Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Game Programmer Looks In...

Sam Savauge from Melbourne brought 8 years of games industry experience to the game developers in the DIM class - and they had lots of questions.

After being shown some of the class project work Sam talked about how to get into the games industry and described the pros and cons of many of the different jobs available. The combination of design, programming and good people skills earns the most money...

He also said those who worked in the games industry tend to put a lot into their work but sometimes had to learn to let go when projects suddenly took a different turn or were cancelled when the money ran out. It was very disappointing when 18 months of your best work never sees the light of day...

Game production work can get very demanding with long hours for many months as production deadlines approach. You recover for a few weeks after the production "goes gold" (the disk master is sent for copying and distribution) until the next production gets underway...

Sam hopes to return later in the year to see how the projects are going... and answer more questions.

2 comments:

bug said...

It was interesting to get some face to face insight into the industry, as well as generating some more outside interest in the subject. I look forward to seeing what Sam has to say about the finished games

TheWarmaster said...

Learning to let go... that's got to be one of the biggest obstacles in life, games design or not. Valuable life lesson, that.

I'd have to say that I was quite intrigued, interested, impressed, etc (words beginning with I, no doubt) by Sam's talk, even if hunger pains prevented me from keeping still for most of it. T'was definitely a plus, learning about the hierarchy in actual professional game development, and being able to compare the structure to how our IM group has been built. Now, I just have to learn not to expect overtime in most cases, if I do get into the video game art industry...

- Nick/The Warmaster