b a d p o p c o r n

What it’s like to work in the game industry

Written by Aaron on September 15, 2008 | 1 Comment

The title is loaded. I can not pretend to know what it is like for everyone in the industry, and I won’t even attempt to give an exhaustive depictions of even my own personal experiences. Trust me you wouldn’t be reading this post now if I had titled it “A rough overview of generally what it’s like to work in the game industry”.

The short answer

GOOD

The long answer

The experience of being in the Peace Corps is commonly described as “The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Love”. I hate that they have dibs on the line because, besides being a great quote, it captures a good bit of the heart of working in the game industry. If you work in the game industry you probably love games and most of the people that you work with do too.

The other people often end up being the best part –Warning– The money will probably never end up being the best part. Not to say that everyone in the industry lives with their parents, just don’t expect golden toilets. Most people in the industry make enough to support themselves, and even their families, just trust me, you’ll be richer in friendship than wealth…unless you’re a complete prick (In which case you’ll probably end up in charge of a game studio and swimming in cash and–if there’s a God–cutting yourself every night as you drink yourself into unconsciousness wondering what is wrong with everyone else that makes them not like you).

Yeah the goods of being in the game industry = Going to work everyday with people you like, working on something that you love.

The con of being in the game industry = More money would be nice.

So that’s the lovey-dovey perspective on the industry, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all Kumbaya and s’mores but it passes the “Office Space” Test. If I had a butt-load of money and I didn’t need to work…God help me I’d still get up and drive through L.A. traffic to show up every morning.

This was going to be the part where I say that I wouldn’t actually show up every morning if I was suddenly rich, but I can’t. I’m scared to death to admit it, but I would show up every morning…it beats the hell out of daytime TV.


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Posted in Gaming

1 Comment

Game Corner?

Written by Aaron on September 8, 2008 | 4 Comments

Moe asked me if I’d like to post here on the BadPopcorn blog, to talk about random game industry stuff. Maybe I should have said no.

Well it’s too late now, I said “I’d love to” or something similar and now I will have to live with the repercussions of my reckless words. I’m starting small though.

There is this odd thing that can happen when participating in team activities, where one person on the team is more burden than benefit, like an obsolete laptop computer, they’re heavy, slow, loud and only rarely useful (and even then only for short periods of time). When we play Halo3 at the BadPopcorn office that laptop is me.

So really, what can the guy with the most deaths and least kills say to the rest of the team? “Uh Sorry I suck guys”? Even if it is sincere, it isn’t going to make the sucking stop, the sucking will continue. I do not have an “A-Game” that I have been not bringing, that can be brought now that I have realized my suck-ocity. To paraphrase Descartes, I suck therefore I am.

So what can the guy that drags the team down do?
Well I could stop playing, but screw that, the game is fun even when I come in last…unerringly, completely, utterly last. As discussed earlier an apology just doesn’t seem right unless I intend to do something to lessen the chances of similar wronging in the future. I’m afraid I cannot promise that.

Leaving only one option, a simple and heartfelt admission of wrongdoing and regret…

So yeah, Moe. That rocket in your back when you were trying to splatter Ben on the Mongoose?

My Bad


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Posted in Gaming, Satire

4 Comments

Dr Horrible

Written by Ben on July 16, 2008 | 1 Comment

Just because I’ve watched Act I umpteen times and wish there will be more than III Acts.


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Posted in Entertainment

1 Comment

privacy policy or the lack of it

Written by Moe on August 29, 2007 | 3 Comments

A few months ago I signed up for a SharedReviews beta account. The idea behind the site is to get solid reviews of products and pay the community 50/50 on certain revenue. Sounds pretty cool huh? Well it may be but as I was signing up I came across the privacy policy. Usually I just breeze through it but I decided to read this one.

“We protect your privacy with a passion!”

First, I want to say that I think ShareReviews is a cool site and I hope their business model works out. However, the privacy policy was kind of weird. It was actually amusing. Why do sites even have privacy policies? They should just come out and say “Yea, we’ll use your information for whatever we damn well please.” Below are some lines right of the policy.

“For the purposes of this policy, “Personal Information” means any information about you except your business title, address, e-mail address, telephone number or facsimile number. It also does not include your home address and telephone number if these are published in a telephone or other directory, and does not include any Review, content or other materials that you post or submit to use for possible publication. “

Umm….so what else is there? What exactly is private then?

“We do not sell your Personal Information to third parties. We may share some or all of your Personal Information with our third party business partners”

Hmmm ok. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a “review” site and to make money they are probably selling data. For that data to be worth anything they have to include user data with it. So why throw in the line about “we protect your privacy with a passion.” Half the business model is actually based upon doing the exact opposite.

Most users caring less is the worst part. We’ll go crazy if a telemarketer calls our house but we don’t blink while registering for a new site. Personally, I’m not against a website data mining to show relevant ads. Let’s take facebook for example. They will look at your profile and use that to display an advertisement. An advertiser will pay more to know that their ad is getting to their target demographic. I’m fine with that. I’m going to see an ad anyway, might as well see one that I might actually like. That’s how Google makes all their money.

What I don’t like is when companies sell information they collect. To me thats like selling hot pictures your ex girlfriend took for you. The ones she would dress up like a tiger and act like she is…ok getting off topic. The pictures were meant for you not the public or your favorite “rate this chick” website. Just because you don’t care about her anymore doesn’t mean you should go and sell something she wouldn’t want sold. However, let’s say you analyze the pictures. After hours of analyzing, and frequent naps, you say to yourself “hey i bet she would really like this lingerie site.” You contact her the usual way you two communicate and let her know that you are an affiliate for an animal lingerie site. Nothing wrong with that, right?