I've recently returned to the world of making games for a living, so just figured if someone is curious of what it's all about, how to get in to the industry, pro's and con's about it etc. just drop your questions here and I, or someone else who hangs here who make games for a living, will reply (hence the AAA in the subject = Ask Anyone Anything lollolololol get it???!!11 not triple-A but still triple-A hurr durr).

Short on my experience;

• 7 years as a voice over designer at EA Dice, mainly working on the Battlefield series and helping out a bit on Star Wars Battlefront
• Recently started as a Technical VO-designer at Hazelight (It Takes Two, A Way out)

So yeah, shoot, if you're interested (some stuff are ofc. hidden under NDA, but I'll answer best I can)!

Nice, thanks for doing this!

What do you think the state of crunch in video games is like now, and have there been improvements since the last time you encountered it? I'd spoken to a couple of game studio recruiters and managers at a career fair and they were adamant they had no sort of crunch, but I don't know whether they were being truthful or not, or whether indeed it was representative of the wider industry.

Similarly, how have developer salaries changed over the years - have they caught up with salaries of other developer positions in non-game-dev companies, or are they still significantly different (and for the better or worse)? I know this is probably a question that can be answered by quickly browsing glassdoor or linkedin, but another facet of this question is the balance that people give to their enjoyment of the profession, their work-life balance and their pay.

And lastly, with the changing trends in big studios to release "incomplete" or even "buggy" content to meet a deadline and patch it out later, how has developer satisfaction changed? I would imagine people would take less pride because of being associated with such tactics lately, even if they most likely had no active part to play in that.

Of course, hope the below is interesting in some way at least! I figured for myself, it could be fun to get back in to it by talking a bit about it. :)

Crunch;

Different studios are doing different things, you may even see a difference between countries. Larger coorporations like EA, Ubisoft, ZeniMax etc. will likely seep whatever coorporate values they have into their respective studios too. Starting in the industry 2011, I heard stories about crunch in the industry as a whole that seemed surreal. I've seen some stuff, but nothing like the hard whipping tales from across the pond (US), and nothing outside of Swedish laws. That doesn't mean you can't bypass laws and play dirty, stories have been told, but I haven't really seen anything forced in that sense.

I do believe the industry as a whole may have gotten better, that's my gut feeling and hearing from friends in different studios. But crunching is such an american way of working, and there's a LOT of american influences in the industry. I don't think it's going away completely any time soon, especially not in the US. But many of the kids who made games, crunching away in the beginning of 2000 have kids of their own now (and for some time probably), I think that's part of what pushes the industry to grow up as well. If you're looking to join a certain studio, it can always be worth digging around a bit, and see what the policies are during ev. interviews etc. Perhaps not too aggressively, but yeah, keep an eye open!. :)

Salaries;

Not quite sure tbh, but I recently heard stories about QA being extremely underpaid (as usual) and taken advantage of. It really sucks that it's like that... also, I imagine that the wage gap between junior and senior (still) can be ridiculous, but yeah, that's the way it goes I suppose. If you want to be sure to have a decent income, be sure to hone those programming skills. That's still the core and foundation of most studios, and even as f.ex. a designer, good programming knowledge likely will come in handy!

Pushing games before "complete";

Kind of a tough one. Making MP-games is always a hoot at release, suddenly the "testing grounds" grow from maybe a few hundred or thousand people to potentially millions of users. There's going to be server problems to work out, there's going to be bugs of all sorts that no one have seen before... but there's also a difference between a game that's lacking a bit of testing, and a game clearly pushed out only to meet a deadline. MP games in particular I believe you should always expect patchwork, and a good shape up 1-3 months after release or so.

In terms of dev-satisfaction... you'll no doubt have your own/your disciplines specific deadlines to meet. If you do that well, you may still have a bad product on your hands, but at least your work was well done... it can be like that, or the other way around, or all just shit, I guess. Working with VO, you're one of the last ones to touch a game - at least if it's supposed to be localized. At Dice, I was one of the absolute last designers to implement stuff before only programmers were allowed to make final optimizations and bits and pieces in order to make the game ship properly.

