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PC Games (Games) Books Media Book Reviews Entertainment Games

Game Creation and Careers 164

Posted by timothy
Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The back cover of Game Creation and Careers says "Reading this book is like being at a round-table discussion with more than 150 of the video game industry's most successful designers, developers and publishers." In fact, it's exactly like that, for better and for worse. Mostly worse." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's lengthy review.
Game Creation and Careers: Insider Secrets from Industry Experts
author Marc Saltzman
pages 744
publisher New Riders
rating 4
reviewer Michael Fiegel
ISBN 0735713677
summary A poorly organized series of interviews with industry-leading game designers.

Structurally, the main section of the book is broken up into four parts. Part 1 is devoted to Pre-Production, and includes chapters on Game Genres and Player Perspective, General Game Design, and the like. Part 2 is devoted to Production, with chapters on Programming Theory, AI, Game Art and Animation, User-Interface and Game Control, Sound Engineering and Music and Gaming. Part 3 takes a look at Post-Production, with information about Proper Game Testing, Tech Support and Public Relations/Marketing. Part 4, titled "How to Make it Happen," discusses DIY Shareware solutions, Breaking into the Industry, Agents and Headhunters, Design Schools, Internet resources, Conventions and Awards.

The book closes with an Appendix that includes biographies of more than 80 of the interviewees featured in the book. These are interesting but somewhat uneven: some of the artist bios are single paragraphs, while others (such as Don Bluth's) run to two pages long; some of the bios are little more than bulleted lists of games worked on, while others talk about future plans; and of course, one wonders why, if the book features more than 150 interviewees, why did nearly half of them not bother with a bio?

Words of the Prophets

The bulk of the book is devoted to material gleaned from interviews with game industry professionals. None of these is presented as its original whole; rather, bits from each are cut and pasted around, so American McGee's comments about Action Game Design, Game Industry Jobs and Storyboards are all located within the (usually) relevant chapters, rather than being presented as a whole, continuous interview.

I say "usually," because there are some rather questionable decisions made about where to place chunks of information. For example, much of the information in Chapters 15 and 16, which cover Sound Engineering and Music and Games respectively, is instead about breaking into the industry, which belongs in Chapter 21. Chapter 6 (which discusses, in part, Creating Characters) has a Note that says "See Chapter 13, 'Game Art and Animation,' for a discussion from legendary Hollywood animator Don Bluth on how to create a successful game character..." One wonders why, if it's relevant to this chapter, why it's not right here. Earlier, Chapter 5 contains a chunk of text about User Interface Design, even though Chapter 14 is supposed to be about UI Design (and in fact, this text refers to the later chapter before giving the advice). And in Chapter 5, there's a section in Gordon Walton's interview about breaking into the industry, which closes by saying "For more on breaking into the industry, sink your teeth into the meaty Chapter 21!"

Whether these were in-person or e-mail interviews is never clear, but they're all a little uneven, with some relating personal stories and others reciting information verbatim from company websites. Taken individually, many of these interviews are filled with interesting tidbits, insightful commentary and quirky bits of trivia which are worth reading. However, a good deal of the advice is not at all helpful or insightful, except perhaps superficially. For example, here are Yu Suzuki's thoughts on what separates a great game from a good game:

  1. Passion.
  2. Never give up.
  3. Create a game carefully, thinking about the people who will play it.

Certainly good advice for creating a game. Or, with some word substitution, for writing a book, or flying a plane, or developing a cure for cancer, or becoming a Jedi Master. I think Yoda said it better: "Do, or do not. There is no try."

Much of the "advice" throughout the book is like this -- vague and meandering, and only peripherally relevant to game design. It's tempting to read the words of the designers within as if they were carved in some holy rock on the summit of Mount Radeon, but the fact is that when you look past the aura you get the impression that a lot of what they have to say is nothing but common sense. And with the way the book presents their interview excerpts their advice often comes across as, well, less than inspirational:

  • Todd Howard on UI design: "Interface is everything. It's the player's way of using the game."
  • Richard "Lord British" Garriott on MMORPGs: "Hire experienced personnel."
  • Kevin Cloud on becoming a game artist: "You can't learn to be a computer artist unless you spend time on a computer."
  • Thomas Warfield on shareware game design: "Make a good game that's fun to play."

I don't know too many people who would intentionally design a bad game that's awful to play by designing a crappy interface with inexperienced personnel without using any computers. But maybe it's just me.

Too Many Cooks

By far the most frustrating aspect of the book is the one I alluded to in my opening paragraph. Namely, that "too many cooks spoil the broth," as goes the old saying. In each chapter, advice from up to two dozen designers is presented, and in many cases one piece of advice contradicts another. In fact, in the few cases where such advice is in agreement, the author feels inclined to point it out, as on page 43, where he tells us, of Scott Miller, "Notice how closely his comments resemble George Broussard's advice? Now that's focus!" In fact, Saltzman addresses the issue himself in the opening to Chapter 14 by saying "...it's likely that you'll find some conflicting advice in areas of this book on art techniques, level design suggestions, or the best way to animate a character..." That's putting it mildly.

"Asked about the importance of design documents," says the author, "(David) Perry directly contradicts Lorne Lanning and others." He does not, however, tell us who to listen to. Nor does he tell us what to think when Ragnar Tornquist contradicts himself with "I said earlier to avoid clichés and stereotypes, but sometimes clichés and stereotypes are great ways to establish a character immediately." Later, John Slagel, asked about job-seeking, says "Don't go through a recruiter," and the author is quick to remind us that "the folks in Chapter 22, 'Game Agents and Headhunters,' may disagree!" On page 386, Greg Thomas tells us that, when it comes to game art, "It's better to make the model simpler at first and continue to add details until the limits are reached," but on page 387 Todd Howard says "Aim high... it's easier to scale down than up later on."

