i... was?

well, sorta.

me, omega and flame (and later dahui) were talking about career and stuff, but at one point it kinda turned into a "they ask, i answer" thing, so i thought i should share it. (there was more than one discussion going on, so i had to cut parts of posts and stuff)

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Most of you must be college grads or must be doing college right? What did you guys pick? Science is out of the option.

OmegaAxl

computer engineer, on my third semester (5 year course).

Thanks for the info. Bruno! I might start researching on that field more once I'm done with my exams.

OmegaAxl

[note: i'm not sure if he meant computer engineering or voice acting (something else we were talking about) when he said "that field", but i still answered :P]

(...)

as for my "field", the bachellor in computer engineering is pretty much a wild card. you learn software, hardware, design (though nothing as fancy as what you'd learn at a design course), circuits, math, calculus, economy, philosophy (YES, EVEN THAT) and you finish the course with a great basis to get any other engineering degree you might be looking for.

i'm taking the course mostly because of the software side though. i'll take a game design course once i'm done.

For design program here I have to take philosphy and ethics as well. And a cIass or two on the buisness and boring side of things.. which Im not looking forward to. The trick with college to me is you gotta do what you want there.. Or it is freaking boring.Guest appearance - Bobakuzero

Game designing is a HUGE RISK isn't it? I mean you should have a backup plan of some sort. If being a develpoer doesn't work out. and What does philosophy have to do with..?

OmegaAxl

^ thing is, there's absolutely nothing i can think of doing aside from game designing. hell i spent about 1-2 hours every day walking to college and back, and most of the time i'm thinking about a game design. or something game related (like how i'm designing a real hidden blade... i just need the materials :P).

i read books, lots and lots of yahtzee (especially his tuesday articles, the guy is almost a bible of how to design something right), take my games critically, etc.

basically i've spent a whole lot of my past years making sure it'll work out. only reason i didn't go with game design right off the bat is because there aren't any (good) graduation courses here, and a degree is always nice.

oh and as for philosophy, it's more like those ethics thing... apparently the engineer is a leader, so he needs to learn a lot of this stuff.

What kind of books do you read?Flamesingh1

aside from novels, i read game design books. like books for people that are already in the market. one of my favorites is one that's actually about pen & paper RPG (and for hobbyists), but written by the big guys. amazing thing to read, i grab it every now and then. how to create a convincing villain, world, tackle unique ideas, character behavior, manipulating the player so they feel engaged and immersed, that kind of stuff.

also, a fun fact about pen & paper RPGs is that whenever i'd play with my friends, i always ended up being the game master... to the point i'd have to make an NPC so i could play as a player at the same time (cheating? NAAAAH :P).

Whoa..Your really passionate about this aren't you? Good luck dude. You can always earn easy cash by making apps for apple. My friend does that..OmegaAxl

actually apps has a lot to do with luck. team meat ellaborated better on it on an interview they gave once (amazing interview, some people didn't seem to like it though), [note: link to interview here] but basically if your high quality awesome thing releases together with a random funny app, you'll lose your first week.

and if you don't get popular on week 1, it's over, because you'll just be thrown in the "app list" on week 2. no spotlights for you, no "popular apps", no nothing.

What are your favorite novels and what is that game design book? Sounds interesting.Flamesingh1

well novels vary. it's more of an author thing. i really like neil gaiman (neverwhere is a jawdropping book, highly recommend it) and anything signed by philip pullman (but especially the golden compass and the other books. best trilogy i've ever read). i also really like the harry potter books and the dragonlance trilogy.

there's also bernard cornwell's "search of the grail" trilogy (hellequin, vagabond, heretic). tells the story of an english longbowman during the 100 year war.

i've also read T.H.White's "the one and only king" (aka king arthur), but never quite finished. stopped near the ending though. there's a fantasy series called "chronicles of the emerse world" and "wars of the emerse world" that i'm pretty sure didn't get an english version, but it's pretty good too. it's like dragonlance, but a bit more "single hero", and more romancey (due to young female leads, i guess).

there's a brazilian book series called "Ether Dragons", which is basically a huge clusterf*** of fairy tales, mashed into one persistent world and taken realistically (robert of locksley is a war prisoner, john and mary were victims of a black magic ritual where they were hipnotized into starvation and thinking a house was made of food, and almost got sacrificed, etc.)

last but not least, i find myself referencing douglas adams all the time, but i never got past the beginning of the third book. it got boring.

