Where are you from and how's game development there?

Just in case it isn't clear. In my post, Hollywood North refers to Vancouver. At least that's a term we use because of all the film production occurring up here.

 

I meant to say that I was from Northern Alberta, specifically Cold Lake.
I now live in Moose Jaw Saskatchewan.

 

I'm originally from Poland where game dev is becoming more promising with even government funding for home grown game dev studios like CD-PROJEKT RED.
For about 10 years now I've been living in the county of Buckinghamshire, England, not far from London and Oxford. There seem to be a lot of opportunities around here. There are quite a few offices of the big guys like EA, Rockstar, Ubisoft or Square Enix, but there are also some home grown big names like Codemasters, Eidos and Criterion to name a few
So definitely not a bad place to be for game development, especially in the South East which seems to have quite a few events you can attend to as well as a multitude of small to medium game studios hiring developers around London/Oxford.

 

I'm from Vietnam. There're some indie dev here, but it seem everyone just exclusively make casual mobile game trying to copy flappy bird success or whatever. It pretty sad.

There also a few big corporation that only do p2w mmorpg, but it seem their gaming development department is dead now, and they just publish foreign games instead.

 

Cool! How was it moving to England? The idea is very present in my future projections.

 

I was just in Vietnam for work a few months back. Nice place. Will probably be back again for holidays in the near future.

Some real massive work force productivity issues though.

 

Feel free to pm me if you have question about Hanoi, place to eat or whatever. Though I wouldn't recommend the city for tourist, unless you like traditional stuff like old temple or looking at revolution leader corpse. Ho Chi Minh city have a lot more entertainment stuff.

What make you think so? In my experience, in government and government backed company, no one are paid enough to care, including the managers. For private company, they often believe the Japanese idea of more OT == more work done, so I guess there that.

 

Here in Alaska, there are no computers, no games, and people survive by eating tree bark and drinking whale blood.

Well, that wasn't until a Russian spy plane carrying advanced computer technologicals mayday'd north of the artic circle where I was living at the time with the Eskimos -- busy fighting the whales. All the computers crashed into a polar bears den and I had to fight them bare-handed to recover the payload. I lost half my face but that doesn't matter.

As soon as I saw the square blocks of technological wonder, I knew they were built for no other purpose than to create silly games so that we would have something to do in the winter besides bang our cousins. So first I had to decipher the Russian, which I accomplished by swimming across the bering sea, capturing Valdimir Putin, forcing him to teach me Russian, and then ransoming him back for a bottle of whiskey and twelve thousand pounds of blubber.


Then.. well, none of that is true, I hate to tell you. But I think I might be the only person doing anything game development related here in Alaska. I don't know, I don'lt leave the house much these days. In another year we'll be moving somewhere, so hopefully it's a place I can interact with actual humans doing some modding or something like that from time to time.

 

I moved here at a very young age; I was only ten years old. It wasn't necessarily a game dev related move as at the time I wanted to become an astrophysicist (aspirations can take a wild turn on you). I always liked the British culture and the language so it was exciting. Very difficult at first as my English was very basic at that time but I guess because I was so young, I picked it up quite quick. School was a mess, so I went from being the popular kid back at home, to that kind of ok dude from another country who hangs out with his weird polish friend and doesn't understand much so let's ignore or bully him.

So yeah, school was a bit tough at first but it can be for any kid no matter whether you're abroad or not. That did however make me very contained and attached to my computer and that's where it all started, modding games, graphic design, making private MMORPG game servers and my interest in programming. But it was only in College, that I got into game development, from a little unit we had where we had to make our own game in Construct 2. It was so fun that I decided that that's for me.

After College I went to work in IT, firstly in a low paid IT Support MSP, met some awesome people but the workload was horrible and very reminiscent of a call centre... There was no way of balancing the long hours and stress with working on games at home. This year however I joined an IT team for a global book publishing company with less hours. Also the workflow here is much nicer which gives me the chance to tinker around in Unity here and there This should help realise my hobbyist dream while retaining a good, low stress source of income. It is still very much the early days for me.

Anyways... back to the point.
As for the whole challenge of moving to England, it's tough. I suppose I was lucky to come here at such a young age, as I absorbed the language very well and managed to acquire a good accent and blend in. But it has its challenges. If you wanted to move here strictly for the Game Dev opportunities, well, it's a good mature market with a lot of potential for devs to grow. But of course, it's still a tricky environment with some fierce competition. If where you are at the moment is a bit dead in terms of game dev, then perhaps that's exactly what you're looking for
Also, Brexit is just around the corner, so there may be some disruption in terms of the market but I doubt it will be as apocalyptic as the media portrays, so I wouldn't let that put me off if I was you.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply. I'm not a kid, but I'm still young (20 years old), so I have a few years to think it through yet. Luckily my english is decent, though of course not perfect (much better read than heard, no doubt about that). It's not because of the game dev environment that I wish to move, even though it is a factor. I don't even know if that is what I want to do professionally (I'm into other geeky things, mostly with Python, such as genetic algorithms and some boring math stuff). It is because there's not much of a future in Argentina. We are experiencing the greatest econnomical crisis since 2001 -year in which the greatest crisis in our history happened-, life is getting pretty hard, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better. If the econnomical crisis wasn't enough, the country is getting unsafe -the danger comming from the government itself and public forces. Anyhow, we are not supose to talk politics on the forum, but this is one of the reasons I want to leave. Anywhere. England would be the best outcome, but nearly anywhere with a more or less decent future is good for me.