IMO, the best game I worked on was hands down Battlefield 1. We had more time to work on that one than any other game I've worked on, and the development was IMO as it should be - a bit hectic at the end, sure, but I didn't have any crazy amounts of overtime, most of us didn't. From a dev-perspective, I'm pretty sure many of my former colleauges would agree. It was a pretty polished game out of the box, IMO. But, yes, there were networking issues and all other crap a large MP game most often deal with...

I guess one change that may have crept in a devs vocabulary is "we'll patch that later", or "the game isn't complete without the zero (or first day) patch" or similar. But IMO, that's to be expected. A single-player game I'd have different expectations of however, but even that depends on what game it is - massive RPG's are more difficult as there's bound to be more shit that can go wrong, compared to a rather linear experience.

But yeah, I think you almost have to be on the inside and have an opinion if the studio is doing right/wrong/being pushed to release before completion or whatever may be the issue for an incomplete game. If anything, I personally have a lot more lenience and patience with games not being fully completed, knowing there can be a large number of problems that led to the state of the game. Not fixing after several months is a different story, however.

Anyway, long read, hope there's at least something in this wall of text that's of interest. :)

Also, sorry for slow response, depending on RL I'm not on NG every day nowadays. Unfortunately. :( It goes in waves. :)

Thank you, that was indeed very comprehensive! Interesting that you mention American influences in the industry - the people I spoke to were part of the Canadian branch :P Although very similar in work culture perhaps that explains quite a bit in retrospect lol

And yeah, it now makes sense that as time passes and more people grow up, so does the industry overall. While I'm probably not going to be joining a game company anytime soon (just got a software dev role at a company, so gonna give it a couple years I suppose) your reply does provide some assurance about the industry!

I'm planning to remain a hobbyist so I'm pretty naive and clueless about the professional side, but I'm curious what sorts of tracks work and which ones don't.

Maybe there's a huge amount of variability, but do people generally get hired full time by a single studio or go freelancing from place to place doing gigs for one game at a time? Or are there some areas like programming where it makes more sense to keep personnel on if you think you might make a sequel and could do it a lot faster with people who originally wrote the code, possibly also art if you want to keep the style consistent, maybe less so with music/audio and go more toward freelancing there?

For programmers, while knowing a couple of languages certainly makes it a lot easier to pick up others, do studios actually have time to hire people and let them pick up whatever language or engine they're using if they don't already know it and have made stuff in it? Or is it a case where turnover is so fast and frequent that it's not useful to invest in training and no one will realistically get hired without substantial experience in whatever the studio's using? Similar for stuff like 3D modeling, although I imagine there it might be easier to learn your favorite software and export assets in whatever format the team needs.

I kinda wonder how useful it is for people on NewGrounds to make games in something like GameMaker Studio if no one actually uses it professionally, and whether they really need to learn something else if they want to get serious. Along those lines, if someone tries to get hired based on a portfolio of stuff they've uploaded to NewGrounds or Itch with some of it being decent by NewGrounds or Itch standards, would they be laughed out of the room or taken semi-seriously, or varies depending on the studio? Or do they end up becoming people who focus entirely on game design and making it "feel" right even if they don't do any coding or modeling or stuff?

Not working in the game dev industry atm so take my word with a spoonful of salt, but the way I believe the AAAs are structured, it doesn't really matter what engine you use since they all use their own in-house engines anyway. As a result, everyone without any prior experience would be operating on the same playing field, regardless of the engine used.

At the end of they day, the portfolio is to show your experience with the process of game design rather than the means of it. An equivalent would be hiring for a web dev role based on the frameworks they know. Sure, it's a bonus if it matches your tech stack, but at the end of the day they're more looking for someone experienced with the overall processes involved, as well as a good communication ability.

It's also the same reason why people hype COBOL as the jobs that pay a lot, but in reality they were never in any danger of going anywhere if the language itself was a concern - any fresh body off the street could probably learn COBOL. No, the real difficulty is in the spaghettified codebase and the thousands of corner cases and implicit requirements known only to the people who worked there for decades; stuff you can't put in a requirements form when someone hands in their 2 weeks' notice, or gets the grim reaper to do it on their behalf. Decoding that stuff and rolling with it takes far more resolve that few are willing to put up with, especially when there are far more jobs that are seen as more prestigious and simpler.

