Surviving Game School…and the Game Industry After That

Michael Lynch, Adrian Earle

• Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351339698
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Games
• Index: Computer Science

Surviving Game School speaks about what to expect in a top game design or game development college program, and what to expect once students get out. Making games is not at all the same as playing games. Uncommonly blunt, the book reveals the rigors – and the joys – of working in this industry. Along the way the book touches on themes of time management, creativity, teamwork, and burnout. The authors explore the impact working in the game industry can have on personal relationships and family life. The book closes with advice about life's goals and building and keeping a sensible balance between work and everything else.

Chapter 1

High School

OK, so if you are reading this chapter, you’re probably in high school, right? If you are considering a career in the game industry, this chapter is for you. If you’re done with high school, you could read this chapter for amusement.

Meanwhile, meet Taylor, who will be our companion during our journey.

Hello everyone, my name is Taylor and I am a gamer. That’s me, fishing my backpack out of my locker.

I play a lot of games and think it would be awesome to become a game developer.

I know these two old guys who have had a lot to do with games, and they are going to help me achieve my ambition.

Why don’t you follow me in my adventures as I move from high school to a career in games?

1.1 You Can Do Anything

Were you ever told when you were younger that you could be anything you wanted to be, like an astronaut or president of the United States? You’ve probably figured out by now that that’s just about as true as (spoiler alert) Santa Claus.

Still, we all need dreams and aspirations to keep ourselves going, and getting into the game industry can be one of our dreams. After all, a lot of people do work in this industry, which directly employs about 42,000 in the United States alone, with another 100,000 people employed indirectly (Videogames 2014).

If you’ve made it this far, you are probably convinced that making games for a living is what you must do, and we don’t want to rain on your parade; we just want to drizzle lightly on it, a reality check on whether your plan has a fighting chance.

You may also have grown up being told to “do what you love, and the money will follow” (Sinetar, 1987).* This one actually has a grain of truth to it, but it is not the whole truth. Look at its opposite: Doing what you hate might make you a lot of money, but you will be miserable, so what’s the point? This seems to happen, for example, to a surprising number of people who go to law school, although solid data are hard to come by. Real lawyering isn’t like Law and Order; much of it is exhausting, tedious paperwork, but it can be a great way to make a lot of money.

What is more likely to happen is that doing something you hate will sooner or later drive you out of that career. At least that’s the way it would work in an ideal world. But once you get out of school, start paying off student loans, buy a house, and start a family, you might find yourself trapped instead. You might want to keep your options open.

So is the game industry right for you? Let’s see.

We’re assuming that you are an avid, maybe a rabid, gamer. So far, so good. But have you actually tried to make a game? That is, instead of merely playing someone else’s creation, have you tried creating your own?

It doesn’t have to be Fallout 4. It doesn’t have to be Pac-Man. It doesn’t even have to be Pong. Creating a game counts even if it’s “only” a board game (and we deeply respect modern board game designers). It counts if it’s a mod† or a level for a game that supports modding or player-created levels. It counts if you’ve picked up one of the many free game engines and design tools (e.g., Construct 2, Unity, Unreal Engine 4) and made a game using that. We have listed a number of these resources in the appendix.

If you’ve done this and, better, are still doing this, then you are showing the world that you have passion. Trust us when we say that this is going to count for a lot.

1.2 Crossing the Great Divide

Something funny, and a bit sad, happens when you Cross the Great Divide. We use that term to refer to what happens when you go from being a mere player to one who has picked up deep knowledge and experience about what makes games actually tick.

When you were “only” a gamer, you could have your mind repeatedly blown by each next, new great game. Of course, over time you begin to develop a critical sense and can start to tell the difference between good and bad game play, brilliant or cheesy stories, great or terrible character models, intelligent or stupid non-player characters (NPCs). It helps if you read a lot of game reviews, visit the fan sites, and exchange recommendations with friends.

All of us develop this critical faculty to some extent, and some of us are better at it than others. We do it with everything: cars, restaurants, music, movies…and games. Some people get so good at it that they get paid to be movie reviewers or restaurant critics. Nice work if you can get it.

