Karma1

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 369928
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I wanted to be a developer, after studying and getting what I needed my first job involved sitting for long hours doing financial coding. I left after a week, man the development world is exploitative of note, I moved around trying out different tech from PABXs, network devices and even fell into supporting ADSL for a bit. Eventually fell into Linux by accident and found I kind of like it.
Simple bash scripting, some basic perl and python and it does what I need to do. What I'm saying is, your passion is making games, but I don't think you'll like it as an everyday job and making it 24/7. It will also take away from your life.
 
crocopede said:
I was a indie dev for 2 years. Most fun ive had in my life. Though the hours were killer and I subcontracted to other studios to make ends meat and doing some training courses for a few institutes.

Even got featured by Epic Games. The wife was not too happy cause i would exlaim aloud at 3am in the morning... Eurika! Then jump out of bed to go implement a bug fix.

But the hours was a problem. Hence not joining studios as hours + explotation + instability of job security even at big studios such as UBI and EA lead me back to infosec.

So what im saying is. The dream has to be destroyed not because its unrealistic. But because its an explotive / unstable industry to work in.

Family first. Passion second.
Click to expand...

I honestly think the industry killed your dream :-(. You could keep trying as an indie, perhaps try spreading the word here about your games?
 
I wanted to be an Architect. But in this beautiful country you cannot become one without studying full time. I think it is time I must also give up on that dream and do something new so I can better provide for my family.
 
To be honest I think you need to adjust your expectations. I suspect you really want to be a rock star more than you want to be a game developer. In other words you want to be successful in the industry(or maybe any creative industry) far more than you actually just want to make games. If you were really passionate about making games you'd be happy already.

You're actually pretty damn lucky to have the spare time to devote to building games when you think about it.
 
So I know one or two devs who were in the gaming industry and the picture from the outside is a lot rosier than the inside. Pay is very low due to how many devs want to do games, and making games is very different to playing games, which I find is the main reason guys want to get into it.

Personally, I had a similar situation. My passion is strategy and history. My aptitude tests said I should head for the military, only in this country that is a very crappy career. However I am a very competent programmer and my aptitude test also said I could make a decent engineer/software engineer. However in that career I would get paid a lot more. Hence I am more than happy to keep my passion as a hobby on the side while working in something that while not my passion provides an amazing life quality, and has decent hours allowing me family time and time for my hobbies.

I get to play my strategy games, read my military history books, and listen to my history podcasts while on the way to Sandton for work. Its really not that bad. What cemented it for me was a guy I once worked with. He lived skydiving. Huge passion for it. So he left dev and opened a company doing that somewhere. After 6 years his passion had become just another job and he actually reached the point where he could not stand the thought of his next jump. He sold the company, went back to dev, and after a few years actually managed to enjoy skydiving again. So there is also danger in doing your passion as a job as it can poison it for you, contrary to all the people saying "Do what you love!" The fact of the matter is most of us love doing stuff that we generally would not be paid well for, cause what we love is entertaining ourselves.

Last bit of advice. Look into the modding community. There are some mods that were almost more popular than the original game they were made on (especially in the Total War community). There are some really cool modding teams working on amazing and creative content out there. Get involved in one of those. You won't earn a cent, but you will get amazing experience, create some awesome stuff, and live your passion out as a hobby.

Just my 2c. Hope you find a way to be happy about this whatever you choose.
 
So you want to be a game developer but only if there's a salary attached to it?

That's what's causing your depression.

Many people love what they're doing but very few doing what they love.

Get with the program.
 
2 of my friends, 1 a boilermaker and the other has his own business, making mirror. Both 40+. Both idiots when it comes to anything computer wise. They love playing games, especially survival MP games, but that's how far it goes. I'm the one who always have to help them setup new stuff. They didn't have an interest of learning anything in that direction.
Last year, they saw the Epic games launcher and installed it, by accident they installed Unreal engine. Not knowing what it is. They played around with it and started watching Youtube videos and stuff. Somehow the one friend became friends online with this one oke, who is teaching him how to make cut scenes. Long story short, they now have a large map with trees and stuff. A guy running around there. A small piece of road they really made to look good, with a cut scene over that.
They will never develop a full game, but they're convinced they are making a survival game. They'll need someone with C++ or some language to assist with the machanics of a game etc, but they got parts of it figured out. I still can't believe what they did.
 
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