Is doing vidya as a programmer fresh out of college really that bad? What's so terrible about it...

Is doing vidya as a programmer fresh out of college really that bad? What's so terrible about it? Is it the pay or just the general work experience?

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What?

It would help if you explained what vidya was OP

What confused you about what I said, faglord?

>It would help if you explained what vidya was OP

Back to plebbit

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>doing vidya as a programmer

You mean being a programmer for a vidya? Or playing video games as a form of programming?

Which one is it Manpreet?

Is everyone in this thread retarded or just trolling?

This is the most summer thread I've seen all year.

Make games in your hobby time, if you enjoy it, make it your job. Do something else as your job first. Beware of burnout

Just ignore that guy he's probably a fucking muslim or some other third world animal that can't fucking read

>Beware of burnout

What does that even mean though? I'm dying for the chance to work as a programmer already

We're retarded.

It is quite clear what I said in the OP. Maybe you should try not being retarded? Or slap your whore mother that gave birth to you.

Nah it's great, everything bad you've ever heard is a lie and the 59,000,000 other people going into the field just like you are all going to get great jobs that pay really well.
Retard.

Burnout is a thing in the game industry because they take young, idealistic, and enthusiastic programmers and force them to work in crunch mode at the cost of their lives outside of work. Just for the privilege of being in game development. It's almost like a shit retail job where your boss can give you the "if you won't do X, there's someone out there who is begging for the chance" and he's actually right.

If you manage to survive the hazing with a shred of your soul, you'll eventually move out of programming into management, and you'll be unhappy there, because you have no creative outlet. The AAA game industry is not a place for passionate people. Do it on the side, be indie

Burnout is when you overexert yourself, like if you have 4 days to do 70 hours of work so you exhaust yourself getting 'it' done

>Just ignore that guy he's probably a fucking muslim or some other third world animal that can't fucking read

Oh hey, could also not be such a racist prick? It's kind of embarrassing to watch.

>calls someone else a retard
>makes the most retarded post in the entire thread by a mile
KYS

I see, this does make sense. I could see this given the tight deadlines. Would you say it's the hardest job for a fresh grad?

I know what burnout is, genius. And I will be a racist prick all I want because retards like that can't be bothered to think for 2 seconds and just run their fucking mouths off, projecting their low IQs for the rest of the world to see.

Well, if your programming skills are as good as your English comprehension you're gonna fail at your career lmao

I love it when idiots like you don't do any real research into their field and then scoff at everyone telling you to get out. Not many things in life are as satisfying and cathartic as watching a fresh college grad take their first steps into the world with the assumption that they know everything there is to know, then fall flat on their face.

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If you are an indie dev, you might as well hang yourself.

The game industry sucks because tons of young, naive idealists are willing to sacrifice their health and endure shitty pay to work in it. The law of competition therefore dictates that you have to too.

SERIOUS POST BELOW

DONT GO INTO THE GAME INDUSTRY UNLESS YOU ARE EXTREMELY PASSIONATE ABOUT MAKING GAMES. YOU ARE OVERWORKED AND PAID LOWER THAN AVERAGE

Can you guys define what "shitty pay" is?

You are projecting so fucking hard it's laughable. You know absolutely nothing about me and you're clearly butthurt because I said something racist. Just do everyone a favor and head back to plebbit where you belong.

That makes no fucking sense but okay

Thats one smug smug ya got there smug posting user of smug

100% this

>You know absolutely nothing about me
I don't have to, user. You aren't special or unique, and you have no ability to change the industry.

I never said anything even remotely suggesting I wanted to change it. Again, you're a plebbitor that is upset because someone said something mean about your minority friends. You do not belong here.

>You know absolutely nothing about me
I know you're an internet edgelord from /v/ and/or Jow Forums which immediately removes any reason for me to post positive things in this thread. So I'll just tell you what you want to hear.

Working in video games is fine. You will be paid very well and you will not have to work ridiculous amounts of overtime. You won't have to always be looking for a job because of constant studio closures. You will not get squeezed by publishers and advertisers for every last drop of creativity that you possibly can muster all while ignoring your friends and family. You will not feel guilt when loading your next product with malicious ads and spyware just to pay the bills. You will not struggle to rationalize your choices when you realize you're busting your ass for a bunch of edgy racist attention-deficit 14 year olds who are now the primary customers you have to care about, and perpetuating the cycle of eternal shitposting that you currently find yourself in. No sir, none of those things will happen.

this
worse pay and benefits than you would get at a FAANG but you have to work way harder to ship the game on time, plus you'll most likely end up working on shitty shovelware tier games anyway

the rule has always been that gamedev isn't worth it and it's long hours, low pay, and very unrewarding
but at the same time the games industry is absolutely huge, and people are making billions
so who is getting rich? how do you get rich?
indie studio? vc? I mean the fact is there are people getting loaded from games, it's not just the executives they don't even make that much compared to some industries

>Saying rude things about minorities just to get attention online in the current year
>Telling other people they need to return to plebbit
Cute. Joke's on you, I don't have any friends.

