Steps On How to Become a Game Developer • Page 2

warlockuk 6 Apr 2013 22:32:52 19,519 posts
Seen 1 week ago
Registered 17 years ago

Mayhem64 wrote:
This is from a mate of mine... steps on what being a videogame developer can be like...

He's been in the game industry for 7 years, this has been his career progression:

- Starts at EA, works on the canceled Command and Conquer: Tiberium. Is laid off when the game is canceled.
- Moves to Midway, and works on a game called "This is Vegas". This game is secretly one of the biggest failures in gaming history, and is a large part of the reason the publisher closed down.
- Comes to work at EA Chicago, works on Fight Night and starts work on a Marvel fighting game that goes unreleased when the studio is closed.
- Starts working at Robomodo, releases TH: Shread, begins the work on a 3rd title, but is laid off with most of the staff.
- Moves to California, works for Zynga developing Farmville.
- Moves to Lucasarts and is a lead on Star Wars: 1313. The project was killed last week, and he's unemployed again.

So in the 7 years of his professional career, he's worked on 2 games that actually saw releases; everything else is just wasted time and effort. Welcome to the games industry.

Sounds about right. The game of mine that gets released this month is the first project of mine that hasn't been canned or nuked from orbit in about 2 years. In that time I've written complete games, entire game frameworks, some apps to cover a few distribution problems and other things... about 10 apps at 60% (functionality, no art), three games to 90% (pending more art/design)... list goes on and on of stuff that's either been canned or just never saw the light of day. Being a game developer can be really really frustrating.

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