Article
'You do what? Write computer games?'
Yes, it’s true. I, and others like me, write computer games – but what does this actually mean?
Contrary to what my brother thinks, it’s not being paid to sit in an office all day long and play Pac Man. Alas, that bit is just not true. Writing or developing computer games just has to be one of the most challenging, stressful but also rewarding areas of Software Development there is. Yes, it involves working on stuff that’s cool. Sure, it also sometimes involves playing other games to see what makes them tick.
More often as not developing games involves spending most of your time with your nose pressed right up against the screen trying to figure out why something doesn’t happen when you’ve spent the entire day trying to make it happen.
But why doesn’t it work? You’ve checked things and double checked things and still it doesn’t work!
What’s going on?!? Surely, you can’t have made a mistake, can you? So you check and then check again… Finally, the penny drops – you’ve not done what you think and with that discovery you arrange the final piece of the puzzle and bingo! It works!! Oh the joy! Oh the rapture! You scream with delight and scare everyone half to death and make them spill their coffee!
But… Wait… – something’s not right. It works, but it’s too slow! Doh! Your eureka moment now pales into insignificance but this isn’t going to beat you! You re-think and with that you re-implement to get it right.
This time you’ve figured it out – it works and it works fast!
The sense of achievement is amazing – there’s something about making things happen on screen in a game that more than makes up for all of the difficulty of it all.
Yes, I write computer games and I love it. :-)
