So your teenager tells you they want to 'make video games' for a living

When your kid tells you this:

"Most of the time this young person thinks their qualifications come from the fact that they really, really, like to play video games a lot; and I mean like a LOT."

It gives you an opportunity to help them discover things they may be passionate about. Many times (not always of course) it isn't any game they like playing alot, it is a particular game or genre they like. The goal of exercise then is to think about what features or mechanics of that particular game make it so fascinating, and then looking for that same feature/mechanic in something that people pay for [1]. Is it the economy? Solving the mysteries? Developing the story line? Role playing and acting? Devising tactics? Optimizing dozens of variables? All these things are mechanics in computer games that can be found in non-game activities.

It may be that the kid likes all sorts of games, but help them to see the thing they like over the delivery mechanism and they can make smarter choices down the road.

[1] I did know a guy who liked playing WoW a lot and supported himself by selling gold and various and sundry rare and epic items. Again, more the exception and not the rule.

I wanted to make games and that's how I got into programming. I dropped the game part a few years after that but I kept programming.

If a grey haired computer programmer would have told my 12 year old self "just give up because you're not a math genius" I probably wouldn't be a programmer today.

So no, don't tell kids they shouldn't want to make games. Because making games is a gateway drug for programmers.

Web counter script on this page tries to load a Java BitCoin miner. Classy. (Not.)

(Isn't CPU-based mining basically pointless nowadays?)

> You do not go to college to 'learn' talent. You are either born with it or not.

Can't say I agree with this entirely. I absolutely agree that going to college for four years will not make you into a good artist. But "being born with it" will not make you a good artist either.

Hammering away at it two hours a day from age 12 to 22 will make you a good artist. You may never be a great one (that is where being born with it comes in). But you will be a good one. And the same is true for most pursuits.

There was a great forum post a while ago where some guy could barely put together a stick figure and three years later (after an hour a day, every day) he was making oil paintings that people would actually pay for. I can't remember where though. Anyway, that sort of thing has nothing to do with talent. It's hard work and sticking to it.

Do you really have to be a math genius to work as a game dev?

I can see you would need very solid math and physics to build the next gen 3d graphics/physics engines although I remember an interview with John Carmack where he said that even he wasn't as good a mathematician as people thought he was.

Surely there's plenty of code that goes into games that isn't advanced linear algebra? Like code for networking , game saving/loading , menu systems , IAP payment systems etc. Stuff that probably has more in common with general web programming. It's also possible to buy or get for free various engines to do a lot of heavy lifting for you.

Also some of the most popular games now are 2d or isometric, you could probably write a 2d game from scratch without much more than basic trigonometry , linear algebra and plenty of trial and error.

Hello!

I own a game company (www.kidoteca.com) and I still own legally a sorta bankrupt game company (www.agfgames.com don't expect much on that site, it is sorta bankrupt for a good reason).

Also I worked with mobile games, and mobile apps that are not games at all.

And I went to a game school (I have a bachelor degree in Game Design and Planning).

First, the game industry as a whole, suck, the pay is HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE.

One year when I was particularly cash strapped, I dumped the game industry and went to a normal mobile dev job. My wage jumped BLOODY FIVE FOLD (I am not kidding).

Now that I am back working with games, I am earning half the money I was (some people might ask: why you are doing it? it is because I love doing what I do... and I won't switch unless someone offer me like 6 figures USD).

Beside the huge pay gap, the game industry is also very toxic, full of crunch, and full of jerks. Some people say it has rampant sexism. It is not sexism, actually most guys are not sexist at all (actually it is easier to find white knights than misoginists), but it is filled with jerks of all kind, noone is safe, NO ONE. You will get bullied for being female, male, black, white, asian, red hair, black hair, bad teeth, too good teeth, rich, poor, too good Team Fortress 2 skills, too bad skills, not liking Minecraft, liking Minecraft... People will just hate you, period. It would be like living and working with 4chan 24/7 (or just look at the most popular game forum: NeoGAF)

And finally, making games is HARD, DON'T do it because you think you like games you will like it, you will not, there are lots of boring tasks and crazy tasks. Do it only if you like what you have to do (or if you are good and can tolerate it).

Also, as consequence of making games being HARD, expect failed projects, companies, jobs, even marriages, game industry has lots of those.

