his brother, theoretically, if I wanted a dev kit after Playstation 3 production was in full steam and I produced $30,000 cash to purchase one, Sony wouldn't mind selling me one as long as I have certification...good idea or not.
Sony is not in the business of verifying ideas. But I do think your friend's brother is simplifying things grossly.
In console development, there are these things called Technical Requirements Checklist (TRC, Sony), Lot-Check (Nintendo) and Technical Certification Requirements (TCR, Microsoft), which are a suite of manufacturer-specified tests that every software title published for the platform must pass. Despite all this, buggy games manage to be released. Why? (I should point out that I doubt that your friend's brother was referring to a recent console title, but rather to a PC game, a coin-op arcade machine, or a title for older consoles like the NES and Genesis which had lower QA testing requirements.)
When a game is completed by a developer, the gold copy is passed over to the publisher, who then performs additional QA (in most cases), contracts localization and moves on with marketing and manufacture. While these steps exist to refine the game, they can also be introduction vectors for bugs. Imagine if a localization contractor botches the job; suddenly the French version of your game has erroneous text everywhere. Or imagine if your game uses fixed-width string tables, but the German version overruns the table width because nobody outside of your tools team knew about this. The German strings could overwrite critical data, resulting in a garbled play experience.
As you can see, making games for the international consumer audience is a non-trivial business, and this is why nobody needs or hires "ideas guys" - ideas are such a small part of the overall process!
Switching gears, I noticed you mentioned "certification" a couple of times. This is faulty. Nearly every platform manufacturer has some sort of incubator program that gives new studios a chance to work with near-production hardware after they have demonstrated competence (take a look at the Xbox Incubator Program). Notice that its complement is the Registered Developer Program. Neither one of them is analogous to what you seem to infer with "certification."
Quote:However, if you were to start your own company (with proper funding, of course) wouldn't you be the person in charge of the project?
Wouldn't that be up to you? And how does that relate to being hired as an executive producer, anyway? Just because you fund a company doesn't mean you should run it. You could start a company and make yourself CFO, and then lose everything because you don't know the first thing about business finance. Ultimately it comes down to competencies.
Do you think you're a competent "executive producer"? Do you think you will be when you graduate college?
Quote:...these are just about all the questions I can think of for the moment, I'm sure I will have more in the morning!
I have a suggestion for you: read. None of your questions are new, which means they've all been answered somewhere before. Do a search and discover the wealth of material available, often directly from the manufacturers, developers, publishers and so forth themselves. And often linked to other information that you'll find interesting.
At least, I think that's more cost effective than reading the barely-informed opining of an underemployed recent college grad with a liberal arts BA!
about the career councelor thing . . you can forget that. ive been to four and the first thing they did was go to a few job sites that even i knew (i was expecting some industry package thing) but no they used monster and the jobcentre site and simply types in Games Programmer, the last time i did it i just let them reel off possible jobs, i had already gave her my skills sheet and she still printed out jobs that didnt have even 1 of my choices.
My advice is to learn the hard way and do a games computing specific course. Learn a programming language, id say c++ and keep your ears to the ground on info of other languages such as prolog, pascal, C, php, java . .although the chances of you never using these are great, they just get u into programming and have you looking at different paradigms.
Im afraid your heros are not telling you the whole picture either. You dont know who they knew for a start and how much money their familys had.
They could have been super rich and their uncle was an in demand programmer who got him a job . . . over the years his experience put him in a place where he started to call the shots on a few things, and here he is today.
my personal story is ive gone through university and tried to get a job, got turned down loads of time and finally i have one if software dev . . and man is this hard. im working with really really and mean really good guys whose logic and maths are without compare, i really do look lame compared to them.
the point is, you have to put in the hard work, as you say, you dont know HOw to get into at all, this is a bad sign as i was exactly the same and out of all my friends that went into this subject im doing by far the worst as im met with "my daddy owns this", "mybrother works here", "my best friend works here" they have a cushion and a pefect mentor, im all at it myslef and its very very hard work when you have the thing called life to balance as well.
i only wish you luck, but its hard and as every day goes by i wish io never got into this subject
My advice is to learn the hard way and do a games computing specific course. Learn a programming language, id say c++ and keep your ears to the ground on info of other languages such as prolog, pascal, C, php, java . .although the chances of you never using these are great, they just get u into programming and have you looking at different paradigms.
Im afraid your heros are not telling you the whole picture either. You dont know who they knew for a start and how much money their familys had.
They could have been super rich and their uncle was an in demand programmer who got him a job . . . over the years his experience put him in a place where he started to call the shots on a few things, and here he is today.
my personal story is ive gone through university and tried to get a job, got turned down loads of time and finally i have one if software dev . . and man is this hard. im working with really really and mean really good guys whose logic and maths are without compare, i really do look lame compared to them.
the point is, you have to put in the hard work, as you say, you dont know HOw to get into at all, this is a bad sign as i was exactly the same and out of all my friends that went into this subject im doing by far the worst as im met with "my daddy owns this", "mybrother works here", "my best friend works here" they have a cushion and a pefect mentor, im all at it myslef and its very very hard work when you have the thing called life to balance as well.
i only wish you luck, but its hard and as every day goes by i wish io never got into this subject
I think you need to give yourself some attainable goals. The chances of you walking straight into an executive producer position are remote at best. You should set yourself goals like 'Become profficient at programming', 'look for doorways into dev companies(eg start off as games tester), 'Work hard and make people aware that you have ideas and want to progress', work your way up to your dream job'.
