Getting into the Games Industry
August 3rd, 20102 comments
I know this topic is of interest to a lot of people out there, from graduates to skilled software developers with a dead-end job. So I decided I should share my experiences and help (or stop) you trying to get a job in video games. Some of these things apply to all game jobs, but the article will mainly focus on software engineers.
It’s a tough industry to get into. The typical “you don’t have any experience but how can I get any if you don’t give me a chance” scenario is something you’ll run into often. Without the right tricks up your sleeve this “dream job” might stay just that .. a dream.
So before you go through all the hassle, let’s first see if this is what you want. First up, it’s a tough job. The pay sucks and the hours are long. Seriously long. And don’t expect to get much in return. Crunch (overtime towards the end of a project) is still a big part of any project. Expect to work weekends and long hours for months straight. Of course the pay will get better with the years, but just remember you will have to want to make this sacrifice.
For any software engineer this has to be a tough choice. We’re used to benefits, company cars, phones etc. For a job this demanding, you will be underpaid and feel taken advantage of. You will envy anyone doing a normal 38 hours a week for a much better pay.
It’s not all bad though. You are part of the creation of something that 10000s of people will (hopefully) enjoy! You’ll get a nice spot in the credits and let’s face it, it’s something you can show off to friends (unlike most business applications you might create somewhere else). And you’ll be around like-minded people .. gamers!
So, how to do it!
First option, if you’re still young and haven’t figured out what to do with your life, you can probably find some university or college with a Game Development program. This is your easiest way into the industry. You’ll end up doing an internship at a studio and probably end up getting a job there afterwards.
Another option is to study Computer Science. Game studios know all there is to know about game development, so you are not going to bring them anything new if you graduate in Game Development. Computer Scientists however get a very broad education, which will contain Maths and Physics, but also AI, Compilers, Databases, Computer Graphics, Design Patterns, Analysis and Design etc. It might be a bit harder to land a job at any game company, but the smart companies will like to see you coming.
One other advantage of getting a broader education is that there is an exit. A game programmer with a game education will have a harder time getting out of the game industry, certainly after a few years of experience. You might not think you’d ever want to quit, but the day you want to settle down with your loved one, the game developer lifestyle might not cut it. Money and time spent with family might just become more important.
So what if you are an experienced developer but without any game experience? Well, you’ll have it the worst. You have experience but you don’t. You’re more expensive but they believe your background has no value. So be prepared to give up a huge chunk of salary, it’ll play a big part in convincing them to hire you.
Be ready to learn as much about game development as you can because with no experience there is a good chance they will test you like a graduating game development student. Which means they want to see if you know AI algorithms, collision detection, the graphics pipeline etc. It’s tricky if you never ran into these subjects before so do your homework!
Then there is C++. Chances are little that you have to use C++ in your current professional life. You’re more likely to be a Java or .NET developer. So how to tackle this? Again, homework! Get the book Thinking in C++ and learn about all the exceptions to the rules. The trick questions you’ll get will probably be covered in this book. Study this before your interview and you should pass those tests with ease.
Nothing beats a demo (combined with everything above of course). If you think there is even the slightest chance you might apply for a game job in the future, start working on that demo right now. As software developer, show off your skills by implementing a non-trivial feature or architecture, something that will blow their mind. There are plenty of papers out there covering amazing things, but game developers rarely get the time to experiment at their job. So it’s a perfect chance to show off.
So to end this post, let’s talk about surviving the games industry. While every job is a blast at first, it will become a job like any other at some point. Remember, you have to enjoy it. If it becomes too much of a chore, it’s time to move on. Also, make sure you are appreciated. You’ll work hard so you deserve respect from your employer. You hear too many stories of crazy crunch periods and underpaid angry developers (hey I was one of them). It’s not because you love doing something you should be doing it for free. It’s not a privilege to work in the games industry, it’s their privilege to have such hard working developers making their games.
A Few iPad Interface Woes
June 15th, 20100 comments
The iPad gave birth to some beautifully designed interfaces with a new level of usability. Using software never felt so natural. But when it comes to inputting text, things haven’t changed much in the last 100 years.
It might be more “virtual” but it’s still a keyboard. Should I say even a gimped keyboard, as typing without looking at it is impossible (same goes for the iPhone, the first phone I could not text with while driving .. not without taking my eyes off the road anyway. We need to “feel” the keys!).
It seems like the iPad team didn’t waste too much time and thought the iPhone keyboard would be good enough. And while holding an iPhone and typing with your thumbs works great, it’s a bit tricker with the iPad. There is the matter of more weight and bigger size.
