(This is assuming you work in the games industry in the first place.)
I like making indie games but I’ve come to the conclusion that many big game companies are not that great to work for. Low pay (compared with equivalent jobs in non-game industry companies), long hours and sometimes hiring of ‘interns’ who don’t get paid at all. You don’t see many older people working in the game industry, maybe because of ‘burn out’ or maybe they just leave to do something else.
So I was thinking, what sort of job would you do (or you do now) if you weren’t in the game industry. Assuming you could still play around with Unity etc. in your spare time.
I am looking for ideas as I don’t think I want to work in the games industry any more. (That includes mobile, console or web games too).
But seriously, I would definitely try to look for a job in which I could use my artistic skills. I would love to work in the CG industry, making some movies.
I work on business software as an automated regression testing intern currently. How do you define older? Our programmers that are 40+ greatly out number those of us who are younger.
So you want to use your game design skills outside of game design world?
Well there are a lot of software & animation companies, but you will still run into the same long hours & low pay problems if you are at the lower end of the company.
What you might consider instead is to work with small game design studios. They usually don’t hire interns and will pay you a decent percent of the profit.
Or better yet gather few people and start working on your own game. This is a relatively big investment on your side, but if you’re confident you should do it.
Well, the job I had before games, invovled being an assistant store manager… so … probably a store manager if games didn’t exist at all and we were going backwards a decade or two.
I currently work on a team that programs an internet application. (web development) Lately I’ve been doing a lot of server-side coding and database management. Mainly MVC-style structures.
I’ve never worked in the game industry. There is very little presence for the game industry out here in Arizona. Almost no major employers to even target. There’s a burgeoning indie scene, but it’s pretty much all small-time, so the employment opportunities are slim. You’re either rolling your own thing, or you’re in an industry other than games. Web development pays the bills, has a decent location, and is not very demanding on my time. It’s not exactly my passion, but I’m not complaining, it’s a pretty solid job.
Making games is far ahead at the top but if that doesn’t work out there’s a lot of stuff I’d rather do before being a stock boy.
3D character animation.
TV ads post production.
Something related to illustrations if I can find someone to pay for that lol.
IF none of that works, there’s an internet meltdown or something. I sometimes I think about carpentry… I could at least attempt learning it. Because carpentry is useful and it involves building and creating, and if all goes well you can involve the art side.
I do process engineering. Currently working for a large chemical manufacturer, documenting the best work practices and rolling these out across their various plants.
Regardless, I was always going to end up in something highly technical. Science, enginneering, computer programming or the like.
I was a financial system sysadmin/config/ba/tester for some of our federal government agencies the last few years. I’m studying now (game design) but still get called in to contract short term. If I wasn’t doing games, & my partner stayed employed, I’d be enjoying retirement & being a stay at home dad (enjoying life while they were at school)
Long ago in a galaxy (er… state) far far away I wanted to be a game programmer working for the companies of the time. I never actually pursued that and instead just spent a massive amount of time continually improving my skills by working on my own game projects for fun.
I got into software development professionally. Just not in the games sector. I find it just about as satisfying as game development. Still doing design. Still doing software engineering. Still doing some GUI stuff. And actually I was able to apply my game programming skills to business programming doing things in different ways than traditionally was done. This helped me to stand out (in a good way).
So… I am doing what I would be doing if I didn’t have a career making games and it is very satisfying because I am still creating things.
Software developer, Embed system programming, Robotics. In fact, I learned game related stuff in my spare time, when I graduated from school, it was all software oriented (nothing related to games). Even my first job was in a software company, I worked in the aerospace market for a while before jumping into games companies. If I ever had to do something else, it will be that.
