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LLSix posted:I was asked about the centrifuge problem in an interview today. I hadn't heard of it before so I thought I'd mention it. This youtube video is what helped me parse the answer. This sounds like a terrible interview question. If your interview involves solving a problem in an hour that people have spent years solving you have a bad interview question.
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Feb 25, 2021 20:03
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LLSix posted:It's a one year hourly contract and pays the same as the full time position I mentioned just up thread,  Hourly? Do they provide normal benefits (health insurance, etc)? Because if not your hourly rate needs to take into account that you're paying for these things out of pocket. The tax situation is also different for a contractor vs a FTE. Your hourly rate needs to be much higher, it's not a one-to-one equivalency. I think something like 30-50% more but I don't recall off the top of my head.
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Feb 25, 2021 20:24
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Jose Valasquez posted:This sounds like a terrible interview question. 100%. Any tech question that hinges on one weird trick or nugget of obscure knowledge are fundamentally broken. You cannot expect a candidate to reinvent 30 years of computer science in 45 minutes.
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Feb 25, 2021 20:31
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New Yorp New Yorp posted:
Agreed. Roughly equal pay for hourly and salary means the hourly position is significantly less compensated. I'm a terrible negotiator. I'm slowly and painfully getting better, but I'm not where I should be yet. This is the highest hourly rate I've managed so far $60/hour (in the midwest). My wife has really good benefits but her company doesn't let me stay on them if I have the option of benefits from another source, so medical and insurance benefits are less important to me than would otherwise be the case.
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Feb 25, 2021 21:02
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Jose Valasquez posted:This sounds like a terrible interview question. But the intention isn't to get the question right, it's to see how you handle something unfamiliar. Does the candidate balk and give up? Get inspired to think the solution is based on prime numbers (like the presenter in that video did) and pursue that, then back out and try a different approach when they get to a dead end? Try questioning whether you need a centrifuge in the first place? I dislike these kinds of questions because it's hard to get a good signal from them. If the real question is "does this candidate handle unfamiliar situations well?", then asking just 1 question like this is not enough data. Maybe they get lucky, or maybe they get stumped on this one but would do well on the next. You'd have to ask a bunch of them to know for sure. And, like, who cares? Unfamiliar situations don't crop up that often. I feel it's not as important as soft-skill questions like "Can the candidate self-manage their time well?" or "Will the candidate resolve conflicts well?" which are far more important to performance and quotidian work, and yet seem to be ignored.
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Feb 25, 2021 21:51
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minato posted:But the intention isn't to get the question right, it's to see how you handle something unfamiliar. Does the candidate balk and give up? Get inspired to think the solution is based on prime numbers (like the presenter in that video did) and pursue that, then back out and try a different approach when they get to a dead end? Try questioning whether you need a centrifuge in the first place? My approach is always to ask an initially simple question that can spiral in depth or edge cases depending on how experienced the candidate is and how deeply they can think about the scenario. Then you can adjust the "difficulty" dynamically as the interview progresses based on the direction the candidate takes things. I very much try to avoid "give me the optimal solution to problem X, you have 45 minutes, go!" type of questions.
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Feb 25, 2021 22:39
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LLSix posted:Agreed. Roughly equal pay for hourly and salary means the hourly position is significantly less compensated. I'm a terrible negotiator. I'm slowly and painfully getting better, but I'm not where I should be yet. This is the highest hourly rate I've managed so far $60/hour (in the midwest). I would strongly recommend against taking a short-term hourly contractor position for which you will be dramatically underpaid over a full-time position that actually pays you market rate. Think of it like this: They don't know you have benefits provided by your wife. They're just offering you an insultingly low rate. You might like the corporate culture more (by which I assume you mean "the people you'll be working directly with"), but the company itself is out to gently caress you over.
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Feb 25, 2021 23:37
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do what you think will make you happiest, not necessarily what the internet tells you. you're seem stoked for the new position, so congrats!
