Re: [分享] 我們生活在一個被大陸遊戲包圍的世界

[johnkry (john)]

Hi Genocide1812,

Thanks very much for the support and the interest.

I feel a wall of text coming on

I knew that I wanted to make games since I was about 10 an got my first

computer, 27 years ago. From that point,

I pretty much spent all my free time playing computer games.

I actually never had a Nintendo or Atari which I always thought was a great

injustice, but it may have given me a different games focus growing up than

my friends.

Eventually I made it into college, and then university

(taking 7 years for a 4 year degree as to not interfere with my gaming)

First years were super slack, but by the end I had gotten a job in the games

industry and was working 40 hours a week with a full course load,

while still keeping my gaming hours intact.

I lacked a social life though, but who needs those.

My degree was in CompSci as yours is, however aside from it getting me in

the door, and providing some good math skills it has not been

terribly relevant.

This will not be the case for everyone though because my career path is odd,

and I am very much a generalist programmer.

I am not a guru at any particular aspect of coding... at all...

but I can fumble by with all of them enough to build what I need at the time.

Mostly I have always dealt with high level implementation.

Now more about the interesting part. The industry job.

So how do you get into the games industry?

Simple, it is like the Mafia and someone needs to vouch for you.

In my last year at university, I found out that one of my room mate's

friend's was a designer at Black Box Games in Vancouver

(A pretty big game making hub because it was one of the early campuses for EA)

 So I proceeded to head out with my buddies and this designer and drink many

many beers. We hit it off, I got an introduction and a shot at the

possibility of becoming a tester. This was beyond a

dream come true

(i did not know then that this is the worst job in the industry and generally

 leads no where but management, which I may touch on later.)

 This was mid year 2000

The day of the interview arrives, and it is awesome.

 I am talking to the owners of a then 50 person company

(grew pretty massive b4 EA bought and over the years dismantled it)

Swearing, the promise of alcohol, everything you want in an interview.

I was sure I had the job. Waited a couple days, and got a rejection phone call. I was not qualified. Keep in mind, I was in my last year of comp sci, had a 3.75 GPA and was beyond an avid gamer. Did I mention it is hard to get into games.

Broken hearted for a few days, and I get a call.

 During my interview I spent a lot of time talking about our Starcraft

network in our university quad. This gets me a job in IT there.

I am the one and only IT guy for a 50 person company.

I jumped at the chance, but was pretty intimidated.

I realize this story is getting long now, and we are no where NEAR SPAZ yet,

 so maybe I should pick up the pace. I proved myself in the IT department,

 and got a chance to actually run the QA (testing) department while

still in school. I jumped at that and was then doubled up on jobs.

 Proved I could handle those, and got a job scripting AI on Sega Soccer Slam.

 So at one point I was full course load in school, IT department, QA Lead,

 and AI scripter for my first game all at once,

and it was the best time of my life.

Quickly I was extricated from my other roles to focus on gameplay,

 and unbeknownst to me at the time, I had become a designer.

 As a programmer, I always felt slighted and thought "scripter" was a dirty

word among programmers, and that I should be writing AI because that's

where its at. Little did I know I was on the perfect career path for me.

 Sega Soccer Slam turned out to be a great success,

and people all over the world were playing vs player brains that I had

created (did all player scripting aside

from goalies) This was absolutely awesome.

 Next I went on to programming defensive gameplay for NHL 2004

(Also, I hate hockey and it is my fault that game was too hard hehe)

This gave me a programming half to my scripting half so I had a better idea

 of what goes on under the hood. But everything I did was always high level.

By the time NHL came out, EA had bought Black Box Games and it had gone from

a frat house to a typical corporate office with suits galore, butt kissers,

the whole bit. TPS reports anyone? I just walked in one day

(after NHL shipped, as not to hurt the product) and told them that I

couldn't do it any more and left. I didn't have a job waiting,

I was just too heart sick to see my dream of the games industry rot in there.

Luckily, my mentor of sorts at BlackBox came with me and we started a

company together called Quasar Interactive. There is actually a game called

Statesmen that we made that never saw the light of day. it sits in a box on

my self, but the company we made the game for, never decided on a means

for distribution and it languishes. (It is a board game by the way)

For this project we were paid about $20,000 each which gave us just enough

to survive. The money ran out and I needed a job.

