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I agree with most of this post except this: > Making an amazing indie game is probably the best way to get in the game industry. Studying math is not. There a
by nilkn 13y ago
I agree with most of this post except this:
> Making an amazing indie game is probably the best way to get in the game industry. Studying math is not.
There are many specialized graphics programmers in the industry. They do not design games. They do not write dialogue. They do not make any art. They don't make sound effects. They don't design plots. But they absolutely do need to know linear algebra and a lot of the stuff listed here. I think the only problem with this post is that its title suggests it's aimed at the general game programmer, but it's actually aimed at the graphics or physics programmer, the sort of guy who would work on the Unreal Engine itself, not a game made with the Unreal Engine.
EA is probably a really crappy place to work (don't know for sure, but that'd be my guess). However, I've heard amazing things about, e.g., Valve, and I think they'd be more than happy to hire a brilliant graphics programmer who's never shipped an indie title that he built from scratch.
- dvt 13y agoFair points. But afaik you won't work at Valve unless you have a shipped title. Where they _do_ make exceptions is with people like the CS devs or Icefrog (DOTA). So I still think that if working as a game dev is what you want to do, making a mod/indie title is the best way to go. I know 3 people that work at EA. One of them likes it and two of them hate it. I guess it's like working in any big company. My dad worked for IBM and hated every moment. I, like him, don't think that could never really work at a big company where my creativity/intelligence/drive is inconsequential. Edit: let me just say that maybe there are extenuating circumstances -- for example, if you presented some novel shading algorithm at SIGGRAPH or something. But for the most part, I think my claim holds.
- ameen 13y agoValve isn't an ideal place to work. It has a floundering management structure, hidden office politics and a failed bonus structure. It's only relevant because of its meteoric success of Steam and skill of acquiring/courting quality teams/devs. It's been a long while since Valve has worked on one of their own ideas.
- yareally 13y agoPortal 2 came out just two years ago Dota 2 this year
- jheriko 13y agoa good demo still beats the crap out of any amount of academic skill. good graphics and physics code often comes from being especially clever and creative with the performance budget and tools available... when your demo implements bits of tech that approach or exceed the quality of commercial games and engines then, so long as you actually made it and people look at it, your actual ability with math is irrelevant, even if you blindly copied all the algorithms to make your stuff work - making things work is far more important. :)
- nilkn 13y agoI wasn't really ever referring to pure academic skill. I have some graphics programming experience outside of a professional context, and I can say you're not going to get stuff to work by blindly copying other people's code in any complex, new, and non-trivial situation. You've got to understand what's going on to at least some degree. You'll never get the top graphics jobs by copying code; you'll very quickly be identified as someone who doesn't really know what he's doing. With that said, anybody who's truly got the math and programming know-how for this stuff will be able to easily put together demos. A demo is not a self-published indie title. These are two totally different things. If you've got a new terrain LOD algorithm, for instance, you definitely do not need to build an entire published and profitable game to show that off to the world.