So do you listen to the game designer on page X who says one thing, or do you listen to the contradictory advice on page X+1? Higher or lower? Recruiter or on your own? Design document or not? Red pill or blue pill? Left or right? Up or down? The book leaves all that for the reader to decide, which raises the question: what's the point? It's difficult to understand the true intent of a book which presents such a diverse range of opinions on the topic of game design, except perhaps as an amusing diversion from actually designing games. In order to use this book as a guide to game design, one must inevitably choose which advice to follow. And as presented, that's an impossibility.

This all comes to a head in Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry." "Find a job, any job," says one designer, while another says you should get a Master's degree first. Scott Miller says "with all the ideas that have been sent to me (hundreds), I've yet to see one that's worthy of turning into a game," and Sid Meier says putting together a playable demo and shopping it around is the way to go, and then Minh Le says that building a mod for an existing game is the best route to success. What all this boils down to is this: these people are not telling you what will work for you. Rather, they are telling you what worked for them. Everyone's story is different. Every path to success is different. Even the recruiters themselves disagree in Chapter 22. Melanie Cambron says "...at the early stages of one's career, using recruiting services is not the best approach," but two pages later Jeff Brunner's interview "...explains why a budding artist, programmer or game designer should consider using the services of a recruiting agency." Admittedly, this latter comment comes in the author's own words, which leads me to my next subject.

Wowza

In a book which basically amounts to a series of interviews, the author's voice repeatedly pops up with interjections-cum-interruptions that are annoying, repetitive, and just plain unnecessary. Sometimes it's a throwaway phrase, at other times just a word, but it's always a speed bump in the experience. For example, in his introduction to the book (titled, in unnecessarily casual fashion, "So, You Wanna Make Games For A Living, Huh?"), Saltzman says "... it's no wonder why the video game industry has broken the $10 billion dollar-a-year mark in the U.S. alone, which is significantly more than the revenues generated from movie box office receipts. Wowza." Wowza?

Later, Saltzman tells us to turn to Chapter 21 to read about "...breaking into 'da biz.' Whew!" On numerous occasions, he invites the reader to "pull up a chair," just in case you were reading the book while skipping rope. In Chapter 14 the reader is invited (or perhaps commanded?) to "Enjoy the following paragraphs." And page 247 cheerfully chirps "Pencils in hand?" before listing five points about Level Design. Why would we need to take notes with a pencil when the book has the notes already printed? These are obviously attempts to insert some lighthearted banter into the book, and in some places they do help to provide transitions between thoughts, but in my opinion they're nothing but an indication that the author has misjudged his audience. If they're meant to be ignored, then they shouldn't be there, and if they're truly meant to be read, then, well ... they still shouldn't be there. These little interjections come across as little more than the author jumping up and down at our round-table discussion, shouting "Don't forget me! I'm over here" or else "Don't forget about this other stuff! It's over there."

It is this latter tendency is the largest issue I have with the author's comments, in that most of them are redundant and unnecessary attempts to explain the obvious or refer to other sections of the book. From the introduction to Chapter 2, "General Game Design: Action/Arcade Games," comes this helpful tidbit:

"This chapter features designers from the action/arcade category. Chapter 3, 'General Game Design: Strategy Games,' delves into the strategy game genre. Here we go!"

Each section and interview constantly reminds us of other chapters and sections that we might want to read, like one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure Books. At the end of a section on game design in Chapter 2, we are reminded to go to Chapter 6 to read more about characters. In Chapter 6, we are encouraged to read not only about breaking into the industry in Chapter 21, but also about game design in Chapter 2. Page 187 of Chapter 6 invites the reader to "(f)ling yourself back to Chapter 2." What, right now?

This reaches its climax in Chapter 5 with "For more from the vocal Chris Taylor, jump to Chapters 6, 17 and 21. Whew!" Whew, indeed; which do we choose? Back and forth, back and forth, every page referring to another two pages. Perhaps this is meant to replicate a hyperlinked web page, or to encourage reading the book out of sequence, but in the end it merely comes across as schizophrenic and eminently unhelpful, as in this gem from Chapter 3: "In Chapter 21, 'Breaking Into the Industry,' Bill Roper offers some advice on breaking into the industry." Or how about the first sentence in Chapter 10: "Chapter 8, "Level Design," dealt with level design ..."

You think?

Also sprinkled haphazardly throughout the book are "Notes," which in theory are supposed to explain something but generally tell us nothing relevant. In many cases, the Note does little more than refer us to another chapter, as with the cross references above. An interview with Richard "Levelord" Gray in Chapter 8 mentions John Romero's interview in Chapter 20 for no apparent reason. An interview with Joel Jewett in Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry", closes with a Note that Noah Falstein has more to say about breaking into the industry in Chapter 6; if it's relevant to the current chapter, why is it not in the current chapter? Most egregious, perhaps, is the Note which leads off Chapter 16, "Music and Games", informing us that we should turn back to Chapter 15 to read about Sound Engineering. But we were just there! In fact, later in Chapter 16 an interview excerpt with George "The Fat Man" Sanger leads off with the words "In Chapter 15," and ends with the words "See Chapter 15!"

OK, we get the point -- you like Chapter 15!

The Bad and The Ugly

Graphically, the book is quite unimpressive. The book's black-and-white printing turns the majority of the photographs into ugly blotches that do little to illustrate anything. For example, page 74 features a drab grayscale illustration from Age of Mythology, amusingly captioned with "Talk about gorgeous graphics!" Elsewhere, screencaps from The Sims contain illegible dialogue, images from Red Faction are indecipherable, and a bewildering photo of a parking lot on page 592 adds a certain je ne sais quoi. None of it is pretty.

There are also a few photos of the designers themselves, which range from the typical ("here's me in front of a computer") to the arrogant ("here's me holding a gun next to two hot chicks") to the silly ("here's me in a bunny suit"). Most of these have nothing to do with the text, the book, or anything at all that I can think of. A picture of George "The Fat Man" Sanger is accompanied by a caption informing us that the snakes on his suit were all hand-embroidered. Objection, your honor -- how is this relevant?

