Charas-Project
Off-Topic => All of all! => Topic started by: Osmose on August 10, 2010, 01:51:44 AM
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So after two internships and more or less the guarantee of an offer, I can hopefully claim that I work in the games industry now. Or at the very least I've WORKED in the games industry.
Details / Catches: I've been a web developer on the Sims 3 website for two summers as an intern now. In that time I've lived/talked with engineers, marketers, designers, audio engineers, and producers. If you're into name-dropping, I've attended talks given by the likes of Peter Moore (former President of Sega, current head of EA Sports; he fed us pizza!), John Richitiello (CEO of EA), Ian Milham (Art Director on Dead Space), Jonathan Knight (Executive Producer on Dante's Inferno), etc. You can see that most of my experience is EA centric, although most of the people I've met and talked to have worked at other companies before EA, and the advice applies generally.
I assume most people on Charas are aspiring game creators of some kind. I don't claim to know a whole lot, but I figure I can at least help out a little with questions about the games industry, how to get in, what it's like, etc. Even as just a web developer, the culture is way different from other companies. So, ask me almost anything. :P
DISCLAIMER: Anything I say is my own opinion and not necessarily that of Electronic Arts. Or, for that matter, anyone else I've ever worked for. This is all me. :P
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Can you score some free swag and send it to us?
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I like the above comment.
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I was hoping to one day write soundtracks for videogames. How would I go about getting someone interested and establishing myself? Or, if I wanted to peddle my game idea onto some company for mass market, how would I do that?
I would ask a ridiculous question right now, but I'm too tired to really come up with one. Sorry, but this chain game is over.
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Can I get a cool job without doing anything to get it?
No
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I was hoping to one day write soundtracks for videogames. How would I go about getting someone interested and establishing myself? Or, if I wanted to peddle my game idea onto some company for mass market, how would I do that?
This idea is cool too.
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How is it different from other companies?
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Can I get a cool job without doing anything to get it?
No
Pornstar, model, escort?
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Pornstar, model, escort?
Quite on the contrary. He'll have to work pretty hard for that.
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Pornstar, model, escort?
Boob jobs ain't cheap, y'know.
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Cool moose. Glad to hear you're making the 'nections. If you should ever happen to find yourself in charge of finding talented indy developers to exploit for money, There is some mad talent at some of the communities Ive been frequenting.
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Can I get in even if I go for college for something thats not related to video games that much, and if I have no talent or experience working with video games other than playing them? :P
Actually, yes. The current Chief Creative Officer of EA, Richard Hilleman, never even went to college at all.
Now, granted, you won't be starting off in a good position at all, but movement within a company once you get there is fairly common. The most common story you hear is people starting off in low QA positions (low-level testers that don't need technical skills) and moving up as needed. Now, don't kid yourself: It's not easy. But if you can land a smaller position, often you can start getting meetings with people higher up and work your way upward. It's actually feasible.
Can you score some free swag and send it to us?
Not right now, but it's certainly possible in the future. :P
I was hoping to one day write soundtracks for videogames. How would I go about getting someone interested and establishing myself? Or, if I wanted to peddle my game idea onto some company for mass market, how would I do that?
I would ask a ridiculous question right now, but I'm too tired to really come up with one. Sorry, but this chain game is over.
On composing for video games, the biggest thing I've heard is: don't. The trend in the industry these days is to contract out composition, rather than hire a permanent composer for any one series. There may be a superstar composer leading the effort, but I've been told that the best way to get in is to become a composer for all forms of media, such as movies, tv shows, etc. And then try to get work doing video games.
Establishing yourself in general is easier: do something. Side projects are awesome things to show off. If you've composed MIDIs for an RPG Maker game you're working on, and they're good, make a website portfolio and post them. Make some great pieces and send them in if you apply somewhere. This actually applies to every position: game design interviewers would LOVE to have you bring in a prototype game you've been working on and show it off to them.
Getting your idea picked up by a game company is really hard, especially as an individual. The easier route would be to gather up some funding, and contract out work on your game. There's tons of channels for indie games, like the XBLA indie arcade, that let you get attention for your small game idea.
