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I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving

by dfan 11y ago

I was a game developer for 20+ years (Looking Glass Studios, Harmonix) and boy oh boy were there a lot of technical and creative challenges. I ended up leaving largely to reduce stress and because I wanted to try doing something else with my career, but if what you want are technical and creative challenges, it's a pretty good job.

geminiradio 11y ago
Who is this!? I worked at Looking Glass too. (This is Randy Smith.)
- dfan 11y ago
  You don't know who dfan is?? This is Dan Schmidt. Congrats on Rite of the Shrouded Moon!
  - geminiradio 11y ago
    Thanks man! Yeah, I figured that must be Dan Schmidt. :)
clessg 11y ago
For my own sanity, I would much rather continue writing JavaScript and Golang apps than do full-fledged game development. It's incredible that some people are able to deal with it, and not have their spouse leave them. By the way, if a mod is here: I think I accidentally downvoted the above comment. (More precisely, my cat and Vimium did.) I tried to reverse it but I doubt it worked. Please remove the downvote if it's still there.
Arjuna 11y ago
[...] but if what you want are technical and creative challenges [...] This is so true. I developed a space shooter for iOS, and it was quite a challenge. This was my first game, and what I found to be quite interesting is just how much is involved in simply finishing a game. For example, every little detail that it takes to make something commercial-quality, like graphics [1], compelling music, game-play, rock-solid frame-rate, user interface, all of the timers that need to be managed, transitions between levels, and in my case, some interesting mathematics (I implemented a Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate flight paths for the enemy drones on one level)... the list goes on. [1] Incidentally, the article quoted Daniel Cook. For my game, I used Tyrian graphics that he created. He made them available under a Creative Commons license.

by dfan 11y ago

geminiradio 11y ago

Who is this!? I worked at Looking Glass too. (This is Randy Smith.)

dfan 11y ago
You don't know who dfan is?? This is Dan Schmidt. Congrats on Rite of the Shrouded Moon!
- geminiradio 11y ago
  Thanks man! Yeah, I figured that must be Dan Schmidt. :)

clessg 11y ago

For my own sanity, I would much rather continue writing JavaScript and Golang apps than do full-fledged game development. It's incredible that some people are able to deal with it, and not have their spouse leave them. By the way, if a mod is here: I think I accidentally downvoted the above comment. (More precisely, my cat and Vimium did.) I tried to reverse it but I doubt it worked. Please remove the downvote if it's still there.

Arjuna 11y ago

[...] but if what you want are technical and creative challenges [...] This is so true. I developed a space shooter for iOS, and it was quite a challenge. This was my first game, and what I found to be quite interesting is just how much is involved in simply finishing a game. For example, every little detail that it takes to make something commercial-quality, like graphics [1], compelling music, game-play, rock-solid frame-rate, user interface, all of the timers that need to be managed, transitions between levels, and in my case, some interesting mathematics (I implemented a Catmull-Rom algorithm to generate flight paths for the enemy drones on one level)... the list goes on. [1] Incidentally, the article quoted Daniel Cook. For my game, I used Tyrian graphics that he created. He made them available under a Creative Commons license.