I always wanted to be in the games industry, making games.
The country I am from is small - so small that if I mention it, anyone can probably track down who I am. But I have no one to tell my long list of failures, so here goes.
16 years old - enter a multimedia course with the end result of producing games. I become a master of Director 8 and 9, only to my dismay, that web-based interaction killed of CD-based multimedia and I should have learned Flash instead
21 years old - A person approached me to do a MMORPG with 3D GameStudios. I was quite skeptical, but for the experience I hop on. It turned out to be crash and burn
21 years old (still) - an organisation dedicated to games development put me in charge of a community game project. Design by community - how bad can things get.
22 years old - I was conscripted. I became a military a clerk. Free time! I picked up C++, Direct3D and try to get a hang of it but never could get a game out
24 years old - I passed out from military. A young student with high esteem among the local gaming community asked me to join him to submit a game for a competition. I did my part, but it bombs because the gameplay sucks.
24 years old - At the same time, I volunteer for a game-development organisation to do its community project. Deja vu?
25 years old - That young student asked me to join in his bid for international fame, this time putting me as project manager. I told him, “You got a 3D game engine based on OGRE. However, if your gameplay sucks, you will lose to a polish 2D game”. He agreed and I laid down some strategies. He never followed them while the others does. The team leader was the bottle-neck. Fed up with him, and to take responsibility for project failure, I quit the team and refuse to pick up any rewards that crappy game managed to get locally. Internationally, of course, as I have predicted, it got beaten by polished 2D games
25 years old - one of those “I want to retire by 31 year old” person approached me and back my idea of starting an independent game studio. Went back to my old alma mater for some enterprising funding. We almost got it all through - then the business legal contract came and no one, those holding the seed money, dare to sign it. Failure.
I try to get into a branded game company as a tester for my internship. Couldn’t make the cut.
26 years old - Fine, since I can’t realise my dreams through a business venture, I do it as a voluntarily club. Overzealous on my part brought on a mis-comm with one of the big greats in the local industry. Next I know is that I am barred from an overseas exchange programmee which is one chance for me to realise my dreams. There are rumours that I am being black-listed in this small small country. All those who pledge their support for the game development club joined their own respective companies and get happy with their live. Leaving me with…
nothing, emptiness, bitterness, hollowness.
I just don’t have what it takes to enter the game industry. This night I entomb a 10 year dream and try to get over it; but I can’t. Unwilling to give up vs. stress symptoms in my body. Wanting to hang on but realise that I am doing it alone and I do not have the cash to, well, get freelancer.
I always wanted to just create. I create my own mini-wargame when I was about 14. Jot down numerous game ideas. Studied courses, read books, but there is always something misisng about me. I can do customised WordPress pages, e-commerce, database, but not graphics. I keen in software engineering, but I doubt that’s a position I can get into.
Goodbye, dream. I just felt a certain part of me just died and withered. Now I feel lost; I have no love of computer science - I only got into it as a major because I thought it will allow me to enter the game industry. Now ironically, game design is regulated to the mass communication majors. Haha, I should have went there instead.
I tried applying for internship overseas; but no response. Who wants me anyway? My C++ is rusted, I can’t do CG - the thing I am good at is software engineering and project management.
I’ve been a gamer my whole life. In high school I coded my own tank battle game on my TRS-80. When I was in my twenties I designed board games to play with my buddies.
I was 32 when I broke into the game industry. All those years doing it for fun turned out to be great training.
You should ask yourself … are you in love with making games? Or are you in love with being in the game industry?
If you love making games you don’t NEED the game industry to feed your love. You can do it entirely on your own.
But … if you’re just in love with the idea of BEING IN the game industry then you’re probably better off out of it. It’s a very cut-throat business. You can make more money with less personal stress doing many other types of computer programming. You have to really love the process of making games to tolerate all the shit.
Sorry to hear that, CrazyChop. I know you feel rotten right now, but - listen to what Pochacco said. It probably feels like it’s too late to succeed, but in reality, you’re awfully young and many people have succeeded in their fields much later in life.
Keep muddling through this rough patch, look for other possibilities, and don’t give up hope. You might find a different field that you really like. Or you might work your way into games yet.
I’ve got a hug for you, kid. C’mere. {{{Haiz}}}
Certainly, it’s no consolation in your moment of darkness, but I’ve got ten years on you and I’m having to start all over again. Everything I ever wanted to be never came to pass, but your time is not over by a long shot. You might wake up tomorrow to find a new calling. You just have to be able and willing to hear the ring over your internal screaming.
Keep your love as a hobby. Pochacco has it right. Hobbies can lead to wonderful things so much later in life than you could have imagined. Keep learning what you love. If nothing else, you have something you WANT to do, which is more than most people have.
Gosh, you’re so young. I know that seems like a silly thing to say to you now. I hope one day soon you realize how valuable that is.
