Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

On a general rule, in the game industry when you 'work on salary' for a gaming company you generally negotiate a 'Yearly' wage. (ie: $25,000/year) and the number of hours is never specified. Also, usually there is specific mention that the hours can become long at different times during the dev cycle. So if you sign for $25,000/year and get paid bi-weekly then you would get $961.54 minus the tax and deductions every two weeks. It should also be noted that there are often long 'down-times' in a dev cycle and the same guy that feels overworked during a 'crunch' feels undervalued during the 'lulls'.

I once worked 6 months straight 16 hours/day (including travel time to and from work [1.5x2=3 hours]) on a reduced salary (something like $12,000/year) and managed to survive.

I've been there, done that. I wouldn't put the full blame on EA, the 'workers' knew what they were getting into. They just probably thought it was 'glamorous work' and accepted the deal. Little did they know, but they did (like me) accept the deal. They'll know better the next time around.

Nuf said, Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Just out of curiosity, is that a fairly typical wage for an American working in the gaming industry?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

There are a number of games mentioned on the ShrapnelGames.com web page which I am eagerly waiting for (and one new one which is not mentioned there)

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Deccan.. you said.. "Just out of curiosity, is that a fairly typical wage for an American working in the gaming industry?"

The nunber was plucked out of the air, it in no way reflects 'actual' wages. However, I was making 25k (cdn) back during that scenario I mentionned. Today I know of several people working at gamming companies that are 'on salary' and the wages range from 24 to 38k/year (for my artist friends) I don't know about programmers, but I figure they probably get more just because 'programming' is percieved as 'harder' work. (I'm still not convinced of that.) Many companies work at just slightly above minimum wage for 'salaried' employees. I heard that many artists and programmers nowadays are only getting between 16 and 20k /year. Much of the industry has gone through many 'restructuring' and have been forced to downscale development costs. This in turn has lowered the agerage salary of the grunts in the industry.

Think of it, if a project has an in-house (salaried) dev-team of say 20 people, at 25k/year and it takes a year and a half to produce the product, that means that the dev cost for the project is $750,000 and this does not take into account management, marketing, or any other 'misc' people that are not part of the actual 'product dev-team'

When you take a company with larger salaries and larger dev-teams you can easilly see how games have gotten very expensive to produce nowadays. That is a big reason that many development houses are going belly up. In 10 or so years, the only developers that will be left will be indipendant (small) Groups of programmers and artists. Working under 'contracts' rather than being salaried.

anyway, I'm babbling, nuf said. Cheers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

What we need is a concept-based program builder, like the enterprise holodecks, only much more primitive.

Serious, here. Something where you type say, "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high", tell it to compute that text file, it makes a 3d box to the specifications you typed. Then, you change it too "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high, stone walls, floor and ceiling, dark gray" Once that is tested, "A ten-foot by ten foot room, six feet high, stone walls, floor and ceiling, dark gray, treasure chest in northwest corner, goblin in front of the treasure chest. Player is human barbarian, near the middle of the south wall, in furs, carrying an axe"

And then you would get more and more specifc and instruct it to save details and such. It would end up being somewhat like writing a book.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Is anyone seriously working on such a thing?

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

*coughelderscrolls3morrowindconstructionsetcough*

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

Uh, that was a drag-and-drop map editor/height editor/data spreadsheet. We already had those, if not in that combination.

It is not what I am talking about.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

It seems to me that putting things together isn't difficult given the tools that we already have. The problem is getting together a big dataase of the objects required. What's a "stone wall", a "treasure chest", a "goblin", a "human barbarian", an "axe" etc.?

You'd need a big database of 3D models of all of these things, together with properties of the objects useful in the context of a computer game, i.e. a stone wall is harder than a wooden wall, a treasure chest is hinged and can be opened and closed, can hold things and can optionally be locked or unlocked etc.

After all, any computer program can't be expected to understand every word in an English dictionary off the bat, it must have access to a detailed database containing models and properties of all the objects Users might conceivably ask it to create, which is the real hard work part.

Re: OT: 2005 Games
 

I could see some system working with drag down boxes.

Maybe player-added content keeping it alive, or professional modellers and a MMORPG style game (hey, you have to pay for quality).

I'm not sure that it could be a game though. More like a huge chat room where people waste their time and spend time designing their buildings/rooms. Maybe some game concept of "credits" could be built into the system. The more you interact with other people, the more credits you get, and you can buy better 3d models and build a better place to show off.

The key would be stunning graphics, and the ability to add EVERYTHING. From picasso pictures, bedsheets, individual books, even cockroaches and rats should be in it. Special items like a computer that you could interact with, etc., could also be incorporated for some interactivity.

Oh, and did I mention avatars? Designing yourself to look the way you want? This kind of game could sell, and could ruin a generation of teenagers/break up marriages.

<edit> Oh and it doesn't have to be limited to a modern setting, what would sell it would be the unique environments you could create for people to explore, like the inside of a spaceship, a dark dank dungeon crawling with scary sounds, etc </edit>

Brian