5 ms·

One thing that has changed in the professional game industry is that

33 points by luu 3y ago

royjacobs 3y ago
Crytek started by recruiting people from the demoscene, somewhere in the early to mid 00s. Cevat Yerli did this himself, simply by shooting off some emails to whoever did some cool demos, I guess. I got contacted as well, but this was before they were doing Far Cry. I believe it was some kind of space game, but I'm sure there are some people here who have a better recollection of that.
- ido 3y ago
  This is indeed mentioned down-thread in the linked mastodon post :)
fragmede 3y ago
Roblox would seem to say otherwise.
- otterley 3y ago
  Are there any wunderkind engineers employed by Roblox?
  - fragmede 3y ago
    But the consumers in this case are the ones generating content with a heavy dose of programming. It sounds exploitative on the part of Roblox, but they're doing game development. https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    Roblox allows its players to make new games on Roblox. This is probably what parent commenter means. And I agree with them, we should view all of those kids that make new games in Roblox as game developers. To make games on Roblox, you use Roblox Studio. See https://create.roblox.com/landing https://create.roblox.com/landing
  - dagw 3y ago
    No but there are some 'wunderkinds' making and selling games on the Roblox engine/platform. They guy who created Bloxburg for example was a teenager when he released that game, and he just sold it for over $100 million.
charcircuit 3y ago
This seems like just an antidote and not a fact. I'm sure if you looked at the age that Roblox, Minecraft, etc developers started at you would see that there still is a lot of people who start young.
NeoTar 3y ago
... perhaps the title (currently "One thing that has changed in the professional game industry is that ") can be altered, it's not useful in it's current form, and a bit click-bait (but no shade on the author, I think it's because a regular sentence is cut-off!)
matusp 3y ago
There are tons of kids still doing games. The AAA scene is fully professionalized, but if you look at what's going on at itch.io, there is no lack of young talent. The older generation forgot that when they were starting there was no multi-billion industry pumping out games.
buro9 3y ago
The fedi instance I am on is full of people making indie games who all seem to be teenagers. Perhaps this is more where the author is, and what they're seeing from that perspective?
- enneff 3y ago
  I think it’s more that the studios used to all be small, and the foundational games of the previous generations were made by newly-formed companies comprised of mostly young people. Today we have established AAA studios with huge bankroll that put their money behind developers with a track record.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  What instance is that? Would love to follow peoples progress
- torginus 3y ago
  One of the issues with this is most of those folks are probably using an engine like Unity or Unreal. Which is fine by itself if you want to make a game, but it kind of forces you into certain constraints while allowing you to not have to understand the underlying tech, as well as the hardware. To really get into the fundamentals, like computer graphics, pathfinding, collision detection to make something really impressive and never seen before like Teardown (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/), you really need to start from scratch. And speaking as someone who has written a basic-ish but fully functional (deferred rendering, dynamic lights, shadows, collision detection etc.) engine, it's really not that hard (well compared to making a shipping game), and having a fundamental understanding of the underlying tech will probably help you to make a game that stands out from the crowd.
gambiting 3y ago
So I work in the video games industry(at one of the largest AAA publishers) so I can shed a little bit of light on it from our side - we used to have a guy here who worked for 30 years with us, was here right from the start. He said that yeah, he got the job by making some demos on his Amiga and literally going to the house of the owner and asking if he needed any help - and was hired on the spot, worked out of his bedroom for a while. 17 at the time. Nowadays even for junior positions we wouldn't consider anyone without at least a bachelors degree in CS, so that's at least 3 years of university - putting the minimum starting age with us at around ~21-22 years old. I myself started just after my masters degree, at 23 years old. I think that it does mean we are missing out on a lot of very self driven, ambitious candidates - but even requiring a minimum of CS education from candidates we get in excess of 1000 applications for every junior position. I understand why recruitment would be reluctant to start looking at candidates without any formal qualifications.
- ido 3y ago
  If i got an applicant with an impressive itch.io page full of games they've made and released themselves I'd interview them even if they're 18 (I'm not sure about child labor laws for kids younger than that).
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Sure so would I - the problem is that they wouldn't go through the first filter of recruitment. As an engineering hiring manager I'd never even get to see their CV in the first place.
    - sanitycheck 3y ago
      Then that recruiting process is broken and you're missing out on potentially some of the best candidates. But it's probably not worth fixing from a boring economic perspective, if you already have too many excellent candidates to employ.
      - gambiting 3y ago
dagmx 3y ago
I suspect this is more about the growing divide between high end games and indie games. Back in the day, the divide was much smaller. So it was a lot easier for a motivated indie dev to make something like Crash Bandicoot and have it be seen in the same light as AAA studios. Today, the divide is so high that you can’t possibly make a AAA level game as an indie. But a lot of indie games get overlooked by the mass market. So I don’t agree with the author. Plenty of people start young, and possibly even more do so now than ever before. It’s never been easier to make a game. But it’s also never been harder to make games that meet people’s expectations of high end gaming and that’s likely what the author is seeing.