Relevance is also a big problem with the artwork; as in, there mostly isn't any to speak of. In but a few cases is the art both appropriate to the text as well as interesting and/or useful (as with the sketches from Twisted Metal: Black on page 35). Some of the artwork is obvious promotional art, as when a pre-rendered still from Diablo II is passed off as a shot from the game, and some of it is merely irrelevant to the text it accompanies, as when two stills of Oddworld's Abe accompany text that talks about how unique his friend Munch is. Later, two random shots from Unreal are dropped in with a caption discussing puzzle design in the middle of a chapter on level design. Then a discussion about User Interface design is accompanied by two shots from The Sims, bereft of any sign of its pie menu interface, the only thing that would have made the images relevant. In Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry," what will you find stuck in between interviews with Donny Thorley of Day 1 Studios and Dave Davis of Electronic Arts? Inexplicably, four screenshots from Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, and a caption that talks about Chapter 19, "Public Relations and Marketing."

The book could also use some updating and at least one more round of editing; though few and far between, there are some embarrassing mistakes to be found. Page 25 mentions "Warcraft: Diablo," and page 242 reverses the name of a popular mod by referring to "Condition Zero: Counter Strike." Other errors are more egregious: page 138 talks about Dungeon Siege 2, slated for a 2004 release, but page 142 tells us that the same game is "not confirmed by the company at the time of this writing." Later, the reader is invited to "peruse Namco's 2002 lineup at www.namco.com"; if Namco still has their 2002 lineup online, they're in trouble. And page 155 tells us that Everquest is "something 400,000 people enjoy almost daily [and for $10 a month!]" while the very next page contains a caption about the same game informing us that "(m)ore than 450,000 gamers are paying $13 a month ..." At that rate, by the time you finish paging through the book, everyone in the world will be paying $1500 a month to play Everquest. Which I guess isn't so inconceivable, come to think of it.

It's also worth mentioning the Cover, Table of Contents and Index here, all of which are poorly organized. The cover is an awful purple mess which lists a number of the interviewees, a list which continues on into the inside front cover of the book. The Table of Contents then gives us more lists of names, showing us who's interviewed in each chapter. Two pages later we are presented with yet another two-page list of the same names. We're 23 pages in and we've seen the list three times. This might be excusable if the Table of Contents was at all helpful, but it's not. Every sub-sub-sub-section of the book is listed; in case you were wondering what page the blank User Interface Detail #2 entry of the Master Design Document Template was on, it's page 225.

Then, of course, there's the 34-page long Index, which includes entries for each interviewee as well as topical entries followed by lists of interviewees in each chapter. Just in case it wasn't confusing enough, the individual interviewee names are organized alphabetically by last name, but their entries under each topic are alphabetized by their first name. And for added fun, how about the fact that the interviews within each chapter are not presented alphabetically at all (either by first name or last)? In sum, there are some 60 pages of the book -- nearly 10 percent -- devoted to repeated lists of names organized differently each time.

Conclusions

In the Introduction, Saltzman points out that this book is an extension and expansion of the popular and commercially successful Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. I've not read that book, but I can't help but think that perhaps an expansion was not the best idea. In some cases, less is more, and this book, while interesting, helpful and at times enlightening, really would have been a whole lot more with a whole lot less of some things. Removing unnecessary banter, unhelpful Table of Contents and Index entries, the ubiquitous page cross-references and some completely useless photographs would make this book 100 pages lighter and a lot more worth reading.

As it stands, the book is worth a look only if you're really interested in what these "gods of gaming" have to say about the industry, or you just want some light reading material to round out your collection. It's fun to hear Scott Miller trash Lara Croft as having "a generic, valueless name that says nothing about her personality" just a few pages before Toby Gard talks about her in glowing terms, but is it helpful? To borrow a Fark tag: Unlikely.

If you're looking for information on how to get into the industry, or any insights into designing and developing better games, there are better books out there, including some others by New Riders (helpfully referenced at the back of this book) which are more focused and better structured. And if you're looking for a magic-bullet solution to landing an industry job, you're not going to find it in here (if anywhere at all). When you boil down the advice in the book and pick out the few things these 150 experts agree on, it comes down to this: go to college, practice your skills, take a job in QA or testing to get your feet in the door, and play lots of games. Outside of that, whatever works for you is what will work for you.

Ultimately, the best piece of advice in the book comes in an anecdote about Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, who signed a fan's Nintendo Power Magazine with the following advice: "To Jeremie, Play Outside on Sunny Days, Shigeru Miyamoto."

You can purchase Game Creation and Careers: Insider Secrets from Industry Experts from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Game Creation and Careers

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  • An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:36PM (#12081801) Homepage Journal
    Just because everyone needs an uninformed opinion, here's mine:

    Stay the hell away from the "gaming industry" as a career. Find an interesting job in programming something else, and write games as a hobby. If you get anywhere near the gaming industry, they will chew you up and spit you out like a piece of used tabacco. You're far better off writing games in your spare time for fun. No, you won't be the one to write the next Quake, but you will have time to spend with your family as well as the ability to exercise your own creative will.

    If you find that your blood still boils to write games, then may I suggest writing it independet of the big boys? It's the only way you're going to get to do what you want to do. Once you have a demo done, you can try to get a publisher to give you funding to finish it.

    As for actual game designs, it's taken me a long time to figure out what's "fun" and what isn't. The answer? Cheap-ass effects out the wahzoo. Seriously! The difference between a dull game and a fun game may be how adreniline-pumping the explosions look, or how you shake the screen, or perhaps that quirky physics trick that causes the bad guy to go flying after you punched him three times! The more cheap effects you can pack in, the more you can crank up the action and immerse the player. The player will find it "fun" and will keep coming back.

    Story-lines also help, but these are damn hard to add on a budget. You need a good story writer that can provide a suspenseful and intriguing story (hard to find!), and you need good voice actors at a minimum. For a *really* immersive story, you need a complete video production team. Not easy to come by.

    The last bit of advice I have, is to not get too carried away with how pretty your game looks. I said "cheap effects", not expensive ones! A player may notice your cool lighting engine ONCE before completely ignoring it. You have to ask yourself if it was really worth the work to add it (i.e. did it add to the game?) or was it just a personal "Look what I can do!" moment?

    • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Informative)

      by stlhawkeye ( 868951 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:40PM (#12081865) Homepage Journal
      I concur. I know a number of people in the industry (including major designers for both the now-defunct UO2 and Star Wars Galaxies), and that lifestyle is not for everybody. Long hours, marginal pay, high stress, low job security. Even the most talented among them have gone months, sometimes years between jobs, and most have lived in 3 or 4 different states in the last 5 years. Perhaps I'm conservative and dull but I like a stable paycheck and living someplace long enough to memorize my own address. No, I'm not married. Just not cut out for an industry like gaming.

    • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

      by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) ( 613870 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:43PM (#12081905) Journal
      Doom 3 has some of the poorest gameplay of any game I've seen in recent years and yet the expensive effects not only sold the game, they sold expensive PCs so people could play the game. The people who wrote the game got the satisfaction of knowing that their renderer kicks ass, and they made money out of the sales. With motivation like that, who needs to write a game that's "fun"? Next you'll be saying that movies have to have a good story!
      • John Carmack is an algorithm Genie. The real value of Doom 3 is not in its gameplay, sales, or playerbase, but in its technology. The Doom3 graphics engine is a thing of beauty, filled with fantastic lighting algorithms, detail preservation architecture, and a slew of other goodies you'll usually only see in SIGGRAPH papers, ready for the next generation of hardware to support it. iD has always been like this - ahead of the game in engine tech, and softer on the other goodies. Carmack knows he'll have a sle
        • It's curious that you've left the word Genie untranslated from German because it gives the sentence interesting connotations in English. I imagine Carmack sitting in a brass lamp from time to time popping up in a cloud of smoke to grant us all a cool new algorithm before being sucked back in again.
      • Doom 3 played exactly like Doom did. And last I heard thats all it was suppost to be. It wasn't all the gfx, it was just good old kill and jump in your chair fun. Thats all Doom has ever been.

        Now you may not LIKE that kind of game, but that doesn't mean it has no gameplay value to those that did. For example, I thought Half-Life 2 was a horrible game. I loved the first one, but the second one was just mind numbing, to me. But i like the engine and I can understand why a lot of people do like Half-Life 2, s
      • doom3 was a tech demo, nothing more.

    • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:47PM (#12081977) Homepage
      You don't need a big budget for a good story line. My favorite game in the old dos days was Star Control II [sourceforge.net]. At the time, there was no voice, simple tracked-music, and graphics that were nothing special. But the game was *fun*, and had a great plot.

      One person in the article mentioned that you shouldn't stereotype characters. Perhaps, but then again, if you start with a general stereotype and then run in wild tangents from there, you can end up with great results. Case and point: the spathi [classicgaming.com]. My favorite alien race [daughtersoftiresias.org] from any game I've ever played.

      Small groups can make great games. The key is utilizing tools made by others. For example, check out UFO: Alien Invasion [ufoai.net]. A couple of quake-modders who liked X-com is making a stunningly beautiful freeware version of the old X-com games. Great music, eye candy, and fun gameplay.

      • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:56PM (#12082108) Homepage Journal
        You don't need a big budget for a good story line.

        No, you don't. But players will tend to expect very high standards, so it's difficult to accomplish today without sinking in the money. For example, Wing Commander Privateer had animated heads and text printing out. (If you got the CDROM version like me, you were treated to some really corny voice acting too!) Wing Commander 3 went to full movies for story nary a year or two later.

        Now do you think anyone would be happy if the next Wing Commander for the PC had animated heads and printed out text? Pfff, I wish. :-)

        The one exception is that you can get away with murder if you reset expectations. Wing Commander: Prophecy for the Game Boy was just released. They have story panels, not even talking heads!
        • Funny... The very reason I'm no longer buying computer games is because there's no game left -- only sounds I turn off and graphics that slow down my PC. I cannot name a computer game that was worth more than an hour of my time lately.

          That to say, if a new RPG came out with animated heads and printed out text, I'd certainly look at it, and I'd probably buy it, because I haven't found anything worth my time or my money since Ultima7 -- er, actually I did find Angband, but it is special.
      • I still play star control II on occasion. That game rules. It's nothing compared to X-COM though :)
    • As a regular game-player, I genuinely pity you in your plight. When I install a game that has a non-immersive story, no voice-overs, cheap-ass effects and no cool lighting engine, I hit the uninstall button and add the game CD to my coaster collection!

      The "Gaming Industry" -- you can't live with it, you can't live without it...
      • What I'll never get is why, to this day, so many games (especially console games) have essentially no shading model. Seriously: how hard is it to precompute normals for your models? All you need is a precomputed normal for each vertex stored with the coordinate and color/texture data. When rendering, all you do is dotproduct it with your lighting vector, and use that as a lighting intensity value for that vertex. Bam! Your graphics look 10 times more realistic. It's not like it's hard or CPU intensive

    • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:5, Interesting)

      by achacha ( 139424 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:54PM (#12082068) Homepage
      Great advise, game industry is the programming equivalent of a 3rd world country sweatshop.

      I have a few friends that thought otherwise and joined game companies (all different ones) and now they are overworked, have no free time, often work weekend, stopped even trying to "think" of dating (yes, yes, at least it was thinking about it before, now it's not even a thought).

      I stayed away and work for a programming company that is not a crazy delivery cycle that games are (still a quick cycle, but at least I get my weekends free, and no, I do not think of dating, because wife's hammer of loyalty +5 will smite me quick).

      Anyhow, the people who succeed in gaming are theones that get together and write games on their own schedule and do what they like and when it is ready look for a publisher. True the publishers are equivalent of leeches, but at least you get to do what you like, gain experience, and hopefully make some money in the end without feeling like a night worker who can't afford a tub of lube.

      YMMV.
      • "I do not think of dating, because wife's hammer of loyalty +5 will smite me quick."

        Maybe her smiting hammer would get less use if you thought of dating more. If you wife was worth marrying, then it wouldn't hurt to take her on a few dates, even after the honeymoon is over.

