Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

Building Game Worlds 268
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U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N
A RT
If you are a natural programmer and enjoy programming, you can’t go wrong in
becoming a game programmer. It’s a great job. Understand, however, that as a game
programmer, you help control the code base for a game project. Any changes that
need to be made in code will pass by you or your team. Game programmers work
very long hours, and the work is intellectually challenging to say the least. You will
constantly be problem solving, experimenting, and working to maximize efficiencies.
It’s tough work, and you simply have to love it or you won’t last long. Good
game programmers are paid well, but they earn it in spades. They are paid less in
many cases than their peers in other industries. I’ve known programmers who have
started their game programming careers earning $25K, and in five years are earning
well over $100K. Like all game industry salaries, these figures are highly variable on
a number of conditions.
The best way to get work is to have solid code examples of a game or game-oriented
material. Maybe you wrote a great game tool with friends, or you wrote a
pretty fun game in college. Many people have gotten into jobs this way. Don’t worry
if you can’t walk in with a code base for a game engine to rival Doom III. If you can,
let’s talk.
Another nice aspect to game programming as a career is the fact that you can eventually
run in a number of directions. You can focus on many areas that might meet
your interests: graphics or rendering, audio, tools, compression, path finding or AI,
or software development management.
And since game programming is one of the hardest types of programming in existence,
it’s easy to jump to a different sector if you don’t like the hours. The demand
for programmers may wax and wane, but the demand for programmers who can
write fast code is more recession-proof.
There is always solid demand for good game programmers. You can’t say the
same thing for many other development roles.
Games require the creation of many types of art assets (as discussed in Chapter 1),
including, but not limited to: character models, character textures, environmental
modeling, environmental textures, prop models, prop textures, character and prop
animations, special effects, complete introductory movies, segues, and end movies,
and, of course, plenty of interface and power-up details.
I’ve cleaned up the language, but I once had a boss tell me: “Find me a programmer.
I can go out on the corner to spit in any direction and I’ll probably hit an artist.” An
overexaggeration to be sure, but there are many aspiring game developers who
would like to be game artists. Game companies are regularly flooded with demo