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Feb 26, 2021 03:54
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Achmed Jones posted:do what you think will make you happiest, not necessarily what the internet tells you. you're seem stoked for the new position, so congrats! A company or hiring manager that pays significantly below market rate is a huge red flag and it's very telling about their real corporate culture. 
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Feb 26, 2021 05:43
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Achmed Jones posted:do what you think will make you happiest, not necessarily what the internet tells you. you're seem stoked for the new position, so congrats! New Yorp New Yorp posted:A company or hiring manager that pays significantly below market rate is a huge red flag and it's very telling about their real corporate culture. yeah that was a pretty dumb take from that discussion
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Feb 27, 2021 05:10
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qsvui posted:yeah that was a pretty dumb take from that discussion I've been following along but kind of lost the thread. Could you kind of describe how or what went off the rails? It just seemed to be competing interpretations and opinions, so I musta missed something.
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Feb 27, 2021 06:01
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Even without context, making a "hurr durr internet is dumb, don't listen to them" post on the internet is pretty brainless.
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Feb 27, 2021 18:59
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i'm not saying don't listen, i'm saying that advice in threads like these very rarely takes individual nuance into account. for example, it's frequently hyperbolic - people paying contractors salary rate isn't really a huge red flag or whatever bullshit, it's just kinda bad pay and is selling oneself short. sometimes people want a job for reasons other than maximizing figgies. clearly op thought the trade off was worth it, and going on at length about how clearly the company is malicious and will mistreat you is full-on dumb. it may shock you to know that contracting rates can vary widely for different customers. op is giving this customer a cheap rate for x, y, and z reasons. i was trying to be nice about it, though.
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Feb 27, 2021 19:15
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It's unclear if the job is actually contracting, i.e. you get a 1099, but if so the same rate as salary is a huge red flag. That's a direct paycut of 7.65% on the first $142,800 aside from any other expenses you have on top of that. Contracting through a third party, where the person is employed by that third party, is far more common and isn't quite as bad though it's never a good sign.
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Feb 27, 2021 23:58
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That was my rate at a bank hq in 2015. No benefits. And yes, healthcare and taxes will take a significant chunk of that if you have to go through the marketplace. Then the bank cut all contractors wages 10% with a 2 week furlough. Lol Executives still got massive bonuses though. gently caress the banks. gently caress the rich.
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Feb 28, 2021 02:59
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Hey guys, a rando recruiter just told me about a great opportunity to leave my awesome local (but currently WFH) full time job with benefits for a remote contract gig where they expect me to do literally everything and probably pay poo poo because the rate is listed as Depends on Experience!quote:Job Description: I gather from this poorly written and disorganized description that they need/would very much like me to know JavaScript, JavaScript, AJAX, AJAX, Vue, Angular, Bootstrap, but also jQuery, HTML/CSS, hypertext transfer protocol and other various acronym technologies, Java, Spring, API poo poo, all stages of QA testing, software development in general, design prototyping, mobile development, be a UI/UX domain expert and probably also technical writer, most of the Adobe Suite, and loving Flash for some godforsaken reason. I get emails and LinkedIn messages about lovely contract gigs all the time but they usually ask for a normal and reasonable range of skills, like various design/design software skills with maybe some bonus programming knowhow or vice versa, but this is something special. And going by the weird combo of technologies, possibly something old, or at least written by completely out of touch clueless people who didn’t get the memo that web-based Flash is finally dead after spending a very long time dying. Just..  Really tempted to respond to the guy just to ask what the gently caress (and tell him not to contact me about dumb gigs like this in the future or at all), but maybe sharing here will help me resist the urge.
