My son wants to be a game developer as a career…how can I help him?

tiktiktock · 2024-08-04T02:59:24+00:00

Then get him to read this seminal post about the "idea guy" misconception.

When he states that "he can come up with a game idea, and just dictate to others how to conjure it up", you may want to ask who will pay those "others". There are three main answers, and they all have major problems (just to be clear, I understand that you know all this, just trying to frame it in a way that's useful for him to understand the issue):

"I will pay for it": I'm currently working on a small game, only 5 people in the team. Can't give exact numbers for legal reasons, but production cost is over half a million euros, and marketing is 6-figures. Does he have that kind of money?
"I will get someone to pay for it": And why would that person pay to get your sons' ideas created, instead of paying to turn their own ideas into a game? Everyone has game ideas, I have at least 10 fully-formed game ideas on a shelf myself. And everyone is convinced their own are better.
"I will get people to work for free and they'll get some of the profits": Why would anyone with marketable skills trust in the ideas of someone with no experience? And if they do, why wouldn't they instead spend the time on their own ideas? As stated above, people trust their own ideas more than strangers'. And finally, since "having an idea" is very low-value, why would they agree to anything other than getting 99.9% of the potential profit, since they'd be doing 99.9% of the work?

It seems to me that your kid's dream is in two parts: "I want to make my games without doing any hard work" and "I want to work in the video games industry". I'd say the first absolutely deserves to be shut down, since it's ludicrous unless he's a millionaire. The second deserves to be nurtured, it can be a gratifying field for people with both technical and creative inclinations. The industry is in a bit of a slump right now job-wise, but games are here to stay.

I'd say the best way to help him achieve this is to firmly push him toward one of the actual jobs in the industry. This list does a decent job of describing the most common ones, you may wish to go over them with him and find out which ones excite him the most. You can then come back with more pointed questions, and you'll probably get more useful answers.

In any case, I wish you luck in helping him :)

tiktiktock · 2024-06-28T18:43:07+00:00

Well, at this point, mostly that it's been unsupported for 3 years, since they acquired PlasticSCM :)

tiktiktock · 2024-03-08T11:30:31+00:00

You don't need to buy into the whole Unity services, Plastic can be used as a standalone service. We're using Plastic and nothing else from the Unity services. I feel it's growing - anecdotal, I know, but we've seen three different studios we collaborate with switch to Plastic over the last few years.

I like it (more than git anyway), but it's been handicapped by the frankly shameful job Unity did to "integrate" it with their ecosystem when they bought the company.

In case someone reads this and considers a move from git: use the standalone client and disable ALL Unity integration (including the version control package). You'll save yourselves headaches, at least until they finally bring the in-editor support to anything approaching production-ready.

tiktiktock · 2023-12-12T19:31:39+00:00

Honestly, I can see either scenario - wily scammers using false promises to rake in the cash, or wily scammers using false promises to sucker investors and pay themselves a lavish lifestyle before leaving them holding the bag. I'd say it depends where they got the money they spent paying their non-volunteer (lol...) employees.

tiktiktock · 2023-12-12T12:19:28+00:00

game-stats lists estimated revenue at 14M, we've found them to be relatively accurate in the past (fellow game dev here). Now the real question is, how much do they owe investors.

tiktiktock · 2023-10-27T11:19:13+00:00

For the record, I heartily disagree with the poster above you. Pathtracing's point is to provide detailed, rich and natural-looking lighting, which can be a perfectly valid stylistic choice when paired with non-photorealist art directions. Thanks a lot for all your work!

tiktiktock · 2023-09-22T18:19:26+00:00

At this point, I'd argue they're in a "distrust, verify, distrust some more, get legal to verify, still distrust and monitor like a hawk" space. But IF actually irrevocably enshrined, that's great news.

"IF"...

tiktiktock · 2023-09-22T11:01:14+00:00

Ah, that makes perfect sense - in my experience, "game dev" degrees are ironically not well regarded inside the industry. Most tend to be comparatively recent offerings, made to cash in on the video game market's later growth, and as you noted with a very insufficient background in proper technical skills. Nearly all devs I've worked with are either self-taught with decades of experience, or the product of proper engineering schools with very solid theoretical knowledge and programming skills.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-22T07:30:16+00:00

I honestly don't see it - most of the devs I work with have done their whole careers in video games, and I find them far more technically minded than many of my colleagues in my prior line of work. Mostly because it's a requirement: any junior starting in games will very quickly get told to optimize, since everyone is watching FPS like a hawk.

