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Same for me. I'm 25 and I decided to do programming to work in the game industry. When I ended my university, I found a job in a big company that pay me well for regular hours. Didn't turn back.
I still want to make games. Not as a job however. I love games too much and I fear mixing my hobbie with my work. It's all I have.
If I want to make a game, I'll make an indy game, alone or in a small team. It'll be exactly what I want..
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I know exactly what you are talking about. I have mixed business and hobbies before and ended up liking the former hobby a lot less. By the way, that was music and I really hate the music business now. I still play music for fun though whenever I can.
Anyway, my hobby now is making "mods" for a racing game and I am part of a pretty good team and you wouldn't believe how many offers we have had to go pro with it. Most of our team actually did go pro for a while and made two fairly successful games but most of those guys ended up getting out of the gaming business and returned to our team as hobbiests. A few of them are still at it though and doing well.
Curiously enough, I joined this team after my previous mod team went pro and they became rather successful. You might have heard of their last game - Need For Speed:Shift.
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If I'm not wrong, I think EA recruited some GTR2 people to make NFS shift. Am I wrong? The game was good and the review were too.
EA did choose another direction for the next NFS. They bought Criterion (maker of Burnout Paradise) and made them make a new NFS Hot Pursuit. It's released this month and they really seems to have nailed it once again.
GJ to you for being part (or being close, I don't know) to all that. You kind of confirm my idea that I could completely burn me out of my hobby. Who knows, maybe that someday, I'm make my own mods too and that'll be enough for me. Who knows, I may end up working for the game industry myself.
Only time will tell. I'm not closing doors either. For now, I think I'll let my hobby be my hobby and let my work be my work.
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No, you're not wrong. Shift was made by Slighyly Mad Studios who was formerly Blimey and they are an offshoot of Simbin who made GTR, GTL, GTR2, Race, and GTR Evo. The old mod team was called the Simbin Development team or SBDT and we released the GTR02 mod for F1 2002 and a few earlier mods. That was a long time ago.
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i have the dream to work with Microsoft R & D in Life Sciences, Robotics domains.
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Need an assistant?
I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else...
-----
"The conversations he was having with himself were becoming ominous."-.. On the radio...
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your sig smells a copy of JSOP
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The most important step I ever did in my professional life was becoming a freelancer.
Yes, it gives you less security, the risk is somewhat higher, there are (few) days where you're working for 10-12 hours, but there are also (many) days where you can decide not to work at all (or at least not for a contractor who pays you...).
But the most important thing for me is that you have substantially more autonomy and freedom - and this definitely counts much more in my book than having piles of money...
blog.thomas-weller.de
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. Programmer - an organism that turns coffee into software.
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Thomas Weller wrote: But the most important thing for me is that you have substantially more autonomy and freedom - and this definitely counts much more in my book than having piles of money... Well I respect your freedom thoughts and based on that once would dream to have work with company which delivers part freedom and part security as well, else money is the only last thing that one need to Roll on else the other two have their own Importance in once life. However that vary person to person.
Have my 5 for your freedom.
Believe Yourself™
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This is not fair
Best regards,
Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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I see someone mentioned RIM in the text answers. Would that be a RIM job then? *ducks*
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Looking at the text answers, it seems there should have been another option called: Adult entertainment industry.
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Whenever I see doofuses playing with their Crackberries, I think to myself that all they're doing is RIMing.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction.
My work here is done.
or "Drink. Get drunk. Fall over." - P O'H
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If I were in the UK I'd apply at The Guardian. They are doing some interesting work with journalism and news data. Semantic web (both big and small s) and also user interaction for, amongst other things, defeating DOFOI (Denial Of Freedom Of Information) attacks (where you request something via FOI and the government tries to bury you in a mountain of documentation.) And Simon Willison works there, interesting guy.
Not sure I'd like to work for Apple even though I like their hardware and, some, of their software (can't stand iLife.) Seems a bit too paranoid in there and it's Steve's way or the highway.
Google could be interesting but I'd be worried I'd be just one more worker ant pecking away at their tagline ("to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful") with little to show for it. Plus I'm rather crap at algorithmic approaches to problems. Go figure.
Microsoft has an awesome R&D section but I think they've had their time. No more interesting times at Microsoft.
IBM, Oracle, SalesForce etc. are too enterprise focused. I like consumer systems, *less* horse-trading.
I voted Myself mainly because I'd like to give it a try someday, see if I have the balls to go it alone.
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luisnike19
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A colleague of mine got a mission patch the other week for helping NASA out with a satellite relay. When I saw it I was overcome, how cool is a real mission patch for a software/hardware guy.
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That's a great task! Software is everywhere.
luisnike19
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Oooooooh! I never thought of that one. Put me down, too!
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I have thought about that one however I prefer to write lots of code instead of writing a few lines of code and spending most of the time proving the code has 0 bugs.
John
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If it wasn't for their major operations centers all being located in hellholes (Florida, Alabama, Texas: saunas; DC, California: local insanity) Nasa'd be high on my dream employer list.
3x12=36
2x12=24
1x12=12
0x12=18
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But, but don't the space systems run on 386s or something. They have to be 100% reliable, no compromise no leeway. I like a little flexibility on the assessment of my work and I'm glad a bug just irritates the user instead of potentially killing them!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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The boss is a really nice guy, lets me have off any days I need and vacation plan is awesome...most the time.
But when there's a dead line he's an uncompromising SOB that demands it be done on time and right. If I get behind he makes me work ungodly hours for little or no pay and feeds me junk.
As long as I keep him happy he treats me good and stays off my assuming that everything goes right that is.
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That is what I am planning to do next year - work for myself, and why not?
Best regards,
Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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.... but my Spawny brother got a job sorting the pictures for the Anne Summer's website
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