Hi, Im currently at the end of my second year on a Games Development degree in the UK and am hoping to get a job programming games after I graduate, and was just curious about some aspects of the industry. For starters, although I know the UK has a good games industry, you probably can't beat the US and Japan, and I was just wondering if anyone who has worked on games programming in different countries could tell me what its like to work there (not necessarily the ones I have mentioned, I know alot of countries have good games industries), are there any major differences between countries, like attitude, level of work, deadlines, and pay etc. Even if you haven't work in different countries, telling me what its like to work in the industry where you are would be very helpful. Secondly, I have heard that games programming is all long nights and deadlines and can be quite stressful, is this true? If what I'm doing now is anything to go by then it will be, I was just hoping it might get easier :D Finally, I was wondering what type of office environments there are in the games industry. Is it formal or informal, do you have to wear a suit or can you go casual, do you have to call people by 'sir' and 'Mr' or is it all first names? This could go back to the first question, as it might be different for different countries, but that's the type of thing I wanted to find out. Any input you could give on this would be helpful, you wouldn't put me off wanting to be a programmer, I'd just like to know what it's like in the industry beforehand. Thanks Matt

Quote: Original post by Matt lynch
do you have to wear a suit ... do you have to call people by 'sir' and 'Mr'

Wow, what an imagination you have! (^_^)

Quote: Secondly, I have heard that games programming is all long nights and deadlines and can be quite stressful, is this true? If what I'm doing now is anything to go by then it will be, I was just hoping it might get easier :D

So it isn't all long nights but nearer to milestones, this can be the case. This can vary hugely company to company and even project to project.

Quote: Finally, I was wondering what type of office environments there are in the games industry. Is it formal or informal, do you have to wear a suit or can you go casual, do you have to call people by 'sir' and 'Mr' or is it all first names? This could go back to the first question, as it might be different for different countries, but that's the type of thing I wanted to find out.

Informal. No suits. First names.

> are there any major differences between countries,
> like attitude, level of work, deadlines, and pay etc.

Of course there are differences.

> Is it formal or informal, do you have to wear a suit or can
> you go casual, do you have to call people by 'sir' and 'Mr'
> or is it all first names?

In Asia people tend to go the more formal route with strangers, at least on first meetings. You will find a large difference in what people wear depending if they are managers or members of the technical staff there. Formality is even more pronounced in Korea; I've seen studios where programmers wore white shirts, ties and dark trousers. But that's the exception. I otherwise find little differences between studios when you go beyond the reception area. It's all casual.

-cb

Quote: Original post by lynch
Im currently at the end of my second year on a Games Development degree in the UK and am hoping to get a job programming games after I graduate, and was just curious about some aspects of the industry.

Sounds like you waited a bit to long before doing this research.

A degree specializing in games isn't going to be much good for other fields, like database programming, web development, etc. It would have been prudent to know a bit more about the field before specializing in it.

In any event, you are here now, and you can't change the past. So on to your questions.

Quote:
For starters, although I know the UK has a good games industry, you probably can't beat the US and Japan

Beat them for what?

Quote: are there any major differences between countries, like attitude, level of work, deadlines, and pay etc.

Yes.

To be a little more helpful, every nation has a different work ethic and different economics. Different places of each country have different ethics, attitudes, and pay. Note that just because two jobs in different places pay the same salary does not mean they have equivalent compensation since cost of living is extremely variable by location.

More on all of these after your next question...

Quote: Secondly, I have heard that games programming is all long nights and deadlines and can be quite stressful, is this true? If what I'm doing now is anything to go by then it will be, I was just hoping it might get easier :D

Every company is different. Every studio is different. Every project is different. Every team is different.

It may be that the studio has published twenty games with no overtime (okay, that's probably fictional) and because of an external factor they decide that they must have everybody work mandatory overtime for the last bit of a project.

Or it may be that a studio has been crunching hard in the past, the people decided they have had enough of it, and actually planned enough time to get the features in, and cut features they didn't need --- and manage to complete the project with zero overtime.

On the other end of the spectrum, some companies routinely have overtime and abuse their workers. Usually these have high turnover rates and understaffed products. Check out their parking lot in the evenings and see how many people are still there.

See some of the recent threads about QoL in this forum. One person said that about 18 months at a studio made them senior employees. At my current place that's just enough time to stop being called a new hire. I believe this is a good indication of the quality of any individual studio.

I have worked on projects with zero overtime. I have worked on projects were a little overtime was requested but not required. I have worked with projects requiring quite a bit of overtime, almost always due to external issues. I have also been fortunate to work in excellent companies with management who knows how to keep a team properly staffed, prioritize features, fight feature creep, and know when to cut features.


