From the mailbag: Rattlesnakes for Breakfast
I’ve been bad and let the mail pile up. Even this only cuts it in half…!
OK so I’ve been reading your site since before it was a blog, since lumthemad.net was still a website. I read everything I can find about game development. I’m currently in community college (not doing well, but whatever), and I want to work in game design. I read a post where you pointed people in that kind of direction. One thing I’m not sure of, though, is once I get a diversified education, what do I do? I’m about to have an associates (2 year) degree from my school, and I have no idea what to do after that. You say learn coding, I’ve already got Flash’s Actionscript and some basic C++/C# down. Should I continue my education at a 4-year school? What should I major in, since I already (almost) have a Liberal Arts/Social Sciences degree? Start coding up some games and try to break into the industry? Apply for a job at a game company near where I live (yeah right, New York)? Start a blog that nobody will read and post thought-provoking essays? I’m at that point in my life where I need some direction, and as probably the most successful person in your field, you’d be the man to ask. I’m looking to spend my life making games and worlds, I just don’t know where to start. Thanks for your time, whether you respond or not.
Well, definitely, try to do better at college. The skills you need there are much like the skills you need in the workplace: completing assignments on time, doing work on your own without someone having to check up on you constantly, working through problems on your own, and so on. College isn’t suited for everyone, and game developers seem to either love it or hate it, but a lot of the modern game industry is like any other big corporate job.
Whether you want to continue on to your four-year degree or not depends on your desires as a game developer. These days, it’s getting more and more common to expect a four year CS degree from a new hire for a programming slot. You could pile that atop your AA. (FWIW, when I mentioned a liberal arts degree, it was for a designer — and I meant a full four year education’s worth of one). If you’re looking to be a designer, then the thing to do is start making games, regardless of whether you want to continue your education.
You could do that while finishing a four year degree — perhaps at someplace like Full Sail, CMU, the Guildhall or USC, which offer game degree programs with heavy vocational training — meaning, they make you make games. And actually, so does NYU (New York!) You could also do that on your own, and in fact even if you’re in school, you probably should.
Applying for a job would likely land you in QA at this point. That is a good thing — you can learn a lot about what the process of making games is from seeing them at all those horrible early stages. You’ll also learn whether the politics of the game industry, the hours, and the pay are for you or not.
Starting a blog — do it only if you see value in it for you. It will not help you achieve your goal to just talk about doing things — you have to actually do them.
Greetings, I have a quick question i have a story line developed for a game and was wondering if you can pointme in the right direction of how to get it developed. it has many of the original SWG concepts and others based on a EX point sprend system. I and a few friends have worked on the story line for quite some time and not at all game developing savy but know it has potential in the deprived Sci fi market. one i think it will pullin all the pissed of pre CU galaxies players as well as many others. but i dont want the control to go to a major company so it gets trashed and sent in a direction we feel its not meant to go. any advice you could give would be helpful.
Develop it yourself. I cannot overstate how cheap ideas are in this business, like in any other creative business. That means that having an idea, unless you are the only one who knows how to implement it, is basically worth nothing at all. It doesn’t matter how complete your storyline is. Odds are there are literally dozens of people at any company you might care to pitch to who have ideas just as developed, if not way more so, and who have been waiting for years to get one approved. Hell, I have probably a dozen MMO designs on the shelf that I knew would never get a shot at seeing the light of day.
Dear Raph, I am doing a PhD research project on MMORPG communities in the Department of Social Sciences of Pisa. As a sociologist, I am interested in the relational aspects of online social dynamics. I see that people came into a guild or drop away from it, but if you are really in the core of the guild, it is normal to switch to another game if the guild decide to do it, just because you want to play with your friends. This is quite a basic and rough hypothesis, but I think that it can help me in the investigation of the information flow’s mechanisms of a guild. I am writing this email to ask the opinion of a MMORPG expert, and maybe to have a link to some papers on the topic. Thank you for your time, Regards, Simone Gabbriellini
I’d get in touch with the following folks, who can provide you with data and also their insights from their research:
- Nick Yee, at Stanford, is the guy who has done the most research into the behavior of players online.
- Constance Steinkuehler, at U Wisconsin-Madison, has focused her research specifically on large scale guilds.
