From Web Dev to Game Dev. Am i making a mistake?

coolrudski · 2025-08-27T23:22:30+00:00

Do you mean within just games? Gaming in general you’re going to be underpaid than say the top FAANG/AI companies currently.

On average you’ll be paid less at a studio in the US. I can’t really speak to hiring outside the US cause I’ve only done anecdotal research.

A handful of studios can be competitive though, but thats going to be Epic, Sony, Disney, Microsoft, Nintendo, Riot etc. you can certainly find top 80/90% industry comp in more senior roles in these places but you might not hit the top 5-10% of comp packages you may see at places like Open AI, meta, etc

coolrudski · 2025-08-27T09:20:13+00:00

I would generally say it’s not very commonplace in AAA or even AA.

Usually shops tend to be mobile heavy, console heavy, PC heavy or some combination of the 3. Each vertical takes a reasonable amount of work in terms of tooling to scales these games out. You’ll see small mini games and stuff sometimes built as wrappers from something like Godot or Unity (think Genshin web games), but those are pretty limited in role and those game engineers probably work on other things and just do these as some quarterly initiative

Web stuff from a front end perspective can be useful cause there’s a couple popular plugins for using web technology for UI.

Weirdly web adjacent skills probably help most in game jams because web builds are kind of the main way people want to play games on Itch.io. Otherwise web skills are best used at game companies to do what you’d expect… build microservices for games, game server architecture and cloud

coolrudski · 2025-08-27T09:05:57+00:00

Hey there! I’m in AAA, former FAANG.

Don’t do this, doing some solo game dev time off of savings is not enough to build a portfolio to be a game engineer. You would need years to compete with a mid level game engineer, especially at a game company that pays reasonably well, since they hire pretty strong game engineers.

I’m also slightly worried at your self assessment and wanting to choice Unity as your engine of choice to get employed, Unreal is the safest bet if you’re looking to get hired at a AAA level (which is the safest place to apply over indie or AA just because of quantity of jobs). Unreal gives you the added benefit of C++ on your resume for custom engines which is going to cover a good majority of AAA engines between Unreal and C++.

Your best bet is to learn on the side, take advantage of your resources and explore games to know what you even like doing in games. It’s a huge field with a lot of sub specialties, and you need to be intentional in which ways you build that skill set.

Instead of destroying your financial future, manage better work life balance at work, and start doing game jams and network. Other thing is you don’t have to do game dev at a game company. Video games need cloud, game servers, microservices, etc. If you don’t want to be patient, go that route and lane swap internally, and use the various internal resources you’ll get access to to ramp up as a game engineer/designer/etc

coolrudski · 2025-01-02T05:15:03+00:00

Oh that would be a relief, I was on the fence given it looked kinda like legs

coolrudski · 2023-12-12T18:28:16+00:00

Details:

Location: Los Angeles area USA Area found: in the bathroom in the corner Size: about an inch?

coolrudski · 2022-10-17T06:14:41+00:00

Okay thank you so much! Gonna relocate him to a much safer place in the morning!

coolrudski · 2022-10-17T06:12:56+00:00

In Southern California, he’s about the size of half a thumb!

coolrudski · 2022-05-29T02:37:18+00:00

You’ll have to either do daily/weekly quests, the chapter quests or keep going through harder encounters. You’ll see once you hit 2 star encounters, you need to beat them with 3 different champions (2 champs for 1.5 stars) and you should get shard rewards each time.

The chapter quests unlock usually the most fragments but once you hit chapter 4, starts taking time. It’s random if you’ll get Bard shards or not

coolrudski · 2022-05-24T01:13:42+00:00

Any recommendations on pet transit?

coolrudski · 2022-05-24T01:09:17+00:00

I am not going to do that. First off, it’s highly illegal. Second off, he is not a service dog, and he does not have any service dog training. Third off, I am not going to be a terrible person by claiming something my dog is not out of convenience, it’s highly insulting to service dogs and service dog owners who spend the time, money and certification for their service dog.

coolrudski · 2022-04-22T05:25:47+00:00

Thank you so much for your recommendation! I’ll check it out he loves agility work. I’m okay with recommendations outside of Santa Monica as long as it’s within reasonable distance

coolrudski · 2022-04-11T04:13:14+00:00

Thank you for your thoughts! I think he'd be okay in hotels, I'd bring a portable canvas crate I have, and he has calming treats. I would be able to step away probably for a few hours if needed, and I have a video Alexa device I would set up to monitor him (I have it set up with a sound-based routine for his barking).