        Treat her to a nice dinner--she'll thank you for it, and you'll thank yourself for doing it. :)
    • Exactly! The world needs more games like Alien Shooter, and fewer awful-as-all-hell RTSs and WW2 FPSs...
    • Stay the hell away from the "gaming industry" as a career.

      I know this was posted as an "uninformed" opinion, but can you qualify your comment somehow? Did you actually work in the industry? Or are you basing this off of what you've heard from others?

      All throughout college I kept hearing (from people I now know didn't have the slightest clue what they were talking about) that the game industry was a terrible place to work. My experience, two years into it as a programmer, is that this job kicks ass!

      • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:4, Interesting)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) * <akaimbatman AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @06:26PM (#12082477) Homepage Journal
        I know this was posted as an "uninformed" opinion, but can you qualify your comment somehow?

        It's a combination of personal experiences and observations. Let's just leave it at that. :-)

        I do work at a smaller studio, and we're not owned by any dark international conglomerate, but I've seen 0% of all the negative stuff these guys are talking about. Decent hours, decent pay, and I get a lot of creative input (even as a programmer).

        Good for you! Jobs like that tend to be from the people who went from "spare time" programming to publishing. If they can keep up the momentum, then they can keep in business.

        However, while those gaming jobs *do* exist, it may be hard to find a different line of work. The programming industry as a whole tends to "taint" you depending on the work you've done before. (Really sucky, I know.) So even if you don't want to work for a gaming company, you may find that other companies may not like you because of your gaming experience. :-(

        Good luck, though. I hope you never see any of what I'm talking about.

    • Re:An uninformed opinion (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think it would be best if games chose one thing and did it really well, instead of trying to do everything. If you make an action game, make it exciting. If you make a puzzle game, make it difficult but solvable. If you make an RPG, make your characters customizable. (These are just my feelings about genres. Since we're dealing in uninformed opinions, YMMV.)

      Yes, you have to do everything else to an "acceptable" level, i.e., you can't have the game crash and your new FPS may require more than 8-bit

      • ?Take Fallout... crappy graphics, amazing depth.

        And, what, 10 years out of date?

        Minesweeper... no wacky effects, just a short learning curve with a long time to master.

        And no one lining up to purchase it...

        F-Zero... no real story or eye-candy, just fast.

        The original *was* eye-candy for its time. It did spectacular. The sequel was low on looks to provide the feeling of speed. It was lots of fun, IMHO, but it flunked on the market.

        Silent Hill... not pushing the envelope graphically, but scary as h
    • Hear hear!

      I know someone who spent two full years studying video game development, got an entry-level job and hated it so much it quit after six months (He's now unemployed).

      Everyone I ever talked to about video game development says to avoid doing it for someone else, since to them you're just another code monkey whose mind, body, and soul can be owned 24 hours a day for some chump change (once you figure in unpaid overtime etc) and Mountain Dew.

      You're best bet is to make some cool game that becomes modera

    • Does anybody here have advice on game engines for hobbyists? I suppose the politically correct answer is Crystal Space [crystalspace3d.org] because it is open source but I found it to be quite laggy. Torque [garagegames.com] seems nice but the demo is not very functional. Is it worth the $100?

      • Write your own? If you don't mind Java, Xith3D [xith3d.org] and JMonkeyEngine [jmonkeyengine.com] provide excellent scenegraphs to start from.
    • . . . they will chew you up and spit you out like a piece of used tabacco[sic].

      The same can be said of any competitive field, especially those centered around "harnessing" (maybe "harvesting" is more correct?) creativity.

      Ask any assistant professor at a top university, and they would say all the same things. So would any professional comedian, actor, singer, musician, writer, or artist. Hell, ask most politicians and the answer wouldn't be any different.

      I'm not saying that makes it right, but it does

      • Have you ever actually worked for a gaming company? The problem is not that they're competitive or that they demand a lot. The problem is that they destroy people's lives and health without providing *anything* in return. (sarcasm)It is, after all, supposed to be a "privilege" to work for a gaming company. Just like it once was a "privilege" to die for a fuedal lord.(/sarcasm) Society cast off those chains long ago, and provided only for common defense. If someone wanted to gain power, they needed to fairly
        • Who did you used to work for?

          I'm thinking it's about time you came clean... the studio I'm working for currently is a very different story.
        • I work in the game industry. Pretty much everyone I know works in the game industry. I have people all over the place who I talk to. There are places like what you're describing. But they are by no means the norm. Your experience is either way out of data, not in the U.S. or you're using a very small sampling to categorize the whole industry. It's not all sunshine and blowjobs. Sometime shit sucks. But it's also not all doom and gloom. The royalty checks for instance kick complete ass.
      • The most efficient way to make money is to make people work for you.

        Ever got a chance to meditate the above statement? Give it a try.

        When you're done, consider how wrong it is to compare a creative genius who is seeking an employer and a sweatshop worker who has one.
    • You're far better off writing games in your spare time for fun.

      I'm curious... do you do this yourself? What do you use? Do you just have gcc and the X libraries and go from there? Or do you use a commercial game development kit or something in between? I wouldn't mind kicking around some "for fun" game development, but I always get bogged down with the graphics primitives; as much fun as it's been learning X programming, I'll be at this for another decade before I actually get a playable game working "

      • I'm curious... do you do this yourself?

        Yes.

        What do you use?

        Primarily Java these days. When I was a young'un, I did 3D engines in C, but these days I see little need for doing much at all in C.

        Some of my favorite stuff to write is the 4K games [dnsalias.com]. The 4K boundry seems to be sweet-spot that provides me with a challenge worthy of spending time on, as well as confines the game enough to make sure it gets *done*.

        BTW, the X libs are the wrong place to start. I spend most of my time in the Java2D APIs, but fo
    • Stay the hell away from the "gaming industry" as a career. Find an interesting job in programming something else, and write games as a hobby.

      I muck about designing single-player maps for my favourite games. Occasionally, I even get round to releasing one. People seem to like what I do [telefragged.com], even if the plots are wilfully obtuse and cryptic [hylobatidae.org].

