Way to shatter my dreams :'(

Chinese outsourced tech support it is!

Dead on right...

While near depressing... it does inspire or remind us to go beyond creating unoriginal games. I have fallen into tha wallmart design department...but only as a segway to bigger and better things.

It is also true that your passions for games dwindle with each year. Mostly due to lack of engagment and lacking value relative to investment.

If anyone is wondering how true that all is... its perfectly true and spoken from someone with 10+ years of industry experience from the sound of it.

Ts

Consider developing for droid which is java based. Im studying it now. Installing sdk tonight.

It's true, the video-game industry is so shallow these days. You really wonder why the trash they keep putting out still sells.

Just today I went to sell a bunch of my DS games I don't play (stockin' up on cash for a 3DS!), and the guy looked at my games and noticed they were pretty much all RPGs of some sort. He mentioned that RPGs just don't seem to be selling. He said people don't buy it if it isn't some stupid shooter. The video-game industry is working to make a profit. So who's the moron here? Sounds to me like the people buying these crappy games are at fault for games focusing less on innovation and story, and more on graphics and gameplay.

That all said, I love programming, but I would never want it to be my job.

Honestly, I don't even want to work in the video game industry "if" I even decide to go to school for programming. Kinda ironic when I think about the non-experienced people I know(not like I'm too much more but atleast I can HTML) who would like to be in it XD.

Falacy wrote:

Working in the video game industry is a waste of time. There are literally no companies worth working for, or games worth working on. Just make the next Minecraft, and you'll be more successful in every way.

Is that supposed to be satirical, or are you being serious?

I think it's more along the lines of "FFFuck, there's another bug."

I know I get at least a bit frustrated when a "perfect" system I spent too much time on ends up having some sort of flaw.

The peoples republic of china wrote:

Is that supposed to be satirical, or are you being serious?

That was a serious comment. 99% of game developers aren't rich, because the companies take majority of the profits. Most of them aren't famous, or even recognized at all. Most of the companies push BS deadlines, which only result in poor products. And the sales of almost any game released by a major company will depend solely on how much advertising they have done.
Minecraft, on the other hand... Almost everyone knows Notch is its maker, he's probably made more money off of the half assed beta than a "professional" game developer will in their entire lifetime. His work schedule isn't set in stone. He can take the game in any direction he wants. etc etc etc
There's really NO reason to work for an actual game developer/company. High quality engines like Unity can be acquired for free, and easily upgraded if your product pulls a profit. Even the Unreal engine's UDK can be downloaded for free. Though, I find it lacking in pretty much every way compared to Unity. Making a game with one of these engines, you can easily get it out there. It could offer just as good, if not better quality than "professional" releases like CoD, if you put the effort in. Advertising is pretty easy/cheap/free/accessible, through your own websites, google ads, etc, plus, if the game is any good, it should become popular through word of mouth. You could even put it up for sale on Steam (there are already Unity projects for sale on Steam). Though, games shouldn't cost money just to play. I think charging for in-game items, or even optional subscription bonuses has proven a far more effective method.

lol Not really. The chances of you making your own successful game are probably a lot better than getting hired by some pro dev team. There are a ton of small time indie games that pull in millions of dollars. Minecraft just happens to be oddly original, so it gets a lot of attention.
I think the key to making such a product is accessibility. You have to jump through hoops just to get started in a BYOND game, so I doubt any of them will ever see such success. Maybe once the Flash client is released... Though, even taking out those steps, very VERY very very practically no BYOND games are user friendly. They are all devoid of intuitive tutorials or gameplay mechanics, which just leaves most people lost.
Look at some of the recent million dollar games. Minecraft, you punch a tile to break it, pick it up, then put the tile back down, and it pretty much all works from a single click. Angry birds, you pull back on the screen, and launch a bird to hit things... Even the most simplistic BYOND game is more complicated and less intuitive than those. And I won't even bring up the countless technical limitations of BYOND itself.
Also, anyone dedicated enough could easily make a Combat Arms type game with Unity. It scores an F in practically every category, but still gets a ton of players. I'm sure that game has raked in a ton of money.