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Mar 3, 2021 22:16
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Queen Victorian posted:Really tempted to respond to the guy just to ask what the gently caress (and tell him not to contact me about dumb gigs like this in the future or at all), but maybe sharing here will help me resist the urge. I get these all the time because apparently I have a like 3 year old resume on clearance jobs (lost the password, and don't really care) even though I don't live anywhere near the DC/NOVA area anymore. They are all something like C#/JS/node/Java/Python/PowerShell/*cloud word salad* developer + full cloud development, deployment, testing/QA and devops experience. So either they are really hurting for people (which they are) or you want you to do the work of 3-4 people depending on how much of each they expect you to do, also you can't do any of this work remote. e: Most of the signing bonuses are like 15K after 180 days though
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Mar 3, 2021 23:39
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Even in the NoVA DC area most of the positions with that sort of tag line start around the $180k TC mark for myself and most hit around $200k. All of which are significantly lower than my current comp for way less ethical organizations and verticals (although my buddies at Palantir are probably doing better... but I’ll accept $150k less / year to not go there) so it makes me wonder if I’m just overpaid now when the job descriptions sound similar.
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Mar 4, 2021 02:33
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It's been a while since I had to interview. I notice panels on system design are popular these days. Assuming I'd be dead in the water on one of these questions, does anyone have a course they'd recommend?
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Mar 7, 2021 23:35
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Grokking the System Design Interview and SystemsExpert from AlgoExpert.io are what I plan on reviewing for my next interview cycle starting in a few weeks.
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Mar 7, 2021 23:47
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Read Kleppmann's "Designing Data-Intensive Applications", it's a legit great book.
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Mar 8, 2021 00:31
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JehovahsWetness posted:Read Kleppmann's "Designing Data-Intensive Applications", it's a legit great book. This is what I suggest to everyone preparing for a system design interview
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Mar 8, 2021 00:40
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you might literally get a question cribbed from that interview lol
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Mar 8, 2021 00:46
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Oh yeah that's a fantastic ready too!
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Mar 8, 2021 05:12
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bob dobbs is dead posted:you might literally get a question cribbed from that interview lol Can confirm, got one
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Mar 8, 2021 11:37
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While we're at it, other generally good software books people recommend? I've been working through Clean Code. I'm a mostly frontend engineer, but I feel like I need to expand my horizons once I start looking at interviewing for senior level positions.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:34
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I really liked Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules by Steve McConnell. It's mostly about how to project manage a software project for different types of goals, whether rapid prototyping, high quality refinement phases, initial stakeholder buy-in, etc. It was really helpful for my career because I felt like I could negotiate with my managers much more effectively as an individual contributer. Now I'm in management. Maybe I shouldn't have read it after all.
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Mar 9, 2021 01:50
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I just turned 40 and what I really want to do is make games, and pay other people to do the bits I can’t and will never be able to do (*cough* art *cough*). I’d always assumed that included programming, but having started CS50 on EdX a few weeks back and got halfway through it, and having spent a fair amount of downtime writing little games in C to amuse myself and my kids, I’ve realised that I actually really enjoy programming - there’s enough crossover with what I used to do professionally that so far all of the concepts introduced are intuitive, and it scratches that puzzle-solving itch. My career has been good to me and I can probably afford to burn cash for 1-2 years to get started. I’m still employed, but have probably reached the peak of what I can earn being paid by other people. So I’m spending my free time getting ready to take a gamble 12-24 months from now on making enough sustainably as an indy dev to not actually cost my wife money feeding me each month. Based on what I know, it’s not a bad plan. What scares me is what I **don’t** know to think about. So for anyone else who followed that or a similar path, here’s my questions: * Say I comfortably finished CS50 and worked their way through “the C programming language”, and finished the EdX course on computer game design. * Also assume I can handle financial planning and business development, marketing etc. * Also also assume I cannot draw a straight line without a ruler and that nobody but an idiot would hire me for any kind of graphic design or aesthetics. What critical skills would I be missing if I wanted to make games similar to, say, A Legionary’s Life or The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante? That is, something like CYOA+, where you add a couple of other elements in, and create value through domain knowledge of (I hope) interesting content? Basically, start out in 2021 as 2040 Jeff Vogel. I don’t expect ever to have to deal with anything in 3D, which I hope reduces work scope some. (Mods feel free to move this to gamedev thread if you think appropriate. In my view it had a more natural home here coz I’m an oldie asking about changing careers to programming). Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 10:12
