programming specializations

[PatrickB]

I'm new here, and I'm 90% sure that a board such as this one would have already had a thread along the same lines as this, but I'll ask just the same, as any said thread has apparently expired.

It's no secret that the video game industry is growing pretty quickly, and the underlying technology is advancing at a similar rate. Just taking one look at an Unreal 3 tech demo, one has to come to the conclusion that, in order to remain on the forefront, game developers are going to have to invest more time, money, and people into their projects. IMHO, small developing companies will have nowhere near the place in tomorrow's market as they do today's market. The developers of these new engines try and reassure their clientele that things aren't as bad as they seem, and that the new tools to create new games are just as intuitive and advanced as the engines themselves.
blah blah blah... we've all discussed this before.

Anyway, gone are the days where you can count the programmers of a game on one hand. Programmers will always do a little multi-tasking wherever they end up, but if any of us coders (present & future ;) are going to have a place in the future game industry, we're going to have to be much more specialized than we need to be in today's industry.

So, off the top of your head, what kind of specializations can you think of that would be in greater demand in tomorrow's vg market?

Brainstorming:
Advanced AI (obviously), I/O, scenery generation (requiring knowledge of biology, geography, weather patterns, etc.), weather in general, acoustics (about to really boom, IMO), piracy protection...

[OneSadCookie]

I think that programmers will still be relatively few, and tend to be jacks-of-all-trades. Gameplay isn't advancing very fast at all, and licensed engines take a lot of the burden off. The real burden is being placed on the artists...

[PatrickB]

Do you think that the relative lack of input/output innovation is one of the main reasons for the lack of gameplay innovation, or do you see it simply as devs playing it safe?

[BeyondCloister]

It is not so much the devs playing safe, it is more the case of the publishers being afraid to take a risk.

[Najdorf]

while it's true that games are advancing to incredible levels of complexity, still the market often does not care.

Example: according to Alexa.com, the top sites in the games category are:

1. Yahoo! Games
games.yahoo.com - Site Info

2. Macromedia
www.macromedia.com - Site Info

3. MiniClip.com
www.miniclip.com - Site Info

4. GameSpot
www.gamespot.com - Site Info

5. IGN
www.ign.com - Site Info

6. Pogo.com
www.pogo.com - Site Info

7. MSN Gaming Zone
zone.msn.com - Site Info

8. Shockwave.com
www.shockwave.com - Site Info

9. GameFAQs
www.gamefaqs.com - Site Info

10. RuneScape
www.runescape.com - Site Info

Most of the games in Yahoo games are things that anyone of us could produce alone (more or less)

Same for Miniclip

Runescape was made (originally) by a single guy.



Now take single "firms":

Traffic Rank for popcap.com: 1,251 (again, you could "technically" make most of it's games yourself)

Traffic Rank for blizzard.com: 3,428

So while one side of the industry is going towards incredibly complex stuff to give you amazing graphics and everything, another side simply does not care and focuses on catchy gameplay.

After all it's not a tech contest, it's making people enjoy their time.

[Carlos Camacho]

>do you see it simply as devs playing it safe?
>it is more the case of the publishers being afraid to take a risk.
Yep, I think that as the money that changes hands becomes greater and greater, we will be more like the movie industry. Whereas publishers, the movie studios, will be less and less likely to take a chance, and thus, we will get endless sequels (ie nothing but FPS)

That said, perhaps we will get our own R. Redford, G. Lucas, Mel Gibson and Peter Jacksons as well who will be in the position to dictate more or to finance a project on their own (perhaps Wright or Miers?)

As for skills... It seems to me that knowing technologies related to mobile gaming will play a greater role. But I suppose that is obvious. :)

[zKing]

If by "in demand" you mean what you'll likely see as "required skills" on a job listings, I honestly think things won't change too quickly with the exception of new platforms and as someone else mentioned greater demand for mobile device skills.

You will continue to see about the same level of "Networking", "User Interface", "3D Graphics", etc. type requirements, but I don't see things getting too much more specific. Its hard to hire people, and you can miss a lot of good candidates, if you are too specific in your job requirements in a listing.

I don't think you are going to see biology or weather or anything like that other than in the "nice to have" column for a particular project. Its too specific and weeds out too many good people. If a project truly needs such an expert, they will likely be hired seperately and be paired with a developer.

Personal rant as someone who's been involved in hiring lots of engineers: Companys should _never_ hire based on the requirements of a single specific project. They should hire for a solid broad base of software engineering skills that will ensure the person will be good for a long series of projects.

What will always be in style:
- Developers that can communicate. Remember that in a pro setting you are going to be working with a team, sometimes a really big team. If you can't clearly explain an idea to the rest of the team when you are in the white board phase, I don't care how good you are at writing code all by yourself.
- Tact and "Plays well with others". Similar to above, if you start fist fights over curly brace placement or take criticism of your design as a personal insult... you will not work out on a pro team.
- Some understanding and respect of the rest of the company. If you can't work with the business guys because you think they are stupid and greedy... if you treat the QA team like they are of a lower class and should bow before your intellect... you will be limiting your career.
- Good software process habits. Do you use source control effectively? Do you do some design before coding? Do you unit test or just throw it over the wall to QA? Do you let your bugs pile up because new code is more fun to write?

I've done a lot of hiring for software engineers and frankly even if you can make the compiler sing... if you are a social cripple who is used to being the one man show, the net is you will be counter productive in a team and I will not hire you. There is a LOT more to a successful large project than being able to hack out reams of C++.

But perhaps I've wondered off topic a bit. ;)

[MonitorFlickers]

its funny because just the other day I was thinking the exact opposite- that today's market is a great place for small companies and even solo shareware developers. Anytime I begin to doubt the opportunities available for Mac shareware developers I remind myself that in the last 5 quarters Macintosh sales have experienced *massive* (!!) growth compared to PC's. Tomorrow, there will be more mac gamers on the market than yesterday, and I don't think big game companies have quite caught up with this yet, which gives smaller companies and shareware developers a nice way of throwing more product at the gaming appetite.

I also think about companies like Ambrosia, and especially Spiderweb. Those companies had already gotten a foothold in the 'market' back when it was younger, but the bottom line is that they did so with fairly low-budget products that were hugely popular because they fufilled a specific niche- specifically, inexpensive built-for-mac games.

I've been programming shareware since I was in 5th grade and I've been rather pleased with the return I've gotten from it.

....k, I know that was sorta OT in regards to your actual question, but I just wanted to throw that out there. I personally think more people should be focusing on starting their own companies and keeping the shareware tradition alive than worrying about specializing themselves to fit in with some hugeMegaMondo gaming company. The opportunities are there if you know how to play the game, and flying solo certainly doesn't mean you won't 'have a place' in the future market.