Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Programming jobs in the games industry change fast. In fact, they
ve even changed
with each new edition of this topic. Programming used to be a really broad activity
because there were so many problems to solve and there were so few good and expe-
rienced game programmers out there who could solve them. In the real early days,
game programmers did everything: code, art, sound, and game design. Now you
tend to see very specialized game programmers for niche areas of game technology:
Character movement, network communications, database, physics, and audio are just
a few. When I accepted my first job in the computer game industry, my second
choice was a job with American General Life Insurance. They wore ties. Their
employees took drug tests. I would have had the distinct privilege of working on a
beta version of Microsoft
'
s C++ compiler, programming little sales tools for insur-
ance agents. Did I make the right decision or what?
Face it
'
most programming jobs are downright boring. If you know where to look,
you can still find really interesting ones even outside the games industry. They might
be jobs you can
'
t talk about, working on ultra high budget simulations and control
software, finding cures for disease through molecular protein folding analysis, and
games. Everything else falls quickly into the
—
“
Did you put a cover sheet on your
TPS report?
”
category.
The Games Industry Is More Secretive Than the Pentagon
In 2010 I was approached by Electronic Arts to work at their Sims studio on
“
t until I
went into the on-site interview and signed a non-disclosure agreement that
they told me this new game was The Sims Medieval. The project
a brand new Sims game.
”
That was all they would tell me. It wasn
'
m
working on as of the writing of this topic is even more secretive. We don
I
'
'
t
tell potential candidates anything at all except that it
'
s a Sims game, even
after signing a non-disclosure agreement.
Here
s my bottom line: Games are great to work on because they are as much about
art as they are science. When I wrote the first edition of this topic, I put a lot of
thought into why I found game programming immensely satisfying even with all of
the pressures and challenges. I came to the following conclusion
—
I like blending the
artsy side of my left brain and the engineering side of my right brain, especially when
I
'
m in new territory. When I was on Thief: Deadly Shadows, I got to work on charac-
ter movement
'
talk about a tweak fest. I had to look carefully at the character move-
ment and understand why it
—
“
felt
”
wrong. I played tons of Splinter Cell to see how