- bibanez 3y ago
  The Indie games market is saturated. That doesn't mean that they can't get the same attention as AAA. For example Minecraft and more recently Battlebit
  - gambiting 3y ago
    I think what OP means is that a small studio could make a game that would go toe to toe with the big studios, not just in terms of sales but in scope. Driver was made by basically a bunch of guys who somehow managed to blag their way into Sony sending them few PS1 devkits, and it's on the same level as other big productions of their time. Nowadays yes, you get the occassional Battlebit and Vampire survivors which would make most AAA games blush in terms of sales, but in terms of scope they aren't anything like Assassin's Creed or Diablo 4 - that's not to say that they are worse, obviously not - just that it's impossible for a small studio to deliver the same scope as AAA studios with 1000+ people per project.
    - ido 3y ago
      But that's not what the original mastodon post said - it was about people getting hired at a very young age. I run a small indie studio (5 people including myself) and know a lot of other indies, and have myself in the past worked for other indies. Even among professional indie/smaller studios it's really rare to see a teenager working (I've never myself seen it). I think it's to a large extent due to the professionalization of the industry (even indies/small scale) and overall raising of the bar of expectations.
archo 3y ago
https://archive.is/RSdHl https://archive.is/RSdHl
BigJono 3y ago
This is going to be a thing across tech in the near future. You can see across games, web apps, whatever, there's a trend of more libraries, more frameworks, more guard rails, less fundamentals, less innovation. The fad these days is to skip learning how to program and instead just learn how to subsist in an ecosystem 'real' programmers have built for you. You don't need to know how to write a game engine, you just have to download the right assets from the Unity Store. What does 'state' mean? That's that thing in React right? Tree? Graph? Never heard of them, do you mean a component? Difference between a class and a struct? Well I've never heard of a struct but classes are the best thing since sliced bread because you can use them to do a ObservableFactoryControllerFactory and I read in a Medium article that those are good. The net result of all this is that the code that actually drives everything is being written by older people that got the chance to actually learn, while all the learning opportunities are being stolen from the next generation in the name of getting people "productive" on day 1 (at the expense of the rest of the days of their career). Those anecdotes you find 10 of in every thread on HN where someone copied a BASIC script out of a book or whatever you boomers did, the modern equivalent of that is npm installing some shit, building 10x the amount of stuff and learning 0.1x as much.
- nanidin 3y ago
  I can't help but think this is how assembly programmers viewed people using compiled languages, or how punched card programmers viewed people using interactive terminals.
  - BigJono 3y ago
    It's different. All the layers below are still there, and those abstractions are WAY more solid than the abstraction from React to NextJS. Most good developers can build apps faster without an ORM or a framework on top of a framework. Nobody is building apps faster with assembly.
    - ffhhttt 3y ago
      > Most good developers can build apps faster without an ORM or a framework Can they though? Especially if there are several developers working on it. Or are you saying that once they start using frameworks they are no longer ‘good’ developers?
gmerc 3y ago
Actual citation needed.
indigochill 3y ago
They later clarify that they're talking specifically about engine development, which makes much more sense to me since I see tons of relatively young hires at our studio (albeit no outright teenagers) but none of them for the engine. I agree with their reasoning that engines are largely commoditized. Ours isn't, but (a) we don't iterate heavily on it any more (so just not hiring for it much in general) and (b) even if we were, most amateurs are using Unity/Unreal because generally there's very little reason for an amateur to write their own engine except for its own sake, so they wouldn't have the low-level experience of someone from e.g. the demoscene or with more general dev experience/credentials.
- torginus 3y ago
  Just a question - where do you see modern engine technology evolving? My biggest gripe is that the extra processing power in modern machines is used to make static content look prettier, and make its authoring easier by non-technical artists, and the extra possibilities of real-time computation (like fully dynamic GI, and collision, navigation) and not taken advantage of, which leads devs to remake the same setpiece-heavy railroaded games over and over.
totetsu 3y ago
One thing that has changed in the professional game industry is that .. you don't see people starting super young.
noelwelsh 3y ago
Roblox, Fortnite Creative, Overwatch Workshop, and Minecraft modding says false. Heck, even Paradox Games have a vibrant modding community. Children still yearn for the mines, but they don't need to build their own game engine any more, and the adults have found more efficient ways to exploit them.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fulafel 3y ago
Have other fields seen similar change? In adjancent fields of culture, are literary authors, musicians or film makers getting their break later in life these days?
dagw 3y ago
I think that is true for most programming fields, not just game development. Back in the day a 16 year old who knew HTML and a tiny bit of JavaScript could easily get hired to do 'web development'. I got hired as a sys admin fresh out of high school simply by "knowing computers". My interview was basically "Hey, are you good with computers?" "Yes!" "Great you're hired. Go see if you can fix this thing" Back then there were simply much fewer people who had any relevant experience so the barrier to entry (experience wise) was much lower.

