Salka

Fund Tim Schafer's next game YOURSELF!

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I guess you missed the bit where SiN claimed that the starting salary for (games) testers was $65-$80K per year?

If that's true... that's amazing. I should be testing games. I didn't make that when I worked hardware QA at Apple (which isn't games testing, but was pretty damn involved for a QA position, as it involved stringy half built laptops in glued together plexiglass briefcases), and I don't think I know a games tester who started at that salary.

Edited by Jake
nevermind, I was behind in the thread

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The review wasn't that long ago. Not the game. (2005 vs 1993)

Yes, that review was published in March 2005. I graduated high school in May 2005. I interpreted correctly...

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Yeah, oops. :P So I don't know about the games industry (and in my defense, I mentioned that up front), but in my experience at bigger software development companies, testers are computer scientists/engineers, so they get the same (or close to) starting salaries as developers.

Yeah, I know what you're referring to. That sort of testing is way more involved and technical, and so leads to those sorts of salaries. I wish I earned that much as a games tester!

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Fucking Santa Fe.

I've always thought San Francisco seemed like an interesting place to visit. I don't know much about it other than:

  • The Rock (the island)
  • The Rock (the movie)
  • They're famous for some unhealthy food, like a burger or sandwich or something
  • The gays
  • The Golden Gate bridge
  • The steep roads
  • That one steep and curvy road that gives you an achievement in Driver (Lombard something?)
  • Driver
  • Midtown Madness 2

but my impression is it's a pleasant place to be, and that it has lots of interesting things going on all the time. If I ever go to the US I hope I'll be able to go there.

I was in San Francisco last summer! I could've sworn I took a picture of Lombard street. All I can find now is a picture of some goats that were two blocks away: https://photos-3.dropbox.com/i/o/w_h6RR31g5bSlNGW51KNkKJ80urG_8xfLX5Q3T4G3cY/8326218/1330120800/af1dd30/America%20598.JPG

Edited by ysbreker

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My motel (Buena Vista Motor Inn) was at Lombard Street. I'm still proud of how I was able to park my big Impala in that very, very tiny underground garage they had. It had an incredibly steep and narrow entryway as well.

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The February issue of GD Mag actually has a lot of salary info if people are still interested. QA average salary is 50k in the US. Programming is about 90k in the US. Art is about 70k and Production is about 90k.

When you include the rest of the world the numbers get pulled down a little bit, but considering in the volume of game development in expensive cities I don't imagine SF would be that much higher than the US average number.

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If anything, my guess is that those numbers are mostly boosted by jobs in California. It's relative.

Also, it's very possible that artists, programmers, designers, QA, and producers get paid less at Double Fine as you often sacrifice some pay to work at a smaller company that you love. This is just my guess though, as I do not work there.

Anyway, is all this debate to wonder if this is enough money for them to make an adventure game with three people or just doing the math for the sake of it?

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If anyone is doubting Schafer's adventure game development potential, Marek Goldstring dug up this gem, a review of one of Schafer's earlier pieces, "The Day of a Tentacle", penned by budding games journalist, Christian Remo. You can find a link to it here: here.

woah, I'd forgotten that you could play MM inside DOTT.

I wonder what kind of hijinks you could get up to if you had a game where you could play the actual game itself inside the game (and regress infinitely), but each level deeper would be subtly different or affect the level above/below it.

You could pull weird mindfuck tricks like letting the player look up faqs (real and in-game) and the game could talk to a server that could scrape gamefaqs or whatever and replicate the text (in the in-game version of the faq) but change key sentences. Some ambitious indie dev needs to get on that.

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$2 M

Who wants to bet they will get $4 Million by the end?

Not me.

Regarding this QA confusion... GAMES testers are NOT the same as software testers. Their pay is not comparable.

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$2 M

Who wants to bet they will get $4 Million by the end?

Sure. I'll bet against.

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Sure. I'll bet against.

Deal. The winner will get gloating privileges.

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If they make less than $4 million I'll send someone a boxed copy of The Last Express.

[edit]does anyone want it?

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If it continues at the speed it's at now, it should just about make $4 million, especially with a last-minute boost. I don't think it will, though. I'm going to guess around $3 million.

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If they make less than $4 million I'll send someone a boxed copy of The Last Express.

[edit]does anyone want it?

Are you kidding?! Hell yes! Boxed copies are pretty damn rare/pricey.

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Seems that suddenly money started pouring in faster again. Maybe it's just people switching from lower tiers to higher ones.

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Yeah no doubt, there'll be a lot of people who donated at lower tiers but now have much more confidence in the project and may be willing to put just a bit more in. Also that (35-minute!) interview is fucking excellent and is surely going to attract attention. :tup:

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Mh, now I have 17 days left to get enough money/carelessness together for the 60$ tier. I'd love to get the actual book, but 500$ are flat out impossible for me - I'm not that rich/generous/reckless by a long shot.

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<--- QA Tester making peanuts

Yeeeah, if you're engineer enough to get a white box level gig more power to you, but us black box slaves paid to test entertainment software are considered 'entry level' (despite actually needing experience and/or intelligence far above 'getting a foot in the door' to be any good at it).

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