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Beefeater1980 posted:I just turned 40 and what I really want to do is make games, and pay other people to do the bits I can’t and will never be able to do (*cough* art *cough*). I’d always assumed that included programming, but having started CS50 on EdX a few weeks back and got halfway through it, and having spent a fair amount of downtime writing little games in C to amuse myself and my kids, I’ve realised that I actually really enjoy programming - there’s enough crossover with what I used to do professionally that so far all of the concepts introduced are intuitive, and it scratches that puzzle-solving itch. As someone who has worked in games for about ten years, here are the things holding me back from abandoning paid work to go indie: It's impossible to market games consistently well without a crazy budget. Especially in mobile. And especially without specific expertise in today's marketing environment. It's incredibly hit driven. Even for games of reasonably good production values, it can be difficult to recoup costs -- especially if you value your time at market rate. Holding people's attention is challenging. The current market is very competitive, so it's important for your game to be sticky and monetize well. I don't have confidence in my own market research to have high confidence that the game I'll make will likely meet ARPU/CAC targets. I'm also not super good at making really compelling hooks. Prototyping is fun. Polishing is a bear. Most of the work I would need to do to be successful probably won't help me much in my career outside working for myself. I enjoy implementing gameplay systems. I don't particularly enjoy managing game economies, integrating art, designing monetization, or authoring enough content to make something worth publishing. I'm recently in a position that's ok with me working on products in my free time. I'm fine trading development speed for a market competitive programming salary. Which is all to say: make art and live your best life. But don't expect indie games to offer a safe or even likely way to pay you a consistent reasonable salary. Especially if you're making games without market research and/or just staring out without an audience.
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Mar 9, 2021 12:50
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it's important to note that CS50 won't teach you some skills that are just as, if not more important than the programming aspect, like game design. it's incredibly hard to design a good game, and like was said above there are a lot of games out there, so finding a space for your game won't be easy. i would suggest you make games as a hobby, and if one day you get lucky and make a hit you can move careers for reference, A Legionary's Life is estimated by SteamDB to have between 0 - 50,000 / 26,360 - 79,080 copies sold. The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante has 0 - 50,000 / 14,340 - 43,020. these are very difficult numbers to reach, especially considering the genres they're in. marumaru fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 13:08
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leper khan posted:
Yes, that all makes sense. I am extremely lucky, in 2021, to be able to weather a couple of years of this going horribly wrong and still have a decent chance of paid employment and security out the other side. It’s a gamble. Right now I’m trying to work out if there are straight up fail conditions I don’t even know exist yet. marumaru posted:it's important to note that CS50 won't teach you some skills that are just as, if not more important than the programming aspect, like game design. Thank you. That’s very helpful perspective. I’m trying to keep my questions on topic for the thread so - say I believe that from a business perspective I can do my own coding, meet 50% of the lowest estimate of those sales and pay an artist fair market rates, and still be ok. Is there some fundamental thing that has to be done that I don’t know exists? Or is coding (let’s assume that if I can code in C I can given sufficient time learn to use, say, Unity), + business/financial planning and art (including sound and music) assets basically it? Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 15:48
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Beefeater1980 posted:Thank you. That’s very helpful perspective. I’m trying to keep my questions on topic for the thread so - say I believe that from a business perspective I can do my own coding, meet 50% of those sales and pay an artist fair market rates, and still be ok. Is there some fundamental thing that has to be done that I don’t know exists? Or is coding (let’s assume that if I can code in C I can given sufficient time learn to use, say, Unity), + business/financial planning and art (including sound and music) assets basically it? Well, just for creating the game there's writing, as in story design, and then there's testing/QA and if you hire out for all of these you're going to need a project manager because it will be incredibly difficult to manage all the moving parts of collaborating with people while simultaneously doing all the programming. Some people can do everything on their own (ConcernedApe who did Stardew Valley comes to mind) but usually they say it takes over their entire life, and there are far more failures than successes. Once you have a game to sell, there's marketing and sales, which is an entirely different skillset. It's not as simple as putting it on the Steam store and waiting for players. Indie games is a very crowded field right now - it's a dream job for a lot of people, which tends to drive compensation down and competition up. It's also a big leap to go from "never worked in coding" to "running an indie game studio". If this were my dream, I would keep my day job and see how far I could get building a small game in my spare time - a lot of people think it's easy to transition into being your own boss, but if you can't even muster up the enthusiasm to do it on nights and weekends, you're probably going to get discouraged really quickly when you have no safety net.