33 points by luu 3y ago

Crytek started by recruiting people from the demoscene, somewhere in the early to mid 00s. Cevat Yerli did this himself, simply by shooting off some emails to whoever did some cool demos, I guess. I got contacted as well, but this was before they were doing Far Cry. I believe it was some kind of space game, but I'm sure there are some people here who have a better recollection of that.

ido 3y ago
This is indeed mentioned down-thread in the linked mastodon post :)

fragmede 3y ago

Roblox would seem to say otherwise.

otterley 3y ago
Are there any wunderkind engineers employed by Roblox?
- fragmede 3y ago
  But the consumers in this case are the ones generating content with a heavy dose of programming. It sounds exploitative on the part of Roblox, but they're doing game development. https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
- codetrotter 3y ago
  Roblox allows its players to make new games on Roblox. This is probably what parent commenter means. And I agree with them, we should view all of those kids that make new games in Roblox as game developers. To make games on Roblox, you use Roblox Studio. See https://create.roblox.com/landing https://create.roblox.com/landing
- dagw 3y ago
  No but there are some 'wunderkinds' making and selling games on the Roblox engine/platform. They guy who created Bloxburg for example was a teenager when he released that game, and he just sold it for over $100 million.

charcircuit 3y ago

This seems like just an antidote and not a fact. I'm sure if you looked at the age that Roblox, Minecraft, etc developers started at you would see that there still is a lot of people who start young.

