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[ProgramGamer]

[Superb Joe]

good lord

[litHermit]

What's it called when you laugh out in sheer desperation and agitation?

[Lurk]

Story 2:
Husband and Wife

Love these kind of stories, it always ends in disaster. I've never understood how higher-ups couldn't see it coming when they usually get a lot of notice that things are going poorly. 

[Oroboros]

Story 2:
Husband and Wife

Love these kind of stories, it always ends in disaster. I've never understood how higher-ups couldn't see it coming when they usually get a lot of notice that things are going poorly.  

Happens so often it makes my head spin. Seeing that nobody has thrown their hat in, here's another fun one.

Story 3: The Doomed Citizens Of the Stars

I was between jobs and had applied to a studio that I won't name (Hint: They raised a record breaking amount of crowdfunding and are incredibly controversial). Basically they were rapidly ramping up production in one of their satellite studios, and they wanted an initial interview over lunch. The urgent desire for new heads seemed pretty obvious in the email correspondence.

I show up to the lunch at a local burger shop and there's a few artists there, but not the director who scheduled the interview. "Couldn't make it," they said. This was a little bizarre but hey, guess he was busy. We started talking about the project and some red flags started to pop up.

Artist 1: "So (Head Guy) is wanting us to have two full planets with full scale cities built for our MMO. About 1:1 scale with what a normal city would look like in real life."

Me: "Ok..Full cities? How many people do you guys have currently working on it? What's the timeline?"

Artist 2: "About 40 at this point between two studios, (Head Guy) wants it done in about 11 months. We'll ship it as modules for backers."

Me: : Oh..... (Internal alarm bells start ringing)

The gist was, the scope was INSANE. They were incredibly understaffed and were planning on ramping up production rapidly. If any of you guys know what happens when you add dozens upon dozens of people in a short time, a metric ass ton of problems can pop up with people not used to working with each other. You factor in time for training everyone and getting them used to the pipeline with a time crunch...We have worst case scenario working conditions waiting to happen.

Still, a job was a job. I was willing to take anything locally before pursuing other options. The rest of the meeting went casually but I left wondering who thought this was doable. They said they liked my work and would follow up in a few days, it was a Friday.

A few days pass and I hear nothing, so I reach out to the HR person who contacted me. Standard procedure when following up. I explain I had interviewed for a job.

Another person replies.

HR: "Well, I'm sorry to inform you all those people aren't available anymore. They no longer work here."

Everyone I had talked to had been fired after the interview.

"What job were you applying for again?"

I did not reply.

Needless to say I quickly realized I might have dodged a bullet with this studio. Turns out there's many horror stories from people who worked there, I like to think I was spared some prolonged suffering by this secondhand experience.

[ProgramGamer]

[Cobralad]

saved it in case someone says {MODULAR SPACE GAME} is not a scam and is actually working right now.

[Superb Joe]

standing as if to deliver a monumental speech: lol

[Lurk]

The gist was, the scope was INSANE. They were incredibly understaffed and were planning on ramping up production rapidly.

This seems to have become a standard in the industry though. Megalomaniacal 'creatives' understaffing a team and discarding them along the way. They know they can be replaced easily since most AAA 'art direction' nowadays can be summed up with the words '3d scans' and 'substance generic materials'.

[Oroboros]

Story 4: What Organization?

Our school emphasized organization over the years to keep track of projects during duress (I was in a game centric program that simulated crunch to prepare us), so that was hard coded into me when I entered the industry a ways back.

The first companies were incredibly organized throughout, good management structure and systems in place to keep us on track. Some minor crunch would happen here and there but it was avoidable. Due to Microsoft dropping a contract suddenly though, I got laid off at one company and got a lead from a fresh startup nearby. The project seemed awesome, with lots of veterans I knew by name so I took the job. They were planning on finishing their debut game in a years time.

Day 1: I arrive to the job ready for my orientation, and am ready to start working. I head to my lead at this 20 something large company.

Me: "So is there a style guide? Where's the documentation and asset list?"
Lead: "Oh we don't do that here."
Studio head overhears and chips in: "Oh yeah we don't believe in paper work here."
Me (Internally):

This project was an RPG of sorts, and if you know anything about RPGs, we're talking hundreds to thousands of assets. That day the dreaded reality of what was coming sank into me instantly.

