
Ask HN: Get a foot into the game industry - Entalpi
I am wondering from a practical perspective how one would go about getting a foot into the game industry?<p>My guess it takes a couple of games or somerhing techy like a custom engine.<p>Would love to hear your stories.
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MorpheusOMG
I was tired of hearing "we want people who have shipped at least two titles"
(classic chicken and egg problem) around the year 2004-2006. So I took 10
months off to create a game/base game tech. I targeted the Game Boy Advance. I
created everything but the compiler and a small utility that smacked an "I'm
GBA software" header on the ROM. This included the asset pipeline, audio
mixer, even the interrupts library. What this allowed me to do was hand my
project to people during an interview, and when they asked what I did, to say
"everything you see there, as well as the things you don't such as x, y,
etc.". Finished portfolio projects are invaluable in this space -- so many
people have unfinished projects/demos that having something finished/polished
really makes you the exception (it shows extreme dedication/diligence -- see
the ninety-ninety rule). You might not need to take it to the extreme that I
did, but it's nice to avoid situations where you have as portfolio work only
projects worked on with others for which you don't have very clear details on
what exactly you did (otherwise, people will have little confidence in what
parts you are actually responsible/deserve praise for, if any). Don't show up
to a gamedev interview with only a binder of dragon drawings expecting a job.
And understand that a lot of the educational programs at "tighten up the
graphics on level 3" schools are almost exclusively in it for the money (vs. a
sound/working skillset for you, as so many people are interested in the idea
of game development as a career). If you're going to do the university thing,
get strong foundations in computer science (not necessarily deep math or
super-advanced algorithms, but sound foundational knowledge and experience).
Don't try to skip the basics (C matters).

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MorpheusOMG
Oh, one more thing. Don't try to make GTA + COD on your first run. Choose
realistic work if you want to finish something. Scope and vision are the two
most important aspects of software development IMO (from working on software
20 years) that make or break projects.

~~~
Rannath
Anecdotes to support this: My first finished game was bizarro-arkanoid (few
hundred LOC). Then I made a text-based adventure game (<1,000 LOC, and LOTS of
data), then I made a jRPG-ish game (5,000-15,000 LOC, IIRC). ETC, ETC, ETC. I
don't have those games anymore because they were crap, but they taught me what
I needed to know to make what I'm making today. Which is still kinda crap, but
less so.

Between and around those games I "made" dozens of other games, not a single
one got finished, mostly because I shot for projects beyond my ability to
complete.

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Rannath
Make a game using a pre-made engine. Only make your own engine if you're
primarily interested in graphics/systems programming. You'll almost certainly
be using someone else's engine, so learning a few different ones should be to
your benefit (& prove you can adapt).

~~~
MorpheusOMG
This is good advice in today's landscape (an alternative approach to my answer
above). Tech matters to me, I wanted to understand many things deeply, I
didn't want my knowledge to exist entirely inside of someone else's genius
work (such as Unreal Engine game development where you're scripting
everything/wiring up game logic/etc.). However, doing the kind of thing I did
a decade ago is almost impossible with the tech expectations of today, and
also, simply not really necessary.

