What are common keywords any game design resume should include?
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2d ago
It depends on the kind of designer position you're aiming for. We want to see key words for common tasks that those kind of designers have done. Here are some examples: Common Experience, craft, create, live, season, update, content, schedule, create, design, team, player, UX. Level Design Layout, place, trigger, volume, spawn, point, reward, treasure, quest, lighting, light, dark, texture, object, obstacle, blocking, whitebox, direct, draw, through, inviting, space, place, multiplayer, competitive, cooperative, co-op, deathmatch, capture the flag, ctf, domination, asymmetric, symmetric. Ques ..read more
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Is there much of a difference between a digital media degree and a game design degree when it comes to applying for jobs within the gaming sector? Or is it dependent on the role you are applying for?
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4d ago
There is a difference between having a degree and not having one in a relevant field, but it isn't as important as one might think. The kind of degree you hold really only matters for the initial application round, where the recruiters sift through all of the applications and decide who gets callbacks and who gets dropped. This is because, realistically, we can't call every applicant back for each open position. Large studios like Blizzard or Riot often have literal hundreds of applications for open positions, and calling everyone back would take an army of recruiters. This means that recruit ..read more
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Is it common for Gameplay Programmers to also work in other areas (rendering, engine, tools, etc) while on the same project? Why does that happen?
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4d ago
It happens on occasion, but not super often. Usually, you want a subject matter expert to handle issues with the subject - an engine programmer to work on the engine, a rendering programmer to work on the renderer, and so on. The reason for this should be obvious - you want an expert to do the work so that the best work gets done and you get your money's worth from paying that expert to be an expert. However, that expert may not always be available - maybe she's out on parental leave, maybe he has too many other fires to fight, maybe she's gone home for the day and it's 2am and we need to fix ..read more
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So recently MTG had to ban the vampire card Vein Ripper because it could be cheated into play on turn three by Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, all because Vein Ripper is a vampire. Looking at the combo, the combo appears really obvious. My question is, do designers not keep some book of warnings for future designers to avoid potentially broken combinations? For example, a searchable word document that says “be careful making an item that does X because of Y existing item”?
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6d ago
Nah. Trying to do this basically results in hopelessness because there's no end to it where you need to design a couple hundred new and different cards every year. It's such a combinatoric explosion and there are so many potential interactions that it quickly becomes an unsustainable mess. It's generally better to look at how things work and adjust as you go, since there's just too much complexity for any single designer (or even design team) to know about. You do your best and you adjust as you go. That's the best you can really hope for. Let's also be clear - Wizards of the Coast didn't ba ..read more
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What is the gnarliest coding hack you’ve ever encountered?
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1w ago
The weirdest coding hack I’ve ever seen myself was in a very popular first person shooter series whose engine my studio was using for a different game. At one point, the animation system pulled a very specific hard-coded string from the string table (the repository used to hold all of the pieces of text in the game for translating and such) and cast it to animation data (i.e. it declared “Whatever it was, we don’t care. It’s animation data now” and treated it as such), then applied that animation data to the character in the game. The animation programmer didn’t understand it either. We could ..read more
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I know you have said designers/engineers in the games industry are people that love games (because they could be paid more for the same skills by working in a different industry). Does the same hold true for AAA producers or executives? Do the people making high-level business decisions for big developers/publishers actually like games, or care about the future of games? (in terms other than how it affects the interests of their company/position)
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1w ago
This might surprise you, but more often than not… yes.  My most recent executive producer started off as a customer service agent at the studio, and worked his way through QA and production. The CEO of that company was a producer who worked on Everquest for seven years. Another executive producer I worked for started as a customer service agent for Dark Age of Camelot, became a writer, then producer on Warhammer Online, and now he’s doing something else.  Even EA’s CEO Andrew Wilson was senior producer, then executive producer on the FIFA franchise from 2006 to 2011 before he was p ..read more
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Every once in a while, in the pre-patch days, you’d hear of a game where later printings (like a “greatest hits” version) were in fact slightly different versions with bug fixes or the occasional tiny balance adjustment. How did that sort of thing happen, given the rarity of it?
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1w ago
Amusingly, this was often because the original gold master build was no longer viable and they had to make a wholly new build to distribute. Sometimes this was due to situations like the cert rules changing between the original launch and the second print run, others because our certified build was lost or corrupted. If we have to make a whole new build for cert submission anyway, we might as well fix some of the bugs/balance issues that have been bothering us while we're in there. The main reason it was such a rarity is because the certification process was (and still is) damn expensive. My ..read more
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There’s a lot of noise online about live service games being detrimental to the quality of games, such as initial launches being bug ridden and with incomplete features. Is there any truth to this last statement? And are the spending patterns reflecting the idea that people are dissatisfied with this model of monetization?
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1w ago
I think that it is true that initial launches are indeed more bug ridden today than they were before day 1 patches were possible, but the reason for this is much less nefarious than most are imagining. I was already working in games before that big change happened and I saw what happened from the inside. Before we could patch, producers would cut content and features much more mercilessly because we lacked the time to finish that content properly and still pass certification. We couldn't ever modify or add stuff to the disc or cartridge, so we had to make sure that what went out was the most ..read more
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How much use does Rust (the programming language) see in game development?
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2w ago
I haven't ever seen it used. Game dev still primarily runs on C++ to do the heavy lifting. We often build internal tools with C#, Python, or Perl. Some games will run interpreted scripting languages like Lua for designers to script out encounters and such. RPG Maker utilizes Ruby or Javascript for its scripting language, depending on the version. To my knowledge, nobody uses Rust, Swift, or Go in game development. [Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon] Got a burning question you want answered? Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky ..read more
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Has every move been invented? Maybe this is a weird one, but within a specific genre—take MOBAs for example—do you think every combination of move properties has been done? Push, pull, stun, life-steal, or line, cone, circle, or unblockable, grab, charge, projectile, hitscan, etc etc; is the total design space explored by now? Or is it boundless do you think?
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2w ago
We haven't done everything possible, but it isn't really necessary to do everything for the sake of exploring that space. When we're creating character abilities for a game, they follow these principles: Be simple to understand Show that something has happened (almost) immediately Have some cost or tradeoff to using the move Many character abilities that end up on the cutting room floor are cut for violating one of these principles. Throwing a fireball in Street Fighter, for example, follows all three principles. The move creates a damaging projectile that moves across the screen at a stead ..read more
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