Most professionally made games come from people already working at a developer and pitching the idea to their boss and a few producers. If an idea is solid, it will be given a very small amount of resources to work on the idea, polish it, and usually create a small prototype. Usually this prototype is a "vertical slice": It shows maybe 10-20 minutes of the game, but those 10-20 minutes are so worked over that they could pass for an alpha version of the game. They then show the game off to executives in a greenlight presentation, at which time the executives will decide if there is enough of a game there to put it into full production. Once that happens, development will ramp up, and the originally small team will balloon as resources are brought in to develop the full game.
So, to answer your question, if you want to pitch your game idea, your best bet is to get a job at a developer and spread your idea around internally, trying to gain enough momentum for someone higher up to notice.
How is it different from other companies?
Try and think of the type of people who play video games, are excited about video games, or at least are willing to work at a company that makes video games. Those are the type of people you'll be working with.
Okay, that's a bit of a lie. Certainly there are people at game companies who are stuck up, too devoted to the corporate process, etc. But by and far the employees at a video game company are laid back, fun people. I work on the Sims 3 Web Team, and each and every employee is nearly required to be equipped with at least one Nerf gun, for safety purposes. There's video games every where you look: our area has Rock Band set up in the middle on a large flatscreen TV for TGIF (free beer every other Friday!).
There's all sorts of events to celebrate when games launch. Employee discounts, too (Regular Full Time employees get a certain amount of free games every year; they have to be published by EA, but still). You also get to learn about unannounced and upcoming titles well before anyone in the public does (and sometimes you even get to playtest them and give input to the game teams).
There's downsides, too. Even outside of the industry you've probably heard of crunch time: when a game gets close to release and you have to rush to finish it. Not being able to talk about your work with friends, dealing with the general issues that come with working at a company, etc. It's not all sunshine and candy. But it's damn close. I like it. :P
MOAR QUESTIONS!
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Haha, Lucas.
You answered my biggest question which was asked by Emerates. So... I got nothin'
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When they hire, do they hire one person to be responsible for that area or do they hire people who knows a lot of many things?
Err...
One of those things that hit me while messing around with RPGM projects. I'm good at some things but not all, and some other people are good at few things and some are limited to only one area. SO! Is it in our interest to upgrade our knowledge in our lacking departments or do you have a better chance of succeeding if you stick to what you know?
'Cuz videogame educations over here pretty much expect you to learn about everything. 3d graphics, programming, planning, storyboards, sound effects, music ect. Would be kinda nice to know if it's worth anything.
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If you've witnessed the making of a game from start to finish, how long is the process from pre-production to the final project?
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This really has nothing to do with getting a job in the industry, but how do the people in the industry think of indies?
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I'm [hopefully] be going to college for Visual Arts next year, maybe I could use that to start working at something somewhere when I'm done with college. :P
Hey Moose, any unannounced EA titles that you feel like leaking? :P
3d animation or modeling is your best bet, concept art is not a very easy field to get into, nor do companies usually keep on a bunch of permanent concept artists.
And no, there are no unannounced EA titles that I feel like leaking. :P
When they hire, do they hire one person to be responsible for that area or do they hire people who knows a lot of many things?
'Cuz videogame educations over here pretty much expect you to learn about everything. 3d graphics, programming, planning, storyboards, sound effects, music ect. Would be kinda nice to know if it's worth anything.
I just echoed this question to my roommate, who is a production intern. He says that the jack-of-all-trades type of education suits a designer or a producer. In terms of a designer, having a shallow knowledge in many fields helps you communicate the design you create for a feature better to the people who will implement it.
As for producers, a producer is a sort've creative manager. There are management duties involved, but you are a lot closer to the product than one normally thinks when one thinks of a manager. You definitely have creative input, although again this is through discussion and suggestion with designers. You won't code, but you may sit in on high-level technical discussions for the game. You won't do art, but you may be able to talk to the art director and influence his thoughts on where it should go.
Getting into an entry level position for either of these disciplines is difficult. Your best bet is either starting in QA and moving up, or becoming an intern. The former I've mentioned, but the latter is a bit different.
The primary source of interns is through recruiting at colleges. Each company has a few schools that it recruits at, although others have none at all. If you can't/aren't going to a college with video game companies recruiting, then you can still submit a resume or portfolio to a university relations rep at a company. You may get a screening interview and just have to work the job-getting magic from there.
So, in short, yes. It's worth it for a producer or a designer. For any other position, not so much.
