Been working as a gameplay/level designer for nearly four years now.

I managed to get the job on the basis of my Quake levels, and some unreleased Doom3 work, but my professional experience as a programmer was also a plus.

I've been Assistant Lead Designer on my team for about a year now, but my role also spills over into project management.

I'd say the salary is fairly decent, but for me it's more about doing professionally what I would otherwise have been doing anyway as a hobby. 

No, mapping is not my job but iy can be real intresting for me entering in game development maybe like level designer :) 

i'd like to look into it some day. i just don't really have enough of a portfolio at the moment, and two massive quake projects to finish up before i try any other game out... 

Link to the thread on inside3d, please? 

only after i posted it and other people replied did i realize the title was too misleading as it did not get right down to business (lit-tral'y)

http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=1596 

Not for long... anyone hiring? Yeah... I know the answer to that these days. 

Mr Fribbles, I dunno if you get the Gamasutra news letter but it seems a lot more people are hiring than you might think. Kind of interesting to peruse all those jobs. 

"Not for long... anyone hiring? Yeah... I know the answer to that these days."

We are. Always. Seriously. 

If I win Euromilions I will hire you all to make a huge project of Quake during summer in Portugal near the beach :) 

Thanks for the encouragement guys. I guess I just have an overly cynical outlook since the local industry is going down the toilet. 

Is quicksand. 

My real job sucks and leaves very little time for anything else. 

Having a non self-satisfying job is a nightmare for me.... If I start back-pedaling when I go to the office in the morning, then I am starting considering to change of job... but nowadays it is quite difficult to find a job, and I nonethemess hav to fill my fridge... so... let's wait for the economic crisis end... :P 

i suppose that it sounds ridiculous, but anyone of you tried to make your own business at least in making just art-house games? or does it sound too unreal for your countries? 

it's something i've considered doing for a long time...

I think one of the issue is that if you want to make money as an indie dev, you have to cater to the same mainstream gamer tastes that big-budget games cater to, which means you're not as creatively unfettered as you could be if you were doing it as a hobby, with no profit motive. 

http://www.wolfire.com/humble proves you very wrong. 

it takes time to make a great game and to become a start-up indie dev you have to invest that time unpaid.

There was a gamasutra article I believe that showed that indies working in groups (even very small ones) made more money that those working alone. 

that has gone from our Quake puddle to working in the industry for years and then gone indie. 

those indie games are very popular and saw a lot of media exposition already. I think it's quite hard to get there. 

"http://www.wolfire.com/humble proves you very wrong."

How does that prove him wrong? I know a bunch of guys who bought that bundle simply to support the charity - they either already had the games or weren't interested in them.

You CAN make a good living as an indie making off-beat games but it's tough. It's equal parts time, effort and luck. You will need to invest some serious time into the business and be very patient at first - success is unlikely to come quickly, so you'll need to have the resources to weather at least a year of obscurity before you get noticed. And that's assuming that you're creating games that people want to buy - many indies are mistaken in thinking that the problem is something other than their game sucks. :) 

It proves that non-mainstream gameplay ideas can very well make money. If it is through making people feel good about sending you money, it is still money. Yeah, you have to be able to think and stuff to make a successful commercial game, duh. 

If there's one thing I've learnt from amateur coding/mapping is that I couldn't (talent wise) do it for a living. Still love it and am (slightly) jealous of those who do.

Willem: have you worked on Gears? 

ajay

Yeah, I've worked on all the Gears games. 

Willem
then I am very much a 'fan of your work', love the aesthetics of those games. 

I appreciate that but it wouldn't be honest to just accept that without stating that, hey, I worked on some levels. I didn't create the meshes and every level really is a team effort. Nobody takes anything from start to finish alone. :) But glad you like the games!