So You Wanna Be a Games Programmer?

I’ll ignore the fact that I’ve seen less than a dozen black programmers in my 20+ years of coding. Same goes for women incidentally.

The thing that gets me about that ad above, however, is that the guy they’re showing here is a FOSSIL.

Methuselah has nothing on him!

Have you ever tried to break into the games industry?

I did several years ago. It’s incredibly hard.

Not only do they want you to have experience but the pay is crap compared to what you could make at other jobs.

Mostly, this is a supply and demand type of thing. The demand (programmers) for programming the games is high and the supply (game companies) is low.

It means they can pay you a pittance and keep you around for the ‘love of the game.’ Screw that! :P

Unfortunately, many of the kids coming out of college will work 80 hours a week for damn near minimum wage (ok it’s not really THAT bad but it’s close!).

If yer a fossil like this guy (or like me - I’m 40 years old and that’s ancient compared to the upcoming games programmers) chances are you’re not going to work a full time job AND get a game demo ready AND shop around and find a game job.

I know DeVry is trying to be policitically correct on this one but it’s so far out of touch with reality that it boggles the mind.

G-Man

P.S. I dunno why I haven’t seen many women or black programmers over the years. I’ve often wondered why it is this way.