The simple fact is that a lot of programmers, like the rest of humanity are idiots.

People want to be associated with the rich and famous, They think that some how that makes them better in someway. The same thing makes people walk around wearing a football jersey with someone else's name and number on it.

As a result people line up to be abused by the rich and famous and that goes double for rich and famous companies.

For every job open at a major game company there are hundreds, if not thousands, or people applying for that job. That fact encourages companies to treat employees as toilet paper. OTOH, the few people who are truly exceptional can rise high and rise quickly. They are well paid and well treated. But, that isn't what happens to most people.

Stonewolf

Game development is a highly entrepreneurial business. Which means you have to watch out for your self and it means you are only as good as your last project. Many companies hire you for the duration of a project. When the project is done you are laid off. The project might be done when it ships, and it might be done after lunch today because the producer decided to use the money for a game that appears to have a better ROI.

Once you have been laid off you get to look around for another project. You will be unemployed during that hunting time. Even if you were making over $20,000/month (never happens for programmers) in your last project you might not get that in your next project. And, you might have to live on savings for anywhere from a month to a year between projects. Not to mention that you may find your self work 80 hours/week while you are working. So, yeah the salary might look nice, but when you look at actual yearly earnings it doesn't look that good. When you break it down to $/hour you might find you could do better working behind the bar at Starbucks or delivering pizzas.

The funniest thing is how many people think that if they will get a cut of the revenue from the game. You don't. The stock holders get the revenue. If you want to make money from games develop them and market them your self.

Stonewolf

I'm currently teaching game development. I have taught it in the classroom and on line since 2004. I run a mailing list for wanna be game developers, I have run it for more than 10 years. I helped a college develop their game programming curriculum, for some reason they won't let me teach game dev there any more :-) I used to be game developer. I only did that for 2 full time years, but I was in the computer graphics industry for 10 years after I got my MSCS and before I went into game development. After being part owner of a game company, programmer, and technical director, I moved on. I went to work for a fortune 50 company doing technical and business analysis for games. Now I'm a teacher. And, I am damn near 60 years old. Oh, yeah, I also did 5 major start ups not counting my times as an independent software developer. I had founders shares in 2 of the start ups.

I designed my first game (not a video game :-) when I was 12 and my first paid programming job was porting games from a minicomputer to a mainframe back in the early '70s.

I have a large number of students from my classroom classes who are working in the computer game business. Most of them are developers. I have an even larger number of people who started on my mailing list who are now working in the game development business. I think I have something to say about this subject.

First off, the best way to get a job at one of the Majors is to create a successful independent studio and then sell you studio to one of the majors. Sure, you can get hired at one of the Majors, but then you will be just like the rest of the toilet paper. Cheap, disposable, and only really good for one use because after you use it it is covered in ... well you get the picture.

OTOH, if they have to *buy* your company they will respect you at least a little bit and you will at least have a nice office and a real salary. But, get the money in cash, not in stock. Stock is like toilet paper... Cash is something you can spend.

Secondly, the best way to get any job in game development is to develop games and sell them or find some other way to make money off of them. Yes, by fart the best, easiest, and most lucrative way to get a game development job is to start your own company. If you do not know how you can learn how quickly. Most states, the federal government, many cities, and every community college I know of in the US has courses on small business management and entrepreneurship. Take them, and make sure you get at least on class on contract law while you are at it. Those classes along with a couple of semesters of probabilaity and statistics will be worth more to you over the next 40 years than anything you learn about programming or graphics. All the tech stuff will be obsolete in 5 years, the business, statistics, and law stuff will still be accurate.

