Posts by Furyo

  • Calling those in the Industry

    That's quite a mouthful, so I'll try and address questions one by one but you can always ask for more info later on...

    - Would there be a difference if you actually had a degree, one that has nothing to do with game design at all ?

    That entirely depends on the field you'd be looking to get a job into. Artists preferably have one, programmers absolutely do need, designers come from every walk of life. That's a generalization but you're likely to encounter that. Obviously mod work can replace a degree, even more favorably if the mod is widely known and presents some groundbreaking stuff. Day of Defeat is one example of a mod that didn't require degrees from the team for them to get hired. Given you have no experience in modding beyond several years ago, it's very likely you can't count on that.

    I would say, absolutely stay with the degree if only to secure yourself one, which will help you in your life regardless of whether or not you can enter the gaming industry.

    - Well, can you still get a job without any degree but a strong portfolio?

    Yes you can, again preferably in design and art departments. However you do need that strong portfolio (most of the time) so you better get to that.

    - Should I drop out and try my luck, or still try get my degree even though it has nothing to do with game design and I hate it with a passion ?

    Hating your degree is a luxury I'm really not sure you're in the position to afford. That sounds rough, and it is, but I think more than anything you need to finish that degree, if only to prove to your future employers you can finish what you start. A degree is a start, however irrelevant to the position it may seem at first. A degree doesn't only teach you skills, it gives you a method to working and delivering on what you were tasked to do.

    - Say I do drop out and get a job, is my lacking degree preventing me from moving up?

    In my experience, I really don't think it will. You'll move up based on your achievements and the games you work on, not because of your degree. A degree is a gateway into a career, you make your own luck after that.

    - What are my chances of getting employed in North America as a EU citizen nowadays?

    Without any prior experience, absolutely none nowadays. To get a work visa in the US, your employer needs to prove that your addition to the team brings something no US citizen could do himself/herself but first and foremost you need to have a degree. Period.

    Things aren't so tough in Canada, where for instance you don't need a degree (relevant to your job or not) but companies won't give you a chance unless you've started proving you can deliver. Again Day of Defeat was good enough for one other Mapcorian to try his luck here straight from Europe, so you get the idea of how big your work needs to be before that's the case. And this was 5 years ago.

    -

    I've seen some nice job offers, say I apply for them(based in CA/US) and they want me for an interview do I get a refund for my flight/trip?

    If a company wants to see you for an interview, they will provide all the necessary accommodations and pay for it. WHEN you get to that stage in your career, you probably already have worked on some title.

    - Or how should I start? Is it "cocky" to apply for jobs overseas when you have no work experience at all?

    Cocky or not, you most likely will never hear back from them. If you really are going to work in this field, you need to start by giving yourself the chance studios won't give you at this stage. Pick modding up again, do your own designs, and prove you're someone that can bring something valuable to the existing team.

    I would also advise you to stay in Europe for now. For one thing the paperwork will be inexistent to get you a job. You can find some good studios in Germany that can get you a foot in the door. I've seen guys in the modding scene getting interviews recently, there is demand for entry level positions still. Hell it only took me one map before Ubisoft took me on, so you could be that lucky (as luck really plays its major part too)

  • Selling a game concept to a dev studio

    There is also a difference to be made between giving your project to a studio that will go look for a publisher itself, and going to see the publisher yourself.

    If you decide to follow through with this, I would tell you to try and cut the middle man if you can. You won't be better served than by doing it yourself. If you can see a publisher with a playable demo, you can negotiate the terms of your contract a bit more. Including another studio is only making you jump through another set of hoops.

    The studio has its own goals, will try and secure funding for itself, not the project, and once that's secured your project could turn out radically different, you could be fired and you'll have lost your project meanwhile.

    Go straight for the publisher, you may also have a very marketable project with lovable characters that will do for easy merchandising, you could negotiate a percentage of the profit made on that instead.

    Basically what I'm saying is the publisher will have many different angles to see this negotiation from, whereas the studio will only have one. Besides once you've presented your game to the studio, there is no certainty whatsoever they won't try and make it themselves without you.

    You'd be surprised how many studios ask whether they can keep your documents after the interview is done. Especially in France with the state of the industry there.

  • Portal: Prelude

    So I gave it another go, because I'm equally as convinced that there are some great designs in there as there are some very dubious ones. In a nutshell, I had to noclip my way through certain key chambers that I found were borderline insane, only to find the next one was ingeniously conceived.

