3 ms·

There are a lot of ads on TV for "getting into video games" - but unless you're at a top-tier school (like USC) and have a top-tier thesis from your MFA program

There are a lot of ads on TV for "getting into video games" - but unless you're at a top-tier school (like USC) and have a top-tier thesis from your MFA program, good luck with that. The game developers still want people who have made good mods or have done good art on freeware or something along those lines. That shows an ability to do the work - the same as how you can get hired based on your work on OSS. Sure, if you come out of Stanford or UIUC or whatever, you'll be able to interview with Google, but if you didn't, you better have done some good OSS work, or no dice. Eventually, I'll write a blog post on the parallels on the corporate blog.

pmjordan 18y ago
Maybe it's different in the US, but in my experience in the UK game industry we had a shortage of decent programmers. We couldn't care what university you came from, as long as you could code, you got in. Of course, most graduates can't code, regardless of whether they did compsci or a game-oriented course. (I taught myself before university and I have physics degree and had no trouble getting a game programming job)
- gamble 18y ago
  Could it be that the UK has a shortage of programmers generally? My husband is a programmer in the games industry. He emigrated from the UK as a child, along with his father and uncle. (Who both worked as programmers in the UK) Since he still has British citizenship, we've considered spending a few years in the UK. What's stopped us (so far) is that it seems like programer salaries in Britain are extremely low compared to the cost of living there. Things like housing, food, and transport are 50-100% more expensive in the UK, but the salaries appear to be roughly the same as here in Canada. Worse, it seems like most of the software companies are clustered in the very expensive areas.
  - pmjordan 18y ago
    Yep, the cost was part of the reason my girlfriend and I moved to Vienna, Austria (in my case that was moving back home) - we couldn't afford to rent a flat in London despite both of us working full-time; it used up my entire salary and some of hers, and that was before bills, commute, food, etc. I was doing ~70 hour weeks and we were barely breaking even, so we decided to get out. I think a lot of smart people, especially CompSci grads ended up working in the finance sector which pays (paid?) way more than classic software development, which pays more than game dev, so that probably explains the shortage. With that kind of cost of living it really surprises me that there are a lot of startups in London compared to other parts of Europe.

pmjordan 18y ago

Maybe it's different in the US, but in my experience in the UK game industry we had a shortage of decent programmers. We couldn't care what university you came from, as long as you could code, you got in. Of course, most graduates can't code, regardless of whether they did compsci or a game-oriented course. (I taught myself before university and I have physics degree and had no trouble getting a game programming job)

gamble 18y ago
Could it be that the UK has a shortage of programmers generally? My husband is a programmer in the games industry. He emigrated from the UK as a child, along with his father and uncle. (Who both worked as programmers in the UK) Since he still has British citizenship, we've considered spending a few years in the UK. What's stopped us (so far) is that it seems like programer salaries in Britain are extremely low compared to the cost of living there. Things like housing, food, and transport are 50-100% more expensive in the UK, but the salaries appear to be roughly the same as here in Canada. Worse, it seems like most of the software companies are clustered in the very expensive areas.
- pmjordan 18y ago
  Yep, the cost was part of the reason my girlfriend and I moved to Vienna, Austria (in my case that was moving back home) - we couldn't afford to rent a flat in London despite both of us working full-time; it used up my entire salary and some of hers, and that was before bills, commute, food, etc. I was doing ~70 hour weeks and we were barely breaking even, so we decided to get out. I think a lot of smart people, especially CompSci grads ended up working in the finance sector which pays (paid?) way more than classic software development, which pays more than game dev, so that probably explains the shortage. With that kind of cost of living it really surprises me that there are a lot of startups in London compared to other parts of Europe.