Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
his own game studio! Weirder yet, the boss you have today might actually be work-
ing for you tomorrow, or vice versa. I
'
ve had that happen more than once!
I Remember You!
The longest job I
ve ever had in the video games industry was just over two
years. If you look at all the companies I
'
'
ve worked for, only about half of them
still exist.
s very rare to find any kind of stability in this industry. One
interesting side effect of this is how often you run into the same people.
There
It
'
ve worked with at three separate
companies. Mike and I live in different states, and we still find people we
'
s a UI designer at EA who I
'
ve
both worked with. For example, the lead gameplay programmer at Slipgate
was hired into the industry several years ago by Mike. This just goes to show
you that if you
'
'
re difficult to work with, you won
'
t last long. We all know each
other.
s something odd about human psychology. After a particularly scary or painful
experience, some of us will say to ourselves,
'
“
Hey, that wasn
'
t so bad. Let
'
sdoit
again!
People who make games do this all the time. The job is incredibly difficult
and can drive you completely mad. Your tools and supported operating systems
change more often than you
”
'
d like. Some days you delete more code than you write.
Taking three steps forward and five steps back is a good recipe for long hours, and
you
ll feel
guilty when you leave work before 7 p.m. on a Sunday night. When crunch mode is
over, and you get back to a normal 60-hour workweek, you
'
ll get an
“
all you can eat
”
buffet of overtime. It will get so bad that you
'
'
ll wonder what to do
with all the extra time on your hands.
Why bother? Is it possible that that boring job at American General Life Insurance
was a better option for me? Not a chance. There are plenty of good things, many of
which I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, but there
ve held for last
that beats them all: After all the work, lost weekends, and screaming matches with
producers and testers, your game finally appears on the retail shelves somewhere. A
few weeks after it ships, you start looking. You make excuses to go to Wal-Mart,
GameStop, and Best Buy and wander the software section. Eventually, you see it.
Your game. In a box. On the shelf.
There
'
s one I
'
'
s nothing like it. As you hold it in your hands, someone walks up to you and
says,
“
Hey, I was thinking of buying that game. Is it any good?
”
You smile and hand
him the box saying,
“
Yeah, it
'
s damn good.
”
