Ask HN: Get a foot into the game industry | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Get a foot into the game industry

1 pointEntalpi6 comments

I am wondering from a practical perspective how one would go about getting a foot into the game industry?

My guess it takes a couple of games or somerhing techy like a custom engine.

Would love to hear your stories.

I was tired of hearing "we want people who have shipped at least two titles" (classic chicken and egg problem) around the year 2004-2006. So I took 10 months off to create a game/base game tech. I targeted the Game Boy Advance. I created everything but the compiler and a small utility that smacked an "I'm GBA software" header on the ROM. This included the asset pipeline, audio mixer, even the interrupts library. What this allowed me to do was hand my project to people during an interview, and when they asked what I did, to say "everything you see there, as well as the things you don't such as x, y, etc.". Finished portfolio projects are invaluable in this space -- so many people have unfinished projects/demos that having something finished/polished really makes you the exception (it shows extreme dedication/diligence -- see the ninety-ninety rule). You might not need to take it to the extreme that I did, but it's nice to avoid situations where you have as portfolio work only projects worked on with others for which you don't have very clear details on what exactly you did (otherwise, people will have little confidence in what parts you are actually responsible/deserve praise for, if any). Don't show up to a gamedev interview with only a binder of dragon drawings expecting a job. And understand that a lot of the educational programs at "tighten up the graphics on level 3" schools are almost exclusively in it for the money (vs. a sound/working skillset for you, as so many people are interested in the idea of game development as a career). If you're going to do the university thing, get strong foundations in computer science (not necessarily deep math or super-advanced algorithms, but sound foundational knowledge and experience). Don't try to skip the basics (C matters).

Also, know that the majority of game developers stay in the industry for only a few years (it's not always the dreamy job it sounds like). And an extremely high percentage of games (I have heard 90%+, I would say around 95% at least if you count all of the small titles) are not profitable. If you're still interested, I wish you the best (you're in for a lot of interesting work)!

Oh, one more thing. Don't try to make GTA + COD on your first run. Choose realistic work if you want to finish something. Scope and vision are the two most important aspects of software development IMO (from working on software 20 years) that make or break projects.

Anecdotes to support this: My first finished game was bizarro-arkanoid (few hundred LOC). Then I made a text-based adventure game (<1,000 LOC, and LOTS of data), then I made a jRPG-ish game (5,000-15,000 LOC, IIRC). ETC, ETC, ETC. I don't have those games anymore because they were crap, but they taught me what I needed to know to make what I'm making today. Which is still kinda crap, but less so.

Between and around those games I "made" dozens of other games, not a single one got finished, mostly because I shot for projects beyond my ability to complete.

Make a game using a pre-made engine. Only make your own engine if you're primarily interested in graphics/systems programming. You'll almost certainly be using someone else's engine, so learning a few different ones should be to your benefit (& prove you can adapt).

This is good advice in today's landscape (an alternative approach to my answer above). Tech matters to me, I wanted to understand many things deeply, I didn't want my knowledge to exist entirely inside of someone else's genius work (such as Unreal Engine game development where you're scripting everything/wiring up game logic/etc.). However, doing the kind of thing I did a decade ago is almost impossible with the tech expectations of today, and also, simply not really necessary.

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