As for education. A degree in CS used to be a good place to start. I'm not so sure about that anymore. If you go to a school that only uses one language all the way through (especially if that language is Java or C#) you should find a real school. But, it is still probably better to get a CS degree than a physics degree. Math is kind of a wash. A math degree with a CSMS is not a bad combo. If you can find a school that offers CS degree with a strong emphasis on software engineering you are in pretty good shape. You need to take trigonometry, college algebra with computational geometry, linear algebra with lots of matrices, calculus, numerical analysis, and probably differential equations. I didn't get linear algebra and DiffEQ as an under grad so I had to teach my self linear algebra and I'm married to an ME so I go to her when I need help with DiffEQ. But, you really need at least DiffEQ to understand physics. Yes, you also need to take physics at least a good introduction. A couple of years of physics in high school is good enough. You need need to take a few art classes. I would suggest an art history course, and courses in something like introductory painting, drawing, or sculpture. You also need to take a survey of history. Learning to play a musical instrument, or doing a lot of singing helps. Take at least one class in creative writing, and one in technical writing.

In your computer science studies take a 3d graphics or multimedia programming class. But, seriously, if you have the background in math, art, music, and programming then learning computer graphic and sound programming is not a challenge. But, you must take everything you can about programming, software engineering, data structures, simulation (you may have to go over to the industrial engineering department to get that one), databases, formal language theory, machine architectures, theory of computation (yes, you need to understand the differenced between a finite state machine and an infinite state machine), network architecture, and anything else that looks interesting to you. Yes, you might have to get an MS to get all those classes or take night classes after you graduate to get all this stuff. BTW, you can take the classes without getting a degree. I have an MS but I have more than 45 "extra" hours that have not been applied to any degree. Education does not stop when you get your degrees. In many ways that is when it starts. I have a stock certificate in a non-existent company that I keep the same folder that has by BS and MS degrees. I learned more in 1 year than I ever learned in school.

Oh my, what a list. Do you have to have all that before you start writing games? *NO* you do not. If you want to be a game developer you are developing games right now no matter what level of education you currently have.

Here is the real punch line:

If you want to be a game developer you are already a game developer because you are already writing games. You have at least one game that you are developing right now.

You do not have to work for someone to be a game developer.

You can tell what someone really wants to do by watching what they are doing in their spare time. If you spend all you spare time at the pub drinking with your mates, that is what you really want to. If you spend your spare time reading books about game development and design and coding your own games then you really want to be a game developer. If you can not figure out how to start learning to be a game developer you do not have the problem solving skills needed to be a game developer.

The advice I give to my students is based on the history of Id software. That crew worked for a magazine that was published on a floppy disk (the 5.25 inch ones) and they had to write a game every month. The magazine paid them to write a playable fun little game every month that went out on the floppy. The skills needed to do that are the same as the skills needed to write WOW. Basically the ability to create a doable design. The ability to stick to a schedule. The ability to write code that works. The self discipline to stick to a plan. The ability to realize when you need to cut your losses. The ability to put down the joy stick and write your own games instead of playing other peoples games. The basic interest in doing something real instead of spending your life being entertained.

My best advice is to pick the design of a game you like that can be coded in a month. A week is better, but a month will do. Pick something that you can do using freely available art or something that does not require any art. If you can do your own art that's great, but remember that artists are cheap so don't waste time of being an artist if you can be a developer. Then code up your game and play it. Let your friends play it. Then put it in your portfolio file along with a document (yes you need to write) that details what you did right, what went wrong, what you leaned, and what you wish you knew more about. You need to write that document so that you will actually do the analysis of the game. BTW, if you get stuck or you hit the end of the month without being done. STOP. Write the document, go learn what you were missing. Write some test cases to make sure you know what you just learned. Then start a new design. Don't back and try to fix your old code. Even if you go back to your old design start over. DO NOT USE YOUR OLD CODE. People get emotionally attached to there old code. As a wise wise man by the name of Dr. Art Evens once said to me, "You fall in love with what you make love too". Too many programmers refuse to dump their old code because of the investment they have in it. They will spend years working on broken code because they can't bear to just flush something they have spent so much time on.

Everyone I know who has followed this advice, is now working for a game company as a developer or is making at least some money as an independent game developer or working for an independent studio. Most students refuse to believe this advice. Many students are incapable of following this advice. But, all who have are working game developers.