If you've witnessed the making of a game from start to finish, how long is the process from pre-production to the final project?
I haven't witnessed a game from the very start to ship date, but I've seen many games in each stage. In general, games take about 2-3 years to make, but it is very much dependent on the game (think Duke Nukem Forever). Sequels may take a shorter amount of time, while new IPs(Intellectual Properties) may take up to 4-5 years, or even more.
This really has nothing to do with getting a job in the industry, but how do the people in the industry think of indies?
Depends. Are you a passionate indie or a pretentious one?
The problem is that there's a large group of indie developers who feel that they're "better" than the big development companies. Some have been burned by companies, others just don't like big game publishers for silly reasons.
The Indie Gamemaker Rant from GDC 2010 has a few good examples of the "bad" kind of indie: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012312/Indie-Gamemaker-Rant
Nathan Vela and Brandon Boyle are good excerpts from that video to give you an idea of the bad indie. They claim to be more passionate, but really it just seems like they're on a power trip.
Now, that's not to say that there aren't passionate indies. Quite the opposite. It's just that when guys like these make it to big conferences like GDC, they give indies a bad name.
Now, for the question itself: It varies. Some people (like me) love indies; there's quite a few people who have worked on a few indie games and used them as leverage to get a job in the industry. Others think that they're a group of pretentious hippies who will never be financially successful. A lot don't even know much about indies; some people just view the games industry as a place to work rather than a way of life.
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How exactly does the flow of game production start?
At the moment, with Myrdia (yes, I'm still working on that), I'm kind of going through a writing phase at the same time as the concept drafting, which I've found is kind of a bad idea, as I'm doing A LOT of stuff at once...mostly doodling and trying to figure out the core "look".
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How exactly does the flow of game production start?
At the moment, with Myrdia (yes, I'm still working on that), I'm kind of going through a writing phase at the same time as the concept drafting, which I've found is kind of a bad idea, as I'm doing A LOT of stuff at once...mostly doodling and trying to figure out the core "look".
So first I'll summarize how a professional game is made:
Pre-Production / Concept
This is the first stage. At this point a few key ideas on the game's subject matter and concept are made. The big focus here, however, isn't art or story as much as gameplay. Since gameplay is the meat of the game, you really want to get a good idea of how the game will flow, what the main segments of gameplay are, and how they fit together in a cohesive way.
A big thing here isn't to create art for your game, but rather to get art references so you know what you want te game to look like.
By the end of this phase you want to know what the player will be doing every step of your game.
Vertical Slice
A vertical slice, as I've mentioned before, is around 30 minutes, or a level, of your game, and complete. Although the final product may differ, the vertical slice should feel like it could be the end game vision. It covers all the main features of your game. Compare this to a (theoretical) horizontal slice, which would be a single mechanic, but features all occurrences of that mechanic over the entire game.
Production
This is where the team ramps up and most of the game is made. At this point development on all fronts proceeds, usually tied to milestones that are defined beforehand. Using milestones helps guide your development so that you don't spin on any one part of the game and get stuck in a rut. Milestones define a date by which certain parts of the game must be finished. If you don't hit a milestone in time, you can either readjust your schedule or move on to another part of the game and come back later.
Polish
As main production winds down, heavy QA and polish begin. Although bugs have been popping up and being fixed throughout development, at this point there is a cutoff for feature development and the focus shifts completely to making the game suitable to ship. There's an alpha, beta, and gold phase here, usually.
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(Note: The following is my opinion rather than anything someone told me about game design)
Now for you as an individual, this process won't work perfectly. The biggest idea here is probably the very first phase: Gameplay is the single most important part of your game. Even with a story-driven game, the gameplay is still more important, because gameplay is what the player is doing all the time. You can write the most interesting story in the world, but if the gameplay is sufficiently bad, players won't bother to read it.
We're an RPG Maker forum, so we have the basics set down for us by the engine, but there's still a lot your game can do to add to the formula and make its gameplay compelling. Sai'Kar's Outpost is a great example of a game that took the standard RPG Maker formula and shifted the focus to an interesting mechanic.
The hardest part is not seeing results immediately, which is why a vertical slice is also a good idea for a demo. It'll give you something to show for your work early, and helps to eliminate the fatigue you get from spinning on an idea for too long. And you can get input from others on your game pretty early.