Apple wants you to put the iPad in your lap and type like you would on a regular keyboard. But the keyboard becomes hard to reach and finding a comfortable position is pretty difficult. In other words, it’s not a laptop. There is a dock plus keyboard option, cases for better grip and you can even just connect a Bluetooth keyboard. Those solutions are great but also acknowledge the fact that the text input capabilities are just lacking.
The iPad tries to be more like a book or magazine. So I hold it that way, in both hands. I let the bottom corners rest in the palms of my hands while I navigate using my thumbs. Since the back of the device is smooth this is necessary to keep a good grip, but the problem starts when your thumbs cannot reach pieces of the interface located away from your hands.
The best example of this flaw would be Safari and its top navigation buttons. While it’s an interface everyone knows, it’s not designed for the iPad. Having to let go of your grip to navigate back and forward or hit the url or search box is an oversight. And one that would easily be fixed by moving all navigation to the bottom of the screen.
Back to the keyboard. Typing with your thumbs actually works fine in portrait mode. On the other hand, landscape mode requires quite a bit of flexibility from your hands. Take a look at the following picture. The green area is easy to reach. Holding the iPad, your thumbs should have no issue hitting those buttons. The orange area gets trickier and the red is pretty much out of reach.
Notice how wide the keyboard is. There is the same amount of buttons as in portrait mode yet it takes up 25% more width. Why does this take up so much more screen estate? Is it because putting the device on a table to type requires bigger buttons to make it usable? If so, why not give the option to choose a more reachable keyboard when holding the iPad with both hands? Here’s my suggestion:
Not the best Photoshop, but you get the idea. This makes all keys easily reachable with your thumbs, saves screen space and causes less finger strain. It’s as easy and fast to use as the portrait mode keyboard.
Another solution would be the T9 layout. Still used in many cell phones and available as virtual keyboard on Xbox 360 and Playstation3, the T9 layout is a viable option when it comes to one-finger (or joystick) text input. While in portrait mode you can have one hand free to use the T9 keyboard. And since landscape mode requires both hands, positioning the keyboard near the left or right thumb of the user would also allow for easy access.
Other solutions would be voice input (Microsoft seems to be going in the right direction with Kinect) or character recognition (Nintendo DS does a great job there). But these alternative text input methods will still not replace a proper keyboard any time soon. Certainly not when it comes to accuracy and speed when writing great amounts of text.
The iPad is a wonderful device, but I still feel reluctant each time I have to start typing large amounts of texts and I usually end up using my Macbook. Nonetheless, for everything else, the device is pretty amazing.
A Darker Web
June 7th, 20102 comments
“For thousands of years we’ve been staring at dark fonts. Blame graphite and its friend paper”
Magazines, books and newspapers all prove that the black on white formula works like a charm. Hence the digital age turned out to be not much different. Editors are black on white, just like their notepad and typewriter counterparts. News and blog sites prefer the same color scheme since it works so well in print.
So why change? Is there any good reason to turn this global standard upside down? Where does digital differ from print? Why a darker web? Let me try to explain…
First of all, putting letters on paper by drawing the letters in graphite is just plain logical. Trying to do the opposite, filling a page with graphite except where you want the letters, would be plain dumb (although rest assured somewhere in history a person must have tried). The same goes for print today. While advertisements might pull off a full black page once in a while, the cost in ink to create a complete black magazine would be ridiculous.
Whatever we put on screen doesn’t cost any ink of course. White or black, it’s all the same. So our choices aren’t limited by logic, only by taste. But maybe there is a logic that would promote going opposite.
Do you remember the chalkboards at school? As a kid we would stare at these things for hours. Ever thought they were difficult on the eyes? (not counting your teacher’s bad handwriting of course) Now flash forward to today and look at the whiteboard at the office. Why is it that these things are so much harder to read than the blackboards back in school?
The reason is simple. Our eye sight is based on light. The photons that hit our retina create the images we see. When we read black fonts, our eyes have to focus on these dark areas while our brain tries to ignore all the bright light trying to get our attention. So it’s pretty obvious a thin red or green line on a whiteboard is tricky to see.
The readability is also improved by less eye strain. Staring at a bright screen to read large amount of text is tiring. Turn on the high contrast/white on black mode on your PC and see for yourself (Universal Access on Mac, Accessibility Options on Windows) . You’ll feel your eyes relax the moment it switches your desktop to white on black.