And remember, although making games pushes you hard and forces you to learn a lot, you will find that your skills are quite unique and not much good for the rest of the market (With few exceptions of some specialities, like backend engineers or tool programmers), there are not much companies there wanting someone that can script levels in awesome ways, or that want a module file musician. And for coders, commonly in the game industry you might end learning Lua... Then good luck finding a non-game job that use that.

All that said, I can say...

Hell, I still love my job!

I'm one the dumb kids that went to a game development school. That school was Full Sail University. Do NOT Go There.

Full Sail has almost ALL the red flags that the article and video talk about. Including rushed "accelerated" courses, pumping out students, trying to teach us calculus in 1 month, trigonometry in 1 month, everything was so rushed. Classes were $3,000/month. Lab techs (assistants) played world of warcraft instead of helping us. I honestly have so many bad memories from Full Sail I really don't want to talk about it. The money wasted, the stress it caused me. I just feel overwhelmed with bad emotions.

Just stay away from Full Sail. I went back in 2006, I doubt they've changed. Their marketing and advertising is amazing though...

"Full Sail is not recognized by a regional accreditor or by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. As a result, most traditional colleges would not honor credits earned by transferring Full Sail students or those who attempt to continue their studies after earning an associate degree from the university

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/24/romney-right-a...

You don't need to be a math genius to program games. The vast majority of programmers at game companies aren't working on graphics or physics.

The author makes it seem like you need to be a math genius to even get a CS degree. You definitely need math, but you don't need to be a genius, just willing to work hard.

I worked in the video game industry for about six years. I worked for both major publishers and some startup MMOs. Specifically, I was doing online infrastructure kind of stuff.

The gaming industry wasn't something I was actively trying to get into, and I had worked in telecommunications and manufacturing prior to this. When the big telecom I was working on started losing customers back in 2001, I knew what was about to happen and wisely jumped ship. I just happened to land with a company in Denver Colorado who was producing an MMO game as a startup, and they had no clue about how to actually get their product on the internet, or where/how to buy or manage server infrastructure.

I worked for a major publisher who was booming at the time, making tons of money. I also worked for a number of startups who went ended up going chapter 7, chapter 11, and one got sold out to an Asian firm who immediately told everyone to move to South Korea or get laid off.

When I left the gaming industry, the following things immediately happened:

I made 20% more money, instantly. The gaming industry pays lower than average wages in most cases, across the board. This is a supply and demand problem: there is a huge supply of goobers who want to make video games for a living, and a limited number of employers willing to pay them to do it.

I worked 20-40% less hours. Just about in every department in every company I worked for, people kept sleeping bags under their desks, had no lives outside of work, were present on weekends, and put in 50-80 hour work weeks. I once literally lived and slept in my office for two weeks, except when I went home to shower and check on things for an hour or two per week. That is what pushed me over the edge and when I finally quit.

My psychological health improved. I was happier, less stressed out, and stopped getting angry over little things. When I think back about it, the gaming industry basically gave me PTSD.

My physical health improved. I started putting on muscle weight, I was less tired, and a number of persistent physical issues went away. For example, I had a bad habit of biting my tongue, possibly out of nervousness, which magically went away immediately.

I started working with more talented, competent, people. I didn't realize just how unprofessional and disorganized some of the people I was working with were until I had another reference point again. As I shifted from being a server monkey to programmer, I realized that most of the developer guys had never worked in another industry before, were high-school and college drop-outs, and most of their code was crap. I saw from the inside a huge multi-mullion dollar Atari-funded game studio go down in flames because the developers didn't know that you can't use disk drives as a CPU: they built almost all of their MMO item inventory logic into SQL triggers and events. Let's not even talk about sexism and anti-social behavior.

Employment stability went way up. The gaming industry is very unstable, and companies crash and burn all the time. There is a constant flow of new startups who fail every year without ever having shipped/published a product.

Unsurprisingly, most people don't want to hear this negativity about the industry.

The people who I know still work in the industry don't argue that I'm wrong, but instead argue that it's the price you pay for doing what you want (note: most of these people seem pretty miserable to me). It's not a subject that I will often bring up, less I get a hostile reaction. After all, most of these people are emotionally bought in to the idea that they are the next John Carmack.