[note: HOLY CRAP HOW COULD I FORGET IT. one of my all time favorite books and the basis to all my social/sociological thoughts, Brave New World is a must-read for every single person alive.]

PHEW, that's a lot of text.

OHYEAH and game design books.

most of the stuff is local, but a book i really like about arts and videogames had the main reference source (or maybe the translation, since the title is the same, but it's not quite clear) in an english book, called "Videogame Art".

Why don't you give apps a shot then? You've got nothing to lose, if you get popular then your mega rich.

If your not..Keep working on your videogame thing.

OmegaAxl

i will... eventually.

i actually plan on learning to use microsoft's XNA at some point and maybe even make some XBLA/steam game, even if it's freeware.

Have you played Yahtzee's games Bruno?Flamesingh1

not really. kinda busy with all the stuff. hell took me a whole year to stop and download cave story (and way more years than i'd like to admit to finally play megaman legends 2).

and talking about yahtzee, Mogworld is on my "to buy" list... i just have to check if amazon doesn't charge absurd shipping prices for books too. (they charge $60 for shipping games to where i live).

So what type of games do you plan on making Bruno..? Any type of company you plan on applying for?OmegaAxl

game? whatever i feel like doing, but i found out i'm more prone to action games and RPGs. platformers require a level design skill i'm not fond of and i just suck at coming up with puzzles. i like story and new game mechanics. i actually had a design of an action turn based game (idea was to make the most action packed turn based game ever, inspired by skies of arcadia) and an MMO that would use the gameplay too that ended up being a pen & paper RPG. the site ran for about one year with just the "core" of my full idea. [note: for the two people who remember LegendaryMythril] right now guild wars 2 has all the concepts i had for said MMO, plus more than a few of their own and solutions to design problems i was facing :P

which reminds me, design ideas i have tend to later show up in real games not much after i think of them quite often (hell, i was working on something that played exactly like baten kaitos when the game was announced, the idea of a card-based RPG instead of weapons and spells always fascinated me... maybe i watched too much sakura card captors as a kid :P).

also, two things i've been reading a lot are guildwars2.com and the Devroom (megaman legends 3's community site where they release info on design progress and ask for your help designing major things in the game, like a boss and the armor design). the first is a really in-depth look at how a studio team works, while the latter has a lot of the non-design stuff being shown (recording sessions, character modelling, etc), and you get to see how the real devs make their picks from idea pools.

as for a company i'd like to apply for, arenanet by far. it's such a friendly, everyone-helps-everyone environment, and the guys are really passionate about what they do. they organize game nights of their own in-development games so they can see if the game is fun. they make a game they want to play, and they enjoy every second of the development process.

Man..your field sounds cooler and cooler the more you go into detail..!

I hope mine turns out to be fun as well..

OmegaAxl

Some of Yahtzees games are great, I love 7 Days a Skeptic and Adventures in the Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment, seriously epic games in different ways.

Oh and I'm also hoping to go into the game designing business lol. More on the programming side though as I imagine that would be less competitive.

dahui58

programming is fun sometimes, but i'm not very fond of it. i know how to program, but coding is boring so i usually team up with someone and tell them "do this and this and you'll get this"... in other words i design the program and someone writes for me :P

I enjoy coding in Computing, but I've barely scratched the surface and it's kind of tough to learn languages using internet tutorials and such. I'm looking forward to starting a uni course where I can learn it from the beginning and hopefully still enjoy it :Ddahui58

i hear you. i tried to learn flash and failed utterly. i hated programming until i got in college.

then you learn that it's basically a more math-oriented version of english and all you have to do is tell the PC to do stuff for you and it becomes pretty easy.

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aaaaaand that's it. it's a bit longer than i expected it to be, but hey, you can just look for the interesting questions you'd like answered :P

also, all of this discussion happened in the off topic lounge of the Mass Designers Lounge, which won not only one, but two union awards! (we won best visual union and most dedicated union :D) we even stayed in second place on a third category, but i can't really remember which.