Working in Games


A Guide to Games Development - Programming

Shelby Hubick, Senior Software Engineer at Relic Entertainment guides you through the role of the Programmer
Q: Introduce yourself! What's your name and what do you do at THQ?

I’m Shelby Hubick and I’m a Senior Software Engineer at Relic Entertainment.

Q: Tell us a bit more about your job - what does it involve, and what are you working on at the moment?

I'm currently working on a WW2 real time strategy game called Company Of Heroes. My job as a gameplay/ AI programmer on this project is to make all the soldiers and tanks in the game move, fight and react to the player's input. I'm not responsible for what the characters look like just how they act and react to the events that happen in the game. So if a soldier is standing around and a tank drives by, and the user then tells the soldier to attack the tank, my job is to make the soldier run up to the tank and throw a sticky bomb at its wheels. Something else I'm responsible for is to add to new rules to our game. If a game designer decides that every time you blow up a tank you get points, then I would add those rules to the game.
So on any given day here are the things you might find me doing:

a) Discussing with game designers new features that need to be added to the game, or old features that need to be fixed

b) Sitting down with a pen and paper and working out a difficult problem (or having a meeting with other programmers to work together on a problem)

c) Writing code into a computer to get new features into the game (currently we write code in these languages - C++, C#, Lua). This is the thing we do the most

d) Fixing the code that we have written. We often have to go back and revisit our code because it may have 'bugs' or not be working as the game designer expected. We do this a lot right before a game is finished

e) Scheduling - we are often given lots of things to do at one time, and we have to make sure to work on them in the right order, and not spend too much time on them, so this is an important step

f) Interviewing new programmers

g) Working with artists - sometimes we need to work with artists to get their art/ animations into the game



Q: What was your first job in the games industry, and how did you get to where you are now?

My career began at Electronic Arts Canada as a junior programmer. I got the job straight out of a computer gaming program here in Vancouver (called Digipen). I had only learned how to program games six months earlier and now I was getting my first job - looking back I was very lucky! Nowadays, the level of experience required for entry levels job is much higher and most often require a degree which I did not have. At EAC, my first game was a racing game called Need For Speed. I was responsible for helping out writing tools for the artists and doing odd jobs. Over the four years I was at EAC, I worked on many games (mostly the Need For Speed games), and worked on everything from tools, graphics, user interface and game play. With all of this knowledge I made the jump to Relic Entertainment to work on games that didn't involve racing or cars, and moved onto much more imaginative games - Homeworld and Impossible Creatures.
Now I've been at Relic/THQ for over six great years and I am still working on my favourite type of games (strategy games).

Q: What made you decide you wanted to want to work in the games industry? Why did you choose programming?

I got into games at a very early age and fell for them hard - they consumed my every waking hour. When I wasn't playing one, I was trying to create one, and since I didn't know a thing about programming at the time, I ended up making board games and role playing games instead. So I know I wanted to make games, the only obstacle I had was figuring how to get into it. I first started out as an artist, I drew comic books and did all the art for all my early games, but I lacked patience, so my pencil was quickly replaced with a computer and some programming books. Almost immediately I found out this my thing! I loved problem solving, math and trying to figure out how to type in odd looking sentences into a computer to make it do my bidding. So now that I knew what aspect of game making I really enjoyed, it was only a matter of time before I fought my way to being a game programmer.

Q: What's the best thing about your job?

The best part of my job is seeing the code that I write be converted into something fun! The smallest amount of programming can make such a huge difference. There's nothing quite as satisfying as adding a new feature to the game and seeing everyone enjoying it.

In addition to this, I have so much creative freedom. Even though I'm not a designer, I still work closely with them to help determine how the game should play. It’s also challenging which keeps me on my toes. Games are getting bigger and more complicated every year so a programmer has to really keep up on the latest technology, so this involves constant learning which I also enjoy.
And lastly, I love to play games, and part of my job is to play all types of games for 'research'!

Q: What qualifications and/or experience does someone need to follow a career in programming?

To be a game programmer takes many different skills but in my opinion the most important is a strong understanding, or even better, a love of math. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't have to solve some type of math or logic problem. So if you like numbers, game programming will have lots of these for you to play with.

Getting a university or college degree is a huge bonus - I don't believe I've hired someone without one for quite some time, the only exception is someone like myself who has been doing this for 10+ years. Another thing I look for is someone who is really motivated to learn more and really excited to make great games - this goes such a long way.

Q: What advice would you give to a young person who wanted to get involved in programming in the games industry?

To get into games as a programmer, or any job for that matter, the best thing you can do is research the job you're interested in as much as possible. This would include reading related articles, books, online forums and magazines in an effort to really determine what are the key skills required for the job. The main reason to do this is because the specific requirements for the jobs in our industry are changing all of the time.
Other things that could really help:

a) Get a degree, it’s harder to get a job without one nowadays, unless you have lots of experience

b) Try making a full game by yourself

c) Work your way up - start as a game tester

d) Go to a game programming school - there are tons of these now