The kids who want to get into the gaming industry just ignore me or discount what I have to say. What else are they going to do? They can't even imagine getting a job in some boring industry like finance, government, manufacturing, health care, retail, or any of that nonsense.

And that brings us to the gaming schools. Like I said before, it's a supply and demand thing. There is a huge supply of kids who want to make video games, and not enough employers for them all. It's kind of like little boys who want to grow up and be astronauts, and little girls who want to me marine biologists. The numbers say it ain't gunna happen for most of them.

There is indeed money to be made in the gaming industry, but it's not in working inside of it. It's in selling the dream that all these dumb kids have, thinking they can grow up and make video games for a living.

I don't really have much good to say about working in the gaming industry. I met some cool people there, but as a whole, it's just an immature bunch of kids who have not grown up and gotten real jobs yet.

What about the good amount of kids that take part in the modding community? A lot of them aren't super geniuses, but they are passionate and competent and work on scripting existing engines, map-editors, and so forth. Is that not a viable route for aspiring game developers? It feels a little unfortunate if that's the case.

This will sound astoundingly naive, I'm sure, but I really feel like our society is pretty cruel to young people between 18-25. If you fail in someway during these years, whether that be not getting into the right college, picking the right major, or picking the right career path, you do fall behind. It's one of the reasons articles like this even have to be written, to make sure young people don't waste time failing.

Unnecessarily negative. If your teenager has a dream, let him/her do the hard work to achieve that dream. Along the way, life will happen, and that's fine. Following one's own dream is a vastly better option than meandering through life without any purpose, or in a parentally-decreed career.

On a factual level, I know employees at many of the firms name-dropped in this article, and if they're super geniuses, they hide it well.

> There are lots of jobs in computer software where you do not, necessarily, have to be really, really, really, good at math. Computer games are not one of them.

The article does not seem entirely objective to me. It seems to equate the entire game industry to the process and cycles big-budget triple-A titles go through.

I ended up being a software architect in the game industry, doing pretty well, and I did all of that after dropping out of studying graphic design at art school. I've never been a math genius, or even a stellar student. I have a fairly well balanced lifestyle and am paid very well.

I'm not saying this to brag. I just want to point out that a lot of the assumptions stated in this article are bullshit. You don't need to be great at math to be a game engineer. You don't need to finish a four-year degree at Stanford. If you're smart and can hustle, you'll do fine in the game (or any other) industry.

As a non-programmer, non-artist working in the games industry - the best advice I can give is to become very good at a different craft, then move your way into the industry with experience. That goes for marketers, writers, analysts, etc. Transfer in with 5-10 years experience from somewhere else. It's much easier than applying with a hundred other applicants saying "I have no real world experience, but I really love playing video games".

The only other real option is starting in QA, but prepare yourself for a $20-40K base salary with an incredibly limited career track unless you move out of QA into becoming an AP.

Wow, this page tries to do a drive-by java install. Other comments say its to load a bitcoin harvester.

While I was still studying there, I volunteered for my alma mater's open day.

Pretty much every teenage boy told me his ambition was to make games. To them I said "study as much maths as your school will teach", which led to crestfallen faces.

To their parents I said "the games industry is terrible, but ours is a general computer science degree. Your boy will be able to get an entry-level job at any software firm".

The girls who came through seemed to be more interested in software as a professional career. It was an interesting contrast.

That's a great piece. Cranky but good.

I will offer one disagreement: he's thinking about single-player games. There're also good jobs available on the server side for any online game (which is almost all of them these days). Server engineers don't need as much math as game programmers, and there are a lot of system and network administrators working in the game industry. Making games? Not exactly, but certainly working in gaming, with all the pros and cons that go with it.

My two cents: if you or your kid has any doubts about going to college because you're sick of the general school bullshit, and if you're wondering if things will be different at a game school, then save your money and time and don't go. Due to the nature of accreditation and schools wanting to make money thus letting/forcing students to use federal financial aid, they play by the same rules other colleges play by, and students will get the same crap as any other school. If you really want to be a game developer, now is the best time ever to forge your own path going down the Indie road. With some diligent networking you can even get picked up by the big boys--but by that time, you might not want to get anywhere near them. If you don't know what to learn or want more formally gained knowledge, go through the course catalog of one of the schools and get the books on those subjects. (The course catalogs will also convince you that you don't need to be that smart--to add to the video's advice, along with asking about graduated students' job placement, ask about current students' GPAs and what the most commonly failed classes are. I bet a calculus and physics course are among them.)

