Any Gearbox employees willing to talk with me?

[botman]

Originally Posted by Raex93

1- Do you enjoy your time working at Gearbox?
2- Do you still find playing games fun or are they boring to you now?
3- What is generally needed to get a position as a game designer?
4- What kinds of positions are there?
5- Is there anything about your job that you really like?
6- What is involved in your part of the job?
7- Is everything coded through something like C++? Would knowing C++ or other coding languages be helpful?
8- Do you get along well with other employees?
9- Is the environment more laid-back or stressful?
10- Anything else you wish to add.

1. Yes! Gearbox is awesome because you are around creative people all day long (literally) who love doing what they are doing. Having any job where you love what you do for a living is a good job.

2. Everyone at Gearbox LOVES to play games (even after spending all day working on creating games). One of the things we ask people when they interview with us is "what are your favorite games that you love to play and why are they fun?"

3. Good game designers are really hard to find. In general, if you want to be a good game designers (someone who actually designs how the game will play out), you need to play A LOT of games to get a feel for what other people have done. You need to know what works and what doesn't. You need to know what will be fun BEFORE someone spends months implementing it. You need to understand things from a customer's perspective and design things that the customer would think is fun.

4. In general, we have artists, level designers, coders (programmers), sound designers, animators, QA testers, and other people who provide support to keep Gearbox running (like IT people, Human Resources people, Public Relations people and Administrative people). There are some people who are more specialized like Concept Artists, or AI programmers, etc. A good way to see the types of people we look for is to look at the gearboxsoftware.com "Jobs" page (or browse through the "Our Talent" section on gearboxity.com).

5. The things that I really like about my job is that I am challenged every day. I am always working on something different and I'm always learning new skills.

6. I'm one of the coders (programmers) working on various coding tasks (AI, rendering, animation, sound, weapons, etc.). I come from more of a technical background so I also like working on low-level type stuff on the consoles.

7. We use Unreal Engine 3 which is a combination of C++ code and UnrealScript code. Many (most?) other game studios also use C++ for writing game code. I would strongly suggest that anyone who wants to be a game coder learn C++ as well as Java and/or C#.

8. I get along well with everyone except Hellface (because he eats people's faces off). No, really...it's true!

9. The environment can be both laid back AND stressful. It's a very casual atmosphere. People come into work in ragged t-shirts, shorts and flipflops. When you don't have a critical deadline or milestone approaching, things are pretty relaxed and everyone has a good time. When you know you have some major deadline approaching (something like E3, or the release of a game), everyone begins working a few more hours each week in order to get as much as possible done. Sometimes people get so involved in what they are doing, they forget to stop for lunch or dinner. You just get so caught up in trying to get stuff done that you sorta lose track of time.

10. Gearbox is definitely the most interesting and exciting job I've had. As I mentioned above, I'm challenged everyday to come up with something new and awesome. One of the best things is that I actually get to make decisions about what needs to be done and how it should be done (I don't just take orders from someone higher up). Gearbox allows their employees to be creative and create something fun. It's the best job in the whole world!!!

[PfcObrieski]

Botman, what about the guy who unclogs the clogged toilets? Is his atmosphere more laid back or more full of $hit? But I certainly agree that he faces challenges every day and that he`s very creative at his job...

[Raex93]

Botman,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond to me. I actually asked someone that my cousin knows at Vicarious Visions the same questions, and he passed them around to different departments, so i have tons of responses (all very similar, actually). So thank you for helping me out. Im definitely leaning towards being either a programmer or a designer for video games.

Thanks a lot, once again!

[Bernhardt]

I'm not in the field of designing video games, but I do know people who are. I know a group that has their own independent studio and a person designing games for Ubisoft. What I've picked up is that designing games is very interesting and rewarding, but also very stressful at times. It's no secret that people enjoy playing games, so being involved in creating them would be like being able to make movies as a movie lover.

Like botman mentioned, it's a casual environment to work in. It is laid back when there's no immediate deadlines, but heavy work and tons of hours need to be put into your current project(s) when there is. This doesn't sound totally different from any other working environment, except that it is more casual. I believe you wont have trouble investing lots of hours into doing something you're passionate about.

All the best in whatever path you decide to take, Raex93.