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Mar 9, 2021 15:58
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vonnegutt posted:
This is solid advice. To put it in terms of carpentry (which is my go-to analogy for some reason): Imagine a friend said to you, "I've always really enjoyed carpentry. I've done a bit of whittling and made a pretty nifty birdhouse once, but I've never built any tables or chairs or anything, and never for pay. I'm thinking of quitting my job and taking a risk on creating and selling bespoke armoires. Also, my runway is such that I really only have time to try to make one or maybe two armoires before I'm out of money." Would you recommend that your friend take that risk? [edit] There are a few people who post here who have had some success in building a game while holding down a regular job, which eventually allowed them to quit their day job. Notably, the user somethingggg made an idle/incremental game called NGU over the course of a few years, and when he launched microtransactions he made a significant amount of money from it. New Yorp New Yorp fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 16:04
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Beefeater1980 posted:Thank you. That’s very helpful perspective. I’m trying to keep my questions on topic for the thread so - say I believe that from a business perspective I can do my own coding, meet 50% of the lowest estimate of those sales and pay an artist fair market rates, and still be ok. Is there some fundamental thing that has to be done that I don’t know exists? Or is coding (let’s assume that if I can code in C I can given sufficient time learn to use, say, Unity), + business/financial planning and art (including sound and music) assets basically it? if you really want to go this route, i'd suggest you do this, before you even consider leaving your job: - finish your programming course - pick up either Unity (C#) or UE4 (blueprints) - make a tiny, proof of concept game (something like a platformer maybe) to learn how the engine works. finish it - continue making very small games, to learn different skills. game jams are great motivation for this. - once you feel very confident, start planning your game, to every last detail. you want to have a super solid plan locked in so you don't fall victim to feature creep - your first "real" game should still be small. if it isn't, you'll take eons to finish it, you'll make huge mistakes early on that will keep slowing you down years down the line, etc - all the while you'll have to be studying programming-unrelated aspects of game development. you'll probably want to learn some skills too, so that you don't have to hire an audio engineer, a soundtrack composer, a ui designer, a writer, etc etc one of the biggest issues with people entering game development is that it doesn't look like making a game involves as much work as it does. scope creep is going to be your greatest enemy. i'd say start small, and don't put all your eggs on a basket before you know how deep it is vonnegutt posted:Once you have a game to sell, there's marketing and sales, which is an entirely different skillset. It's not as simple as putting it on the Steam store and waiting for players. Indie games is a very crowded field right now - it's a dream job for a lot of people, which tends to drive compensation down and competition up. ^ marumaru fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Mar 9, 2021 |
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Mar 9, 2021 16:09
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Beefeater1980 posted:I just turned 40 and what I really want to do is make games, and pay other people to do the bits I can’t and will never be able to do (*cough* art *cough*). I’d always assumed that included programming, but having started CS50 on EdX a few weeks back and got halfway through it, and having spent a fair amount of downtime writing little games in C to amuse myself and my kids, I’ve realised that I actually really enjoy programming - there’s enough crossover with what I used to do professionally that so far all of the concepts introduced are intuitive, and it scratches that puzzle-solving itch. So, I'm doing this right now. My first game is hopefully going to be released this year, early access in May, full