(We are almost to the

forming of MinMax, you said you wanted the story)

Interestingly, Statemen used Torque (what SPAZ uses) but Radical

Entertainment was also working on a game called Scarface that was in

serious trouble, and it also used the same scripting language as Torque.

 (Both engines were built off the tribes 2 engine, crazy eh?)

 I had an interview, told them that I had written in the order of 50,000

lines of Torque Script and was hired in about 15 minutes.

Scarface was in serious trouble and my role quickly went from bolt on

gameplay scripter to technical designer as my previous high level experience

and programming plus my familiarity with torque script and the fact that

I am a benevolent (I hope) dictator lead me to begin to implement changes

to that project that got the scripting team to use a common set of gameplay

tools to bring the game into a humming machine. Scarface didn't come together

until about 1 week before we shipped. But the most important

part of that project was that I met Richard Clifford (other half of MinMax)

This was his first job, and we became good friends and worked together a lot.

 I taught him everything I could and he was always willing to learn.

After Scarface's success, we were both put on Scarface 2 and in an office

together. We began to work out the metagame for our opus. Let me tell you,

Scarface 2 was going to be friggin awesome, and we designed the core of the

 game in a pub one night. We even made a board game for the metagame that we

 made each team member play when they joined the project as to infect their

 brains with the awesomeness of what they were creating. Oh, by the way,

Activision and Videndi merged and Scarface 2 was canceled

because XYZ executive bull????.

(So Genocide1812, I feel your pain about the industry's direction)

 We poured our souls into Scarface 2, it was awesome, the team loved it,

it was to be the best thing any of us ever made, and they killed it.

This pretty much broke Richard's and my Spirit but we tried to persevere.

 Richard went on to work on Prototype, and I spent time on two undisclosed

and ALSO canceled projects at Radical.

Both were canceled after I left,

 but the writing was clearly on the wall.

Dysfunctional teams and broken spirits all around in the company.

 Oh also, when they killed Scarface 2, they laid off half of the company.

 Great feeling that was losing all those friends.

So finally, I had enough and so did Richard.

 We were chatting in the same pub where we designed Scarface 2 and

said #$@! it! after about 6 pitchers of beer,

 we didn't want to live that way and the next day we marched into work and

resigned together. Note, I had a 1 month old first child at this point,

and didn't want him growing up with a dad that was spiritually broken.

FINALLY WE GET TO MINMAX. A few days later, after the glow of quitting wore

off, Richard and I thought, what now (at the pub again) and decided to make

a game together. We had both dabbled extensively with Torque and decided to

go for it. Richard's job in general is to run around with rainbows flying out

 of his head, and I chase him around dual wielding with a butterfly net

catching the good ideas, and a baseball bat to smash the bad ones.

We both REALLY missed games like Star Control, so we decided to

merge all the favorite bits from our favorite games to make a "space game."

 In the Dev branch, our game is still called "Space Game"

We spent 1 whole week designing the game and scheduling out 6 month dev cycle.

5 races, persistent universe, random tech tree, epic story,

ship construction, betrayal , hybrid races blah blah blah. FOOLS!

So we ended up with a design in our heads

(never anything on paper to this day)

that we decided we loved and was perfect

(almost none of it is in the game today) and we instantly set to work.

===========================================================
以上推文連結的第一樓,
我三流的翻譯,為避免誤導留下原文
加減看吧


=========================================================

你好Genocide1812,

感謝你的支撐與感興趣.我覺得一片討論文字牆就快來了

我知道我想作遊戲是起於大約我十歲,得到第一台電腦時,距今27年前了。

從那時起，我花了相當大量的時間在打電動.

實際上，我從未有過一台任天堂或ＡＴＡＲＩ，

這是我真的認為從不公平的一件事，

但它可能給了我一條不同於成長期間友人的遊戲聚焦。

即便我進了大學，（花了七年才將四年制讀完，如果沒有被遊戲干擾的話）

第一年真是超散，但最後我得到了一個遊戲產業的工作，

並在全課程滿載的情況下每週工作４０小時，同時確保我的遊戲時數依舊完整。

雖然，這使我缺乏社交生活，但誰需要那東西呢。

我的學系和你一樣是CompSci（直譯應該是程設系對應台灣感覺應指資工吧？），

然而除了這項背景讓我入門以外,它也提供了一些很好的數學技巧,

相關性其實沒那麼糟.