As far as every team being different, consider a project that is running late. It could be that they have all the art, sound, movies, voice talent, and core content complete, but their engine is still rough. Or it could be that the game is fun and the content is there, but the art could be better drawn by handing a three-year-old a tablet. Or maybe the game is completely scriptable, runs well, looks good, but has no substantial content.

In each of those cases, it is just one individual team that needs to put in extra work.


However, I know a few companies where every project requires overtime. I know of one manager who occasionally gave workers a Sunday off. I know of people who would say 'yes' to ANY project and ANY feature as long as there was a bit of money attached --- even if a little rational thought would show that his staff couldn't do it. Of course, that same person has had several lawsuits from (former) employees, been fined by the IRS multiple times, and been sued and blacklisted by a few publishers.

Shop around, and keep your eyes open to the *current* practices of any studio. Don't worry so much about *previous* practices, especially after major executive turnovers.

As far as QoL goes, the big companies are much more nimble than startups. When single project in LA had problems it doesn't mean every other studio has the same problems. Little companies generally can't afford the headaches of firing a senior management. Big companies (especially publicly traded ones) have no problem with firing bad bosses who give them negative publicity, possibly transforming the formerly-bad studio into an gem. Bad press for a publicly traded company often causes them to change their ways.

Quote: Finally, I was wondering what type of office environments there are in the games industry. Is it formal or informal, do you have to wear a suit or can you go casual, do you have to call people by 'sir' and 'Mr' or is it all first names? This could go back to the first question, as it might be different for different countries, but that's the type of thing I wanted to find out.

Around here, most people wear their shoes all day. Even when it is snowing you can generally find somebody in shorts and a T-shirt. And the only time I call my co-workers "Mr." or "Sir" is when I am mocking them.

I have no experience in Japan, (or in the US for that matter), but I work in Canada.

One thing regarding working long hours that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that not only does working long hours vary from company to company, project to project, but also from individual to individual. Different people are either more driven or less driven to put in longer hours in order to either get extra features into the game, tighten up existing features, or even to try to advance their career by taking on more challenging tasks than they are normally tasked with.

It's easy to blame the company, but if you look around and you're one of the only ones there at night you need to evaluate whether you want to put in those hours (I've pointed out reasons above where certain types of people WOULD actually want to). No one is going to look out for you if you don't look out for yourself.

With that said, crunching on occassion is most likely unnavoidable, but I've worked on projects where I was working 12-16 hours days every day, and on projects where the only time I put in overtime was the week before we went beta. All with the same company.

As for some of your other questions:
-My office is very informal. Even most of the higher up executives are very friendly and are themselves very informal when interacting with us lowly grunts. I was asked only once to dress nice the whole time I've worked there, and that was for an extenuating circumstance. I usually wear ratty shoes, shorts and a hoodie.

-Any information I provided on Japan would be entirely things I've heard from others.

I am from Brazil, here it is a really intersting place...

First: Here in Brazil, since the country is huge, there are a lot of internal diffrences, but I will talk about São Paulo where I live...

São Paulo was created by a priest that had a lot of native american students...
This result on the first bizarre thing for a incoming person: There are a LOT of places with "uncommon", like when I was told that I should go to a place in the street Libero Bararó on near the Anhamgabaú valley (I got surprised the first time that I heared that, even because I live in a street named Baron of Triunph, in the region named Brooklin Paulista (paulista is the adjective of something existing on São Paulo estate, not city)

After 1920 or something like that, São Paulo got a trend to copy New York, becoming nearly a NY copycat (we even various huge art-decó buildings and that sort of things...), but because also São Paulo got a great incoming amoung of immigrants, mostly Europeans and Japanese, the result is that the city is a huge mix of things...

So, depending on who is the owner of the company, there are several cultural diffrences, for example: here we have a HUGE amount of japanese (about 10 to 20% of the city population is japanese), and japanese owned companies are common, usually those companies are more formal, you do not call people the first name unless you know the person, and people wear neckties... There are many companies that copy the US companies (here many people go to the US, see things that they think that is cool and return here and try to implement it), it is like the others said, more informal and such... Also there are many companies that the owner is european, since there are many countries in the europe the things are one again a real mixture...

The point is: In São Paulo there are so much diffrent people from diffrent countries living, that everything is always diffrent, the city is huge (with a NY style architeture), the amount of japanese and italians are also huge, and when you hear someone talking any language that is not portuguese, still there are a great chance that this person is not a outsider.