Learn to study other games and find out what makes them great. For example, one of the greatest things about Chrono Trigger was the amount of hits it requires to kill an enemy at any point in the game: if you notice, the rule of thumb is that weak enemies take 1-2 hits, medium enemies take 3-4, and only the strongest of all enemies take more than 4 hits to kill without some sort of special mechanic (Don't quote me on this exact thing, but you get the idea).
Two good takeaways from that are: 1. Battles with enemies should be long enough to be gratifying, but short enough to not hinder progress, and 2. You should be consistent with enemy difficulty relative to the expected player level. Entering an area where enemies break this model of difficulty should mean that that area is not meant to be explored yet. You'll know an area needs some more balancing if you find that players have to grind to get through it.
The biggest thing I've learned about game design from working at EA is that a ridiculously large amount of thought goes into gameplay, far more than you can imagine.
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Oh...I also heard that some companies prefer making an overlying engine, and then producing a toolset for the designers to monkey around with for the final product. I know this is mostly true in games like Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 and beyond, and Torchlight, but have you seen this often?
I am going to take all of your advice to heart though (as well as the vertical slice...that's a really good tip), because if there's anything that I want to do in the world right now, it's bring my ideas to light/life.
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Polish
As main production winds down, heavy QA and polish begin. Although bugs have been popping up and being fixed throughout development, at this point there is a cutoff for feature development and the focus shifts completely to making the game suitable to ship. There's an alpha, beta, and gold phase here, usually.
I take it the Fallout 3 developers didn't realise this phase existed.
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What are some reputable colleges that gaming companies frequently go to when searching for interns or new employees?
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I take it the Fallout 3 developers didn't realise this phase existed.
Bethesda likes to give us half-finished products. I take the optimist approach, and see this as a "let the community decide what's best" situation.
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Oh...I also heard that some companies prefer making an overlying engine, and then producing a toolset for the designers to monkey around with for the final product. I know this is mostly true in games like Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 and beyond, and Torchlight, but have you seen this often?
More than often. Pretty much every game I've ever seen is built in a reusable way. Most start off with a base engine, like Unreal or Frostbite, and then modify it from there to fit their game.
Of course this helps with things like making sequels or developing DLC, but the biggest benefit is simply that it makes development of the game easier. There are a TON of resources in any given game. Textures, models, maps, items, sounds, etc. Even within the scope of a single game it just makes sense to develop a reusable engine so that adding new levels is easier. A game is very much a living thing, and changes over the course of development; rarely do you see a game that has not significantly changed from its initial concept.
Now this doesn't mean that programmers create an engine and then designers create the game; it's not as clean as that. Through every phase of development there are roughly three levels of work, functionality-wise(don't take this for gospel, of course):
- Core Engineers: These are usually experienced developers who create the core engine upon which the game runs. Throughout the course of development designers and GPEs will work with Core Engineers to figure out what features the core engine needs to support the game. Think of it like having a Ruby coder who can edit the RPG Maker XP engine for you while you code events like normal.
- Gameplay Engineers (GPEs): These are developers who work on a layer "above" the core engine. They usually use a higher-level language like C# that doesn't have direct access to things like rendering graphics, but rather can use functions exposed by the engine to make things happen. Often they work on the specific features that are requested by designers, such as an item that can teleport the player from one place in the world to another.
- Designers: Designers usually don't code, or if they do, they don't code heavily. The extent of their coding is making tweaks to features the GPEs have implemented to balance the game or change how small things work. Designers instead focus on how gameplay will work and what the player will be doing with a feature. Once this is mapped out (in detail), they pass this info onto a GPE, who implements the feature.
All of these people continue to work until the game is finished, so there's no handing off of a toolset, really.
What are some reputable colleges that gaming companies frequently go to when searching for interns or new employees?
First, a disclaimer: Choosing a school based on who recruits is not a good idea; researching the school you want to go to is the right path. Also, going to a school where a company recruits is by no means a guarentee. Taking initiative and being good at selling yourself as a good employee is infinitely more valuable.
Having said that, here's a very incomplete list of colleges from which I know a lot of interns have come from:
- Carnegie Mellon: Entertainment Technology Center: ETC is the biggest program I know. Everyone I've ever heard of who went through the program has gotten some sort of position in the games industry.