A lot of people swear light on dark is hard to read however. So here’s another little test to prove the opposite is true. Look at the image below and tell me what’s the difference between these O’s.
The O on the left looks bolder (try to compare the distance between inner and outer corner) even though both O’s are identical in size. The brain actually magnifies bright objects on dark backgrounds. Dark objects on white backgrounds will always appear smaller. This means that a white font would look bigger. You gain readability yet you use up the same space!
There is one more benefit to sites with dark background but let me explain fully before you run off. Power consumption. You’ve probably heard of Blackle, a black version of Google’s search homepage and how it would save energy if you use it. Nothing is further from the truth of course. The back light of your LCD is always on. The light just gets blocked where black appears. However, with new technology there might be some truth behind Blackle after all!
LED screens can actually turn the back light off locally. Hence large dark areas on a website would mean less LEDs would have to be lit up which would result in power saving! Do note however that this does not count for most LED TVs on the market today. These Edge LED TVs do not dim the background locally as they have LEDs on the side that light up the entire screen.
In conclusion, there are a lot of good reasons to make your websites darker. Readability being the biggest. One cannot argue about taste however and a complete dark web would tend to get boring quickly. But if your main focus is text and articles, it might be a good time to change.
*Image: Black & White 2 by Lionhead Studios
*Links: Blackle
Introduction
June 1st, 20101 comment
“To blog. To clutter the web with my thoughts once more..”
For those new to the party, hi! I’m Sven and this site is almost 10 years old! (that’s an old man in Internet years) It has seen quite some iterations, starting in 2000 with my own home-brew MySQL/PHP blog, shoutbox included! Blogging wasn’t that popular back then, tools were limited but being at university usually meant you had plenty of spare time to waste on such projects anyway.
The site would go from blog to static page usually after long periods of tumbleweed posting [definition "A blog post that happens once in a while on a non-active blog to tell the readers 'sorry about the lack of updates and we'll be back soon'"], and then turn into a blog again. The quitting usually meant I went through a busy period in my life, be it World of Warcraft grinding or just the plain old video game industry crunch.
As for the blog name, well, after 10 years it kind of stuck. I tried finding a new name but this one had too much history. Trying to spell it on the phone still is a pain in the neck though.
“5! Not Five! No, DOLLAR, not $ that doesn’t work you #%#$%”
If you’re clueless about the name, go rent Pulp Fiction. Go rent it and like it or never come back! ..
On this new version of the site, I’ll be posting much more useful posts. That’s the idea anyway. I’m nearing 30 and should give something back to the community right? So expect interesting posts regarding topics I know more or less something about!
To get a better idea of what I might talk about and give the clueless a clue, let me tell you a bit about my professional history and background. And while we’re at it, why not do it job interview style! Here goes …
It all started back when I was 10 and got my first NES and Gameboy. It got me into computers, a bit of hacking, some QBASIC and C and so on. My future was pretty much set, computers were going to be a big part of my life.
I went to study for Master in Computer Science, doing a fun thesis at the Computer Graphics Research Group, KULeuven on Image-Based Space Carving [defintion "Creating virtual objects through algorithm using images as input"]. After graduating, I went to look for my first job.
Bad timing, as IT was too popular and it took me quite a while to find a job. I ended up at Arinso (now Northgate Arinso) in Brussels, discovering the world of .NET and HR (and Walloons! Awesome folk.). 4.5 years later, I quit!
Games were where my heart was at and I was sure to find joy and happiness in the game industry. I made a demo (a dumb little platformer in C++/DirectX) and faced the hell that was applying for jobs once more. Tips on how to get into the games industry with no experience some other time!
I ended up at Monumental Games in Nottingham, UK and got to work from start to finish on MotoGP 09/10, a game published by Capcom. An interesting experience, one that introduced me to some great people and got me into iPhone game development. Though after the project was finished, I quit. Again, more on that some other time.
Back to Belgium! No place like home, we moved to Antwerp (not really home as I’m from near Leuven but anyway!) and I started a job as software developer at iChoosr. And that’s where we’re at today!
So, here we are. A new city, a new job and a new blog. I hope to entertain you with personal opinions, experiences and knowledge, as well as random things to keep tumbleweed posts from creeping in. Suggestions on what you’d like to see next or comments on the site more then welcome!
.. Enjoy!
( if you were wondering, yes, the picture is related. I really love burgers )
Links: World of Warcraft, Computer Graphics Research Group, KULeuven, Northgate Arinso, Monumental Games, MotoGP 09/10, iChoosr