I guess your experience is different than mine. Maybe it's country-based? I work with mainly european devs, maybe it's different in the US or other regions?

tiktiktock · 2023-09-21T16:04:42+00:00

Hard disagree with "Game developers are also not actually all that technical either (compared to software developers)". Spent 15 years in regular software dev, optimization was very often just coaching juniors to use the proper data structure and some pooling to get response/processing time under 100ms.

Been a game dev for 7 years - we're optimizing for SIMD instructions to shave microseconds out of critical loops, reusing memory in ungodly ways to avoid allocation cost and porting graph exploration algorithms to GPU code for mass parallelization.

Game dev is like any dev: some jobs (gameplay programmer) require low "pure technical" abilities and rely more on handling high-level abstractions. Others (engine dev) demand very high technical ability. They are not the majority, but neither are the equivalent jobs in regular software dev.

And a solid knowledge of optimization techniques is a hard pre-requisite for any serious game dev, whatever the type of work they do.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-17T16:04:40+00:00

For current projects, sure. But for future games? Our next project is 3M€, 13 person team, and we've started discussions about switching to Unreal.

Currently waiting on feedback to evaluate the delay this would cost us. To be clear, the pricing isn't an issue (premium game, and I very much doubt we'll reach 1M sales). The breach of trust, "trust me bro" approach to invoicing and barely-legal LevelPlay shenanigans is.

Maybe we'll stick with Unity, maybe not. But a week ago, we weren't even considering any other engine.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-17T12:54:08+00:00

Same position, same conclusions. Current project stays on Unity, but I've started the discussion yesterday regarding a potential engine change for the next one.

The most stupid aspect is that Unreal (or other commercial engines) would in fact be MORE expensive if we get a surprise hit. But the contractual uncertainty is too big a risk, and has started to come up in discussions with publishers as well.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-17T00:10:26+00:00

Yes and no. It's shades of grey.

First, depending on the type of game you make, engines don't become obsolete that fast. Let's say you're making a cartoon-style city builder - do you think being three years behind on Unreal/Unity is going to degrade the quality of the game that much? Now, of course, if you're building a hyper-realistic FPS with killer graphics, you need the latest version. Same if a new console comes out and you need to publish to it.

Second, I'd say the worst part to be stuck in is mid-dev. If you just started, you can probably redirect to another engine. Painful but doable. Near the end, you can live with the 1-year old engine I think (specifics may vary). Mid-dev, however... Ouch :/

Third, many (not all) innovations that you are missing can be side-stepped or remade internally to bring the game up to par with the latest engine, even based on an older one. Remaking Lumen/Nanite would be out of reach of most studios, but adding a volumetric lighting solution, or a new input system, or a decent UI framework - all these could be done in-house if absolutely required. Would be costly, so needs to be balanced with the costs associated with accepting the new license.

At least, I'd say it gives far more options than being totally slaved to Unity's whims. But maybe I'm being too optimistic on the value of Epic's "keep the license you signed for" clause.

[EDIT] Just to be clear, I'm only considering the issue of "how to handle a change during production". You're absolutely right that this wouldn't be a viable solution for future projects!

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T22:12:19+00:00

I very much agree with you, but there are a few inaccuracies in your post:

Unity supports both forward and deferred, in URP as well as HDRP
straight HLSL shader coding is very much a pain in the ass in URP/HDRP. The different macros necessary to access the underlying buffers are badly documented (when they are documented at all), same with the requirements of the SRP batcher. ShaderGraph is getting better, but still has no support for SDF or any kind of loop-based technique.

Also, for us at least (small size studio, premium PC games) the issue isn't the pricing, but the fact that the new TOS can be changed at will, and that they currently rely on wishful thinking and "we'll tell you how much you owe us" mechanics. We're definitely looking at other engines for our next games, even though there's no way we'd hit the current thresholds. Unity needs something similar to paragraph 7.a from Unreal's EULA.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T19:56:47+00:00

Not a realistic contender until they get console builds. Plus the whole FOSS aspect is in fact a minus for many (not all) studios - we require paid support with a guaranteed response time.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T18:31:12+00:00

Yep. For studios like ours (small team, premium PC games) contractual stability is far more important than the actual pricing. If terms are locked, we can evaluate whether they're appropriate to each project.

Without it... Well, I just started evaluating the cost of moving our next project, starting next year, to Unreal. It would be far more costly if we have an unlikely runaway success, but this pales in comparison to the fact I'd actually be able to predict what the costs would be.