- University of Southern California: I've heard of quite a few people from USC also getting into gaming companies.
- SMU Guild Hall: This apparently is the third of the big three schools, along with USC and Carnegie Mellon
- Georgia Tech: Georgia Tech I hear is much more active in getting students to start projects/companies and getting into large companies, including gaming companies.
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Duh.
- Florida Institute of Technology: Blatant plug, it's my school. :P EA is the only big recruiter who comes here.
Some of these schools are geared towards different disciplines. For example, I've heard that USC focuses on producers and designers for their games program. But if you're really interested in the games industry in general, it's worth a look to see if any of these schools piques your interest.
Know that for new employees, often people are suggested by others inside the company, so getting to know a few people in the industry and keeping in contact with them can go miles in getting you a chance to interview for a position.
You sure? Because gameplay doesn't seems to be EA's strongest point. :P
See: Spore. Creating creatures? Awesome and fun as hell. The actual game? Fun for a week. After that? Just :|. |:
I never said gameplay is EA's strongest point. :P
Now, keep in mind that this is all my opinion, not fact or anything EA has told me. Personally, I am a fan of some EA games, but not most. I liked Dante's at points, I like Mass Effect, hate Madden, hate FIFA, etc.
But even with the games I hate I appreciate the amount of work that went into them. Spore specifically had a ton of stuff that was reportedly taken out later, which may be the biggest reason why it didn't live up to the hype. But whether it was a good or a bad game you bet your *** a fuckton of effort and thought was put into the gameplay.
Designers and producers spend huge amounts of time thinking about every little thing. One of my roommates spent the majority of his summer making flowcharts of how the player moves through the menus and UI. He had to take into consideration how many steps it took to do anything through the menu, do research on how successful games before it have done menus, think and re-think every single little thing. And that's just for menus(Note: He did this because he has a background in UI design, not because he was an intern and got the crappy job :P).
People make mistakes. They make a decision based on the market, and sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes, yes, there are a few people who are lax in their judgement and overlook things that they shouldn't, but don't take that as a standard. There are always tons of good people working very hard thinking about things you won't ever notice.
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The engine in Spore is actually rather awe-inspiring. The animation layer in combination with the creature building/mesh building is just intense.
That and the fact that a creatures species is encoded in a fairly small PNG.
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EA is a publisher. Gameplay has little to do with the publisher. Spore was a Maxis game; other titles published by EA include Dead Space, Battlefield series, Rock Band, and Mass Effect series. All have fantastic gameplay. What I'm trying to say is:
(http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8166/windmillbeard.jpg)
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Yeah EA is just a publisher, they don't make the games, generally speaking.
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Yeah EA is just a publisher, they don't make the games, generally speaking.
Wrong.
Dead Space and Dante's Inferno were developed by Visceral, a studio within EA (they're actually based on the fourth floor of the building I work in). Spore was developed by Maxis, a developer within EA (the technical word is subsidiary; I went on a tour of their studio a few weeks ago). The Sims franchise is developed by the Sims studio, again a part of EA (actually, my team, the Sims Internet Group, is a part of the Sims studio).
Madden is developed by teams in Tiburon, Orlando, about an hour from my school; again, they are part of EA. Bioware is owned by EA, as well as Playfish, Brightlight, Pogo, etc. All development studios.
Some good examples of games published by EA but developed externally are: Rock Band, Deathspank, Crysis 2, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Reckoning, Alice: Madness Returns, Bullet Storm, Shank, Brutal Legend, etc etc. All these go through EA Partners, which handles making deals with the studios that make these games.
Not to toot EA's horn. Just to dispel the myth that EA is only a publisher.
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'Grats dude. Good to see someone make it. The only question I have is that, now you're movin' on up are you gonna try for a deluxe apartment in the sky?
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I generally see in-house studios as their own, not that of the publisher that owns them, but you do have a fair point.
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Just because EA owns the developer doesn't mean EA is completely responsible for the content. Ownership alone doesn't give them the praise of criticism the game itself has; that goes straight to the people that actually made the game. I don't thank Microsoft for Halo 3's multiplayer, or loathe them for Perfect Dark Zero. It's the responsibility of the studio behind the game to make it worthwhile, even if they're owned by a big-name company that's publishing the title.