Remember that there is never going to be any guarantee that you will ever get there (often due to company politics), but you can give yourself the best chance by working hard.
Also you need to loose this belief that even if you were in charge you would release games only when they were perfect. All large dev projects are ruled by the publishers, the publishers want to make money, the publishers also fund your project, if they say the game is to be released half done then it is to be released half done. Even the god-like Shigeru Miyamoto will have had this at some point.
As I say your best bet is to enter the industry at the very bottom and work your way up, or If you are hugely confident then program your own games and sell them, gradually building up a company (although you only have to take one look at the number of dev studios folding to realise that this is also not an easy task).
Good Luck
Remember that there is never going to be any guarantee that you will ever get there (often due to company politics), but you can give yourself the best chance by working hard.
Also you need to loose this belief that even if you were in charge you would release games only when they were perfect. All large dev projects are ruled by the publishers, the publishers want to make money, the publishers also fund your project, if they say the game is to be released half done then it is to be released half done. Even the god-like Shigeru Miyamoto will have had this at some point.
As I say your best bet is to enter the industry at the very bottom and work your way up, or If you are hugely confident then program your own games and sell them, gradually building up a company (although you only have to take one look at the number of dev studios folding to realise that this is also not an easy task).
Good Luck
I disagree with those saying that you can't start out as a designer. You can. I agree that you need experience before people will hire you to do it, but you can get that experience in the unpaid community - modding.
I would also recommend against committing yourself to any kind of programming courses, because it's not what you want to do. If you go into games you'll find yourself working with programmers someday so it's a good idea to understand some basics; this will help you communicate with them. However, you can get most of that from a good book; it's more important that you build up your skillset in the areas that actually matter to you.
Here's what I recommend you do. This is the "Introduction to Game Design" course offered by Superpig University:
When you're done, you won't be a lead game designer and producer at a top international studio. What you will be is a balanced and open-minded individual with a good portfolio who should make a good addition to a design team.
Don't rely on schools to lead you to where you want to be, because they won't. Take the initiative, and start training yourself for the job, today.
I would also recommend against committing yourself to any kind of programming courses, because it's not what you want to do. If you go into games you'll find yourself working with programmers someday so it's a good idea to understand some basics; this will help you communicate with them. However, you can get most of that from a good book; it's more important that you build up your skillset in the areas that actually matter to you.
Here's what I recommend you do. This is the "Introduction to Game Design" course offered by Superpig University:
- Get a notepad and pen, and 3 games. Try not to pick three bestsellers; a bad, poorly-selling game would be good to have (and I'm not talking about Big Rigs). Play through all three games, and take notes in the notepad about which aspects of the game work and which don't. I'm not talking about bugs as much as I'm talking about game design - e.g. "corridoor section on level 5 is too narrow and the battle ends up bottlenecking," "lots of variation in the weapons, but the pidgeon gun is not very useful."
- Go through all the notes you made, and extend each one with some suggestions about what you'd change to fix that problem. Cut sections, add sections, rework key game concepts... the good thing about thought experiments is you do not have a limited budget. [grin] Feel free to post your results back to the site when you're done - I'm sure the design forum peeps would love to pick apart your ideas, suggest alternatives, and generally give you feedback.
- Repeat with more games. The more you do, the more you will build your critical appreciation of game design. I don't know any game designers that don't play a lot of games.
- Pick up a copy of a game that has good modding support - I'd recommend Half-Life 2. Try not to pick your favourite genre of game (though there's no need to go for something you completely hate). A highly valued game designer will be one who can be thrown at any project and work effectively, regardless of whether they personally enjoy that kind of game. I generally hate RPGs, but I could work on one.
- Pick up the modding tools and put together some gameplay. Go for variation between scenarios; if one's a charge through a high-pitched battle, perhaps another should be more stealth-based, or a boss battle, or a puzzle. The more variation you pull off, the better, as it'll expand the range of situations in which you as a designer can work effectively. Don't try for anything too big - you don't need to be creating 20-level epics with highly involved story at this point. Imagine you're creating a "deleted scene" from the game you're modding, if you want. Don't worry too much about the way it looks - once you're happy with the way it plays, you can team up with an artist and have him make it all pretty-looking.
- Get some people to play your mods. Release them on the internet and read what people say about them. (Some of it will be harsh - resist the temptation to lash out, because it looks highly unprofessional). Try and get people playing them in real life, and watch them while they play - don't say anything or help them, just watch and take notes. When they're done, talk to them about it. Be careful of choosing friends for this - they may well decide to tell you want you want to hear instead of what they really think. Gather together all of this feedback and use it to refine and improve your mods.
When you're done, you won't be a lead game designer and producer at a top international studio. What you will be is a balanced and open-minded individual with a good portfolio who should make a good addition to a design team.
Don't rely on schools to lead you to where you want to be, because they won't. Take the initiative, and start training yourself for the job, today.
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