Working For The (Game) Man!
I've had some people ask how things are going with the new job, once again making games for a living and working for a game company. So here's how it has gone - at least the declassified stuff. The game itself is unannounced and it's all NDA'ed, so I can't talk about THAT. Sorry. But I can tell you about working for a game company.

In some ways, it's really weird to be doing games full-time again after a nearly six-year hiatus. In other ways, it feels like I never left. Maybe it's the familiarity of the stuff I lived and breathed for six years, and maybe it's the fact that I've been doing this part-time for more than half of my time out of the industry.

So the popular image of working at a game company is that there's a perpetual party going on, where guys are hammering out code and art in-between playing games and shooting each other with nerf guns. Or maybe two guys sitting on a couch playing on a console where a game is magically appearing while they are mashing buttons. I hate to break it to anyone who has their heart set on working at such a place, but in the three game companies I've worked, it's never been anything like that. While lunchtime and after-hours deathmatches could get a bit heated, and you may find a lone developer taking a fifteen minute break at an arcade machine, all three companies I've worked for have been relatively quiet, professional places. Though game companies tend to have employees who are a bit more driven and passionate about what they are doing. And the meetings are often a bit more exciting talking about boss levels and what a monster's armor might look like rather than developing more web-based reports for customers.

The first day was the usual first day of any programming job. Paperwork, proving I'm legal to work in the U.S., setting up the new computer and installing all the software, getting some lessons on how the pipeline & workflow work, and then reading design documents. The next day, I started fiddling around with real code. This was mainly a "hands on" training to get accustomed to how things worked in the code base. I'd try things, find out they didn't work, ask some questions of people, and then try something else. I probably managed to embarass myself pretty well in front of my boss, stumbling around and having people ask, "Why are you trying to do that?" But by the end of the day, I was finally getting some stuff added to the code base that was somewhat useful.

By the third day, I was starting to feel back in my element again. I started getting some real productive work done, cranking away on some new stuff, and fixing bugs in the existing code. Of which there are plenty - the area I was assigned to hasn't received a lot of TLC, and the guy who was previously on it was moved abruptly to a new project and didn't have time to clean up what he'd been working on. But I finally started getting real items at least partially checked off on my hit-list for the next milestone.

The project is tremendously fun, something I *wished* I could have done back in the Singletrac days, but never had the opportunity. The Wahoo guys are stark-raving crazy for taking it on, but after having worked with the team a bit I think they are ALSO just crazy and brilliant enough to pull it off. I'm coming face to face with the magnitude of the tasks ahead, but I'm seeing how well people are pulling it all together. The pipeline at Wahoo is well-designed, and integration is fairly constant, so you get to see a steady evolution of the game towards its finished form. The guys there have their act together, and are very smart, professional, and know their trade.

It's good to be back.
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:15 PM (Permalink)