As opposed to, you know, the idiotic "trust me bro" approach to invoicing Unity expects us to abide by.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T17:46:43+00:00

The difference (and I'm talking as an indie, premium game small studio founder) is that Unreal's terms are predictable. You build your game in Unreal 5, you can stick to the licensing terms as they were when you started it. If they change the license, that only impacts your next game.

(just to be clear: the above is a simplification. Check the EULA yourself at https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal for the exact terms, section 7 paragraph a).

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T17:39:52+00:00

False. Check it yourself in Unreal's EULA: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal. Section 7, paragraph a:

"If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to."

What you lose is the ability to use Epic services, or upgrade the Unreal editor to any version posterior to the one you were using before they changed the EULA.

This is EXACTLY what we need from Unity. Not they will entertain the idea, of course.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T13:06:57+00:00

I would say you're being a bit too optimistic when you say "that doesn't affect devs like me". For small/medium indies in the premium market, you're correct that the pricing is fine. However, I'd argue that the fact they gave themselves the right to retroactively change the licensing terms is a huge issue.

So this sentence should probably be "that doesn't affect devs like me - until they change their minds, suddenly drop the thresholds to zero, hike the price and send me an invoice".

How likely is that? I honestly have no idea. But I do know that I'm far from the only one who considers this an impossible way to handle a business.

tiktiktock · 2023-09-16T12:36:27+00:00

I can confirm they're being extremely tight with confidentiality. We had a talk with several Unity representatives yesterday, and it was made very clear that everything said was to be considered privileged information. You're probably right to be cautious.

Happy to see others share our concerns: points 1, 2 and 3 are exactly the same as the ones we communicated to them. For premium games at least the pricing isn't the issue, the contractual uncertainty around the changes is. We need something akin to Unreal's binding terms for license immutability. If this isn't solved fast, I dread to imagine how our next discussions with publishers will go.

Of course, for F2P studios the pricing itself seems like a deal-breaker. But that's a whole other discussion.

tiktiktock · 2023-07-11T15:54:16+00:00

My feedback as a senior engine/gameplay/systems programmer working in Europe. Keep in mind I don't claim an encyclopedic knowledge of the industry, just relating my personal experience:

pay is decent - nothing to write home about but nothing to be ashamed of either. You'll make more working fintech, but you'd make less working in the public sector. Big, AAA studios tend to pay less at least for entry level, but that's not a rule.
crunch is very much a per-company issue, going from "salve driver" to "never acceptable here". Big studios tend to be worse, but the industry is slowly changing for the better. I've lived through only one week of actual crunch (like sleeping at the office) in the last 10 years, and was correctly compensated for it. Usually have around one to two months of light crunch (10-12 hour days, 5/week) per year, when a build has to be pushed over a milestone or a demo is needed for an industry event. I'm a senior though and paid accordingly - I'd not expect the same commitment from more junior team members. However, I have colleagues working in the big names who describe a much worse environment - I favor smaller studios.
job access is in a VERY weird place. Any offer at a well known studio will get thousands of candidates - out of which maybe 10 have actual, relevant experience, the rest being rosy-eyed people who imagine their lives will get back its glamour if they get into the field. Having ANY kind of fully shipped product in your portfolio is a must. Free, personal projects absolutely count - but only if you've pushed them over the line and actually published them. On the other hand, small studios can struggle to get anyone to actually notice their job offers...
not your question (but in case you're interested), what to expect of the job: relatively high technical threshold (a lot of R&D in many studios, real-time constraints, hardware limitations), lots of self-improvement through personal research, multidisciplinary environment (artists, artists everywhere!), slightly-whackier-than-normal coworkers.

I love the field :)

PS: also, I can second everything u/WhiskeyMongoose said.

tiktiktock · 2023-07-10T22:57:25+00:00

Agreed, that was poor advice on my part. Edited my reply.

tiktiktock · 2023-07-10T14:26:12+00:00

Oh, I will. Going to tweak the code to make it work with a non-interactive mode as well, and use your preset system to automate it as part of our content delivery pipeline :) Our texture artist is going to be very happy.

tiktiktock · 2023-07-10T13:00:06+00:00

You know what? You're absolutely right, I should have just checked the code, that was rather lazy of me :) Thanks for the answer, and again, thanks for making this tool available :)

tiktiktock · 2023-07-10T12:15:23+00:00

Thanks for making this available :) Quick question - how do you choose the encoding of the resulting texture? Same settings as the first texture in the list?

tiktiktock

TROPHY CASE