Hey there. i am bru, i am 16 and one day i want to be pokemon maste... i mean work in the game industry! now i wonder,how is the game industry? like how does it work programming with a large team,do you work in your own mini room? with a partner? with a group of 10? are there any nice people in the industry to social with, or they are all busy doing their job? how diffrent developing a game in the industry is than developing alone? i dont want to be in the game industry because of the high salleries,but do you realy get paid good? do you get bonus every time your team releases a game? and most importantly,how do you work in a team? i never worked in a team on my projects,i heard there are programs that help you,but it still sounds annoying to me when 2 people work on the same file and then you need to merge the results of these two. i'll be happy for any answer :) yours, Bru.

A lot of it depends on the company, but as for the company I work for:

Quote: Original post by Bru
now i wonder,how is the game industry? like how does it work programming with a large team,do you work in your own mini room? with a partner? with a group of 10?
are there any nice people in the industry to social with, or they are all busy doing their job?

A team usually consists of 5-10 people (Depending on the project). In our current office, we're in two main rooms, but we're moving soon to a more open plan office.

Quote: Original post by Bru
how diffrent developing a game in the industry is than developing alone?
i dont want to be in the game industry because of the high salleries,but do you realy get paid good? do you get bonus every time your team releases a game?

Personally, I have a lot more motivation when working on work stuff than my own projects - mainly because there's more people working on the project you see more work being done, and you (usually) get a chance to work on several different components of the game. Salary is reasonably good, how much you get paid depends on your experience / abilitym the size of the company you work for and the country you work in. Bonuses are highly company-specific; we get profit sharing which encourages us to make the games better so they sell more units and give us more royalties and therefore higher profit sharing.

Quote: Original post by Bru
and most importantly,how do you work in a team? i never worked in a team on my projects,i heard there are programs that help you,but it still sounds annoying to me when 2 people work on the same file and then you need to merge the results of these two.

We use Perforce (And I use it for my own hobby projects so I can work on some code from 2 or 3 places), which is very good IMO. Generally, people work on particular modules of the game so there's not too much cross over and merging. On an average day, I'll have to merge maybe 3 or 4 files (And they're almost always very simple merges, which Perforce can do automatically).

i see thanks :) also when you say a team usualy consists of 5-10 people do you mean the whole team? or you mean there are a lot of mini teams and each mini team has around 5-10?

i'll still be happy to hear anyone's else experience in the game industry :)

Quote: Original post by Bru
i see thanks :) also when you say a team usualy consists of 5-10 people do you mean the whole team? or you mean there are a lot of mini teams and each mini team has around 5-10?

We work on multiple projects at a time (Currently 3), and each project has between 5 and 10 people on it.

so i understand you work in a relatively small team right? i guess that because i guess blizzard or valve or any other oversized company would have 5 programmers on each project.

Quote: Original post by Bru
so i understand you work in a relatively small team right? i guess that because i guess blizzard or valve or any other oversized company would have 5 programmers on each project.

The number of developers in any project varies a lot depending on a lot of variables...

i) Is the project built on top of an engine, or is it being written from the ground up? If you're developing something on top of something like the Unreal engine, a lot of the ground work is done for you, if not you'll need to have a big technology team to write rendering code, network code, etc.

ii) How far along the dev cycle are you? At the start the teams are small, and towards the middle they bloat, and then near the end they tend to shrink a bit as people are siphoned off onto other projects.

iii) How big is the project? A low scope small game (like an uno clone) will take a much smaller team than an MMO.

...etc...etc...

Your questions on socialising are totally person/company dependant, and generally have little to do with the line of work. The only difference I've seen is that people who work in games companies sometimes play games together as a social activity, which isn't as common in other industries.

By using source control software working in a team isn't too bad. Merging files is often an automated process, and generally you shouldn't be editing the same function as someone else. The biggest challenge in teamwork (in my opinion) is communication.

communication? how is that a problem?

Well in any software project, your code will probably have to interface with someone elses. It's important to know how they've implemented their code, so you know how it will work with yours.

Additionally software is also written as per a specification (class will be called 'X', will expose functions 'Y, Z, W'), and it's important that this is clear, or at the very least, there is a strong dialogue thread so that everyone understands what's being done (especially when the project deviates from the technical specification).

oh :o,well this does make sense.
thanks :)

Quote: Original post by Bru
Hey there.
i am bru, i am 16 and one day i want to be pokemon maste... i mean work in the game industry!

Cool!

Quote: Original post by Bru
now i wonder,how is the game industry?

It depends. Many shops have closed or really pared back their numbers and projects. Other companies are still hiring and trying to take on more projects.

Quote: Original post by Bru
like how does it work programming with a large team,do you work in your own mini room? with a partner? with a group of 10?

Where I work, most are all in a large, open area, sitting in cubicles. Each team sits closely together to help with communication and such. Other depts may work in offices, like audio depts that need to be able to mix and work with acoustically sound environments.

Quote: Original post by Bru
are there any nice people in the industry to social with, or they are all busy doing their job?

No. They're all jerks. :P Seriously, game industry people are some of the coolest, nicest people I know. Also they're alot of fun!

Quote: Original post by Bru
how diffrent developing a game in the industry is than developing alone?
i dont want to be in the game industry because of the high salleries,but do you realy get paid good? do you get bonus every time your team releases a game?

Developing as a team is vastly different. You have to work as a team, compromise and ensure that everything everyone is doing aligns with the overall vision of plan of the game. Working by yourself means you get to decide all of this.

Salaries depend on the company, your position and where you live. I don't get rich but I definitely get by with my salary.

Quote: Original post by Bru
and most importantly,how do you work in a team? i never worked in a team on my projects,i heard there are programs that help you,but it still sounds annoying to me when 2 people work on the same file and then you need to merge the results of these two.

We use Perforce and Alienbrain on our various projects, which help with version control. There are also other methods to help with file sharing. Some teams develop "layers" so that teams don't step on each other's toes while developing. The artists can work on the art layer, programming can work on their layer and so on. If you don't have layers then having an appropriate workflow and pipeline is essential. You have certain core teams go first, finalize their work then add other disciplines and so on.

Quote: Original post by Bru
i'll be happy for any answer :)
yours,
Bru.

Sure!