- T. L. Taylor, who just completed an ethnographic study of players in EverQuest, Play Between Worlds : Exploring Online Game Culture
They have all published papers online, so I would look for their work first, and then start exploring the works they cite.
Hello Raph. This email completely qualifies as “YAY Raph!” I re-subscribed to SWG a few days ago after a year long absence due to extream frugalness, only to find the game I used to love had become more like the ones I didn’t care for at all. (WOW, EQ) Upon mentioning the proffession path changes to my hubby he immediatly suggested that perhaps you were no longer at the helm. See, I was also a rabid fan of UO for about 6 years. Basically the fact that I have to include cooking in my list of abilities as a Domestic Trader and don’t have the option to use those points to go dancing or shooting womp rats anymore has led to the re-cancellation of my account with them. “People like to make stuff themselves a whole lot” …and they do not like being told what to make. I will make NO Bofa Treats. =P So now we’ll be eagerly awaiting news of your next project as it seems your “Worldly Game” style perfectly suits us.
I am glad you enjoyed yourself in SWG. I must say, that even the shipping version was still quite a far cry away from what I had hoped we could achieve. So I’m glad that even incomplete as it was, you liked it.
I must warn you that “worldy games” may be what people associate with me, but it’s not the only sort of game I make. I have in fact made more puzzle gamesin my life than I have made worldy MMOs. 🙂 So the next game you see form me may not be what you hope for — it may be something completely different. I hope you try it out anyway.
In fact, have been desultorily working on a little game idea on the side here this week… been thinking about posting samples as I go. I am trying to work on it only for fun in the evenings, since it is quite beside the point of the startup studio… shall I post what I’ve got for people to mess with? It’s not online at all…
what game are you currently with, we sure miss you here at SWG. the game is just not like it was when you created it. are you working on a game similiar with skills and diversity? thanks in advance for answering my questions and take care
I am not ready to talk about what I am working on with the startup studio, and probably won’t be ready to talk about for many months to come. It will be online, I can tell you that much.
Hi Raph – I was just introduced to you as a resource for designing a Simulation excercise from a website that I stumbled across: Forio Business Simulations. I am developing a business simulation for an upcoming conference in October, and i need some help! I’ve written a case study before for use in graduate business schools, but i need some pointers/outline/resources on how to best write a simulation game for use by adults (a 3-day conference with 3 hours/day simulation time.) i have an idea for the setting, plot & theme, but can you suggest any resources to use as a guide for writing a relevant, realistic, fun and engaging storyline? many thanks for your ideas~ Heather
The first challenge is to pick what you want to simulate. Really, it all flows from there. You are focusng on the wrong thing if you are focusing on “a relevant, realistic, fun and engaging storyline,” particularly for use in a graduate business school conference. You need to identify the core fun mechanics to simulate — the stock market, a management dilemma, sorting out supply chains, what? Once you have that, you can then assign storyline elements to it.
At the Ludium organized by Ted Castronova, our group had to pick a topic to do a game design about that would be a serious academic research project. We decided for our presentation that we would also be actually playing a little bit of a crude form of the simulation. We decided to do a simulation of information flow through a population in crisis, and the serious application was measuring who talk to who when and why, and how bits of info flowed. Because of what we were doing, we were able to tokenize the info down to index cards that the audince could pass around, and play the game that way. It was a fun way to get the conference attendees interested and having fun.
hi, this is all about your book “theory of fun game design”. i really enjoyed this book, there is none alike. what annoys the heck out of me though is the missing index and the “senseless” chapter headings. it took me 30 minutes to find the chapter on game definitions. (after having read the book) i browsed through “what games are” remembering i hadn’t read it there then went to “what games aren’t” which didn’t seem like what i was looking for. finally i found it under “how the brain works”. seriously my brain works differently ;), so for future editions this would be probably a great enhancement. thank you very much, jan
You know, I’ve often found myself wanting an index too. Maybe I will ask the publisher about it. 🙂 Did you know that originally, it didn’t have endnotes either? Now I cannot imagine the book without them.
I’ll makea point of including an index in the next one, how’s that?
Oh, and the post title comes from a song by my friend Paul Edward Sanchez. “I’ll have rattlesnakes for breakfast, sugar in my stew, whiskey in my coffee, and a dream to hold on to.”