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Just because EA owns the developer doesn't mean EA is completely responsible for the content. Ownership alone doesn't give them the praise of criticism the game itself has; that goes straight to the people that actually made the game. I don't thank Microsoft for Halo 3's multiplayer, or loathe them for Perfect Dark Zero. It's the responsibility of the studio behind the game to make it worthwhile, even if they're owned by a big-name company that's publishing the title.
This is true, but keep in mind that it's not like EA is a publisher that owns these developers; these developers make up a majority of the company, person-wise (I think). Some studios, like Visceral and Sims, are located at EA world headquarters and are very much a part of EA. Visceral was actually created within the company rather than purchased.
It's hard to draw the line of where you think "EA" ends and the studio starts. Maxis and Bioware have their own identity and think of themselves as a unique entity, but they think that within the framework of being part of the greater entity that is EA. EA itself also has a say as to what will happen with a game; the CEO of EA has the authority to kill or greenlight a project at any studio whenever he wants, certainly.
It's really fuzzy at a general level.
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Kinda like Square then. Sometimes they publish a new game it's not anything you would expect from a company like them. Kane and Lynch for example - I didn't see that one comming.
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Some studios, like Visceral and Sims, are located at EA world headquarters and are very much a part of EA.
Maxis and Bioware have their own identity and think of themselves as a unique entity, but they think that within the framework of being part of the greater entity that is EA.
Doesn't Maxis make Sims?
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Is Java ever used for anything?
Any languages which are a must-know for developers?
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They're still around, but they're not first-person shooters.
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Doesn't Maxis make Sims?
The Sims portions of Maxis were moved to EAHQ a while back. Maxis is now basically the Spore team. As far as I know most of the Sims 3 was developed here by the Sims studio.
Is Java ever used for anything?
Any languages which are a must-know for developers?
Java is used for a few things. Our website runs on Java, so I spend most of my days doing Java, HTML, CSS, etc. Pogo uses Java for all of their online casual games as well, but in terms of "real" game development, I haven't heard of Java being used.
The de facto programming language is C++. You may not code in C++, but you better be able to read it. It's like the "universal language" that most every programmer should be able to understand to some extent (no need to be a pro though). Not to mention that a lot of core engines are implemented in C++ because it's old as hell and blazingly fast
Side Note: C++ isn't always the fastest. Various technical reasons make it a decent rule of thumb that it'll be fast in C++ (or even better, C), but it's not a law by any means.
Other languages to know? Well, off the top of my head:
- C#: C# is a common choice, considering XNA is in C# and it makes developing on a 360 much easier than it would be otherwise.
- Lua: Another common scripting engine choice, the thing has been ported to every language in existance, basically
- Actionscript: Flash finds its way into a lot of places. I've seen it used as a UI layer on Wii games, primarily.
Really though, programming is very much an abstract thing. A good programmer should be able to code in a new language in a week, and always be learning. If you've ever interviewed for a coding position, the emphasis is (or at least should) be less about "I know C++" and more "I know how to program and can solve problems." Writing code is the smallest part of the job, really.
What the hell happened to 2D games?
The market vanished. :(
Seriously, don't blame game companies, blame the market. 2d disk games just don't sell. It's a shame, but indies do a decent job of filling this void IMO. TIGSource or PixelProspector are great places to get your fix. :P
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Probably a stupid question, but how many times have you seen Python popped up?
Just for curiosity.
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Kinda like Square then. Sometimes they publish a new game it's not anything you would expect from a company like them. Kane and Lynch for example - I didn't see that one comming.
Square own Eidos now, which is why they publish all of Eidos' games.
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Hey, Lucas! The Wii is getting a few nice 2D games in the near future! Thanks, Nintendo!
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New Kirby, Donkey Kong, and Metroid games. Good start. Look into E3 coverage.
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I still think Metroid Prime style > 2D style
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Donkey Kong and Metroid are both 2.5D, but it can't really work any other way. 2D games just don't sell.
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All good 2D games are on the DS, Xbox Live, or Playstation Store.
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Well, Virtual Console.
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Probably a stupid question, but how many times have you seen Python popped up?
Nothing by a large developer. Maybe some indies use it; there are a few python game frameworks out there, but mostly I haven't seen anything.