Maybe it's different at indie companies since those use COTS engines more often, and for those it might matter more since they may not be able to afford the time to train people in using the engine.

Yeah I don't know the specifics of Canadian vs US conditions, but the work ethic and leadership is afaik quite hierarchic in nature. Which is something that I could kind of get a smell of at Dice, but that was likely only due to its size. Flat structures will make it more fun in the sense that you'll easier make your ideas heard.

Back in the old days, it was quite common for audio to get thrown on at the very tail end of it all, which is not a good idea considering audio people, being what they are, usually develop a very good FEELING for things. Audio is very much about what you feel, meaning you'll open up your eyes (or ears whatever lol) to understand why your audio doesn't shine - and many times it's not because of the audio itself, rather other parts. Audio also often tend to reveal bugs, making things sound wonky when in fact the audio is but a symptom, and the actual problem lies somewhere else. Most studios, unless suuuper small, likely benefit from having audio people in the team from the get go. That said, it's not uncommon for audio people to join up as freelancers, and you do have freelance personell in most areas. Though it's also not uncommon for freelancers to stick to studios for a long time, 1+ project, you'll learn the tools, how the studio works etc, making you a more valuable asset. For that reason, many studios prefer to have a full headcount of certain roles, because it probably becomes cheaper, and you don't have to chase talent etc. I've seen contractors in most roles, and it's not uncommon for people who leave their full time position to come back in some shape or form as a limited time contractor if needed. But yeah, if a small studio is 20-50 ppl, mid size 50-125 and large studios 125+, the larger the studio, the more head counts to fill. Percentage wise, I dunno how it would look...

Actually, after my hiatus, one of the reasons I went back is becuase of how programming would be a skill my new employee want me to get better at. Basically, I'll be able to learn and grow whenever I have time to do so. But it differs from studio to studio what the prerequisites for programming skills are - at Dice, you could easily work in most disciplines without knowing any programming language (visual scripting in Frostbite would still be required, which at least used to have quite a high learning curve, meaning you'd need to "understand" programming, even if you don't know any languages). Some studios simply are building their engines around people having at least some programming skills. That said, knowing a few languages will no doubt quite possibly open up a bunch of doors for you, in most disciplines.

I don't know GameMaker, how hard it is to go from that to say Unreal, etc, so can't answer to this. A guess is that, providing that even GameMaker require SOME skill, you can always show off creative ideas and solutions, but yeah, I don't know.

Lots of studios work with Unreal, Unity or other engine that you can bopth customize towards your need as a professional studio, and pick up and use for free as long as you're not making money off of your products. Knowing one engine is very valuable, even if you end up using something else. I used to sit in Frostbite, and now I'm learning Unreal, along with whatever in-house stuff there may be. And even if I don't know exactly how to fry a specific fish, I know that it SHOULD be able to fry it. This, along with just googling stuff (and in my case ofc. asking colleagues), will get you very far.

^^^^^ Spot on! :)

Some studios may demand a designer to know coding, but as of to date,

a designer doesn't need to know how to code but it helps and you need to understand the programmers needs.

What this means is that you must know certain programming words and nerdy terms in order to effectively

tell the programmer how to pull off something you want in the engine.

If you just say "when the player enters this room they will be attacked", it won't be helpful at all.

But if you do it nerdy like "I want you to place a trigger zone on that floor tile,

so that when the player steps on it when entering the room, enemy x spawns at point x".

Of course, this isn't perfect, but it's sufficiently pinpointing and informative for your coder to run on.

How do you get familiar with coding terms?

You use modding tools or engines that can be operated with zero or minimal coding, such as Game Maker.

That being said, as games become more complex and when we reach the point of advanced virtual-reality,

it may become a standard requirement for designers to know programming

As for your last paragraph: simple engines like Game Maker is used by professionals,

and has also resulted in critical and commercial successes.

Examples are Hyperlight Drifter and Hotline Miami

Hope that helps to some degree : )