Video Game Development Pros and Cons
Good news and bad news. If you read on, I will illustrate my point with a metaphor about kittens. But first an update.
I didn't get the 3D Artist Position at U of M. The bottom line was that they had a lot of applicants with actual paid experience on the job. My next application will be for a User Experience internship at JSTOR.
I really appreciate receiving a followup email from U of M 3D Lab. With over 150 applicants, that's a lot of work for them. They're even going to post (with permission) work from some of the applicants which will give us a sense of where to improve our skills.
The hope of defeating the tidal wave of competition in any branch of the entertainment industry seems more and more like an absurd folly. This Penny Arcade comic painfully illustrates the problems of oversupply of candidates. Conditions are grueling and projects are uninspiring, precisely because hundreds are lined up to replace you.
and his associates have been suggesting to me recently that I should consider joining the video game development program at U of M Dearborn. With my Motion Capture Animation certification, programming inclination, artistic skill, and obsession with board/card/puzzle games, it seems to them like a slam dunk.
They have a really good point. I have been mulling it over almost constantly.
On the debate podium opposite them are the articles I read almost monthly on Gamasutra.com or Hacker News, which make it seem that nearly everyone in the video game industry hates their jobs. Imagine you like kittehs and wish to work with them. But so does everyone else. The only remaining kitteh-related career is strapping kittehs into the Pain Machine from The Princess Bride. What do you do? I don't want to have to get up in the morning and go in to work on Railroad Tycoon 14, Tits 'n Guns 9, or the latest Wheel of Fortune.
Now we get to the good news. Independently-published video games are in a boom period, spurred by platforms like XBox Live, WiiWare, and iPhone or Android mobile devices. Minecraft is the poster child. Here is an excerpt from the article "Why Minecraft Matters":
Sounds interesting, you say, but why should I care that a few guys have put together a cool little indie game? The reason you should care is because a team of four or five people using free libraries and cross-platform tools have just made a mockery of the last five years of franchise-oriented, $50 million budget, yearly-release, AAA game development. And it’s not just a fluke. The Humble Indie Bundle, World of Goo, Braid, and a number of other extremely low-budget titles have electrified the gaming community, while games with millions in marketing budget like APB and Kane & Lynch fall flat on their face critically and commercially. Gamer discontent with these barren blockbusters is palpable, and Minecraft is the new poster boy for it.
The game isn’t technically finished; in fact it only recently left pre-beta state. It’s buggy, missing major features, and to make things brief, you kind of have to want it. But it also doesn’t have B-movie voice acting, a scruffy 30-ish white protagonist, DLC, a movie deal, console exclusivity, or any of the other hundred things that plague gamers in practically every major release.
Emphasis mine.
Using a Master's degree in game development to publish an independent video game has a pro and a con:
1. The con: If my goal is to impress myself when hiring myself in a job interview, it is unnecessary.
2. The pro: I might be able to develop the game during the course of the degree itself, rather than look for a source of funding for a startup.
Comments
sorcycat on Jan. 27, 2011 1:59 PM
I have some colleagues who love Minecraft.
So, my question is... how much funding do you really need? You can develop game concepts and code in your own time. The iPhone development kit has a simulator for the iPhone, so you don't need to buy actual hardware until you have an app to show. The barrier for self-publishing is really, really low these days.
justbeast on Jan. 27, 2011 5:01 PM
I second this. You really don't need funding, at least to start. Grab an SDK in your favorite language (like Python, or check out what's going on in the HTML5/Canvas/JavaScript world of gaming in the browser), some books, draw some crude programmer art in pencil or something, and go. Keep a blog, post demos of your game in progress. When you have a decent game going, and some feedback, and you're ready to actually publish it & earn money, go to Kickstarter to get some funds going to hire an arist (or, again, do the graphics yourself).
You just need time & effort & will to break into indie game development. I'm not saying 'Don't get a Master's degree' - sure, go for it. But don't go the 'seek funding for a startup' route until you have stuff to show.