Also a intersting thing for the game industry: Piracy of japanese games in São Paulo is also huge, plainly because to Japan companies we are "westerners" and thus we get no attention (so no official sales or translation), but since there are a huge amount of Japanese here, much of our culture absorbed the japanese culture, and so japaneses games are really appreciated here (ex: few people know fallout, elder scrolls, might and magic, ultima... But a HUGE amount of people knows what you are talking about if you mention final fantasy, sephiroth, mana tree, or any of those japanese games unrelased here officially), the result of that is that since there are few japanese titles released here and people here love them, people that know japanese translate them and release for free.

Also, about 60% of the PC "box" or "online" game companies here (I say that because the majority of our companies are serious games, cell phone and advergame developers) are Korean, and Korean games are also REALLY popular here, if I ask people around what game that they are playing online, 20% plays WoW, 40% plays Ragnarok, and another 40% plays Gunbound, there are more "Cabal online", Landmass (I know that Landmass is a title exclusive to Korea and Brazil) and WYD than WoW and Everquest players (in fact the first time that I heard about everquest was when a judge banned it...)

Quote: Original post by lynchlike attitude, level of work, deadlines, and pay etc.

I have worked in the UK, US and Canada. On some levels there is no difference at all and certainly working on a team and project seems much the same. However, I do remember a lot of fun and games on the UK teams, to the extent where looking back I often wonder how we managed to get any work done at all. It was definately the most relaxed.

To be honest, any real differences on attitude, level of work and deadlines is more likely to be specific to the working environment of the company than the country. I did find team management to be a little more uptight when I was in Canada and since then working with Canadians from the US, but I don't at all believe this is an example of the Canadian people, I think it's two very specific examples of company and people.

Some US companies are a little more fearful of being sued by employees than others and thus are less tolerent to bad language and booby pictures. The UK has tighter laws than anywhere over this but the office environments are generally supportive of our (or my) bad behavior. Canada is closer to the US than the UK on this one, but very reasonable. Again it is more specific to the company. I have worked for places with very similar employee rules and handbooks, most of which are very strict but policing and enforcement tends to be different.

California companies I've found to be more serious than any and I've seen people easily fired for making very light remarks about PC topics. Even today we found overselves having to be careful about talking about our experiences in GTA4 from the previous night for example.

Quote: Original post by lynchSecondly, I have heard that games programming is all long nights and deadlines and can be quite stressful, is this true?

I've never worked on a project that has not had a crunch period, although they have differed quite a lot. The worst I had was about seven months long days with sleep deprivation counting up to a couple of days at certain times throughout that. The best I've had was a few extra hours each day as the project closes out over the course of about five weeks. There is better, there is worse.

If this bothers you, then I'd at least come into the industry only with a backup plan. Most people should do that anyway. No job is 'for everyone'.

Quote: Original post by lynchFinally, I was wondering what type of office environments there are in the games industry. Is it formal or informal?

Office environments are not formal, no 'sir' (unless you work for me, ha) or suits generally. One company I worked for insisted on formal trousers and shirt but I have never seen it since then. Only other time I've ever had to wear anything remotely similar was when meeting people from Japan. When I visited Japan I was told to wear similar attire to meetings, but didn't and it proved not to be necessary.

As for actually working Japan full time, try searching gamasutra. There was a two part article series from a Western developer who was working in Japan recently. It was very insightful.

As a side note that I forgot to put in my earlier post:

Crunch time in games is really no different than other industries, except that the final deadline is less negotiable.


When I worked in databases we had deadlines and schedule pressure. We had late nights before, during, and after major releases. I spent several late nights transitioning servers to new software -- and I liked it even less because we needed to do it all over nights and weekends since that's when all the normal workers are there.

When I worked on presentation software, there were many times when we needed those last-minute features for the big multi-million dollar event, or when one of the few core customers has a sudden serious need for a bug fix or new feature.

When I developed software for live broadcast TV, we had hard deadlines ranging from the first on-air date (about as critical deadline as a game shipment) to making sure any maintenance was complete and tested between the hours of the evening broadcast and the morning broadcast.


No matter what technical job you choose, you will always see occasional overtime, long hours, late/early hours, and crunch time. Every group --- including the healthcare database networks and TV news broadcasters --- will vary in those conditions by how management handles daily events.


Any date that is announced to the public with a big marketing budget is hard to move. It doesn't matter what field you are in, rough conditions are based mostly on management choices and the published date. Anything with a big published date, from games to TV/movie premieres to huge corporate presentations -- all of them have 'crunch time' in common.

Canada is probably the best country at the moment. But France, South Korea and Georgia (usa) are upcoming areas.

Yes it's all nights and struggles, almost all the time.

The majority of offices are quite relaxed but it can vary.

Hope I helped! :)