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Haha, I had such a hard time finding the page with the guide lines for a fun system design that I bent the corner 😀
You like fishing for overwhleming “YES!” responses, eh? Of course we want to see what you’re working on!
I’d like to offer a bit of advice to the author of the first email (fwiw coming from someone with 20+ years in the workplace):
Whatever you pursue as your profession, learn to love everything about it. Doesn’t matter what it is. If you are only in love with the ideal and know little of what else surrounds the job, you may find yourself in for a rude awakening. Many law-enforcment aspirants are in love with the idea of fighting crime, chasing bad guys, carrying a gun (unfortunately), and even helping little old ladies. Most of those folks give little consideration to the time spent doing … nothing. Same thing for game design and development. Designing and coding are just pieces. As in any business, you will find that you probably spend more time doing “other things” than you want to. Maybe, in some cases, even more time doing other things than coding or designing.
Anyway, my point is that I made a mistake in my younger life of not really becoming intimately informed about a career with which only a part of was I enamored (wow – there’s some painful non-grammar). If you’re not willing to participate in the whole of your eventual profession, then you should seriously reconsider it.
It makes me wonder how you plan to write a new book, start up a studio, and idly make games on the side. It reminds me of the Benjamin Franklin show on PBS a night or two ago. “For mere mortals like us, that would have been a full time job.”
I second damijin. =P
Michael, I’ve always had trouble focusing. 🙂 Right now, the one that is losing out is the book. I have no idea when I am fitting it in!
Im seconding Damijin (YES!), and Chabuhi.(Career choice and loving what you do)
Everything flows from your love of your vocation. Ok, correction most things!
Anyhow Id like to add that there are some great online business simulation modeling “games” (usually dealing with logistical supply issues) available to graduate business students, I’ll try to find the link later tonight and post, access might be restricted though I cant remember offhand.
Same here 🙁 which stinks because I’d love to be getting some input during development. Of course I dont make games, I only mine data 🙂
Im about half way through your book right now Raph (I’d be done but well startups take a lot of energy) and while it may be lacking an index (which would be nice) I think you compensate the reader by providing an accessable writing style that deals with high level concepts in a way amenable to broad understanding. Something many writers miss completely….
Also for the writer of the first e-mail:
I was recently at the Imperial College London Games and Media Event (GaME ’06) (sounds interesting, but it turned out to mainly be a recruitment drive) where a couple of interesting points turned up.
Firstly, none of the speakers thought much of game-design specific degrees. The general consensus seemed to be that it’s much better to be a specialist in one area of programming than it is to be a generalist.
Also, one of the companies that had been invited to talk, Introversion Software, are an example of how it is possible to make your own way in the industry. They started the company on the back of Uplink, a game which had been developed by one of the founding members during his final year at university. They aren’t rich, but they’re doing ok.
This didn’t come up in GaME, but doing a programming degree isn’t necessarily the best way of getting into the games industry. Yes, they want people with programming degrees, but they want them to do all the work. The really tedious work, long hours on some basic system. Doing a degree in something else, anything, from biology to classics, will give you an area of expertise which the straight programmers won’t have, and most of the programming taught at university you can learn yourself, if you’re dedicated. Or you can combine programming with another course. The bottom line is that there are many many code-monkeys all fighting for the same base jobs, meaning low wages and bad work enviroment. There are a lot less people with alternative studies and the ability to apply them to programming, though.
As to actually getting in, Lionhead and TT Games both expressed interest in signing new people, and asked anyone interested to send them a CV. Also, lateral transfers are always possible inside companies, so you don’t necessarily need to start as a programmer, from where it’s quite hard to rise through the ranks. It may sometimes be a better idea to get a job elsewhere in a company that interests you (perhaps in QA, marketing, CS) and then switch laterally within the company until you’re where you want to be. It may take a few years, but then so will digging your way up from the bottom of development, if you can get in. I know half a dozen people now that have gone from a QA position to assistant producer positions or developer positions well within five years of starting.
Amen. Every time I hear a hopeful spirit say “I have this really cool game idea, but I need to keep it secret,” I want to bonk them with a squeaky hammer. This is like saying you have a really cool movie idea, but you need to keep it a secret. Like Steven Spielburg cares about your movie idea. Right.