launch in December. That would make it two and a half years from start to finish. Here's my thoughts on this, in no particular order: - You'll note that "two and a half years" thing. Project management for any software is hard, and project management for games is worse. You will overshoot your estimates, incredibly badly. "One to two years of runway" is not going to cut it for anything but a very simple arcade-style game. - I have waaaaay more background in this than you do. I did software development for a living, and I dabbled in game development and other arts as a hobby for over a decade. Not only did this let me hit the ground running when I went indie, it also gave me a grounding in a lot of other skills besides programming. I mention this because you want to have some understanding of those arts in order to be able to direct the people you hire. If you don't have any understanding of what makes good music, for example, then it'll be a lot harder for you to guide your musician. For reference, I am paying a musician, an illustrator, and a writer to make content for my game; I did the 3D models myself and bought several asset packs for VFX, materials, etc. off of the Unity asset store. - Speaking of which, just because you're paying someone to handle work in a particular domain doesn't mean that you can ignore that domain and focus on the bits you find fun. As soon as you're paying someone, you're managing them. Expect to spend a lot of time just talking to your contractors. - Indie burnout is a real threat. I'm doing the thing I've dreamed about doing for years! I'm gonna put in 60-80 hour work weeks and love every minute of it! ...wait, why am I dreading working on my game all of a sudden? What happened to my motivation? So yeah: you need to pace yourself. Treat it like a job, because it is one. Learn to recognize when you hit that point each day of diminishing returns. Sometimes it'll come after 8-10 hours of work. Sometimes it'll come after 3 hours. Regardless of how disappointing it is that you can't keep working, recognize that forcing yourself to continue is just making things worse. Resting is productive! It makes the next day/week/month/year better. - Not to be all doom and gloom, indie gamedev is a lot of fun! You can learn a fuckton of different skills here. Like, I'd not made a single shader before I started this project, and now I'm pretty fluent with them (so long as they don't involve custom lighting anyway  ). And it's creative, satisfying work. - As an indie you end up doing everything, so you don't really get to specialize. This is perfect for me personally; I don't know if you prefer to specialize. - Pick a project that's achievable. Keep scope under control as much as possible. Like, my game is based heavily on a PS2 game that was made in 2006, with a credits list of over 50 people not counting stuff like voice actors, plus they were building a sequel and were able to re-use a lot of stuff they'd made previously. So I'm not going to do as much content (levels, boss fights, enemy types, unlockable equipment, etc.), my art's not as good and there's way less of it, cutscenes are a lot shorter/simpler/fewer in number, I've simplified a lot of the systems to be easier to implement/maintain, etc. etc. etc. I get to leverage 15 years' worth of advances in game development tooling, which is the only reason this project is even remotely feasible; even so, it was a hugely ambitious project for a one-man studio. - After all this is said and done, there is no guarantee of success I seem to recall hearing that the stat is that, after you filter out the "no effort" games, something like 1 in 10 indie games make back their cost of development. In other words, you have ~90% odds of spending two years working on this huge creative endeavour, and at the end maybe get a couple hundred sales and then go back to whatever you were doing before, minus two years' worth of cost of living and whatever money you spent on development. You want to be confident that you can do this without sabotaging your future. So in particular, if your runway relies on pulling money out of your retirement accounts, or taking out a home equity loan, or (god forbid) maxing out your credit cards, then indie game dev is not for you. You also mentioned having a wife; is she okay with this plan?