      I probably could get a job in the gaming industry, but I really can't be bothered. I'd rather be able to completely change the ending of one of my maps at a whim than have
    • Ok, so I'm a lead programmer at a fairly major studio. Your's is an uninformed opinion. Yes, we do do crunch times. And yes, I could probably earn more doing some other kind of work.

      However, most weeks I don't work more than a typical 9 to 5. I have a girlfriend (who I met subsequent to taking this job), and I have a more active social life now than what I had before joining the games industry.

      What many stories about this business fail to mention is the comradship that can build itself within some of th
    • Not having read this book (but having some acquaintance with similar ones) I can say this: - Most of the game projects get shot down prior to launch. Each success story masks at least fifty valiant efforts, now lying in a ditch somewhere. - Actual game makers (not publishers) do not earn enough to compensate for the burnout. - The 10 Gazillion Dollar Game Industry needs new and young and enthusiastic blood to go on. Nobody else in his right mind would work, if they knew the deal (with very very few exc

  • For stagnation, the future is now. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:41PM (#12081877) Homepage Journal
    As a game developer, I have noticed a tendency in computing innovation to withdraw to yesterday's discoveries. Tried-and-true approaches offer the twin comforts of backwards compatibility and tested reliability, attractive propositions to the modern CEO or venture capitalist savvy enough to recognize the additional benefit of recognizing further gains on already completed research. Unfortunately, and in my opinion, this follow-the-leader approach has lead to stagnation in CPU development. I'll explain using a simplified analogy for the benefit of the less technically-inclined.

    Let us think of a computer processing unit as a juggler, and bytes as mangoes. Older CPUs would juggle one mango at a time, and frequently require modifications to the stage to boot. Around the 1980s, they could juggle two mangoes. Then four around 1990, and today as many as eight at a time! Now you would be expected to be quite impressed with each leap, notwithstanding the fact that you really wanted a juggler that could handle melons,grapefruit, or watermelon slices instead of (or in addition to) mangoes. In addition, the fact that you are juggling in a zoo where a primate is free to grab your fruit and substitute twigs (or worse!) mid-juggle owing to something called "stack smashing" in computer terminology is not supposed to discourage you.

    There is a movement towards something called mutable paragraphs, where as in English "words" (groups of bytes) can be of different lengths depending on need. This may mean the ability to exactly fill out a data page for better efficiency, or to allow the CPU to work with communication protocols in their element (if a common network packet is 68 bytes long, a word should be ½NP or 34 bytes in the I/O buffer.) It also means that you use no more CPU space than you absolutely need to for a computational step, decreasing wear and tear on your components.

    I guess what I'm getting at is that innovation needs to be less about protectionism such as DRM or copy protection and more about, well, innovation. Increase functionality and the content will be made available, increase content and the fans will be content, as we say.

    The problem with the game industry is that we're similarly content to rest on our laurels. Independent developers can no longer reach into the domain of the big guys, who are able to level Hollywood-type budgets into special effects and, unfortunately, Hollywood-type scripts and originality into the gameplay. This has turned the industry into something of an interchangeable parts style factory, churning out new real-time strategy, football, MMORPG or first-person shooter units on a yearly basis without any real motivation to improve upon the formula.

    Demand better.

    • Unfortunately, and in my opinion, this follow-the-leader approach has lead to stagnation in CPU development.

      Nonsense. As a game developer you should know that CPU development has jack to do with modern games. Graphics card designs are the major push for more immersive experiences, and they have been changing at break-neck speeds. Graphics have constantly become more and more "realistic" with things like programmable pixel shaders. Real time raytracing GPUs are on the horizon, and promise to offer a gaming experience like no other.

      So why the heck are games so dull? Primarily because the gameplay is recycled. Everyone copies Quake/Doom and adds their own spin on it. Where's the push for *new* gaming experiences? Games like Wing Commander, BioForge, Secret of Monkey Island, Doom, Privateer, System Shock, and Half-life are all remembered fondly because they pushed the boundries of gameplay. In some cases they also pushed the boundries of hardware requirements, but that's because they needed the horsepower to create their fun game environment, not the other way around!

      • Re:For stagnation, the future is now. (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think it's amusing that all the "old" games you mention are in fact the ones that begat our current era.

        The real innovation was over in the late 80s, when the market for interactive fiction dropped out, publishers like Acclaim that focused almost entirely on licensing deals appeared, and the 16-bit machines brought in new standards of whiz-bang graphics and sound. These three events signified the end of "mainstream" game development as an innocent pasttime - one could no longer hope to be a sole author,
      • As a game developer you should know that CPU development has jack to do with modern games.

        Why is it then, in a modern game like half-life 2, my frame rate is silky-smooth until an explosion sets a lot of objects in motion? The same models are still being drawn on screen only they're now part of a real-time kinematics simulation. That stuff is very computationally and memory intensive. Pretty soon you'll start seeing simulated sound effects (that's right, sound with no prerecorded samples), and NN controll
      • Unfortunately, and in my opinion, this follow-the-leader approach has lead to stagnation in CPU development.

        What's amazing is how many professional game developers aren't even aware of subjects covered in such books as the "Game Programming Gems" series. Many game developers are confronted with the exact same problems, in slightly varying forms, in virtually every game. At conferences like GDC and through books, many experts are trying to shout their solutions from the rooftops.... yet many don't bother

  • Game Over (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aspx ( 808539 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:42PM (#12081879)

    I don't know why so many consider game development a "fun" career. It isn't. I like to drink beer, but I don't care to brew it.

    Game tester would be ok, if you actually make a living at it.

    • Re:Game Over (Score:1, Interesting)

      by essreenim ( 647659 )
      Game tester?

      I don't know. I used to work for a leading Games publisher only recently. The games testers love their job but the lead tester hated it.

      The promotional opportunities are a bit bleak. Besides, games publishers use their employess like toilet roll because they know there are always young people willing to play games for a living... Demand outweighs Supply in this stressfulll world..

      Better to seperate work from play, I think..