I thought of “Dungeon Keeper” before it was made. So? They didn’t steal the idea from me. They just had the same idea. If I’d made something, that would be another matter. But, since I didn’t make it, big whoop. Simply having an idea isn’t going to make a game magically materialize. There’s not a game studio in the country that wants to hear you pitch an idea. Hell, most of us even in the industry haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of doing it. Remember, Will Wright had trouble just getting “The Sims” made. Think about that.
If you seriously have an idea you believe in, and you’re not of those miniscule few who have the leverage to do anything about it, you’re going to have to make it on your own. Find some hopeful programmers. Find some hopeful artists. Learn to do the stuff yourself, if you have to. Just make your game. As I often tell folks who want to make games: Nobody is stopping you from making games but yourself. It may seem like an insurmountable task, but a half hour of work every night will get you there much faster than dreaming.
What I’m finding in teresting is that game industry types frequently are citing the working conditions in these shops. Is there a study or link etc.
The reason Im finding this interesting is that in my experiance and background programmers are treated much better, perhaps conditions (in the gaming industry) are a result of supply (to many willing “code monkeys”) and demand (not enough spots). Further I’d say that tired overworked programmers are more likely to make more mistakes, and less likely to be creative…
Just an observation
I would venture to bet that the skill competence of the management above those roles has a lot to do with the work environment. I work in an industry where the bigwigs have almost zero technical aptitude. In this industry, programmers (and most tech guys in general) are gazed upon with equal amounts of awe and disdain. Fortunately, we are needed, so we are paid well and usually treated fairly well (except when there’s a fiber cut somewhere and somehow the application developers magically are to blame for it).
I’m trying out what they have to offer at http://www.multiverse.net, and there are some teams there who are still looking for people. People who have experience, people who aren’t quite ready to quit their day job but want to see what it’s like moonlighting, the whole range, really.
Allen,
It’s entirely a product of supply and demand. There are bucketloads of fresh-out-of-university programmers that want to make games, and they’re so desperate to do so that they’re willing to accept contracts that degree holders in other industries wouldn’t. Still, the actual workplace obviously varies from company to company. Some are worse, some are better. It’s an employer’s market, though, so salaries, unless you’ve made a name for yourself, seem to be quite low compared to other degrees, or even to salaries in other areas of IT. For instance, here in the UK, you can earn 30-50k pounds working as network/IT support for a company in the city of london, whereas game programmers pay bracket is more in the 18-25k area (still not too bad, but half what they could be earning in a more boring job).
Lobosolitario said:
Speaking strictly from personal, annectdotal experience…
There is much value to be found in (some?) game-design specific degrees. I am currently attending Full Sail where I am earning a BS in Game Design and Development over a 21-month period of intensive study. The program is set up so that, each month, a new group of students is beginning the 21-months and another group of students is graduating at the end of their 21-months.
Every month I hear of students graduating and getting jobs in the industry. Dave Neubelt at Ready At Dawn. Tamir Nadav at Kings Isle. And even in my final project group, Dean Johnson was offered a job at Microsoft’s XNA division some six months before graduation. Granted, these are students who are at or near the top of their class, but the opportunities are obviously there.
On the other hand, although I hear about people like the original e-mailer who want to break into the idustry all the time (I am one myself), I haven’t personally seen the same sort of success via routes other than game-design specific degrees. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t happen, only that I cannot speak as confidently about the opportunities via those other routes.
If the original poster is following this thread and is intersted in seeing what the Full Sail program is like from a student’s perspective, please feel free to take a look at my web site. Here’s a link to the current project (our Final Project) that I’m involved with, titled Headcases.
In any event, don’t get discouraged. It is possible to get from where you are to game design. I’ve seen others do it, and I’m out to prove it myself. But as Raph points out, you will likely need to be an exceptional student to make it happen. Calculus, physics, linear algebra, C/C++, DirectX, OpenGL, Data Structures, AI, Assembly, Optimization, etc. are all very challenging and are all part of the course of study here at Full Sail in addition to the classes on writing and desgin. You will really need to apply yourself to do well in these classes. No one is looking for average.
–Phin
[…] What Raph is working on Submitted by Abalieno on August 2, 2006 – 12:12. From his blog (also here): I am not ready to talk about what I am working on with the startup studio, and probably won’t be ready to talk about for many months to come. It will be online, I can tell you that much. […]