I explained all this to a student in a C++ for game programmers class. He started following it that night. He dropped out of the class because he got a job as a full time programmer at a fairly large studio. He recreated a number of the old block graphics game programs from the '70s and '80s in C++ using DirectX. He spent nearly a month on the first one. Less than two weeks on each of the others. He picked the best two and sent them around to local game studios. He got replies from most of the studios that he sent his portfolio too and he was hired during his second interview. Yes, he already had a CS degree which helped.

OTOH, I have had a couple of Ph.D physicists take my classes and immediately get good jobs at major studios. A Ph.D in particle or theoretical physics plus a portfolio containing a couple of simple games is likely to get you a good job in many parts of the entertainment industry.

Most of my students are not working in anything resembling game development. They expected to take a series of classes and then be hired by the majors because of their straight A average. That does not happen. You need the education, but you must love game development enough to do it on your own. You must have the problem solving skills needed to find solutions to problems like "how do I learn to program games". You must be willing to take reasonable will thought out risks like the risks involved in starting a business. And, you have to be able to figure out how you are going to make money.

Oh yeah, before the artists out there try to flame me down let me pass on a bit of conversation I had with our creative director one day. He asked me why we got so many applications from programmers who were also artists and musicians, even composers, not we never got applications from artists or composers who were also programmers? I have what I think are answers to that question, but I don't trust them enough to pass them on. But, it is a fact that a lot of programmers are writers, musicians, and artists, but the reverse is not true. As a result, there more people become artists than become programmers. In the market the scarcer good costs more. So, as a rule of thumb if you are a programmer you should spend you time on programming because it is worth more.

Last comment: Most state colleges offer the kinds of classes you need to become a game developer. Getting degrees in general areas like CS or Math is always better than getting a degree in a specialized area like game development. A person with a CS degree can get jobs in many places. A person with a degree in game development will not even be looked at for the same jobs. OTOH, a person with a CS degree and a portfolio can apply for any job someone with a degree in game development can apply for.

I have met a few outstanding people who graduated from Full Sail, I have met some outstanding people who have BS degrees in CS who took a few game development classes at the local community college who are every bit as good as the folks from Full Sail. I have met people with CS degrees from MIT who could not pass a game development course at the local CC and others from the same school who were exceptional. So, be careful about your choice of schools. Also, be very wary of on line schools. The economics of teaching on line says an on line class should cost no more, and maybe less, than the same class taught by a tax supported CC. But, that is not the case. If you are being asked to pay $2000+ for a half semester on line course then you are getting ripped off big time. Most of the on line "colleges" and "universities" are designed to get you to max out your student loans and give the money to them. They are not in the business of educating people, they are in the business of making as much money as possible while leaving you 10s of thousands of dollars of debt that you will be paying off for the next 40 years.

You are right about people not being able to handle 2D driving, and having grown up in the mountains I know that people have even more trouble driving in 3D on roads :-)

I expect that within 20 years cars driven under human controls will not be allowed in cities or on major highways. I *DO* believe that we will have flying cars, but we will *NEVER* be allowed to operate them under human control. The will not be capable of violating any laws and you will not have to worry about a drunk pilot flying in to the 37th floor of you apartment building.

Stonewolf

the task of cleaning out the closet where I've been dumping my old computers and parts came to the top of the infamous honey-do list. I found 8 40gig drives a couple of 30gig drives and a 20gig drive. After testing I had 6 working 30gig drives. I tore down the others just for grins and giggles and to pass around in some of my classes. Not to mention the magnets in the head positioning system are fun to play with.

I also found an old mother board, 3 or 4 CDROM drives, RAM, a couple of power supplies and a very very old PC case. So, I built a PC. We call it Frankenputer. I got a working Athlon 1.5Ghz processor from the computer goodwill store and I lucked out and found some PCI IDE interface cards at the same place. (I had to update all the ROMs in the whole system to get it to work. Finding the BIOSes for a bunch of discontinued cards made by out of business companies was not as hard it sounds.) I had one set of rails for installing a 3.5 inch hard drive in a 5.25 bay. I found several more at computer Goodwill Computer store! I picked up a 30 dollar case at Fry's.

