What You Love/Hate About Your Job

1. Testing

2. I love the games industry and games, so my job is pretty cool

3. Nobody appreciates the job that testers do or how important it actually is to have good QA. Also fixed-term contracts.

 

1) art / game design

2) bringing something to life that in turn gets brought to life by the player - and seeing it in person. making people smile. some developers can be some of the most awesome people.

3) the uphill battles on the business side. the jaded people that try to bring you down with them.

 

1. QA.
2. I love me.
3. I hate other people.

 

1) Programming
2) Writing Games! I mean, how cool is that? All the problem solving, designing, architecturing, optimising, improving...
3) Politics.

 

1) Programmer
2) Being around the latest tech and like minded people. Knowing that something I am involved in can be seen and appreciated( most of the time ) by the public
3) Constant last minute design changes.

 

1) Engine programmer
2) People actually paying me to mess around with this cutting edge tech, pickup cool coding tricks and just generally learn from guy who know far more than me.
3) Being very far from gameplay, a lot of the stuff I do don't even expose interfaces to the game teams.

 

1 - Programming (anything and everything)
2 - Actually looking forward to work, being at a small studio
3 - Adding features without adjusting deadlines, bad QA departments (If you found a bug, tell me a reliable way to find it myself, or don't tell me anything), being at a small studio

 

1. Net code and multiplayer
2. Making things sync that people say can't be sync'd.
3. Latency...and engine designs that consider networking a last minute add-on.

 

1. Design.
2. Haven't crunched in almost 2 years. New projects mean new things to learn/research. Seeing people have a good time while playing your game.
3. When crunch hits, it will hurt. Egos, especially from those in positions of higher authority. People who "don't mind crunch", since it prevents our industry from maturing.

 

People not using tried and tested (sometimes free) tools and methods, instead rolling their own so there's a huge down-time for new people, and lots of bugs to fix that were pointless.

 

1. Producer type
2. It was either this or the music industry
3. Old boys clubs and upper management types that treat "their" company like their own personal bank account. You know what I'm talking about.

 

1) Art. Environments.

2) I get to work with something I've grown up with aswell as being creative.

3) Not my job particularly but I freakin hate my 4 hour commuting hell... Not much of that left though.

 

1) Design
2) Working in a mostly stress free environment with a good amount of creative freedom in getting my work done. Working with a lot of great people as well.
3) Things can feel a bit slack. Sometimes the working procedures, and personal standards and attitudes from a couple of others are just a bit too easy going for my tastes.

 

1. Design (Creative and Tech)

2. Building Worlds, building them on time and working first time, other peoples oppinion that I'm good at what I do (I'm a humble fella).

3. The unavoidable Politics, the unavoidable bad management, the awful pay, the ridiculous schedules, the lack of any job or financial security, publishers who inevitably know nothing about games, marketing departments who inevitably know nothing about games, dealing with people who know absolutely nothing about games development but have all the power over the decisions, when you realise at least 20% of the team are slackers (no really, its like those people are shitting in the eyes of people who do the work), having to tell the same person the same thing more than twice, the lack of professionalism people can have in our industry (v. frustrating)...the list goes on.

 

1) Design
2) Pushing the tools as far as possible to realize gameplay that is unexpected without dragging down the other departments with requests for extra resources in order to do it.
3) People who demand documentation then don't bother to read it when its provided. Ask for it, or don't - I can work either way, but I'll be making fun of your literacy skills for the rest of the project if you ask for a doc you don't read.

 

1) Programming
2) Just...programming, really. Coming up with great solutions to problems is fantastic fun, I think.
3) Suits, clients, and anyone without a sense of the development process. These people don't care how or why something's done, they just want it done. It can become pretty stressful and depressing if they're not put in check.

 

Publishers who see something cool in another game and want it in the one I'm working on. With no thought given to function, relevance or whether it's even possible.

I've received an email from a publisher before saying "I just saw this in game X and it looks great! I know we don't have time to do it for our game, but let's go for it anyway!" I'm paraphrasing but it was almost exactly like that.

 

Ha! I had that exact same thing happen to me on my last project. The title of the e-mail was "volumetric blood." We weren't sure if he was talking about the feature, or the cost to get it in...

 

1. Art

2. I like the money. I get paid more than my friend who sells shoes.

3. I hate the people. Apart from a handful of cool dudes, I spend my day surrounded by some of the saddest and most tragic dweebs on planet earth; greasy haired drips who collect little plastic toys and stack them all around their desk and yap all day about dorky stuff. And to add insult to injury they have 'tude.

 

don't really mean to pry, but, maybe #2 is the reason you're so seemingly unhappy... why didn't you list anything else there, like, you know, creating something cool or something?

it is my personal opinion that if you're in this for money then you aren't going to be happy. just my thoughts.