    • Re:Game Over (Score:4, Insightful)

      by th1ckasabr1ck ( 752151 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:52PM (#12082033)
      I'm a game programmer and I have fun just about every time I head into work. I get to solve interesting problems all day with a group of intelligent people. On top of that, my output is in the form of a game - Not a php shopping cart, finance tracking program, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, but I much prefer games.

      And game QA is not fun. I've never done it, but I am exposed to people who do it all the time and it's not what you (apparently) think it is. It's repetitive, monotonous, tireless work.

      • It really depends on which company you work for and what their attitude towards the workers and the products they produce is.

        I work as a game developer and I love it. My hours aren't long (~40/week), I make decent money, surrounded by people that have a love for games. I can easily imagine however that working for other companies could be a lot less fun. If I didn't like my job I would probably grow to resent the games I'm working on as well. In that case I'd rather go back to the financial market, hate th
      • if you have an extremely pedantic personality and enjoy nitpicking things to death, then game QA is certainly for you.

        however this personality type describes many programmers ...
      • Do you feel that making 'games' is helpful to society? I've always wondered this. I'm not trying to be sarcastic (sorry if this limited form of communication makes me come across as such).
        • Do you feel that making 'games' is helpful to society? I've always wondered this.

          No more so than writing books and dramas, making art, composing symphonies, or making music.

          Of course, there's room in those fields of endeavor for Danielle Steele, Jerry Bruckheimer, and the members of N' Sync just as much as there is for Great Art that Redeems Humanity.

          The medium isn't the message if you wait long enough - the first couple of decades of cinema were pretty atrocious too.

    • Re:Game Over (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gatekeep ( 122108 )
      I like to drink beer, but I don't care to brew it.

      I like to drink beer, and I like to brew it.

      Different strokes for different folks.

      Ohh, and game testing professionally would really suck.
    • game development aren't the most unattractive area one could work in, if it wasn't for the hours involved I would love to do that sort of work after im done studying.
    • Your example is well suited to my situation. I love to drink beer, and I love to brew it. Same with software, and electronics. Some people enjoy something better that they create, even if it takes blood, sweat and Mountain Dew to get there.

    • Re:Game Over (Score:2, Insightful)

      by jolande ( 852630 )
      If you want to get a sense of what it is like to be a game tester, I would recommend reading this article from penny arcade [penny-arcade.com].

      It really is not a very good job. Think playing the same level of Mary Kate and Ashly Olsen's sweet Sixteen 14 hours a day. It's really not all its cracked up to be.
    • Game tester is far from fun. Imaginge playing the same area day after day testing to see if you can get stuck, testing for walkable mesh, going through ever piece of dialog to see if it matches the text over and over.
    • some people find brewing beer much more fun than just drinking it all day long.

      game testing would be the worst choice. you like to play the same level again and again and again? game reviewer might not be so bad though.

      • game reviewer might not be so bad though.

        Not true, if my experience was anything to go by. I did a little bit for a now-defunct dotcom and a university paper. It's the old problem of taking something you enjoy doing and adding deadlines: suddenly, it becomes much less fun.

        Sure, testing out steering wheels with Sega Rally 2 or playing pre-releases of great new games is fun. Having to spend days playing games you really don't like (Gabriel Knight springs to mind) or games that are just crap, and then w

    • Game tester would be ok, if you actually make a living at it.

      As a game programmer, I can tell you that game testing is just about the worst job you can have in the industry. The days that the artists and I are pressed into testing are the only days that I ever want to kill myself. Tracking down and logging errors (in games) is a very boring and time consuming process.

      I'm always on the lookout for local teenagers that we can kidnap and force to do testing for us. It's all fun and games until you acutu
    • I don't know why so many consider game development a "fun" career. It isn't. I like to drink beer ...

      I was a game programmer and the studio stocked a beer fridge. But at 14 hours every day, no one would really utilize the supply, except maybe Friday and Saturday nights.

      And I never envied the game testers. Before deadlines, sometimes we were directed to basically play the same level repeatedly for a couple days. Lucky for us, it was a pretty cool game.

      Game programming really is that much fun, but t
    • I think I can pretty safely claim to have played as much, or more, Wing Commander IV as anybody on the planet.

      Testing games is not nearly as much fun as playing games. Trust me. It's certainly not a bad job, but it is tedious, time consuming, and not very exciting. You know, like lots of day-jobs.
    • Game tester would be ok, if you actually make a living at it.

      I've done QA professionally, and let me tell you, it's not as fun as it sounds.
      It beats, say, scrubbing toilets, hands down, but... low pay, bad hours, NO respect, stress a' plenty.

      Testers are to the game industry as goblins are to fantasy settings: You need them, they do the dirty work, but if a few of 'em die? No one's upset.
    • Testing is a really sucky job. You can't just 'play the game' - you have to repeatedly go through small sections of it, trying to do things nobody with a brain would do in the game itself, trying to replicate the exact circumstances that made it crash before, etc.

      It's dull, repetitive and nothing like actually playing a game.

  • And seated around the basement table (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:42PM (#12081880)
    And, seated around the table in the basement, are the guy who designed "ET" for the Atari 2600, the guy who designed "Doom" for the N-64 (Hey! I wanted it even blacker, but they would not let me!) and the guy who gave us Plattermania [arcor.de] for Atari 400/800. The designer of the Nintendo Virtual Boy would have shown up, but he got lost on the way: poor chap has been rendered blind by using his own game.

    Nothing will come of this meeting, except there are rumors that Sony has some sort of devious plan to get these guys appointed as head of Microsoft's X-Box division.

  • i hate working in games (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    someone plllleease give me a new job and get me out of this hell hole called game development

  • Not trying to be a dick (Score:5, Informative)

    by DaveCBio ( 659840 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:56PM (#12082105)
    But, Marc Saltzman is one of those guys that people keep going to as an "industry expert". He's not an expert. He's just a guy that knows and interviews a fair amount of people in the industry because he started a few years ago. He really doesn't have much more insight than a lot of people that post on /. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time and the media keep calling him back because they are too lazy to look deeper.