Long story short: A few months into the project the numbnut leads realized this utopian idea of not keeping track of asset productions and general task management to gauge progress had backfired horrendously. The studio descended into hard crunch for 6-7 months to catch up on the incredible backlog of missing assets required, the longest prolonged one I've endured in my career. The game finished but I nearly quit the industry over the experience due to my health degrading. Ultimately I had enough after receiving a joke of a raise and headed to a studio with a much healthier environment and work/life balance, but it was a lesson that small high risk startups are not necessarily better ones.

The lead was ultimately fired and the studio tanked due to mismanagement not long after. I have had a comically rocky career if you're noticing a trend here. But mainly when I was starting off and still naive. Over time you learn to spot the red flags early on.

[Alevice]

Man, what a track.

My career as an IT Admin is full of those. Large projects I managed to do in record time only so they never release.

Current job has me with switching shifts all the time to the point I have lost track of weekdays and events.

[ProgramGamer]

Oof, these are some insane stories.

I don't really have much industry experience yet, but I have been in a college program for game dev, and I've had some dumb things happen there, so I hope that counts.

College group project GONE WRONG (NOT CLICKBAIT)

In the second semester of our second year, we had to do a group project where we would all get together in a big team and make one game together. I say big, but really by that point we were only six people out of about 18 who were in the program initially (this is not really the incredible part of the story, post-secondary education in general has drop rates in that ballpark).

Anyway, we did some brainstorming for game concepts, and I proposed a dead simple one that ended up being chosen, which was a hybrid between an idle clicker and tower defense. I proposed it because I thought it would be simple enough to not get carried away with feature creep. I wasn't wrong, but it didn't really end up being relevant, and you'll see why.

Then, because our profs seemed to insist on it, we decided to use Unity for the project. While we had used it before for some projects the previous semester, we'd never really figured out a good methodology for working in a group with Unity since we'd never learned any kind of source control (which is regrettable for a game development program). Our strategy was then to work on individual parts of the project, export them as asset packs, and then integrate them into one main project file at regular intervals. We then divided the workload among ourselves and began working away at our assigned parts.

However, what we hadn't anticipated was that the paperwork our teacher was making us fill out was taking a lot of our in-class time. Plus, our leader didn't have the best idea of where exactly we were at in the project progression wise, so tasks ended up slipping between the cracks of the project. So, naturally, because of our collective lack of experience and organization, we fell behind. What went from a comfortably simple idea turned into a scramble to get anything at all showing for the end of the semester. We had trouble implementing pathfinding, struggled with Unity's way of doing things a lot because we'd never gotten courses on how to use it and had to just watch the tutorials available on their website, and none of us were artists, so we spent way too much time trying to retrofit asset store models into our project.

Then, a bit more than halfway through the semester, our team lead went ahead and quit the program entirely. Like, he decided, out of the blue, to just quit school and take a job that was offered to him. As far as I know, he's a radio show host now. This set us back about a week as we had to appoint a new lead and get the old one to transfer all his paperwork to us.

Long story short, we struggled a lot to even get the game in a functional state, and even then the result was kind of sad. The pacing of the game was way off, placing towers was super janky, and the UI ended up being the best looking part of it all (and even that looked passable at best). Anyway, we ended up getting "something" done, and we presented it at the end of the year at an event that the college hosts every year.

But the final nail in the coffin of this story for me is that, at the end of the year, as we were showcasing the game in the lobby of the college, another one of our programming profs passed by and said, with an air of telling us something confidential, that to be frank, the game's concept was a terrible one. I replied that it was chosen because it was supposed to be an easy idea to implement, but he insisted, saying "yeah, but it's still a pretty crappy concept", and I didn't really have the guts to object. All I could really do at that point was quietly nod and sulk about it until the event was over.

Anyway, I fubernucking hate school, and I think I'm at least a little justified to feel that way when stuff like this happens on a regular basis.

[Cobralad]

Like, he decided, out of the blue, to just quit school and take a job that was offered to him.

that actually sounds reasonable.

[s0]

Like, he decided, out of the blue, to just quit school and take a job that was offered to him.

that actually sounds reasonable.

Yeah that happens all the time. Still sucks for other group members tho of course.

[Oroboros]

College group project GONE WRONG (NOT CLICKBAIT)

Source control REALLY needs to be taught at schools with team sizes that big. 3-4 people it's manageable, after that it becomes extremely difficult to organize projects.

Regardless I think you got a great lesson out of it for scope, these types of school experiences prepare you in a good way for the industry. Failure is the best lesson one can have I think, it has a long term positive impact.

