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[Poll] How much time do you spend working on games

Started by Wombah May 3, 2007 at 8:42 AM 28 replies 3.3k views
Original Post
Wombah
Wombah
How much time do you spend on developing games per week? And what do you do for a day job, or is your day job perhaps game development? It would seem this board is full of people devoting a *lot* of their time to game development, and I'm curious to know how much. E.g. I've been lurking in the help wanted forum on and off for a time now, and it seems many projects consist of and want people that devote upwards of a full time job towards the projects. So, how about it? Mainly I'd like to know how many hours a week you put into game development and what your main occupation(s) are, but feel free to elaborate. [Edited by - Wombah on May 3, 2007 12:13:49 PM]
Ravuya
Ravuya
Really only about two hours a day, but I've been having motivation problems so I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk playing games.
mntlinstituteflr
mntlinstituteflr
I'd say 30-40 hours a week. Depends on school and hockey. I am a student and don't have a "job" at the moment, atleast not a paying one. :(
Patrick Cason
Wh1sp3r
Wh1sp3r
Same as Ravuya, I work full time and go to school at night 2 times a week, and currently building a house, so game development time took a huge drop !
Samith
Samith
Well I'll be at about 40 hours a week this summer when I start my job. During the school year I'd say that value is about zero.
ToohrVyk
ToohrVyk
I have three jobs and working on two master thesis at the same time, and contribute to an open source project. Plus, I'm a Magic : the Gathering aficionado and a Game Master for In Nomine Satanis and Paranoia XP. And I'm a bimonthly disc jockey as well.

This leaves about 3 hours a week for game development.
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Rixter
Rixter
About 3 hours a semester, if I'm lucky. School keeps me pretty busy, although I did make space invaders last year...

I'm hoping that changes once I'm done.
Evil Steve
Evil Steve
37.5 hours a week as my day job (Currently DS development for Race Driver: Create and Race), plus about 15-20 hours a week doing hobby stuff. Although the hobby stuff varies wildly.
Wombah
Wombah
I should answer my own question. My day job makes 40 hrs a week working on casual/betting games. Beyond that I'm currently logging zero hours a week, and I'm thinking I could get that up to about 7-14 hours a week at most before I'd have to loose something - either my job or my mind. Of course that's a question of motivation, and thus depends on what I'm working on.
Scint
Scint
Right now, about zero. The only time I spend making games is jotting down ideas in a spiral notebook -- no programming. I found that as soon as I got a programming job my motivation to program in my free time disappeared. Also since I spend my 8 hours at work at a desk all day long, I find I like to spend my evenings & weekends away from a desk.
gunning
gunning
Probably an average of 3 hours a day but it varies greatly. I've done 24 hour coding marathons before just for fun, and during heavy schoolloads I can't spare any time at all.
....[size="1"]Brent Gunning
Omid Ghavami
Omid Ghavami
I get at most a few hours a week, but usually zero. I'm a full-time student and I'm also co-owner of a software development firm, we mostly do consulting jobs but we have a few projects of our own as well. I wish I could spend more time on it, but I figure there are more relevant things for me to do considering I'm not even studying comp sci or planning on joining the industry. It's great fun, but it's just a hobby for me, at least for the time being [smile]
Best regards, Omid
GameCreator
GameCreator
Next to none. I'm a real estate assistant by day and have little to do at night and weekends (live by myself) so I have the least excuse out of all of you. Worse yet, I know Photoshop, Max, Allegro, Irrlicht (to some extent), Reason ...

Great. Now I'm more depressed than ever. :(
Machaira
Machaira
Quote:
Original post by Scint
Right now, about zero. The only time I spend making games is jotting down ideas in a spiral notebook -- no programming. I found that as soon as I got a programming job my motivation to program in my free time disappeared. Also since I spend my 8 hours at work at a desk all day long, I find I like to spend my evenings & weekends away from a desk.

Any true code monkey would be happy to chain himself to a desk and write code 24/7! [grin]

I manage to get between an hour and 3 hours a night worth of coding time usually. Right now it's on the "an hour" end as Guitar Hero 2 has been sucking up some time. [cool]

There's so many things I want to do game-wise, I have to pull myself away from the keyboard just to get 6 hours of sleep a night. [sad]

Former Microsoft XNA and Xbox MVP | Check out my blog for random ramblings on game development
DeadlySinner
DeadlySinner
Almost none now. I was able to squeeze a little bit of time when I was in school, but I'm working 40 hours/week Co-op/Interning at ATI (...technically AMD) and still have another job (though it's only about once a month).
shuma-gorath
shuma-gorath
Short answer: Not enough.

Slightly longer answer: This current transition is preventing me from developing full-throttle, but make no mistake: my heart is still very much in game development.

Here are the results of a previous frontpage poll covering this very topic.
load_bitmap_file
load_bitmap_file
I average a couple hours a week, mostly on weekends.

Lately though, 0. Damn APs! Then it's off to college [headshake]
lancekt
lancekt
At least 40 hours a week. ;)

Plus 1-2 hours on hobby stuff most of the time, but as many as 10-20 hours when I really get into something.
Orin Tresnjak | Graphics ProgrammerBethesda Game StudiosStandard Disclaimer: My posts represent my opinions and not those of Bethesda/Zenimax, etc.
nordwindranger
nordwindranger
probably only about 5 hours. However I do spend a ton of time reading about other people working on games. lol

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