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Mar 9, 2021 16:41
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Beefeater1980 posted:* Also also assume I cannot draw a straight line without a ruler and that nobody but an idiot would hire me for any kind of graphic design or aesthetics. I might be veering off topic, but as a designer, I can address the design question. Video games require a fuckton of design work in order to be good, and I’m not talking about art assets or nice fonts. It’s more fundamental. You have the story design, which ties closely with the writing. You need to come up with compelling scenarios and objectives and and figure out how the player is going to discover and work through them. You have level/stage design. You need to design your levels so that the player can be challenged just the right amount commensurate with their current skill level so that they don’t get too bored or too frustrated and walk away. Then there’s the user interface (this is my particular area of interest). How does the player interact with your world and the character? How do you do all the things like control character movement/actions, access/use supplies, manage inventory, view your status, present plot choices, make plot choices, defeat an enemy, fight a turn-based battle, move a puzzle piece, manage dialog, map the controls, etc.? Then you need to put all the design pieces together and build a solid overarching UX, or user experience. UX gets closely coupled with UI a lot in software development, but I think there’s a bit more separation between them in game design because there are more design facets that contribute to experience in games than in software. All the above design issues/questions can be handled/answered with stick figures, wireframes, and low fidelity temp assets. Some examples of this workflow include the development of Breath of the Wild, for which they built an 8-bit 2D prototype to figure out the fully open world and emergent gameplay, and Horizon Zero Dawn, where an early prototype looks like recycled Killzone dudes fighting a Duplo T-Rex in a GameCube game. This is not to say that you shouldn’t also be working on the art and look and feel as you go, but it’s not essential to earlier stages of development like the other facets of design are. I recommend reading The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell. It might seem a bit dated at this point with the video game examples it uses, but the design fundamentals it discusses are still as relevant as ever. Also this is a good article derived from a talk I attended: https://jenson.org/games/. He’s an Android UX guy examining game UI and UX and picks apart differences between mobile apps and games and how game UX can inspire app UX. It’s a really good analysis and presentation about what game UIs need to accomplish vs mobile apps (or software in general, really). Oh, also I had a coworker leave a while back to pursue his dream of making indie games. He was able to do it due to a supportive spouse, low cost of living (sub-six-figure house), and he picked up a part time job to have some predictable income and provide some external structure in his life. No idea how that’s panned out though - dude has a restless soul and might have moved on to something else for all I know.
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Mar 9, 2021 19:02
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Queen Victorian posted:Video games require a fuckton of design work in order to be good, and I’m not talking about art assets or nice fonts. It’s more fundamental. This was nicely summed up by the famous "The Door Problem" article.
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Mar 9, 2021 19:16
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minato posted:This was nicely summed up by the famous "The Door Problem" article. This is a really good and succinct example and I’m really surprised I hadn’t encountered it (that I can recall). Yeah, you have to think a LOT about the most mundane poo poo and in ways that you are not conditioned to consider if you don’t have a design background.
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Mar 9, 2021 19:37
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Thanks all, that was exactly what I was hoping for. My distilled takeaway is: * High level design (in the sense of integrating each individual element into a coherent whole) is a separate domain that requires substantial thought * In addition to the underlying coding, get familiar using a specialised game development platform such as Unity * UX design specifically needs a ton of effort * Expect to have to be a generalist * Have the first game ready to launch before trying to do this full time * Watch out for scope creep * Due to the high failure rate, only do this if **really** sure that finances can survive it failing for a protracted period. All together that probably translates to keeping it as a side project for another year or two for safety. Financially we can get by if this is an irregular, not very large income stream (to the poster who asked about possibly sending the family into penury & swigging meth spirits on the street corner after a debt spiral, Mrs B and I are confident that we can survive this failing for quite a while longer than the 1-2 year runway if needed without eating into important assets); for long term sustainability the question in my mind is what distinguishes the 10% of Indy games that break even from the 90% that don’t. Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Mar 10, 2021 |
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Mar 10, 2021 00:04
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Beefeater1980 posted:for long term sustainability the question in my mind is what distinguishes the 10% of Indy games that break even from the 90% that don’t. either luck or a really good understanding of the market. but yeah, definitely make small little games for fun and go from there
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Mar 10, 2021 00:22
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