Thanks to google, Goodwill, and freedos I got it all working. I used FreeDos and GParted to get all the disks configured and tested as a raid. Then, I installed Ubuntu using the "alternative" installation disk.

Even though the drives were all "40GB" drives each manufacturers drives were of a different size. So, I created a partition the size of the smallest drive on each drive. Then in the extra space I created a partition of the size of the empty space on the next largest drive. The odd bits of space left at the end of two drives I just partitioned as their actual size. I used the 6 large partitions as a RAID 0, the second set became another RAID 0. The rest of the partitions just became normal drives.

I stuck an old NVidia video card and a old but good network card in there and the thing actually works. It is an absurdly fast disk server.

Every 3.5 inch bay has a drive in it. Every 5.25 inch drive bay has a drive in it.

All the rest of the stuff in the closet went to Goodwill or the dump. Recently a new item went on my list... Move Frankenputer out of the living room. Oh well. And it looks so good on the book shelf :-) For some reason she wants me to move the table saw out of the living room too. Can't imagine why? Can you?

Stonewolf

I appreciate your going to the effort to make it easy on me. Seriously, I do. But, I still do not understand what you are trying to say.

If I'm correctly decoding what you said, and I've been a programmer for nearly 40 years so I'm probably conditioned to be completely incapable of understand you :-) but I'll try anyway, ok?

What I see is two sequential statements. The first one says that if every is in agreement then we must split hairs. If we all agree, they why are we splitting hairs? It makes no sense to me. When we are all in agreement we have no hairs to split.

The second statement says that if we all dis agreement then we must reconcile our view points. That is a potentially nonterminating processes so if we go off to reconcile view points we may never return.

It looks to me like the code is flawed. At the very least is should be coded as an
if() {}
else if() {}
else {};

structure. Not as two sequential if()s. Also I'm guessing it needs to be embedded in an iterative structure of some type or in a recursive function.

I do not see any attempt to address the state in which we form factions. The code seems to assume that we all either agree or disagree. A situation that never happens.

I do not see any thing in the code that addresses the key question of what to do when one group is correct and one is not but can not see their error. That is not a reconcilable situation.

What I think is really missing is an attempt to link what you said back to why some people believe they actually need have a rule for stupid little shit like how many spaces to put at the end of a sentence. It also does not address the question of why anyone would pay any attention to such a rule if it did indeed exist. What kind of person would allow themselves to be controlled in such a way?

The fact is that we obey rules because disobeying them has consequences. If disobeying a rule can result in harm to you or other people then it makes sense to obey the rule. The only reason to have a rule is as a way to codify dangerous behavior.

Rules are a useful learning tool for those who are capable of understanding the reasons behind the rule and are useful as threats used to enforce socially acceptable behavior in those individuals (children, sociopaths, and idiots) who are incapable of understanding the reasons for a rule.

If disobeying a rule causes no to harm to myself or to others then what is the point of even having such a rule? If disobeying a rule causes no harm to others and I am willing to accept 100% of the consequences then I am free to ignore the rule.

I can not fathom the kind of mind that would ask the question that started this discussion. But, people like that have cost me many many hours of valuable time by making up pointless rules.

So, what were you trying to say?

Stonewolf

"an attention deficit disorder"

Did you really? How do you know what that feels like? Do you have an attentional disorder? If not, then you do not have any idea what it feels like to be a child, or an adult, with an attentional disorder.

Let me try this a different way: If I wrote an that I "felt like a tall stacked blonde walking nude into a male prison block" would you believe that I knew what I was talking about? Well yeah, if I were such a woman who had done what I described then maybe you would accept that I know what I am talking about. But, since I am a fat man who has never walked nude into any place but my bathroom it is clear that I can only use that line in a work of fiction.

