Hi,

I would like to ask for advice regarding my first job.

I've been interested in game engine development for some time now and I was offered a role of Game Engine Developer few days ago. The only "problem" is the fact that the game engine is:

• written for game terminals, the ones that you can find in casinos.
• it is written in Java

My question is how will the experience gained in developing such engine help me in future jobs? I always wanted to make game engines for AAA games and I'm having some tough time making a  decision, because I really don't know how many similarities there are between making computer game vs game terminal games. Another thing is of course Java. I know that 90%  game engines for triple A games are written in C++ and that is also considerable downside for me...

I consider myself to be intermediate C++ programmer with slightly worse Java knowledge

5 minutes ago, fleabay said:

IMO, it is very odd that they wouldn't use a prebuilt engine.

As far as I know, they are responsible for making game engine that is later used by other casino game developers.

It sound pretty interesting and you will of course learn a lot of stuff. It's not always necessary to learn EXACTLY what you're aiming at, because there's lots of different things to learn anyway, also a game engine can be a quite complex thing.

Assuming that there won't be an "AAA 3D game engine" job just around the corner, and even if, they might look for a more experienced coder there, I would suggest you to take this job and see what you learn from it.

Like others have said, lots of experience will still transfer to traditional video games.Worked at a casino games company using a prebuilt and found the experience to be useful and relevant. 3D graphics in casino games is becoming pretty common, the gameplay is a bit different, but not so specific to casino games that it won't be useful.

Casino games are also very regulated and have a very high bar for QA, you may be able to use this aspect of the experience to your advantage. As far as the Java vs C++ thing goes, I wouldn't worry about it too much, it's still programming experience, as long as I you can adapt to C++ in the future.

From what I gathered if you're not working for a major triple A on an already well established game engine, a large factor for making a custom engine is the licensing. And indeed you're likely to find yourself working for the gambling industry for a while for that reason

Thank you all for responses! You've been very helpful. Happily, I was given the opportunity to take the almost exact same role, but with C++. I accepted the offer obviously.