What do you do?
An average day would depend on where you are in a project.
Early on in the project there is a lot of prototyping
of new ideas. The designers come to you with concepts
they want to try out and put into the game.
It will be up to us to try and get those ideas running,
so they can see what they look like. Towards the end
of the project when most of the actual game is up and
running, I spend most of my days fixing up bugs
to get the final version of the game ready.
There are about four programmers working on the project.
There is a producer, and other senior programmers who
help on the engine level. There are four or five artists
working at any one time, and one or two designers. It’s
quite dynamic around here - people come on and off different
projects. At any one time there would be about seven
people working on a project.
How did you get to where you are today?
I started off at university doing a Bachelor or Science.
I started doing chemistry, physics, and biology. I got
into the computer side of it in my second year, then
changed streams and ended up majoring in computer science.
In my second last year of university, we had a talk
from a program manager from a Melbourne games company
and that inspired me to start thinking about games.
I thought it might be something I’d like to do
and set my goal on doing that.
So I finished my degree at Melbourne, and then did
an extra subject on game programming at RMIT. I worked
on a demo while I was doing that final subject, and
ended up where I am now.
What skills are necessary for you
to do your job?
You need to have strong programming skills.
In university, we learnt mainly C programming. But in
the company here, it is mainly C++. So I spent a lot
of my own time learning languages outside of what they
teach you at university. And that goes for a whole range
of other stuff. There is a lot of C# programming and
batch programming that can help quite a lot as well.
How important was your education/training?
University was very important. But so is getting onto
a lot of games sites on the web and researching
and working on your own things as well.
In games programming, there is a lot of maths
and physics that I used day-to-day
at university which at the time I probably thought I
wouldn’t use. So my university degree was really
helpful from that point of view. Having strong maths
and physics is really important. But at the same time
there is also a lot of just programming
C++ stuff that isn’t necessarily learnt at university
that you need to teach yourself, and that can be even
more important.
Where do you see your career going?
I’ve been here two years and I will be just finishing
my second project in about a month or so. I’m
aspiring at the moment to move up to a Lead Programmer
within the next year or two. I try and take on a lot
of responsibility in the project. I enjoy doing that.
So I think that my current goal would be to move up
into a more senior role and oversee other programmers’
work on future projects.
What advice would you give to someone
wanting to enter the games industry?
The most important thing I can say is that university
was very important for me, or any other course would
have been. But to stand out and get a job straight out
of university, you really need to put in extra
time and extra research and
work on your own portfolio outside
of what you have to do for university. If you’ve
got a ‘killer’ demo, that’s sort of
what stands out. I think that’s what got me job.
A really important thing is to try and get to know
someone in the industry. It’s great to
have this demo but you’ve got
to try and get people to look at it. I knew a few people
by the time I got around to applying for a job and it
helped me get my foot in the door. So, going along to
any industry nights and organised functions
and anything like that to get to know people in the
industry is good.
I love my job. It’s a lot of fun. Like, I can
sit around with all of my friends, and they definitely
like hanging out for the weekend, but I can say I actually
look forward to coming to work each day.
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