>I don't have any friends
You made that pretty obvious from the start

>how do you get rich?
If I had to guess? Start your own studio, hire as few people as possible and do as much work yourself as you can.

Yes. Defining "hardest" is complicated in this context. Programming embedded in ASM for NASA would also be a hard job. Skills wise, much harder than games. But in practice, the deadlines (like you said), demands, expectations, peer pressure, all that, are different with games. I would say that working in games is the hardest thing for any programmer, not just a new graduate.

And I'm not saying that to put on airs here. All jobs have deadlines. Missing your deadlines is bad. In most jobs, you can have a dialogue with your customer to manage expectations and your product will, usually, be improved as your customer uses it and they'll work with you to make it better. Getting something functional but imperfect, or late, is acceptable. Games are not like this. Your publisher has your boss's boss's boss by the nutsack and if he doesn't ship it, the board can't afford new yachts that year and all that other corporate shit everyone says. Missing a deadline in games is absolutely unheard of and treated like the Apocalypse. Rightfully so, because management will have a lot of rolling heads. I don't mean to get bogged down here. The answer to your question is yes. It would be the most difficult experience in your career and it might break you. Don't see that sentence as a challenge, but a warning. You don't want to cut your teeth in the games industry, you can't imagine how many people in your position quit programming forever because of two years in games.

Interesting stuff, thanks for the insight. Do you have experience working in video games?

You're very welcome. Yes, some, but I thankfully quickly realized what I was getting myself into. The culture of most studios isn't exactly in line with my prime requirement of any job I hold, that I must be improving my skills. I bailed when I realized that nobody has any time to mentor. When I was looking for another job, I found that the vast majority of studios did not prioritize skill advancement of their low level employees and that's a big no for me.

A large chunk of what I speak from is watching close friends working at different places over the years. It's uncanny how similar their stories all were. All the stories coming out now about MK11 and Anthem? That's been going on forever. If you're looking for a case study of the kinda thing I was close to, look up the story behind Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning. People joke about crunch and unfair work, but it's the rule, not the exception.

And the sickest thing? If your game isn't a big hit, your owner can just dissolve the whole company and leave you holding the bag. You'll see that's what happened with BigHuge Games.

That does not follow with your previous statement, which accuses me of having friends. Try to think before you post next time, thanks.

If the game industry is that bad who is getting all the money?

These days? Nobody! We're still living mentally in the 90-00's where a core team of fifteen people and a support system can push out a game that moves a million units. Ocarina, Banjo, GoldenEye, Super Mario World, Metroid, Final Fantasy 6, Mega Man. Graphical fidelity and game scope were second to gameplay, and the technology being used to build games was much simpler. So a company could make gangbuster profits with a reasonably successful game.

But then we got into the HD era and the graphics wars. Developers told consumers that graphical fidelity was the selling point of the next generation of consoles (Xbox, PS2, specifically), so consumers started to expect good games to push the envelope on graphics. This is something John Carmack takes the original blame for.

So okay, you need better art, hire more artists. Okay, we also need a better engine, hire an expensive R&D team. Okay, we need objects to move like they're in the real world, hire a different expensive R&D team. On and on and on. The big money coming into video games is diffused amongst the massive enclave of people hired to produce them. In theory, this is good. But we don't live in a world where the executives of companies are okay with getting paid on the same order of magnitude of any other employee. The board also needs to get paid seven figures. On top of that, a studio is going to ship maybe one game every three years! They're going to have to ride the profits until they cut their next one. It's theoretically sustainable with a more worker owned studio, but big AAA doesn't have that corporate structure. Huge money is coming in, but it's a treadmill.

Thanks a lot user, it helps to know all of this

You are very welcome. I don't want to pass myself off as the word of God, but if you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer them, if I'm able to.

>we don't live in a world where the executives of companies are okay with getting paid on the same order of magnitude of any other employee
I actually think this is ok, my uncle became an executive of a major company and honestly the shit he had to do to get there was unbelievable. my aunt would tell stories of him not coming home because he literally slept at work multiple nights and she would bring him changes of clothes and food. executives are pretty special people and they can fundamentally change a company. I mean look at amd. there's definitely fat cat executives but some of them totally deserve the huge money they earn.

I'm a firm believer that a person should be paid as much as they can either earn themselves, or as much as someone else is willing to pay them for their skills and time. I'm not declaring it unethical that executives get paid so much, I'm attempting to answer the question of "where does all the money go?"

In my experience, for every one person who threw away their real lives for work that makes it to the top of the heap, there are ninety nine who likewise threw their lives away and did not.

People can do whatever they want, but ultimately, game development is most profitable when money is spent on the creators, not the managers. We have a huge body of evidence that suggests a connection between a corporatization of a creative entity and a downturn in the product they put out. Correlation isn't causation, so I can't show you my math. This is my opinion.