The pay is shit and the work is grueling. You'll make more money shoveling some enterprise's Spring Java shitpile than you will developing games, and you will still be able to see your wife and kids.
If you like making games, make one yourself, or help out a small indie studio with people you know. Hobby stuff. Don't let the business quench the flame of passion for the art form.
There are good AAA gamedev jobs. I knew a chap who worked with Ken Levine workshopping gameplay ideas for the BioShock series with Python prototypes. But he was in a very fortunate intersection of "has the right skills" and "knows the right people". If you come in cold, you're most likely going to find yourself "texturing the right eyeball of NPC #642" or "fixing glitches that arise when the player presses a certain combo of buttons" or something, 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Every bit as grueling as enterprise-shop work, but under constant crunch and for very little pay, comparatively speaking because the demand for game-dev roles vastly exceeds the supply. Every kid wants to get into games, so if you're not willing to accept the shitty working conditions, there's always someone fresh out of Full Sail University who is.
The pay is shit and the work is grueling. You'll make more money shoveling some enterprise's Spring Java shitpile than you will developing games, and you will still be able to see your wife and kids.
If you like making games, make one yourself, or help out a small indie studio with people you know. Hobby stuff. Don't let the business quench the flame of passion for the art form.
There are good AAA gamedev jobs. I knew a chap who worked with Ken Levine workshopping gameplay ideas for the BioShock series with Python prototypes. But he was in a very fortunate intersection of "has the right skills" and "knows the right people". If you come in cold, you're most likely going to find yourself "texturing the right eyeball of NPC #642" or "fixing glitches that arise when the player presses a certain combo of buttons" or something, 12-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week. Every bit as grueling as enterprise-shop work, but under constant crunch and for very little pay, comparatively speaking because the demand for game-dev roles vastly exceeds the supply. Every kid wants to get into games, so if you're not willing to accept the shitty working conditions, there's always someone fresh out of Full Sail University who is.