OT: Your accomplishments in 2013 and plans for 2014

[Manu]

On 13 December 2013 18:17, Meta <jared771 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Friday, 13 December 2013 at 08:05:45 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> Well... I hate to say it, but I wonder if your choice of studio might not
>> be the best to make a positive impression of the industry. It's a problem
>> across the industry, but EA are notorious for being among the worst.
>> That said, there are lots of EA studios, and they're all different. Which
>> one?
>>
>
> The former Bight Games in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.
> They developed The Simpsons: Tapped Out! for iOS. I made a point to ask
> during the interview about the infamous EA hours, and it seems like it
> won't be an issue. The team I'll be working with there primarily develops
> tools for the other teams/studios to use, so crunch time isn't a necessity.


Cool. Well sounds like you're probably safe then.
I've generally worked in the engine/tech teams, which is usually fine, but
the last few years at Krome I became the lead programmer on the last
project that was actually bringing in money for the studio before it melted
down. I got a very strong dose of what the industry is capable of at that
time, coupled with the fear of the studio closure if we slipped a
milestone, or didn't meet contractual requirements for any reason.
But that's the perpetual state of a lot of smaller studios. Most of them
are all-in all the time. Most studios wouldn't be able to survive a single
project failure.
The industry is sick. The big-games publishing model is a chronic disease
(working to the daily whims of the publisher). I can't wait for all-digital
distribution of big-games where we can finally factor out the
publishers/middlemen, and good riddance!


 I worked consistent 16 hour days for a year solid at my previous job (Krome
>> Studios in Australia) before the studio melted down spectacularly.
>> Never really gave myself a change to recover from that before going
>> straight into another job which also had a lot of crunching (though
>> fortunately, a lot less in my department).
>> It was fine when I was a kid, but it creeps up on you. For me, I realised
>> I
>> wasn't putting the effort in that I expected from myself at first. I could
>> sit there staring at my screen, but by brain kinda seised up, and I got
>> very little work done.
>> When I consciously realised what was happening, I had to start thinking
>> about how to fix it, before it ruins my lifes passion.
>>
>
> Yeah, I'm not anxious to work so hard I burn myself out within a few
> years. I'm not even all that sure what I want to do, so I've been making an
> effort to investigate a bunch of different "fields" of programming. Mobile,
> web, game development, enterprise, etc.


For me, I don't really know another field that I imagine I would enjoy as
much. Games (particularly, game tech/engines, which is my thing) is a very
interesting union of almost all aspects of computer science that there is,
and an interesting process marrying all these different disciplines
together.
It's a constant challenge to keep ahead of the curve, and new stuff in
seemingly unrelated fields of computer science is almost always applicable
in interesting ways, so you really have to keep your eyes open, and keep
your skills up to date.
You also have to take these new ideas in computing, and force them into a
low-latency high-performance model, which can take some creativity, since a
lot of research work isn't designed to be fast.

I find it interesting, and very rewarding technically. I can't imagine any
other fields of computing where you have the opportunity to learn so many
things about so many different kinds of things. I also enjoying the
interaction of disciplines. You don't just work with other programmers, you
also work with artists, animators, sound/audio guys, designers and everyone
in between.
It's an underrated job. It's definitely also an under-appreciated job. It
requires huge investment in skills and experience in as many fields as you
can get your head around, and for some reason, the pay just doesn't match
the skill set and experience expected.

I just think the _industry_ is extremely sick, but it seems to be in
transition. Social games, and crowd-funded games are pioneering alternative
funding models which leave studios the freedom to do what they want with
their projects, slowly cutting publishers out of the loop all over the
place.
There are games which take in BILLIONS of dollars. Why is it that the
senior programmers of these projects are paid like mediocre web designers?
Who is getting that money? It certainly never ends up with the developers...
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.puremagic.com/pipermail/digitalmars-d/attachments/20131213/8813d253/attachment-0001.html>