What do you do?
As a project manager, I look after and assign people
to different roles, meet the time lines, and look after
the quality. I’m responsible for all of my programmers,
and report to a producer. My role is to make sure the
programs follow the design and meets a certain quality.
On a typical day we start the day with a team meeting
and talk about what we’ve achieved over the last
few days, hurdles or obstacles coming up and what people
will be doing for the rest of the day. I might do some
coding. I might attend a meeting or two, discussing
the game design or architecture. A lead programmer will
generally work on only one game at a time, but across
different platforms.
The game I’m working on at present will take
about two years, which is longer than usual. A typical
project would go for about 18 months. At present I have
a team of four programmers, but over the next six months
this will grow to fourteen. For consoles, the team sizes
really increase. Teams can run from 30 to 70 people.
How did you get to where you
are today?
I’ve been passionate about video games since
I was 15. I started with an Atari 2600 and thought this
is for me. So I sent a letter to a games company and
said ‘I want to be a games programmer!’
They sent a letter back saying ‘you’re too
young, go away and get a degree’. So I did that.
I got a computer science degree.
Somewhere a long the way I lost my way and got a ‘real
job’ and for 7 years, did a bit of business programming.
I wasn’t happy doing that, so thought about what
I was happy doing. At that point I spent about a year
creating demonstration games and submitted them to a
Melbourne company. They accepted me and I’ve been
game programming ever since – that was about eight
and half years ago.
I’m really happy I went that way and followed
my dreams. I’ve only worked in one other company
– it was a large company with big offices in different
countries, so I’ve been able to work in a few
different studios.
What skills are necessary for you
to do your job?
You would have to have some sort of programming
background. I believe a computer science degree
is almost a pre-requisite, unless you’ve got extremely
special abilities or demonstrations to show. A computer
science degree gives you a general grounding in the
mathematical and programming concepts that you need
to become a programmer.
There are generally tools that you need to learn that
every game studios uses, and certain compilers and environments.
And, if you are starting out you can definitely get
experience in those things without being part of a professional
organization. So when we look for younger people and
graduates we look for people who have learned those
tools themselves. You need strong C++ skills.
For a program manager role, you need communication
skills. You need to not be afraid to direct
people’s work, and be stronger in your personality
than you need to be when working as a programmer. There
are general management skills and things
that you can learn in a management course. A business
degree course would also be helpful in taking on a role
such as mine.
I don’t have any experience in that side of thing
but working in the games industry for a long period
of time has given me that experience. I guess you can
sort of elevate yourself to a lead role if you show
that you are ready for that kind of thing. For lead
programmers you are generally looking for about five
to eight years experience. It depends on the
company. If there is an opening in a company it is possible
to jump into that role with less experience.
How important was your education/training?
It is definitely not impossible to get in to games
without a degree because there are people who work in
my studio that don’t have any formal qualifications,
but it’s not the norm. Normally people have a
computer science degree or some sort of diploma in computing,
with a specialist course in games programming as well.
I believe having a computer science degree
really gives you an edge against people that’s
don’t have those computing backgrounds as you
get exposure to a huge variety of programming styles
and methodologies, and also mathematics as well. Having
a grounding in mathematics really helps.
Where do you see your career going?
There a number of different career paths you can take
from a lead programming position. Obviously, if you
are stronger on the management side then you can take
a more management based role. You could become a
technical producer for instance, or an option
to become technical director that oversees
a project and the technical requirements within the
studio.
There are also specialist roles – an example
is AI, a graphics role another, or maybe just a technologist
in general. Graphics and AI are probably the areas where
you can specialise. Perhaps physics as well –
that’s gaining a lot of ground as a specialist
area as there’s so much more physics in today’s
games than there was in the past. They’re getting
more and more complex and physics plays a huge part.
What advice would you give to someone
wanting to enter the games industry?
It depends on what level they are at already. If you’re
not part of the game industry, I recommend that you
be extremely stubborn and stick
to your guns. If you keep trying everything
you can, you’ll eventually get into the industry.
The way I did it was working after work on my own demos
and making sure that I knew exactly how a game was put
together so that when the interview came around to those
questions, I would be ready for them.
There is so many different organisations and websites,
you can become familiar with the industry without being
part of it. That’s really what we look for in
a graduate, someone who has a real passion
to be in the games industry; they are familiar with
games, they know the basic environments that they’ll
have to work in as programmers, and they have the skills.
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