So, do you have an attentional disorder? Or is your review a work of fiction? If you do not, do you really expect anyone to take you seriously when you make such a statement?

Stonewolf

The truly sad thing is that you believe that your post contains information.

No, I do not care about how many spaces you, or anyone else, put at the end of a sentence. I do care that there are people who care about how many spaces they put at the end of a sentence. I firmly believe that being able to care about such a thing is a mental illness similar to OCD.

OTOH, did you read my title?

Right?

I mean, seriously, no body &*^&%$*^ cares.

If you do in fact care then I hope you die from a million paper cuts.

Some people have to have rule for everything and then they go around trying to force the sane people to comply with them. I wonder how such people manage to reproduce. Do they have a rule for how often to do it? How far to put it in? Use a metronome to comply with the insertion frequency rules?

This? This? is the kind of crap that the /. editors choose to post?

I'm sorry I bothered to come here today.

Stonewolf

Well.... there goes my "Excellent" karma...

The supreme court decided that money is speech. That means that anyone can spend any amount of money to support any political point of view they want. That means that the more money you have, the more freedom of speech you have, and the more political power you have.

The supreme court just decided that corporations, you know, a legal fiction that is not a human being, a thing that is really just a mask for the people who run it, a thing that is not born and does not die, a thing that can not breath, bleed, or vote... the supreme court just decided that corporations have the right of free speech. That means that the people who control public corporations are allowed to use unlimited amounts of corporate money to support any kind of political action they want with no restrictions of any kind.

Yep, ATT, Verizon, Timewarner, ComCast... all get to use the money you pay them to buy our state legislatures and our national legislature. They can use the money you pay them to make sure that they can charge any price they want, that they can mess with the Internet in any way they want.

You wonder why a US Representative would apologize to BP? Maybe it is because he is owned out right by BP. You think that maybe the same guy is bending over and saying thank you when ever BP asks for a BJ? You think the same guy isn't doing the same thing for ATT and the rest of the scum?

Do you think they all aren't doing the same thing?

Big Telcom is coming in with a plan to charge you by the bit and make you pay extra to access any service they don't want you to have. Timewarner already tried it and only backed off because of opposition organized over the Internet. But, hey now they can pay to have a law that keeps you from being able to organize over the Internet. They can get a law that lets them charge anyway they want. You want to use Google? That will be an extra $10/month, but with Google you'll also get Bing and Yahoo whether you want them or not. You want to use YouTube? Well that is part of the video tier and costs $50 per month but hey, you get to upload too.

Slashdot? You want slashdot? Then you must be one of those subversive hackers and we'll just have to turn you over to the feds like we do anyone who wants to look at wikipedia or the democratic (fill in the name of any organization that ever made a statement in favor of regulation) party's web site.

Yeah....

Get used to having no rights at all. You don't have enough money to balance the free speech rights of the big corporations.

Oh, yeah... we can fix the problem in a very short time if y'all would vote. But, it seems that y'all don't vote.

You need to see a doctor. You need a complete physical and a complete mental examination. What you describe is not even close to normal. You need to be checked for metabolic problems, depression, hormone imbalances, and a whole lot more.

I recently went through a real bad spot physically and mentally. I completely lost interest in most everything and became pretty depressed. Turns out my testosterone levels had dropped way below normal. I'm a diabetic. It turns out the most widely used diabetic medication, metformin (aka glucophage) suppresses testosterone production. It does it so well that it is used to suppress testosterone when that is medically necessary. I also had a low grade infection that I may have had for years and infections also suppress testosterone production.

Yes ladies, I can tell you I know from first hand experience what hot flashes and night sweats feel like. I had them and they suck.

After a couple of weeks of testosterone injections I was back to my inquisitive hard coding happy self.

The description you gave of your changes at age 30 are *not* normal and should be looked at carefully by a couple or three different doctors.

Stonewolf