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 5:56 PM
Crude programmer art? Hire an artist? Do you really think I'm that bad at my job?
How unutterably depressing.
justbeast on Jan. 27, 2011 6:02 PM
Er... sorry. :) I somehow divorced in my mind the part in your post where you said you were applying as graphics artist from the part where you were talking about creating a game as belonging to two different people.
Please ignore that part of my comment.
What would be the funding for, then? If you can do the art, and you can program, hell, you're in an awesome and rare situation!
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 6:27 PM
Oh, thank goodness.
The funding would be for groceries and rent.
justbeast on Jan. 27, 2011 6:32 PM
Ahaa! Ok. Yeah, rent & food is important :)
So it seems to me, funding is a problem of building trust, right, both with investors, or crowdfunding-type donors.
What if you set aside a weekend and created the barest of demos? And then put that up on a site, and did a Kickstarter project for like, /one month/ of rent & groceries. With the idea of showing a in-progress demo after that month. Cause I'd donate to that /so fast/, out of my own grocery money if I had to.
And then, with that to show, you could do another Kickstarter project for a couple months. With another deliverable type demo at the end. And then more. and so on. That way, no one step is overwhelming (either for you, or for investors).
What do you think?
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 6:40 PM
It just occurred to me that you might need me to elaborate because you might also not know about me, that I'm severely underemployed.
My part-time temp job ends in a month (due to university Union rules), and my student loans are inexplicably AWOL.
I've run out of all the friends who I'm comfortable asking for a loan of $50. I have none of my textbooks. My cell phone is disconnected. My Livejournal paid account is expired. Because I have not gone grocery shopping in two months, I eat one or two meals a day, and go to lots of parties in the hopes they'll serve food. (I lived an entire month on Christmas leftovers.)
Sure, I could do a project "in my spare time", which is most of my time. But if I don't need funding, that assumes my spare time fits around a job that meets my basic physical needs. For now I just need money from somewhere.
justbeast on Jan. 27, 2011 5:10 PM
Also. I would love to collaborate with you. Or barter - ask you for game design & feedback in exchange for programming help or advice or actual coding time.
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 6:41 PM
OK, that is fantastic. Frankly, since I'm so new to programming, I need adult supervision in that aspect!
pstscrpt on Jan. 27, 2011 7:15 PM
Any idea what tools you'd be looking at? I'd be happy to help with programming questions, if it's something I know anything about.
Last I checked, Adrian was hoping to eventually get into game design and/or programming; you may have a potential intern, if you want it. That might get you more technical help from me, too, if we direct Adrian's programming education toward what would be useful for your project.
justbeast on Jan. 27, 2011 7:38 PM
I'm curious, what tools would you recommend? (And what languages are in your area of expertise?)
My own personal (wholly unqualified) recommendations would be.. well, depends on what eventual distribution platform Matt is going for.
If for iPhone, then choice is pretty clear: get an apple iphone SDK, grab ObjectiveC and go.
For desktop? I would honestly recommend either:
* Pygame
* One of the non-Flash browser-based HTML 5 game frameworks, like GameJS, CraftyJS, or Akihabara or some such.
pstscrpt on Jan. 27, 2011 8:01 PM
I'm not a game programmer. I figure I'll be more help with general programming questions than anything game-specific.
I figure I can be helpful to a beginner for C, C++ (maybe), Java, .Net, Ruby, Perl (although I'd rather avoid it) or Python. I should be trying to reach that level for JavaScript before long, anyway. I'd be willing to learn Lua if my son wanted to work on it, and I hear C/Lua is a common game combo.
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 10:18 PM
The mobile market seems really promising. I'm not interested in the desktop. I'm already playing around tentatively with some web-based games in PHP.
matt-arnold on Jan. 27, 2011 10:20 PM
(By "desktop", I mean "not in the browser". I'm interested in programing for the web. The advantage of mobile is that I'm more likely to get paid.)
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