Work Experience on the Gravity Crash Project

This is an article from the previous web site by Amanda Allen.

When I started my second and final year as a student of games development in Sydney, Australia, it really began to sink in that I needed to start thinking about how to break into the industry. Sure, I would have my diploma and my classwork to show off, but I wasn’t convinced this in itself was sufficient.

Work experience seemed like a distant dream – especially since the industry is fairly quiet in Sydney – until I managed to win a scholarship to the U.K. through an organisation called BBM. Part of the scholarship requirement was that I perform a minimum of 4 weeks overseas work experience in my field of study – brilliant!

However, this meant I was required to self-organise this work experience before departing for the U.K., meaning I would need to “cold call” someone on the opposite side of the world and somehow convince them that I was a real person and also a capable candidate for work experience. I emailed several development houses around London, but the few responses I received were negative; disappointing, but not terribly surprising.

My persistent Googling then led me to the IGDA website, where I discovered the concept of Chapters and came across Paul Sinnett’s name as the person volunteering to regroup the London Chapter. Perhaps someone like him was more likely to be sympathetic to my plight? Sure enough, he responded warmly to my emails and suggested that I could work with him in a paired programming style on the project he was currently contracting on, which was due to be in Beta at around the time I was to arrive in London. I quickly realised this was a better opportunity than I could have possibly anticipated – I had not only found an experienced programmer to work with, but also someone with a special interest in bettering the lives of developers. I very happily accepted his offer!

I felt pretty nervous walking into the office on my first day, but Paul’s warm and professional manner soon put me at ease. Our work routine each day was to refer to a checklist of tasks requiring attention and make our way through them. Paul took care to involve me in every step of the process, discussing his thoughts on each new challenge and listening patiently to my (undoubtedly amateurish!) input. When we had decided on a solution, Paul was most often the one to implement the code, but more and more frequently he pushed the keyboard in my direction and allowed me to do the typing. I was quite intimidated by this at first (Paul is a very accomplished coder and I am only a student!), but I gradually came to feel more secure about programming in front of Paul – and indeed more secure about my understanding of C++ in general.

The atmosphere in the office was always friendly – and, much to my relief, everyone welcomed my presence and I never felt excluded from anything. I was introduced to Dave Parsons, the designer and primary coder behind Gravity Crash, who also welcomed me into the project without hesitation and, when Paul was explaining a programming concept to me, he often paused in his work to contribute to the lesson (which I thought was rather nice of him!).

Seeing how programming actually works in the industry really shocked me out of the impression that the style I had learnt as a student was the “best” way of going about things. It was also very encouraging to see that Paul managed to persevere through problems that seemed insurmountable (encouraging, too, to see that even a highly experienced programmer encounters such problems and that they are not an indicator of ability!).

Paul talked me through the processes of adding new A.I. for game enemies, debugging and error checking, optimising existing processes, and implementing new processes into the PlayStation 3 framework (including prototyping them in flowchart form). I also learnt a lot about how to navigate through extensive library documentation!

As well the technical learning, I was able to pick up a lot of useful information about the industry from just chatting to Paul, and from chatting to the numerous other people I met along the way. Paul allowed me to accompany him to a couple of social events where I was introduced to others in the industry. This exposed me to a variety of sentiments and experiences related to games development, from which I summed up a few key points:

• It is critical for programmers to let the ego go and work in unison with other people’s code, even if it isn’t structured the way they prefer it.
• For a young person entering the industry, it is worth spending a few years at a few different companies even if you don’t plan to work there long-term, just to build experience.
• Finding a company with a culture and ethos that you can respect and relate to is often more important than the actual projects they are working on.
• It can be important to keep in contact with the people you meet through work who are notably skilled in what they do – you never know when you might need them in the future!
• It is the mark of a truly motivated individual to go ahead and teach yourself a new skill – such as learning a new programming language – in order to achieve a goal.
• Paralysis is normal when you are starting from nothing and creating your first game, but in order to succeed you need to overcome that and go ahead anyway.
• If you are persistent enough and keep applying for entry-level jobs, it is likely that someone will eventually take you on simply because they need the numbers.
• The best way to learn how to program is to do it, and writing a demo game on your own can be highly beneficial both for the experience and to demonstrate your capabilities to a potential employer.
• When entering the industry for the first time, it is best to be prepared to make mistakes, and to take the attitude that you know nothing, whatever you might have learned through education.
• Game designers often have grand, innovative ideas which fail to recognise the limitations of reality. This annoys programmers and alienates them from the design process, effectively dividing the team.
• The industry is dynamic, perpetually shifting and doesn’t tend to offer a lot of job security – it can be unwise to drop anchor in any particular city or with any particular company.

To summarise my experience – I was absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to get a taste of the industry, and as detailed above, I learnt a tremendous amount in that relatively short time. I couldn’t have asked for a more patient and thorough teacher than Paul – not once did he make me feel stupid for being slow to understand a concept, or for any of the elementary questions I bombarded him with! I also never stopped being impressed with his abilities as a programmer; it was inspiring to work with him.

My confidence and knowledge increased exponentially in the single month I spent working on Gravity Crash. I would recommend that anyone studying games development seek out an experience like the one I had – thanks, Paul, for making it possible!

• Amanda Allen
• Big Brother Movement Organisation
• Gravity Crash
• Attractive Games - kindly provided office space for this work experience
• WorldSkills International - the organisation behind the IT competition I entered