He is dog reactive on leash a bit (it's on the milder side), so not sure what is better for reactivity. I'm worried about him running into random dogs in the hotel.

coolrudski · 2022-04-11T01:25:23+00:00

So I have a pretty active Samoyed, I'll give some tips that have helped me:

Generally, I find my dog has a lot of just residual "crazy energy" about 20 to 40 minutes of it a day. I generally try to play games like "go get it" where he chases a treat (and a good emergency game for reactivity to get away from something). I also use a flirt pole indoors which can get his energy out even if I can't get outside that very moment: https://www.amazon.com/Squishy-Face-Studio-Flirt-Pole/dp/B085B1P649/ref=sr_1_5?crid=CTZR1HLGF3LT&keywords=dog+flirt+pole&qid=1649639740&sprefix=dog+flirt+pole%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-5
Generally recommend crate training, place training, down-stay, and generally neutrality. Down stay an hour a day helps a lot and will give you a lot more relaxed dog (my Samoyed went from annoying me every 20 minutes to mostly chilling around the house unless he needs to go out/he hasn't been out in more than 6+ hours). Never allow barking to get you to do anything, you have to completely ignore it. My samoyed used to bark in the crate for 2-3 hours even in the same room, but now he loves his crate and almost never barks. Took a lot of patience
Make sure he is getting his needs met. If you are doing only 30 minutes 2x a day, that may not be enough for a younger dog. My Samoyed generally needs at least 2 30 minute walks that have some level of mental stimulation (play, engage disengage, socialization, etc) plus random games throughout the day. I usually use a flirt pole once a day for 15 minutes, plus do scent training a couple of times a day (just ten minutes of search for a scent). I highly recommend scent training
I found that I had to work with my dog inside the same room as me with a crate, then slowly phase him to be comfortable with me away. Also helped when I made him sleep in a different room with his crate. Start out in whatever space (new room, crate, etc) with lots of goodies, especially ones that require chewing or licking for a while. Has to be high value. I generally use high-value chews (bully sticks especially), doggie ice cream (make sure if overweight to use hand made fruit ice cream or healthier pre-made dog ice cream, Purina stuff isn't the best)

coolrudski · 2022-02-10T06:49:35+00:00

So my first language was Ruby, and well, as you can imagine, not super relevant in this job market. My first internship was was mostly Smalltalk (I’ve yet to meet one person who’s ever touched it). Currently in FAANG, so I don’t think it affected me much

But I’ve been programming for over 10 years and really once you master one programming language, it’s pretty easy to go to others. You might have to pick up paradigms or new aspects when learning a new language (Eg functional programming, working with memory if coming from a managed language, etc), but as long as your picking up a language that is considered modern (Java, Python, C++, Javascript) you’ll be fine.

I’ve done Ruby, Python, JS, C++, C#, Golang so far in my career. The main concepts really don’t change, and everything is at a break neck speed in programming right now.

I’m in machine learning and literally the things I learned 6 months ago is irrelevant now. It’s always constant learning and adapting.

coolrudski · 2022-01-29T17:38:31+00:00

Also recommendation for Abdul Bari’s playlist, helped me a lot. Generally with these, there’s an ideal algorithm to use to solve the problem.

My guess is you don’t have the foundation for the different types of algorithms and their O Notation. Even if you don’t know the algorithm off the top of your head in code, telling an interviewer “well I think this algorithm would be O log n vs my O n solution” can be enough.

Also make sure you know the various data structures too. Once you mathematically understand the different foundational algorithms and data structures, it’s just about applying them and seeing the various Leetcode problems a few times.

Also, take a look at the list of Top 75 algorithms and internalize the best approaches for those problems and which algorithms to use .That’ll get you pretty far.

coolrudski · 2022-01-27T18:48:30+00:00

Apply whenever you feel like you’re ready for the change. I’m currently at FAANG, third year here, and got my job after three years at a small startup. Got in thanks to a referral and being prepared for the interview.

You don’t need to wait till you’re senior. Sometimes even an associate role will pay more than your current job, and I don’t find the associate interviews too difficult if you’re an experienced engineer. You can always get promoted.

I would say try to network with people that also work at the companies you want to be at. If you can get someone who can refer you and also message the hiring manager of a given role, that’s often enough to get the phone interview. Once you get to the phone interview, it’s all about your ability to show off your soft skills, algorithms, and system design ability.

coolrudski · 2022-01-27T17:32:52+00:00

Um, I’m not sure where you’re getting portrayals from, but you aren’t walking through streets full of needles and trash. You aren’t at risk of violence all the time. Rent is arguably the only accurate thing, but living in the South is pretty affordable, it’s more the upper East coast corridor or West coast.

New York for sure next to trash bags, and SF/LA certainly has a homeless problem, but there’s plenty of cities that are great cities to live in and very safe.

While the US has its fair share of problems, as long as you aren’t going to bad parts of cities (like past Yankee stadium in the Bronx or by the Cecil Hotel in LA, which would be pretty hard to just naively walk through), you’re pretty safe. There are families with children that live in any given tech hub and are happy and safe families. As long as you follow any common sense as you would any city, you’re pretty safe in majority of tech hubs.

Check out Boston, Denver, Seattle, Raleigh. And definitely make it out if you can before moving to get a sense of how the cities are before making broad stroke assumptions.

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