NeoTar 3y ago

... perhaps the title (currently "One thing that has changed in the professional game industry is that ") can be altered, it's not useful in it's current form, and a bit click-bait (but no shade on the author, I think it's because a regular sentence is cut-off!)

matusp 3y ago

There are tons of kids still doing games. The AAA scene is fully professionalized, but if you look at what's going on at itch.io, there is no lack of young talent. The older generation forgot that when they were starting there was no multi-billion industry pumping out games.

buro9 3y ago

The fedi instance I am on is full of people making indie games who all seem to be teenagers. Perhaps this is more where the author is, and what they're seeing from that perspective?

enneff 3y ago
I think it’s more that the studios used to all be small, and the foundational games of the previous generations were made by newly-formed companies comprised of mostly young people. Today we have established AAA studios with huge bankroll that put their money behind developers with a track record.
yellow_lead 3y ago
What instance is that? Would love to follow peoples progress
torginus 3y ago
One of the issues with this is most of those folks are probably using an engine like Unity or Unreal. Which is fine by itself if you want to make a game, but it kind of forces you into certain constraints while allowing you to not have to understand the underlying tech, as well as the hardware. To really get into the fundamentals, like computer graphics, pathfinding, collision detection to make something really impressive and never seen before like Teardown (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/), you really need to start from scratch. And speaking as someone who has written a basic-ish but fully functional (deferred rendering, dynamic lights, shadows, collision detection etc.) engine, it's really not that hard (well compared to making a shipping game), and having a fundamental understanding of the underlying tech will probably help you to make a game that stands out from the crowd.

gambiting 3y ago

So I work in the video games industry(at one of the largest AAA publishers) so I can shed a little bit of light on it from our side - we used to have a guy here who worked for 30 years with us, was here right from the start. He said that yeah, he got the job by making some demos on his Amiga and literally going to the house of the owner and asking if he needed any help - and was hired on the spot, worked out of his bedroom for a while. 17 at the time. Nowadays even for junior positions we wouldn't consider anyone without at least a bachelors degree in CS, so that's at least 3 years of university - putting the minimum starting age with us at around ~21-22 years old. I myself started just after my masters degree, at 23 years old. I think that it does mean we are missing out on a lot of very self driven, ambitious candidates - but even requiring a minimum of CS education from candidates we get in excess of 1000 applications for every junior position. I understand why recruitment would be reluctant to start looking at candidates without any formal qualifications.

ido 3y ago
If i got an applicant with an impressive itch.io page full of games they've made and released themselves I'd interview them even if they're 18 (I'm not sure about child labor laws for kids younger than that).
- gambiting 3y ago
  Sure so would I - the problem is that they wouldn't go through the first filter of recruitment. As an engineering hiring manager I'd never even get to see their CV in the first place.
  - sanitycheck 3y ago
    Then that recruiting process is broken and you're missing out on potentially some of the best candidates. But it's probably not worth fixing from a boring economic perspective, if you already have too many excellent candidates to employ.
    - gambiting 3y ago

dagmx 3y ago

I suspect this is more about the growing divide between high end games and indie games. Back in the day, the divide was much smaller. So it was a lot easier for a motivated indie dev to make something like Crash Bandicoot and have it be seen in the same light as AAA studios. Today, the divide is so high that you can’t possibly make a AAA level game as an indie. But a lot of indie games get overlooked by the mass market. So I don’t agree with the author. Plenty of people start young, and possibly even more do so now than ever before. It’s never been easier to make a game. But it’s also never been harder to make games that meet people’s expectations of high end gaming and that’s likely what the author is seeing.

bibanez 3y ago
The Indie games market is saturated. That doesn't mean that they can't get the same attention as AAA. For example Minecraft and more recently Battlebit
- gambiting 3y ago
  I think what OP means is that a small studio could make a game that would go toe to toe with the big studios, not just in terms of sales but in scope. Driver was made by basically a bunch of guys who somehow managed to blag their way into Sony sending them few PS1 devkits, and it's on the same level as other big productions of their time. Nowadays yes, you get the occassional Battlebit and Vampire survivors which would make most AAA games blush in terms of sales, but in terms of scope they aren't anything like Assassin's Creed or Diablo 4 - that's not to say that they are worse, obviously not - just that it's impossible for a small studio to deliver the same scope as AAA studios with 1000+ people per project.
  - ido 3y ago
    But that's not what the original mastodon post said - it was about people getting hired at a very young age. I run a small indie studio (5 people including myself) and know a lot of other indies, and have myself in the past worked for other indies. Even among professional indie/smaller studios it's really rare to see a teenager working (I've never myself seen it). I think it's to a large extent due to the professionalization of the industry (even indies/small scale) and overall raising of the bar of expectations.