    Any room that has time based death traps is a place where I felt terribly frustrated, and all of the others where I was given time to think things through gave me the feeling this mod was thoroughly thought out. Some of the chambers with the turrets are awesome fun, and very close to something Valve would release, if only for the somewhat meticulous use of portals, where you can still fail what you were trying to do because of a few centimeters here and there. Not forgiving to say the least.

    I'll probably finish the mod, but it's going to take me time, because as much as I was and am able to play through Portal on a single run, this mod has me needing to take a break after a couple chambers.

  • Selling a game concept to a dev studio

    I would really encourage people NEVER to go look for publishers for their own little game project. There are many different ways to come up with solutions yourself and have both you and your game a lot more audience.

    It's simple enough. If you go see the big wigs, they couldn't care less taking risks on your own little game that they still need to market and invest a lot of resources on when they can play with their own portfolio of brands. If you go see the small publishers, they won't have the resources necessary to help you as much as you'd like, and generally speaking their current status is due to bad business deals for years anyway.

    Make your own game, have it on XBLA if you can afford that, talk to Jason Holtman to get it on Steam, make your own next Braid. Start your own 2 persons studio, and sell it back once you've made a name for yourself if you're not enjoying that crazy lifestyle anymore.

    Do you think the Braid creators couldn't join a vast list of studios right now? In a heartbeat. Could they do that before? Probably too, but with half the salary and half the job title. Take the bull by the horns and make your own little gem. If you're that good, the accolades will start pouring in before you know it. This is a perfect example of how to shine as an entrepreneur.

  • [wip] zg_stuttgart

    This is probably your work I like the most. For some reason it really makes me think of an alternate reality. I'm sure you're actually depicting a german city as it really was, except I can't help but think of a more sci-fi setting at the same time. Really original either way, and other than the previous concerns mentioned above the only other spot where something felt odd was in the right bottom part of the 4th screen, where that stock model stands out. The wood is probably too clean compared to the rest of the architecture

  • Portal: Prelude

    I talked to Moroes directly to voice my concerns, and only made it to Chamber 5 before my patience ran out. I haven't experienced all the bad things you mentioned above, but the unintuitive level design was one that was glaringly obvious. I'm told Nyk018 wanted to cater to the hardcore Portal players, something I clearly am NOT, only playing the game occasionally. Overall I think it's a mistake to design the mod for this very precise and knowledgeable target group by artificially increasing the difficulty (playing with glitches, not making clear paths in the levels) instead of doing what Valve did, which is build the main game for anyone to enjoy and give additional challenges that are just copies of the maps with less ingredients for the hardcore masses.

  • New Compile Tools for any Source game

    qUiCkSiLvEr just released his latest tool called VBCT (Valve Batch Compile Tool) which acts as a replacement for the Hammer interface to compile your map.

    It also brings a vast list of improvements over Hammer as it gives you help and description of each of the processes along the way, yet still acts as a simplified expert mode.

    I was fortunate enough to be among the beta testers for qS for the past few weeks, and I must say this tool is my new best friend mapping. In contrary to Nem's own tool, this one is a lot more user friendly. While I realize this isn't exactly the kinda target visiting this forum regularly, I personally prefer it over Nem's.

    Give it a try !

    http://qsextreme.com/vbct/

  • Deus Ex 3

    It's actually a very valid point to me, and while my previous reply may have been misinterpreted as not caring for feedback, the "some times" in the quote was important. It's actually a major design decision, not just a small one as it impacts the entire game.

  • Deus Ex 3

    Deus Next: The next installment in the long series of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" video games where nothing should be different but everything that is exactly identical also sucks.

    Fan boys may be the bread and butter of this industry, but there are times when not listening to them at all should really be your first priority.

  • MapCore Job Census

    Fixed . The French Canadian keyboards do have that character (as it's also used in French over "i") but I'm still stuck with posting on Mapcore from home (qwerty keyboard this time around) as Ubi blocks phpbb forums... It's actually weird I can send Pms but not post....

  • MODS available directly through steam

    I see, clearly other priorities came in the way. The most important one probably the fact they needed to establish Steam as the leading digital distribution platform, something no amount of mods could ever do, and using the bandwith for that purpose and nothing else was a smart move. Now that this is starting, I only hope this is the first step towards the global client based distribution of all things mod in the future. Steam has a peer to peer system already, it would be so sweet to enable it for players to share the custom maps and models on the fly, with no waiting time.

  • MODS available directly through steam

    I honestly don't ever remember Valve promising that kinda thing, and in the past we have had other answers such as " all content would have to be Valve approved etc" It's a pretty nice move, which also basically means Steam gives them a way to support mods without purchasing them, which only means more and more will benefit from it.