[ProgramGamer]

That's a nice spin on it, thanks for the positive words

Anyway, I guess in retrospect I'm not super mad because the game failed, but rather because that guy left us in the middle of it and also because my idea got chastised by my teacher. It felt bad because he was someone who I respected a lot while I was there. He was strict, but not to the point of being unfair, so it made me want to succeed to prove him what I could do, which I guess explains why his jab at the game's concept stung like it did.

[Oroboros]

That's a nice spin on it, thanks for the positive words

Anyway, I guess in retrospect I'm not super mad because the game failed, but rather because that guy left us in the middle of it and also because my idea got chastised by my teacher. It felt bad because he was someone who I respected a lot while I was there. He was strict, but not to the point of being unfair, so it made me want to succeed to prove him what I could do, which I guess explains why his jab at the game's concept stung like it did.

It might be a bummer now but in time you'll realize how subjective opinions are. Just because they might be in positions of power it doesn't mean they have good judgement on all topics.

In my school the majority of my faculty was out of touch with current trends and ideas in videogame development and I dealt with this constantly. Later I realized the last time the people teaching me had been in the game industry was the Nintendo 64 era. Have to take everything with a grain of salt.

[J-Snake]

Oof, these are some insane stories.

I don't really have much industry experience yet, but I have been in a college program for game dev, and I've had some dumb things happen there, so I hope that counts.

College group project GONE WRONG (NOT CLICKBAIT)

In the second semester of our second year, we had to do a group project where we would all get together in a big team and make one game together. I say big, but really by that point we were only six people out of about 18 who were in the program initially (this is not really the incredible part of the story, post-secondary education in general has drop rates in that ballpark).

Anyway, we did some brainstorming for game concepts, and I proposed a dead simple one that ended up being chosen, which was a hybrid between an idle clicker and tower defense. I proposed it because I thought it would be simple enough to not get carried away with feature creep. I wasn't wrong, but it didn't really end up being relevant, and you'll see why.

Then, because our profs seemed to insist on it, we decided to use Unity for the project. While we had used it before for some projects the previous semester, we'd never really figured out a good methodology for working in a group with Unity since we'd never learned any kind of source control (which is regrettable for a game development program). Our strategy was then to work on individual parts of the project, export them as asset packs, and then integrate them into one main project file at regular intervals. We then divided the workload among ourselves and began working away at our assigned parts.

However, what we hadn't anticipated was that the paperwork our teacher was making us fill out was taking a lot of our in-class time. Plus, our leader didn't have the best idea of where exactly we were at in the project progression wise, so tasks ended up slipping between the cracks of the project. So, naturally, because of our collective lack of experience and organization, we fell behind. What went from a comfortably simple idea turned into a scramble to get anything at all showing for the end of the semester. We had trouble implementing pathfinding, struggled with Unity's way of doing things a lot because we'd never gotten courses on how to use it and had to just watch the tutorials available on their website, and none of us were artists, so we spent way too much time trying to retrofit asset store models into our project.

Then, a bit more than halfway through the semester, our team lead went ahead and quit the program entirely. Like, he decided, out of the blue, to just quit school and take a job that was offered to him. As far as I know, he's a radio show host now. This set us back about a week as we had to appoint a new lead and get the old one to transfer all his paperwork to us.

Long story short, we struggled a lot to even get the game in a functional state, and even then the result was kind of sad. The pacing of the game was way off, placing towers was super janky, and the UI ended up being the best looking part of it all (and even that looked passable at best). Anyway, we ended up getting "something" done, and we presented it at the end of the year at an event that the college hosts every year.

But the final nail in the coffin of this story for me is that, at the end of the year, as we were showcasing the game in the lobby of the college, another one of our programming profs passed by and said, with an air of telling us something confidential, that to be frank, the game's concept was a terrible one. I replied that it was chosen because it was supposed to be an easy idea to implement, but he insisted, saying "yeah, but it's still a pretty crappy concept", and I didn't really have the guts to object. All I could really do at that point was quietly nod and sulk about it until the event was over.

Anyway, I fubernucking hate school, and I think I'm at least a little justified to feel that way when stuff like this happens on a regular basis.

Pretty much a copy paste story of what a relative of mine went through: idle game, Unity, teamwork gone wrong, prof out of touch with games/game-deving etc. Smells like you too are in a bad college program, at least regarding this part. But game-dev programs tend to be not a very grounded and serious subject.

All that aside, more importantly, especially in your young green days, I think it is important to experience failure. You have learned a substantial lesson early on that way. You got an awareness about all the problems you encountered. That is a fundamental part of learning. So really, it is not for nothing. Just take it as a lesson.

(Your hate for the school is still justified.)