Article: Game Development:

Statement: "I work at a videogame company."

Common Response: "THAT IS THE COOLEST JOB IN THE WORLD! That job must be so fun/awesome."

The truth is... Yes and No.

There are cons for every pro in the game industry. I'm sure some of you have heard of the EA_spouse letter. The truth is that most game development companies require alot of time and effort focused solely to creating these amazing/not-so-amazing/ ok/ crappy games. With the time constraints of holidays, summer, fiscal year beginnings/endings, etc. developers find themselves in a constant time crunch where work goes from decent to very bad then back to decent.. with a small break in between. How bad is bad you ask? I've heard of 100 hour work weeks. Seeing your coworkers more than family is the norm. The Developers and the Quality Assurance (Testers) both put in lots of hours into making sure a game can ship on time. Sometimes 12+ hours a day, 6-7 days a week, but I will talk more of the different phases of game development and the different departments in a company another time.

Since the game industry is a billion dollar industry today, secrecy is of the upmost importance. Each person is usually held accountable for their devbuilds (pre-release game versions) in the hopes of leak prevention. The QA testers are usually at the sh*t end of the stick as they are rarely trusted with anything. Devs are more relaxed, in my opinion, with how they handle builds in the office. So these stories of making up to $80 dollars an hour playing videogames from home are simply NOT TRUE. This just does not make any sense. Game companies are not going to trust you with their secret in-development games outside of the company walls. DO NOT APPLY FOR ANY JOB STATING YOU CAN MAKE MONEY TESTING CONSOLE GAMES FROM HOME.. (PC games.. I seriously doubt. Beta testing PC games is not a paid job.)

"Well.. every job has its down sides.. working at a game industry must be fun right?" It's true that there are also good aspects to working in the game industry. For the most part, game companies consist of a bunch of hard working, nice people. A strong sense of comeraderie is usually built up over the course of a project, and going to work is like seeing a second family. There is a fair amount of fun times to be had when working at a game company like Nerf dart wars, game tournaments, parties, etc., but it's definitely not like Westwood college's version of a game companies inner workings.

In the end, I must say that when working in the game industry is fun, it's really fun, and when it sucks, it really sucks. It's definitely a love/hate relationship. If you love everything about games and are passionate about it.. you'll probably survive the hard times and sacrifice alot.. but you'll most likely gain great friends, coworkers and will be making and playing the games all day. If you aren't passionate about games.. the simple answer is, you will probably need to change careers.