雖然這對一般人而言不會是個好例子,因為我的職業之路是奇特的,

(或者意思是只有過一個職業的),我其實是一個非常一般的程式設計師.

我在編碼的任何一個面向都絕非一個大師,但我能摸索出在我需要建立出什麼的時候,

摸出什麼並且完成它.

最近我已經能保持有高完成度的產出.

現在開始關於更多有趣的部分.業界工作

那麼你到底是進入遊戲界的?

很簡單,它就像是黑手黨,某個人需要擔保你.

在我大學生活的最後一年,我找到了一個我室友的朋友,

他是個在溫哥華Black Box Games工作的設計師,

(一個相當大的遊戲製作公司,因為它是其中一個早期為EA工作的公司)

所以我和我兄弟一起去拜訪了這位設計師,並且在幾杯啤酒之後.

我們把事情敲定了下來,我獲得了一個介紹,並且有機會成為一個測試員.

這是個夢想的成真

(我那時並不知道這份工作是業界最糟的,

一般而言除了管理職它沒有任何其他升遷的可能性,但這是我接觸之後的事了)

這時是2000年中

面試的日子到了,而且過程很棒.

我和一個50人公司的老闆討論著

(而且規模成長到當大,B4 EA買下了它,並在幾年後解散它(原文的B4是什麼意思有待釐清)

宣誓,關於酒精的承諾,所有你在面試裡能想到的.

我已經確定我已經拿到了這份工作.

在等待幾天後,我得到了一通不錄取的電話通知.

我沒有合格.

這句話一直在我腦中揮之不去,我正在comp sci系的最後一年,

並且不只是個3.75GPA的人而且是個有幹勁玩家(GPA是啥有待解釋)

我有提到要進入遊戲界很困難嗎?

我的心碎了幾天,然後我接到了一通電話.

在我面試期間,我花了大量時間在我們大學公開區談論關於星海爭霸網路.

這讓我在那兒得到一份IT的工作....

我原本是一間50人公司的唯一IT人員.

然後我在一個機會裡飛躍了,儘管這相當令我害怕.

我理解到這故事現在已變得漫長,我們已經到了一個附近沒笨蛋的地方

(原文NEAR SPAZ yet有誤譯請指正)

所以我也許應該加快腳步.

我在IT部門證明了我的能耐,並且以在學中的身份得到了實際去跑QA(測試)部門的機會.


我在那時得到了躍升,在工作上翻了二翻

在證明我有處理那些問題後,我得到了一份在世嘉Soccer Slam(我不知這啥遊戲)

的人工智慧程式撰寫的工作.

所以我在一個時間點上是個全職學生,IT部門,QA LEAD

(我翻不出這職位,反正跟測試有關),及我第一個遊戲AI程式,

這是我人生裡最棒的時刻

很快地我擺脫了其他的身份,可以聚焦在遊戲上,在那時裡我忘了我自己,

我已成為一位設計師.

作為一個程式設計師,我總是對"編碼者"這詞感到有點輕視,

並認為這是對程式設計師的汙辱.

我有稍微察覺到我正走在完美的工作之途上.

Sega Soccer Slam在發售後獲得了極大的成功,

全世界的玩家正對抗著我所設計的球員智慧.那感覺沒話講,棒極了.

接著我繼續了NHL 2004防守的程式設計

(同時,我討厭曲棍球,這遊戲會變得過難是我的錯,嘿嘿)

這次我得到了一半的專案,和一半的編碼,所以在表面之下是什麼實際狀況我有了較好

的概念.

但我所做的一切都是高完成度的.

在NHL快結束製作時,EA已買下了Black Box Games,

把它從一間兄弟會據點變成典型的西裝橫行的辦公室,分割案子的接合者之一,

全體的一個環節.

向每個人TPS報告?(TPS待解釋)

我在一天裡的散步後(是在NHL結束後,而不是在傷害這產品)

告訴他們我無法再為這東西作什麼並離開了.

我並沒有新工作在等我,我只是太過傷心,因為在那裡我無法看到我夢想中的遊戲界

很幸運地,在BlackBox有個像我一樣的傢伙,一個良師益友來到了我的身邊,

我們一起開了一間公司叫Quasar Interactive.