Hell, pity you aren’t from this country with about 40M people placed between Portugal, Morocco, France and Andorra, cos those skills are in demand big time!
By all means, take up another career if that’s what you need to pay the bills, but perhaps you should consider simply making small games, and making them available. Competitions like those on jayisgames, even coding up something and releasing it free on iTunes for the iPhone, all of that is great exposure you can get on the side while not letting your project management skills go to waste.
Who knows, you might write the next Bejeweled, and THEN you can quit your day job.
I cutting down the scale of group projects; just focusing on doing my small games, but I don’t work well alone The issue is now I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life. Database admin? No. Chasing academic papers like a Master or PHD? Software engineer? Project manager?
No - it’s a mistake for me to enter Computer Science as a major - I thought all it takes is just programming but I got floored by mathematics.
Yes, I wish to do it as a hobby. I know 26 is supposedly young; but well - there are people appearing on newspaper, TV etc. for being the “Next Up and Coming Game Designer” at the age of 18 or 21 and I feel “Gee, what is taking me so long?”
I just happen to miss out on the skills. C++ - I can’t stand the syntax of the language. Computer graphics? I can’t even figure out how to interpolate an animation between 2 points. And even if I do it as a hobby, I have to out-source the art, and I am not rich. I surviving by doing PHP e-commerce websites - which I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.
Adding insult to injury, there are people in my circle who just put together a nice looking simple game (because they have the art skill) and are hired, within a year of trying to get into the industry. Of course, they happen to be good artist and game designer…I shouldn’t resent them - they earned it…but it just so frustrating.
I really need to shoot down something virtual. Excuse me…
ETA: I don’t feel young anymore. I wake up each day demoralised and wondering why I am waking up for. It could be depression, it could be negative self-talk, but I am just so tired day in and day out.
Learn how to drive a truck. Take a factory job for a while. Study carpentry or welding or roofing or plumbing. Do landscaping.
My point is, try other things. It sounds to me like you’ve focused your entire life towards one end: computer games. By now you’ve not been terribly successful at it, and your non-success is eating you up. I don’t believe you’re a failure–I don’t believe anybody is–but I do believe that people get caught in their own mindsets because they cannot see anything other than what that mindset says. Sometimes, it seems to me, what is needed is a complete change; doing something you never in your life expected to do. Think of it as a mind-refresher; as a complete flush of the old mindset.
This way, you will also meet others to whom computer games mean nothing. Hell, you’ll meet people to whom computers mean nothing. They’re more interested in their golf game, in news and current events, in their kids. This exercise, and these people, can give you a whole new perspective you may never have had before. You can always return to computer games if you like, or you might find that you like something else better. Nothing need be forever and you can relearn (or learn for the first time) the necessary technology; or as others have suggested, keep computer games as a hobby. Or forget them entirely. It’s up to you.
As for me, I have two university degrees, I was a professional writer, a speaker, and a teacher. But I also learned to drive a truck.
Well, like any industry I imagine you will need the credentials if you want to get into it. 26 is a pretty typical age to go back to school for a masters.
As for your dreams dying, I can’t relate. I’m currently living my lifelong dream of being a middle manager in some obscure tangential group in a massive insurance company.
I agree with Spoons. There is no rush to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life. Start with smaller steps–like what you want to do tomorrow.
Yes. You need something else, not something more. You need to go in a completely-different direction for a while. Heck, even washing dishes for a couple of months will be a break.
And something with physical exercise will be very refreshing. I find that after a day at the computer designing brochures or whatever, I need to get to the gym and switch my brain off and just be physical.
Heck, you’re young enough to go to Ibiza or whatever the dance music party spot is these years.
Take a holiday. Go to the wilderness. Mourn. Yell at the trees. Whatever.
I wish I could; but I need to get out from my computer science major first before I could do those. Maintaining an e-commerce website and doing a research assistant pretty much meant I will always be reminded of my failed dreams.
Then I hope I can leave the country. But being on bond means I must work there for at least 2 years.
I am still trying to think what good have I gotten from those 10 years. It’s not just “I didn’t get to make a game”, but also broken trusts, people leaving you when you need them most, people taking your sacrifices casually and for granted…gee, are all those talented game artists and programmers first-class selfish bastards or something. Life in this miserable small country haven’t prove me wrong yet.
CrazyChop, I know exactly how you feel and I sympathise. My retail career has been about as successful as Operation Market Garden, and I feel like shit a lot of the time now as a result.
I’m going back to Uni next semester, but I’m not confident about my prospects of getting a stable career anytime in my life, and and focusing my energies on my writing work.
Good luck with whatever you choose to do! Remember, there’s no shame in taking a McJob to keep a roof over your head while you decide what you really want to do with your life.
College (at least in America) is an opportunity for you to prepare for a career doing what you want to do. Unfortunately too many people end up taking bullshit majors with no idea of what they want to do thinking “it’s the education process that matters”. They then they get out in the world and kind of float around forced to take whatever job they can get.
