Why would you want to work in the game industry at 50? Poor pay, too many hours and being managed by someone 20 years younger than you.
The only exception I can imagine is if you have already built enough of a reputation to go and do your own thing via your own studio or kickstarter etc in which case you don't need anyone's permission.
> According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience.
It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products.
Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.
"Why would an older person want to work in the game industry" -> "why is this old person applying to my game company" -> "what's wrong with this old person" -> "what's wrong with old people". Ageism comes from bogus adverse selection.
The little derisive zing about "senior citizens" at the end did a nice job of selling it.
Introspect. You are going to be working when you're 50. You're sabotaging yourself.
PS: As a general rule, excellent game developers are among the best low-level systems programmers. But gamers are not; as a rule, people who sit around and play COD all day do not dominate life's leaderboards. Why are good game developers such good programmers? Because game programming is extremely challenging. Good programmers seek out good challenges like bugs, in the case of game programming, to a bug zapper.
So consider that there might be reasons for a 50 year old who feels about COD the same way Phil Fish does to still want to work on one of those titles.
I suspect you would find an age bias in most industries with a learning curve for lower level positions, i.e the type where you apply mainly by sending a cold resume. Try getting started as say a chef or electrician post about 30.
Attempting to immunize yourself from claims of bigotry by handwaving about virtues that offset the stereotype you're defending is the second oldest rhetorical tactic in the prejudiced debater's handbook.
The first of them would be, "but some of my best friends are older adults!"
This was a shitty way to argue; my comment above was directed at a comment on the thread, but this one feels more like it's directed at a commenter. I think the argument --- that some kinds of ageism might not be a problem, because they involve jobs old people shouldn't want --- is toxic. But I resorted to snark and sabotaged my point.
I'm not sure what you mean, it's not so much age as things that are likely to correlate strongly with age such as experience salary expectations and willingness to work insane numbers of hours.
I've never understood why someone would ever want to work in the game industry, regardless of their age. It's full of people who are willing to make absurd sacrifices just so they can make games.
It's a much more rational decision to write code for a "boring" industry. You're still honing your software engineering prowess and gaining experience, but you're getting paid a lot more and not being required to work ridiculous hours - a win-win situation.
I usually tell "kids" (I'm 53 and this describes a lot of you, okay? No offense :-) ) not to get started in the games industry. I lucked out by starting out writing game cartridges, then doing systems programming for the next 25 years. Now I'm back to games (or rather, gaming platforms).
Remember who got rich in the California Gold Rush? Not the folks digging the gold, but instead it was the shop-keepers, bankers, real-estate men and similar infrastructure-like people. Be one of them. I don't mean go into things expecting to be rich, but don't be a starry-eyed fool and start at (say) EA just out of college, get burned-out and then expect to have anything out of it. Make sure you can use other things than a shovel.
Get a grounding in systems. Do graphics, do networking, do LAMP, basically do as much as you can "wide" and focus on some areas that interest you ("deep"). Then you can work on games (great!) or servers or UX or whatever you chose. You can work at a games company (great!) or you can work some place else (also highly recommended). Don't focus on games because they're cool, do the tech behind them, with games as an incidental.
Don't get into games and expect that rewriting the same piece of code in the same soccer game year after year is going to be fulfilling. You'll wish you had the ability to go somewhere else, so ensure that you do.
And for God's sake, never think that you're going to get a foot in the door by starting out in Q/A. Just don't do that.
Because it seems like a high status career choice when you are 21, other 21 year olds will be jealous.
It's also a good place to get a lot of practical experience actually writing code, ex games programmers tend to be pretty good at taking a big messy code soup and turning it into something that actually works.
For me, it's because I want to make games. When I had a boring job, I found myself braindead when I came home from work and found myself unable to make games on my own time. For all its pros and cons, working in games allows me to make games, and for all its ups and downs I still love the challenge and the work.
I seem to be riding the average age wave. When I joined the industry 10 years ago I was the average age. Now I'm still the average age. Working conditions have (for me, at least) got better and I crunch much less.
I have to say though, it is worrying. People in the industry above 50 are like unicorns, and most of them are senior managers or execs. I'm in my mid '30s and I feel that I can't stay in the industry for much longer, and then what?
The only exception I can imagine is if you have already built enough of a reputation to go and do your own thing via your own studio or kickstarter etc in which case you don't need anyone's permission.
> According to data collected by the Entertainment Software Association, the percentage of people over 50 years old playing games is slightly higher than the percentage of people under 50 playing games. We ARE your audience.
It would be interesting to adjust that data for amount of time spent gaming and amount of money spent on gaming related products.
Somehow I don't get the impression that COD servers at peak times are rammed full of senior citizens.