Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Toby Hutton Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Agencies... Date: 04 Sep 1998 14:58:10 +1000 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 57 Sender: thutton@TECH10 Message-ID: References: <35EB7D9F.7D37@mundivia.es> <35ED8DB0.51A3@writeme.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 203.103.154.235 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 tjs@cs.monash.edu.au (Toby Sargeant) writes: > > On 03 Sep 1998 10:54:32 +1000, Toby Hutton wrote: > >tjs@cs.monash.edu.au (Toby Sargeant) writes: > >I know of at least 5 Australian members (including myself), 4 in > >Melbourne and 1 in Sydney. There must be more though. > > Really? Apart from you, I haven't spoken to any Melbourne based Yaroze members. I had an email from a guy called Yan Kit James Fu who's at Deakin and is trying to hook his Yaroze up to an O2! Also, there's a friend of a friend, Simon Bullen, I met briefly last year who works and lives around St. Kilda. I live in Prahran now, and you're in Ormond? Plus the guy in Sydney is called Regan Russell who registered his page a while ago. > > >I work full time as a software developer now and will be thinking > >about moving on to a new job in a year or so. I know there aren't > >many game developers in Australia and they tend to keep a low profile > >(except for Beam/Melbourne House) but I think it will be possible to > >get a non-PC games programming job when I want to, locally. > > Yep; Beam are about the only largish games company in Melbourne. Up until > recently, however, they had a pretty low profile, and reports from people > who've worked there suggest that they treat their employees badly. Recently a guy left us here and went to Beam. He wasn't a particularly good programmer (we spent weeks going over his code fixing it up after he left) and now he's a project manager at Beam. That's one reason why I wouldn't want to work there; I haven't heard anything about poor treatment... > > >I don't know, I think there's plenty of opportunity wherever you look > >(here or O.S.) if you obviously have talent. > > Agreed. I could get a good job in Melbourne, but the liklihood is that it would > be doing something other than games programming. This, coupled with the fact > that England seems to produce many more quality games than Australia does, and > the fact that I have a desire to travel anyway leads me to the conclusion that > my plan is not a bad one. Ideally I'd like to start up my own company, but I > acknowledge that that's a really difficult thing to do, and that, given my > lack of business accumen, I'd be likely to go under really quickly. It's surprising to discover sometimes who actually does the work on titles - you hear more about publishers rather than developers, but you're right. If you wanted to go England anyway then you'd be able to find a job over there just as easily or easier than here. I don't know how visas work these days in England. I think it used to be a bit easier. Hell, I was thinking of moving over there in a year or so with my girlfriend. But then we broke up, ha. Maybe I still will. -- Toby.