Game Developer's Class Reunion

Norm: Thanks bud! You don't mind if I bum around and ask some of these guys about themselves? No? Great! Everyone around the table, introduce yourselves!

Chris: My name is Chris, I'm 34, I now do technical support at a local ISP making $30,000. I spent most of my youth becoming an expert at how to make Adlib, Sound Blaster and Sound Blaster Pro drives for games. I knew everything there was about how to do it. My skills became obsolete when Windows 95 came out and I've spent a lot of time looking for work.

Norm: Uh, ok. But you're doing okay now, right?

Chris: Well if spending your days trying to explain how to do a renew on IPCONFIG to a hysterical grandmother over the phone is doing okay, then yes, I'm doing "okay".

Bill: Hullo, I'm Bill, I'm 37, I spent my youth working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week all year 'round working on PC games.

Norm: Really? What games?

Bill: Well I spent 4 years working on a Star Trek game that got cancelled. That was kind of a bummer because I worked incredible hours. My first wife left me and I gained so much weight from eating pop and fast food during working on it that I got diabetes.

Norm: That's too bad, any other games?

Bill: Yea, then I spent another 4 years working on "Terror Force". My second wife left me because I kept having to stay at the office 24 hours a day to make the deadlines.

Norm: Terror Force, hmm, oh I remember that game, I tried out the demo version for about 10 minutes, not too bad of a game.

Bill: It tanked, GameZoneWorld's reviewer only played the first level of it and said it lacked "umph." That was enough for the publisher to basically let it die on the vine.  By the time that game was done, I was 33 and had missed out on the prime of my youth working on stuff that had never come out or was completely forgettable. Now I'm out of shape, single, and don't have the resume to be a producer but didn't have time to keep up with the latest happenings in Direct3D.

Norm: Wasn't Terror Force 3D?

Bill: OpenGL and it was kind of hacked at that. Now people want people that know Direct3D for coding or networking, neither of which I've learned. I'm trying to learn now but between looking for a job and learning that...

Norm: Yea, kind of a bummer. How about you?

Steve: I'm Steve, I worked at LightHearted Studios. We spent 5 years working on DeathKill. It was a first person shooter / adventure game.

Norm: Hmm, I haven't heard of that game.

Steve: Pretty much no one did. It came out, sold 40,000 copies, LightHearted went under. Now I write scripts for the IT Department at Ford. Wish I could have those 5 years back during the prime of my youth.

Norm: Er.

Cliff: I'm Cliff, I was an expert at Real sound, you remember that? The sound that came out of a PC speaker...

Norm: Brad, I want to go home!