archo 3y ago

https://archive.is/RSdHl https://archive.is/RSdHl

BigJono 3y ago

This is going to be a thing across tech in the near future. You can see across games, web apps, whatever, there's a trend of more libraries, more frameworks, more guard rails, less fundamentals, less innovation. The fad these days is to skip learning how to program and instead just learn how to subsist in an ecosystem 'real' programmers have built for you. You don't need to know how to write a game engine, you just have to download the right assets from the Unity Store. What does 'state' mean? That's that thing in React right? Tree? Graph? Never heard of them, do you mean a component? Difference between a class and a struct? Well I've never heard of a struct but classes are the best thing since sliced bread because you can use them to do a ObservableFactoryControllerFactory and I read in a Medium article that those are good. The net result of all this is that the code that actually drives everything is being written by older people that got the chance to actually learn, while all the learning opportunities are being stolen from the next generation in the name of getting people "productive" on day 1 (at the expense of the rest of the days of their career). Those anecdotes you find 10 of in every thread on HN where someone copied a BASIC script out of a book or whatever you boomers did, the modern equivalent of that is npm installing some shit, building 10x the amount of stuff and learning 0.1x as much.

nanidin 3y ago
I can't help but think this is how assembly programmers viewed people using compiled languages, or how punched card programmers viewed people using interactive terminals.
- BigJono 3y ago
  It's different. All the layers below are still there, and those abstractions are WAY more solid than the abstraction from React to NextJS. Most good developers can build apps faster without an ORM or a framework on top of a framework. Nobody is building apps faster with assembly.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    > Most good developers can build apps faster without an ORM or a framework Can they though? Especially if there are several developers working on it. Or are you saying that once they start using frameworks they are no longer ‘good’ developers?

gmerc 3y ago

Actual citation needed.

indigochill 3y ago

They later clarify that they're talking specifically about engine development, which makes much more sense to me since I see tons of relatively young hires at our studio (albeit no outright teenagers) but none of them for the engine. I agree with their reasoning that engines are largely commoditized. Ours isn't, but (a) we don't iterate heavily on it any more (so just not hiring for it much in general) and (b) even if we were, most amateurs are using Unity/Unreal because generally there's very little reason for an amateur to write their own engine except for its own sake, so they wouldn't have the low-level experience of someone from e.g. the demoscene or with more general dev experience/credentials.

torginus 3y ago
Just a question - where do you see modern engine technology evolving? My biggest gripe is that the extra processing power in modern machines is used to make static content look prettier, and make its authoring easier by non-technical artists, and the extra possibilities of real-time computation (like fully dynamic GI, and collision, navigation) and not taken advantage of, which leads devs to remake the same setpiece-heavy railroaded games over and over.

totetsu 3y ago

One thing that has changed in the professional game industry is that .. you don't see people starting super young.

noelwelsh 3y ago

Roblox, Fortnite Creative, Overwatch Workshop, and Minecraft modding says false. Heck, even Paradox Games have a vibrant modding community. Children still yearn for the mines, but they don't need to build their own game engine any more, and the adults have found more efficient ways to exploit them.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fulafel 3y ago

Have other fields seen similar change? In adjancent fields of culture, are literary authors, musicians or film makers getting their break later in life these days?

dagw 3y ago

I think that is true for most programming fields, not just game development. Back in the day a 16 year old who knew HTML and a tiny bit of JavaScript could easily get hired to do 'web development'. I got hired as a sys admin fresh out of high school simply by "knowing computers". My interview was basically "Hey, are you good with computers?" "Yes!" "Great you're hired. Go see if you can fix this thing" Back then there were simply much fewer people who had any relevant experience so the barrier to entry (experience wise) was much lower.