My experience as a game developer is completely different from yours! It’s *very* social. My job involves working in a team of hilarious guys, all of whom make me laugh so hard I cry on a regular basis. I love coming to work because even though I’m in front of a computer all day, we all work in one large cubicle-free room and are constantly talking to each other. TBH, I don’t think an introvert would last long in the games industry - it just takes too much teamwork, IMO.

When our games come out in stores it’s not just a game sitting on a shelf and anonymous reviews. I work on an extremely under appreciated and often mocked sector of gaming - little kid’s games on the DS. But it’s not a void. It’s little girls in stores telling you that your game is her favorite because she wasn’t interested in gaming before until she saw your game. Or a mom telling you that she’s been all over town looking for a copy of your game because it’s all her kid wants for her birthday and it’s the only video game mom approves of. I see the kid’s reviews on Amazon saying that they love it and their parents approve of the message we’re sending. It’s stuff like that all the freakin’ time! It’s incredibly rewarding, even though we’re not making triple A titles. My sister worked one of the best selling 360 games of ‘06 & ‘07 (many, MANY 10/10s & a GotY edition) and the amount of people she’s inspired is incredible. Someone mistook me for her once and I thought the kid was going to have a heart attack in the process of saying hello. She gets letters from teenage kids who look up to her as a career role model as well as soldiers in Iraq who are playing it to pass the time and want to thank her for the work she put into the game. It’s crazy how much feedback people go out of their way to give you once your game (no matter how popular) is on the shelf. People seem to really like talking to strangers for whatever reason. heh. Anyways, good luck with your movie stuffs! Hopefully you’ll find it a very enjoyable pursuit.

Just thought I’d throw that in here.

Stop analysing everything, it’s counter-productive.

Andy Williams
Biz Dev
www.GameJobHunter.com

And I’m certainly not saying that making video games is “bad” because it’s less social than making movies, I’m just saying that it’s less socially rewarding. It’s an ideal medium for introverts, but I’m too extroverted to enjoy the lack of social interaction that it necessitates. Actually, wait, I guess I am saying that making video games is bad. But what I mean is that it’s bad for someone like me who needs something socially rewarding.

I’m happy for you that you get so much enjoyment out of sharing your games. I think that means that you’d be better suited to a career making games than I would.

Many of my games are really construction kits; I may make a good game out of them myself, or may not, but what I really want to give people is the experience of building their own game in some specific style.

I haven’t got very far with that. There’s a dozen or so people who’ve talked to me about the games they were making (none released that I know of), and that was awesome.

On the other hand, the many thousands of downloads of the more finished games, and the hundreds of registrations for Hephaestus when it was shareware, those are pretty awesome, too.

I’m gearing up for a new game release, and my primary means of contact for it will be Facebook, so a real network can form around my games.

If you isolate yourself behind email and blogs, or lock yourself in a closet with a typewriter to be a screenwriter, then you’ll feel all alone except for some numerical stats. That’s regardless of the medium. If you do something to encourage community, and that’s what you want, you can get it.