我們也實際上作了一個叫個Statesmen的遊戲,一個永遠不會見光的東西.

它位於我的一個盒子內,但這個我們為了這公司製作的遊戲,

卻從來沒有決定發售方式和發售語言.

(順便一提,它是board game應該是桌遊,但後文顯示它不是桌遊,所以我想另有譯法)

為了這個計畫,我們每人付了20000塊美元,讓我們能夠生活.

當錢燒完時,我需要一個工作(我們幾乎形成了MinMax的模式,你說你想聽故事的)

有趣的是, Statemen使用的語法是Torque(多蠢的方法),

但Radical Entertainment那時也正用類似的語法在製作一款叫Scarface的遊戲,

而且陷入了大麻煩中.(這二種編碼法都來自tribes 2 engine,很瘋狂吧?)

我在面試裡,告訴他們我已經寫過50000條的Torque程式,就在15分鐘後得到雇用.

Scarface正陷入大麻煩裡,而我的角色像是來自閃電中現身,

從遊戲的程式編碼到技術上的設計,如同我先前的高完成度工作經驗及專案能力再加上

我對torque語法的熟悉,事實上我成了一個仁慈且寬厚的(我希望)獨裁者領導著變革的

開始,這計畫有了使用遊戲設計工具組的程式團隊,這讓遊戲進入了機械運轉的狀態.

Scarface直到我的部分完成一週後才結束.

但這專案裡最重要的部份是,我遇到了Richard Clifford (MinMax的另一半)

這是他的第一分工作,我們變成好朋友,並時常工作在一起.

我教了他我的一切,而他也總是願意學習.


在Scarface的成功後,我們都推動著Scarface 2並在同一個辦公室工作.

我們開始為我們的大作進行規劃.

讓我告訴你, Scarface 2將會他媽的棒,我們泡在一間PUB的晚上時,

設計了遊戲的核心.

我們甚至為了續作, 弄出了一個桌遊讓每個小組成員在加入專案時能發揮他們的腦力

使作出來的東西更棒.

喔,順帶一提,

Activision 和 Videndi合併,然後 Scarface 2 就取消了,

因為 XYZ 的執行 bull????.(本段XYZ及愛心應該可以理解成一段不滿字眼)

(所以啊,Genocide1812兄弟,我可以感到痛苦,關於業界的方向),

我們傾注靈魂的Scarface 2,它棒極了,團隊都愛它,它是我們曾製作過裡最好的一個,

然後他們殺了它.

這事重傷了Richard和我的心,但我們試著去抵抗.

Richard繼續為著原型工作,而我把時間花在二個未公開的也是被Radical取消的案子.

在我離開後,它們都被取消了,但牆上的書面的形式很清楚.

那時不正常的製作團隊和受傷的心充斥公司.

喔,還有,當他們殺了Scarface 2,他們解散了半個公司.

失去那些朋友的感覺很強烈.

所以到最後,我受夠了, Richard也是.

我們待在設計Scarface 2時的同一間小酒館,

並且在大約六品脫的啤酒後說他#$@!,我們不想用這方式討生活,

接著隔了一天我們把工作結合重新聚集在一起.

記著,我那時有一個一個月大的長子,並且希望他成長時沒有一個精神破產的老爸.

終於,我們來到MINMAX部分了.

幾天之後,在離職的光輝散去後, Richard和我思考著現在怎麼辦(還是在酒館裡),

並決定一起製作遊戲.我們對TORQUE都涉獵廣泛且決定繼續用它.

Richard平常的工作是讓他的腦子飛出彩虹,而我則在旁追趕著他,

並用著捕蝴蝶網子往好主意套下去,並用棒球手套殺死其中不好的.

我們都很懷念像是Star ControL的遊戲,所以我們決定去結合我們喜歡的遊戲裡所有喜

愛的要素,以製作一款"太空遊戲".

在發展部門,我們的遊戲仍叫做"太空遊戲"

我們花了一整週去設計遊戲,及排程出一個6個月的開發週期.

5種族,不滅的宇宙,隨機的科技樹,傳奇故事,般艦建立,背叛,混種等等等等....

蠢斃了!



所以我們終止了這個腦中的計畫(到這天還沒有任何文件產生),

這個我們決定作,我們喜愛,的完美遊戲(幾乎沒有任何殘留在現在的遊戲裡),

我門立即開始動工


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