bruceba

Your old stuff looks pretty good.

Rusty Chainsaw

I have a friend here in the UK who has been a game developer for over 25 years. He started in the late 80s doing Amiga games, and he's still going. He's one of the best programmers I've ever known, and I've known many.

Do you know what his salary is? £32k.

In other industries, someone with his skill and experience would be easily on a six-figure salary. He does receive royalties from the games he works on, as well as a lot of holiday time to make up for crunch time, but that doesn't really make up for the crap salary. It's a job you do for the love of games, not for the money. That's why I no longer work in games!

PixelMonkey

They definitely take advantage of the "fun" nature of the work; although the fun factor diminishes quickly when you realise how exploited you are.

That said, the tools (Unreal, Unity etc) these days are such that if you're willing to jump in and learn some new things in addition to your core specialisations, the possibility of making high quality games outside of AAA is there too if you can get a few like-minded and experienced friends on board. And if you make something decent, far fewer people creaming off along the way before you get your cut!

Still, I'd prefer to be doing something at least a little more secure than indie development when I first move over, and there's a lot more to be learned in the right job I'm sure.

Your friend sounds grossly underpaid even by UK game industry standards... is he a long-timer at one particular company, or has he moved around a lot? Has he made moves to increase his wage or is he just pretty happy where he is?

Rusty Chainsaw

He's been around a fair few companies over the years - Codemasters, DMA Design (pre-Rockstar buyout), Core/Eidos and a couple of others. His pet hate is that producers get paid more than he does!

markcst

I'd echo a minor point someone made on here, get yourself on LinkedIn and make lots of contacts on there. Get the reality from professionals in your industry as to the pro's and con's of particular geos and companies. Its usually good to ask both people who are at a business and have left a business why they are there or left.

Bob

It's a nice show reel!

Need to show ambient occlusion and spec maps for interiors as well as the rest of the maps and definitely ditch the music! No one wants to watch hundreds of demo reels with random music

As for west coast hubs, they're all going to be expensive locations. The safety in numbers is big though and makes bouncing from job to job a lot easier.

PixelMonkey

Yeah I hate showreels... prefer a well laid out site with no bullshit, but they made us do it for an expose (I won best showreel, so in a £10 plastic trophy kinda way it was worth it) and my old website has deprecated.

I've been doing a lot of in depth work making parametric textures in Substance Designer (if youre familiar with it?), so I'm looking forward to showing all the breakdowns of that with some full scenes using them. I'll make sure to get more passes and breakdowns in generally though. I like working with dynamic lighting so I usually rely on screen space AO, avoids issues with direct lighting not cancelling it out. Higher frequency AO passes on a texture level are a part of my substance breakdowns though so I'll make sure they're seen.

I've been adapting the gpugems paper on water surfaces with vertex deformation into an Unreal material with some extra stuff... works at the moment but I want to add some stuff so that you just select a Beaufort scale number and you get an ocean with the right behaviour. I've done a couple of other shader related things recently; a fake refractive gem shader, and some stuff for cloth that adds high frequency rippling and some effects to mimic the way fabric diffuses light, gives it a particular look. Hopefully if I break down these and put them in they'll help me stand out a bit from the asset factories.

Do you mind if I ask where you're working Bob? Are you currently in the industry?

Re LinkedIn, I am on there currently but will definitely be making more of it once I have the new portfolio done and uploaded.

N1cky

Maybe he should look for another job, I've just had a quick search for Games Developer UK, and there are lots of advertised jobs in the range of 40-55. Or change industries. Or move into Games Production

It's quite funny how you mention he's been in the industry since the late 80s, and started doing Amiga games. My hubby has a few friends in the industry who he keeps having discussions with, about them moaning on about how hard it is to get a job in the games industry now they are older. Their portfolios harp on about what they did 10+ years ago. Who cares, it's more about your last game or what you did last year. Sure, if you worked on something absolutely amazing that everyone knows, briefly mention it, but stop going on about it as if you did it last week.

Bob

I was, mostly do contract stuff these days and dabble in other art areas.

LinkedIn, there are loads of game industry groups, but there are also a lot of localised groups. Meetup.com is also handy on the art front.

In my hub, you've got a Autodesk meet up group (more product/architectural art), Boston Indies, Boston Post Mortem, Boston Unity, Boston Blender. MS NERD do meet ups, Mt Ida College, NE Art school, Berkshire Music school, MIT Games Lab. Brit Consulate do a couple tech/games events. There's Mass Innovation Nights, Mass Technology. Whole bunch of monthly events and groups to join and get networking with people as well as getting involved with the Q&A/forums on LinkedIn.

Other hubs are probably much the same. As crap as the IGDA is, local chapters might not be to bad (Boston Post Mortem for my area) and might be a way to find local groups.

Hit the conferences and network the hell out of them too. Some will be better than others for networking such as BostonFIG, GameLoop, GameOn, Games for Health, Agile Games. Some will be less useful for networking but still worth a punt like PAX East. You're going to have to figure out what's what for other hubs, can't help you there, but this is what's on in the Boston Metro area.

Chaos Engine, is great for networking and getting the skinny on places too. If you're not in, you'll probably need someone you know who's a member to refer you though otherwise it can take forever to get approved. A work email address is also required.

aardvark

Bumping an older thread I know but thought I'd chime in. I'm a games dev (art side) based in Southern California if you have any questions about California or the scene here specifically.

As other people have chimed in - Southern California is probably one of the most healthy scenes for big developers so it's definitely worth taking a look at. Regarding your lack of degree... Shouldn't be a problem getting a job if you have a right to work sorted out. If you're looking for a visa you need 8 years experience to qualify for H1B but if you're good enough and apply to the right place, a company will do anything it can to get you on board. That means an O1 also might also be an option.

Regarding pay and COL. Sure it's expensive out here but I get double what I got in England and the potential for growth is so so much more out here. You might miss your holidays tho. 10 days a year is quite standard and takes some getting used to - especially if you want to visit home once a year.

Any questions feel free to PM me. Best of luck.

Bob

Not that it applies to the OP, but it's 12 years experience if one has no university as it's 3 years progressive experience for each year of a 4 year degree missing.

O1 is a pretty tough sell unless you're going for a lead type position.