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High-Level vs Low-Level Game Programming

Started by calculemus1988 Oct 7, 2011 at 11:54 AM 5 replies 6.4k views

Original Post

calculemus1988

Oct 7, 2011 at 11:54 AM

I am in last year of college. I want to get a job in games industry as programmer but I don't want to do low-level programming. I want to do something AI and machine learning related. Am I in the wrong industry? Should I change focus to other jobs other than games industry?

By low level programming I mean, for example, connecting XNA and windows Forms or whatever. I mean I don't care about those kind of things, I want to work on higher level like doing fuzzy logic, how does the AI decide what to build in RTS and so on...

ApochPiQ

Oct 7, 2011 at 6:31 PM

Moved to Breaking In.

There are plenty of what you call "high level" roles available in game programming. Any gameplay or game logic programming position will generally be as you describe. You probably won't find a huge amount of machine learning work in the games industry, though, so if that's something you specifically really want to do, you might consider alternative career paths. General applied AI is pretty common, though.

Tom Sloper

Oct 8, 2011 at 5:15 PM

Cal, you will have to prove yourself a worthy teammate, worker, and programmer, and that will definitely entail a period of having to work on stuff you don't want to work on. That's true in all endeavors of life, not only the game industry.

r4idontmy

Oct 12, 2011 at 6:21 AM

if u dont want to work as an entry level, then how do they know you are more than capable for the tough work.

Hodgman

Oct 12, 2011 at 6:50 AM

Generally, when looking at games jobs -
game/gameplay programmer = "high level" stuff.
engine/systems programmer = "low level" stuff.

PedroFurtado

Nov 19, 2011 at 12:58 AM

Exactly what Hodgman said, right? I think there are more "high level" jobs available(but the competition should be harder too), specially on small companies that tend to reuse already made engines.

And yes, you'll need to work on stuff you don't like...

Tom Sloper

Nov 19, 2011 at 2:25 AM

Old thread. Closed.

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