Anyhow, thanks, man, great response.

 

Basically every job I am used to one person doing in Australia, I saw three or more people doing in Vietnam. Everything from the checkout operators at local stores to street food vendors to guys loading the trucks at the factory.

Its currently my day job to improve productivity. So things like that stand out to me.

 

Everybody's got to eat.

 

'cause it's awesome.

edit: Also, I haven't moved to Tokyo yet.

 

Born in Oregon. Live in Silicon Valley. Work in Sweden. Work is good and plentiful in all places.

 

I see where you're coming from man, I'm 20 too actually. Your English does seem pretty good so I'm sure you'd be fine. There are many people here who know very little English and they still manage to get by. As to overall living, life here is expensive but you can get paid quite well depending on experience and qualification, so go for it. There are a lot of opportunities here in the game dev world but also in other professions, so if Argentina is as bad as you're saying, I'd say why not! Even if you started with a basic job in Tesco's to start with just to survive, you could get by, albeit pretty modestly. Anyways, I'll stop the offtop, if you need to know anything drop me a pm

 

People can't just move to the UK and work in Tescos! It's a points based immigration system and supermarkets don't count. If you come for just a holiday you're not allowed to work.

If people want to move to the UK they either have to have a job offer (not in a supermarket) or marry someone from the UK. Or (until Brexit) be from the EU.

 

I have Italian citizenship so I'm technically an Italian citizen, therefore technically from the EU. I can even vote on Italian elections, which is funny. Of course I don't do it (why would I decide on the future of a country I'll never live in?), but I have the right to do so. This is the only advantage I have when it comes to moving somewhere on the EU, though England will count only till Brexit.

It's a lot of logistics, of course, and for the moment it's just an idea. At the end of the next year elections will come in Argentina (if we get there without the current government resigning, which would force to have advanced elections, which would be good because change could come sooner) and hopefully (it's a very highlighted hopefully) things might get better. In few words, all this, which remains just an idea for the moment, depends a lot on how things turn up in the coming one or two years. Wish me luck!

By the way this was very nice of you, I'll keep this in mind. Thanks!

 

I am aware of that and it was only a theoretical assumption to prove that you can even get by with a very basic job here compared to other parts of the world. Besides, they can move and work for a supermarket if they are an EU citizen which our friend here is

Well you have quite a few options then! Good luck

 

We have a tiny conference every year but I'm nowhere near social enough to attend.

 

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4138287/free-movement-end-eu-migration-brexit/
The problem with policies is that the government don't seem to understand the idea of recursion.

Code (CSharp):

1. class Person{
2.   void MoveToUK(){
3.      FindRelative<Person>().MoveToUK();
4.   }
5. }

It seems fairly harmless to say that you can bring your relatives to live with you. They seem to forget that relatives also have relatives and so on until the whole population of the world is basically allowed to come in.

But anyway, why move to a country with expensive standard of living? That's the complete opposite thing you want to do if you want to make computer games!

I would like to move to Argentina.

 

I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world. Even though I think we could get the same standard of living for cheaper (THe public sector is crazy ineffective), its pretty nice living in a stable west world country, were most of the population has fiber broad band connection etc, etc

 

You could compromise and live in somewhere like Estonia. Cheap living due to it being former soviet satellite but also good technology infrastructure. Mind you, as long as you don't mind it being freezing and that any minute you might be annexed by Russia.

It's kind of funny that silicon valley is in a really expensive place to live. Since one of your only overheads in the software business is rent. But I suppose that's where the money is for investment.

 

I don't think you know what Argentina is like, haha. I think you based that on the assumption that Argentina is cheap (which is only true if you earn in dollars, which you won't in Argentina). If you earn in argentinian pesos, you are looking at a country whose inflation rate is only overcome, in Latin America, by Venezuela. This means that the 10.000 pesos salary I earn, in the beginning of the year I could have used to buy a TV, but now with them I can buy.. milk. Luckily, next year I'll be able to buy a candybar with them. And the economy is not solid enough for the salaries to raise, so prices get constantly higher and salaries remain the same. So no man, I don't think you want to move to Argentina; not right now at least. Unless you plan to earn in dollars/euros someway, which doesn't seem likely having a job here. If you come to visit here, though, you'll have a great time, it's a beautiful country. It's living here and earning in pesos what's the tough part.

I guess it's a prejudice though, the idea that latin american countries are cheap. I mean, of course they are if you come with the dollars or euros you earned back in your home. For the natives it is a very different reality. I would consider myself so lucky to live in a country where people can eat everyday and go to school and live in decent houses that, was that the case, I wouldn't even joke about leaving

Of course if you do come, whether it is to visit or to live, you can contact me for any help you need. We like being hospitable and I'll help you anyway I can to assure you'll enjoy the country!