But something happens once you pull back the curtain and start to learn the actual secrets (that aren’t so secret anymore) of what parts go into a game and how they are all put together.

This happens to people who learn how to make movies, whether they went to film school or not. Once you begin to understand how stories are structured, how camera shots are carefully composed, how lenses and lighting and panning and dollying work, and all the rest of the filmmaking craft, some of the magic goes out of going to the movies.

Go through this process and you can no longer look at a movie the same way again. Part of your brain will be picking it apart, analyzing it, finding how some lame story exposition got snuck into the dialogue, or noticing how convenient some plot coincidence was, or why that background was so badly lit.

Do this with making games, and the same thing will happen. Why do the combos in this fight game tie my fingers in knots? Why do those textures look so stretched out of shape? What’s with that annoying lag? Why is the frame rate so low? Why was I able to find a perfectly undamaged health pack in the rubble of an oil tank I just blew up? (This last one is from famed game designer Ernest Adams, who uses it as an example of especially stupid level design from an old James Bond game.)

But it’s not all bad news. One kind of magic goes out of your life, but a new, deeper, richer kind of magic enters. And this works very much like learning stage magic and learning how tricks (or “illusions”) are done. The gee-whiz goes out of it, to be replaced by a new-found respect for the brilliance and skill of the magician. Welcome to the club!

That’s the deal you make once you choose to go pro, and there’s no getting away from it.

1.3 What’s a “Plethora”?

So here you are, a high school student trying to figure out what to do with your life. You are “paralyzed by a plethora of possibilities.” According to thefreedictionary.com, a “plethora” is “an abundance or excess of something.”

In the old days you probably did what your parents did, maybe farming or blacksmithing or baking. Life today, at least in the developed world, is different: You usually actually get to choose what you’re going to do when you get older. That’s the theory, anyway. But just as not everyone is actually going to grow up to be an astronaut or president of the United States, not everyone is cut out to work in show business, or the game industry in particular. If you want to do that, decide right now, and plan on working your butt off on your way to that first industry job.

Oh, and have some talent, too!

1.4 This Sounds Pretty Scary

All the things we just talked about, along with everything else that makes adolescence so rough, make for a pretty scary scenario.

You may be one of those teenagers who swaggers around, acting brave and in control, but, shhhh, we’re all friends here, and deep down you are scared, and you know it. It’s all a matter of being honest with yourself. In your innermost thoughts, you know you’re going to have to confront a world that is a lot more confusing, complicated, and frightening than you ever imagined.

You are not alone. Everyone has to go through this. You are faced with making some really critical life choices, and you want to get it right. Of course, if your choices are between going to Harvard or Oxford, or buying the Lamborghini or the Maserati, or working at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley after you graduate, well, this book wasn’t for you a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Notice to Rights
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Authors
• A Note to Parents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: High School
• Chapter 2: Paralyzed by a Plethora of Possibilities
• Chapter 3: Before You Start College…
• Chapter 4: Day One
• Chapter 5: Year One
• Chapter 6: Teamwork, Part One
• Chapter 7: The Roles in Building a Game
• Chapter 8: Year Two
• Chapter 9: Becoming a Professional
• Chapter 10: San Francisco (and LA) Bound
• Chapter 11: Year Three
• Chapter 12: Internships and Co-ops
• Chapter 13: Year Four
• Chapter 14: Graduation Day
• Chapter 15: Transitions
• Chapter 16: The Hiring Process
• Chapter 17: Your First Gig
• Chapter 18: A Day in the Life
• Chapter 19: Teamwork, Part Two
• Chapter 20: Crunch Time
• Chapter 21: The Postmortem
• Chapter 22: Your First Promotion
• Chapter 23: The Pink Slip
• Chapter 24: Going Off the Rails
• Chapter 25: A Continuing History of Change
• Chapter 26: Going It Alone
• Chapter 27: The Exploding Gig Economy
• Chapter 28: There Is More to Life Than Games
• Appendix 1: Resources for Game Development
• Appendix 2: Top Schools for Game Development and Game Design
• References
• Suggestions for Further Reading
• Index