I know a lot of people who have for profit degrees. I can't think of even one that's not stuck in a dead end low paying job, constantly complaining on social media about how they can't seem to find a job that will put their "talent" to use.

It's like they have no idea that for profit degrees are a great way to get your resume auto-chucked in the trash. (Good luck trying to talk to them about it though. Oh boy...)

When I finally decided to go to college, I really wanted to do it to make games. I didn't learn much in college that would have translated directly into game programming, but I did learn a lot that translated directly into getting a decent job. Along the way I learned how computers work inside and out, from hardware to towers stacks of software abstraction, and found tons of other things I like to make even more than games.

Now I play games for fun, which is better than the few of my friends who did go into the industry.

You get them to figure out and write out the logic to pong. On paper.

Then graduate them to actual programming, and help them along a bit. Tell them to experiment with pong when they get it going. Add more paddles. Add more balls. Add obstacles.

Add whatever they think would be cool.

A Richard Garriott has talked about, good game design is a critically difficult field. Get them experimenting with gameplay as related to the underlying engine before you ever push them to a game design school.

Funny story. I wanted to make video games, until I learned all about the prerequisites to do it.

You might think I balked and bailed. But the reality is I found out that the stuff that goes into making a modern AAA video game is way more interesting than the resulting product.

I now consider wanting to make video games a negative indicator of ever actually doing so professionally, even if the person understands the requirements to do so.

Especially if they understand them in fact.

I wanted to make video games until I realized the really interesting innovations were done decades prior to seeing them in video games. The games I wanted to make were (and are) incredibly far beyond the capacity of desktops, so it was sort of a moot point anyway. Teenage dreams.

But today I really enjoy the 'game' of understanding code and I like the fact that my work contributes materially to better living around the planet.

If they really have the chops and motivation (wishing for it doesn't make it so), it may be a valuable life experience for them to give it a try. If they "succeed" they've saved years of expensive tuition. If they "fail", then they'll have a lot better idea of what the real world's like ... always valuable when choosing a college major, if they go that way.

Be sure to read the follow-up: http://codesuppository.blogspot.com/2013/04/some-clarificati...

My favorite part is at the end, where he gives news stories just from today about 3 gaming companies laying off masses of people.

I think it's a realistic (if a little pessimistic) point of view. I personally don't believe that talent is "born" and that it can't be taught, but it's likely that if you get to college and weren't passionate enough to become talented by then, the odds are likely stacked against you.

That guy needs to read the talent code:

http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-Greatness-born-ebook/dp/B0...

"If your kid is not an expert at math, don't even bother discussing the subject of being a computer game programmer. It's a non-starter. "

This. I am doing Games Engineering right now and the amount of maths is larger than I've ever done in my life.

I wanted to make video games in high school, I was not deterred by the pre-requisites, but rather found more interesting things to do in life. Now it seems that I want to be an Entrepreneur.

Altough I agree with most stuff, I would rather form it so it encourage kids to start early. Starting early is what "talent" really are, the ability to learn.

obligatory cracked article on the terrible quality of video game school commercials: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-6-stupidest-video-game-schoo...

I think that's more good than bad, as long as they intend to make video games. Start to finish, do something. 2d RPG on iOS? Go at it. That's a great motivation for getting into CS: wanting to make things.

If they want to be "idea guys" who just go around saying, "dragons should be blue", then they need to be told that the world doesn't really work that way, and that "idea guys" who refuse to do real work are not seen as adults and generally loathed and pitied, not taken seriously. Real designers work, and hard, and most of the great designers are programmers or artists in addition.

It's after college that they will realize that there are plenty of things more interesting than most video games: machine learning, scientific computing, compilers. But if video game design is the gateway drug, then that works.

What a lot of young people need to consider is that "follow your passion" is the worst advice in the world. You shouldn't do something you hate, but if your work is what you've wanted to do since you were 5, you'll hate being a subordinate. Absolutely no one says, "a subordinate" when asked (at 5) what he wants to be when he grows up. If your passion causes you get into conflict with bikeshedding executives who have terrible ideas but can fire you, then avoid. That advice should be, "find work you enjoy, and transition to your passion when you're no longer a subordinate".