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what do you nerds do for living? - discuss career possibilities

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wachin:
My brother worked for Atari/ Infogrames as a full time game tester.  It was mainly playing the games looking for bugs.  It was a pretty basic entry level job and from his stories, it wasn't as glamourous as one would think.  8 hours a day playing video games that you have to play makes you lose the desire to play the games you want to play.  Plus he didn't really play games through.  They were given codes to access specific levels/ stages for whatever was slated to be tested that day.

The busiest season were the months leading up to Christmas as that was the big push for releases.  And it got tiring for him to be playing crappy video game conversions of board games.  Every so often he would play a big name game, but then again it was always only a portion of the game.  Come to think of it, I can't even recall what those games were.  Plus the pay was barely above minimum wage... but then again, he was getting paid to play video games!

HaRuMaN:

--- Quote from: Kevin Mullins on June 01, 2009, 08:03:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 04:09:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Franco B on June 01, 2009, 04:04:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 09:11:52 am ---Aerospace engineer.   :)

--- End quote ---

+1 :)

--- End quote ---

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

--- End quote ---

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   :laugh2:

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

--- End quote ---

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

AtomSmasher:

--- Quote from: RayB on June 01, 2009, 10:23:43 pm ---
--- Quote from: AtomSmasher on June 01, 2009, 07:49:48 pm ---I'm now 4-5 months into a game developement job and that info is basically correct, except that its usually only the last few months of a project that have crazy hours.  We're now a month away from when my first game is finished, and it's only been about a month of absurd hours (which is why you rarely see me on these boards anymore).  However, before the crunch, it was a fairly standard 40-50 hour work week, although I'm sure this depends on which game company you work for.  Currently I'm working 6 days a week, 10-14 hour days, but at the end I'll have a game I can be proud of, which makes it all worth it.
--- End quote ---
Here's the thing. You THINK you only have a few months of crunch, until the end nears and it becomes more and more obvious that the schedule is shot and it won't happen. So then you guys are still "crunching" past that point for months, maybe even stretching into a year or more.

I also laugh at your "fairly standard 40-50 hour work week". You do realize fairly standard is 35-40 hrs.  Think about this, if you make $50,000 a yr, working 35 hrs a week, it's like $27.47/hr.  Whereas working 50 hrs per week, you're making $19.23 /hr.

Anyways, enjoy it while you can. I wouldn't go back to that kind of torture.  ;)


--- End quote ---
When the entire schedule for the game is 7 months, it's a little unlikely that it will go more then a year over schedule and it looks like we won't be going over schedule at all on our project.  Besides, we currently have 4 games in our company nearing completion and the game I'm working on is the only one where the publisher decided to make drastic changes at the last minute causing us to work massive hours.  None of the other projects are working weekends, but since this is going to be our first Wii title, we want to go the extra mile and make sure its good and the publisher is happy.

And I worked 40-50 hours a week when I was doing real estate appraisals, so that is a normal week for me  :dunno  The first 2-3 months working here I actually only did work 40 hours a week, it was only as the project milestones became bigger that the hours started creeping up.  Anyways, I did real estate appraisal for 5 years and made much better money doing that then I am now, but now I'm doing something that I actually want to do, which makes a world of a difference.

I remember reading that the average video game programmer leaves the gaming industry within 5 years, which I can understand, but as of right now I'm still loving the job, crazy hours and all, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see if I still love it 5 years from now  ;)

danny_galaga:

--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 02, 2009, 12:14:17 am ---
--- Quote from: Kevin Mullins on June 01, 2009, 08:03:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 04:09:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Franco B on June 01, 2009, 04:04:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 09:11:52 am ---Aerospace engineer.   :)

--- End quote ---

+1 :)

--- End quote ---

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

--- End quote ---

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   :laugh2:

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

--- End quote ---

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

--- End quote ---

i STILL don;t know what you do  :laugh2:

HaRuMaN:

--- Quote from: danny_galaga on June 02, 2009, 04:50:29 am ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 02, 2009, 12:14:17 am ---
--- Quote from: Kevin Mullins on June 01, 2009, 08:03:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 04:09:17 pm ---
--- Quote from: Franco B on June 01, 2009, 04:04:20 pm ---
--- Quote from: HarumaN on June 01, 2009, 09:11:52 am ---Aerospace engineer.   :)

--- End quote ---

+1 :)

--- End quote ---

Oh, you too?  Cool.  What do you do?  I'm in commercial propulsion.

--- End quote ---

Sorry, but that just tickled me.   :laugh2:

"Aerospace Engineer" being one of them soooooo broad titles that such questions need to be asked. No offense mind ya, I have an Aviation background.....but there too have seen one end of the spectrum to the other.

--- End quote ---

Hehe, yeah, it is broad.  I'm in system modeling and analysis- starting and operability.

--- End quote ---

i STILL don;t know what you do  :laugh2:

--- End quote ---
It's ok, neither do I, really...  I just make it up as I go along...   ;D

Mostly, I'm a computer geek.  I model turbofan engines based on their thermo qualities, and then simulate their operation across the flight envelope, and look for potential problems.

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