  • Holy shit. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Gannoc ( 210256 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @05:59PM (#12082140)
    I have this vivid image of the author of this book sitting on the floor next to his computer chair... curled into the fetal position, weeping silently...with only the glow of the slashdot home page illuminating the tears on his face.

    • Re:Holy shit. (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the glow of the slashdot home page illuminating the tears on his face
      He must have been in the "Games" section.

    • Re:Holy shit. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Scorchio ( 177053 )
      It's the final lesson in games development:

      After years of pouring your heart and soul into your project, experience the euphoria of having it ripped to shreds in a few hours by a ruthless, pimply reviewer.

    • Re:Holy shit. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by taybin ( 622573 )
      I'm just glad to see a review that doesn't just list the chapter titles and call it a day.
  • As much as I hate to have much of anything to do with him, it's "Denny Thorley" not "Donny Thorley."

  • hilarious review (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @06:05PM (#12082199)
    my compliments to the author, i was chuckling throughout the article, by the end i was laughing out loud
    an entertaining review, and i now know to avoid this book, thanks Michael!

  • You are no longer needed... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bad_outlook ( 868902 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @06:05PM (#12082210) Homepage
    I worked at Origin in Austin for a time, but once EA (parent company) wanted to move tech support out to San Mateo, that was it for us. Sure, they offered us a job if we moved out there, but no raise in pay. Stand of living is a bit more out there, so it was no an option. Still, I saw some very dedicated ppl working there, but unfortunately they were expendable when their product grew old. I had allot of fun there, but sometimes it was very depressing. I'd rather admin unix boxen for a dot com. bo

  • If you're going to make a game.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Landak ( 798221 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @06:15PM (#12082324)
    If there is one kind of game that I think anyone on slashdot will love it is this:

    The traditional, immersive, huge, excellent role-playing game

    Seriously - if you're a person who wants to write a game for the joy of coding, then do something like that - The Baldur's Gate Series was created by black isle, whom are a group of enthusiasts basically (I mean that as a compliment, not as a flame...), and it is widely renowned as the best cRPG on this planet today. The whole series is about 500 hours long from top to bottom, and it's story is pure joy. There are more than enough Hack 'n' slash, fps's, random, violent, action-packed games out there simply because people say "I want to make a game. I want it to be easy. What can I do?" and out pops the answer - an FPS.

    Don't do that. If you can't write a decent storyline to save you life, get someone else to - your wife, brother, someone from slashdot (*Cough*), go and buy some good 'ol creative juices (aka marijuana), whatever - but please, please, don't create something that has the tacked-on sub plot of a marketing department. If you're going to create a world when dreams can be reality, then show us your dreams. Explore them. Combine everything into one; have the joy of free flight in an immense world combine with spell-casting prowess to make Eliminster pleased, have the character *really* shooting a bow, *really* jumping over obstacles....ect. Be creative....


    And release it under the GPL ;-).
    • If there is one kind of game that I think anyone on slashdot will love it is this:

      The traditional, immersive, huge, excellent role-playing game

      I hate role-playing games. Think we can get someone to make another Wing Commander?
    • The whole series is about 500 hours long from top to bottom, and it's story is pure joy.

      I've played the whole series from top to bottom and it's more like 100 hours -- not to denigrate it for that.

      Actually, I think Fallout and Fallout 2 (from the same people) were far better.

    • Re:If you're going to make a game.... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Err, no. The Baldurs Gate series was developed by BioWare entirely, Black isle was just the publisher and did some sound recording.

      BioWare is still around, Black Isle is dead.
    • don't create something that has the tacked-on sub plot of a marketing department.

      What if it's the game "Postal", and there is a side mission to kill everybody in the marketing department? Would you still object?

  • Poor Author, Excellent Interviewer? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @06:24PM (#12082445) Homepage Journal
    As much as the reviewer ripped the author for a poorly organized and non-insightful book, you have to credit the author for arranging that many interviews with some decent game creators. Granted, he doesn't interview the most famous game designers, but just name dropping the ones he did talk to is enough to impress anyone familiar with the gaming industry.

    That said, it sounds like the author would have done much better by releasing a book of interview transcripts. You'd probably get more out of it as far as context and tone of the interviews, and the author would have saved quite a bit of time. Perhaps the transcripts along with comments included inline?
  • Wow, it's funny that the first post has totally commandeered the forum, and not one reply thus far has anything to do with the submitted book review.

    Anyways, if you're really serious about the game industry, I suggest you try to find some open source games to which to contribute. Look for one with decent project management and development activity.

    I was involved with a grass-roots remake of the popular Ultima series, and it was a pretty enlightening experience because the project leader actually did dece

  • Game Designs, Secrets of the Sages. It ended being an OK read but I always found the articles in Game Developer Magazine much more illuminating. Marc is a nice guy though.

  • Sometimes vague is useful. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by podperson ( 592944 ) on Tuesday March 29, 2005 @07:50PM (#12083424) Homepage
    The most useful thing I ever learned about game design is this (paraphrased):

    A good game consists of some activity that the player finds enjoyable together with an excuse for doing it repeatedly.

    I don't remember the name of the originator or I would provide it.

    The movie industry had already been around for seventy-odd years when William Goldman said of it that "nobody knows anything" about what makes a good or successful movie. What we do know is that if you make a really successful game then the safest bet is to keep on making minor variations of it (Hollywood has figured this out with movies).

    Any more specific advice on game design (such as "that you need cool graphics" or whatever) simply falls into the "imitate a successful design" category. There will always be good games that don't follow such advice, just as there a great movies that don't follow one or more of the rules for making movies (e.g. Star Wars is a great movie with terrible dialog and at best mediocre acting).
  • I think there is an utter lack of innovation in all of the entertainment industry anymore. Same old blueprints used to create something a little different each time, but no new innovations. GTA:3 didn't sell cuz of the mass murder the general craziness, it sold because it was something NEW, nothing like it had been done before, now that the concept has been done 50 times, I don't find much enjoyment in GTA series anymore. Find a NEW product give it to us, and you will make money.

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