Hi everyone, I am a game developer who works in the industry with unity game engine for about 6 years. Next year, I will move to America due to that I won green card lottery this year. I want to switch to AAA company if I can. For the last 2 years, I was mainly UI programmer and UX designer, I can also write gameplay systems. I still want to main UI programming, so I started to learn flash and AS, as some big companies want that. I am also focusing on UX design as it can help develop my UI programming skills further. But I wonder if I am doing it right? For instance, in terms of TC and job title, does having 6 years as unity game developer mean anything to AAA companies? Or will I start from scratch again? Am I preparing myself in a wrong way for AAA companies? Are there any suggestions you can give me while I still have time to prepare myself? Is it useless to learn flash and AS for big comp.? Sometimes I just feel like I am losing control, and I feel like I will never get a job in AAA companies.
Flash and AS??? I though flash is completely dead, who still supports flash? As for AAA, EA uses Frostbite and Ubisoft and Activision probably has their own propriety engines. Whatever company you end up joining, you’ll be learning a new engine. If you are going to sell yourself, sell on your portfolio and engine agnostic tech skills.
If you are going for TC, your best bet is probably becoming a unity engineer/prototyper for AR/VR teams at FB/Google/Apple. Especially if you can pitch for the UX angle. Big tech companies pay better than most AAA unless you are senior/lead level.
TC is not my priority actually, although I am a bit scared if I can manage to pay my expenses(rent, etc) and live an avg. or higher life by working in a game company in America. Whenever I read something about game industry in blind, I get a feeling that I will have hard times to manage my life in America (finding job, moving in, understanding all the expenses i need to pay every month, and manage all those things) Also your suggestion is very logical.
It really depends on what you want to do. Game design/engine is still a niche field in terms of skill transferability. People deal with low comp because it's their passion. And you don't get to focus on fun in tech. It's very customer need/metric driven. Cost of living is depending on what you are willing to accept. If you are OK with getting a roommate or two, you will manage in SF. Now a family of four is a very different story. Once you are accustomed to tech industry comp/quality of life (crunch time in games is worse than nearly all tech companies), it will be harder to go back. Meanwhile you may also crave more creative work in games instead of being told what to make for customers.
Keep trying and don't give up. You won't be starting from scratch and I think you should be fine. Leetcode and get feedback from your interviews.
For AAA you ought to learn direct3d12, opengl, opengl, etc. Knowing unity or UE is good but not sufficient for top project roles.
Most game programmers are not rendering engineers and most rendering engineers working on AAA games are not directly working with DirectX. This is not good advice if you're just looking to get a job. I suggest learning a low level API so you understand how the graphics pipeline works but it's absolutely not a requirement to get a game industry job. Especially as a UI or gameplay engineer.
I know Rooster Teeth Games is making games in Unity. I'm sure Oculus has games in Unity, and Unity itself employs engineers. You should be able to find a good job with any games engineering experience (if you're not terrible), and Unity won't hold you back. Depends 'how AAA' you want to be. You should also learn Unreal, which is used by AAA studios. Wargaming (World of Tanks) is a huge developer and uses AS and Flash, by the way. I believe IdTech UI may also be in AS/Flash but could be wrong. You probably need Scaleform too.
AAA? Auto insurance?
Nope, I meant big game development companies. Like AAA game companies, ea, bioware etc