Random Fail: First World Problems

[Kohan]

Local candidates only

Most jobs are. I only suggested it off-handedly and not seriously, but if you ever wanted to get a job in the industry, I'd recommend moving to Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York. Optionally, you can use a friend or family member's address to fake a local presence (making preparations to be available for an interview, if necessary), and then apply anyway.

I'm not fluent either, that's my major problem or I would be looking for a job around here in the field. I have to go to Japan for a while to get firsthand cultural experience and finish gaining fluency (or as close as I can get being a non-native speaker) before I'd be comfortable getting a job in the field, but I can't afford it on my own dime and I can't afford school anymore either. Currently have an application out to teach English in Japan though but who knows, the program is pretty competitive.

You definitely don't need to visit Japan to become fluent. While there, you'll probably run into people who will try to speak in (broken) English to you when they realize you aren't a master of their language, which will complicate matters further. Of course, it's true that being in a country where the primary language is the one you're studying can be helpful, but you're better off enforcing immersion in other ways.

You may already know this, but one of the best means of studying language is to do so as naturally as possible. For one, avoid flash cards that have the word in your first language. Instead, look for cards that use pictures and words alone. For example, if you had a Japanese card for "rice," it shouldn't say "rice"—it should say "米" (more info here), or the Romaji version of that, "bei." (As you've studied already, you probably recognized the character, but that's beside the point.)

Secondly, you should immerse yourself. Watch anime without subtitles. Listen to conversations and language instruction audio (that isn't just "Word in English," "Word in Japanese" style) when you're driving to work. Force yourself to read about things you're interested in by reading Japanese articles about it.

Alternatively, you could pay for a full immersion course that requires living on-site. That would be much more effective than a few years of exposure while you're teaching students English all day, as you'll basically be speaking the "wrong language" while at work, and will be tired otherwise.

This video is someone talking about their own immersion experiences, and it provides some reference links: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BISS6efQoOo

To be a full time translator you pretty much either have to work for the government or have to be in the right area for the language (and for the video game industry, almost certainly West coast). Not to mention it takes years to learn a language enough to be fluent enough for most translation jobs, it takes real dedication to it for most people. And then there's the fact that a lot of langauge classes just plain suck and you'll walk away knowing almost nothing (took a sadly loosely-administered Japanese at a community college for 3 years and literally learned almost nothing from it that I hadn't taught myself, university was definitely the way to go). If you happen to fall into one of those fail programs you're pretty much screwed unless you cand find something better in your area, which, depending on the langauge and area might be pretty hard to do. Solely teaching yourself is pretty much out of the question too, as that doesn't convey cultural nuances or affirmation of correct learning (and especially not pronunciation and accent).

I can understand and sympathize in relation to all of these things, as I've studied Japanese, French, and German. My knowledge of German is best, though my familiarity with Japanese culture is likely more significant. I don't talk about French, because fuck French.

Anyway.

With the sheer excess of online language-studying communities available today, I'd have to completely disagree with your stating that teaching yourself won't work. That isn't true. By using an intelligent approach, I've successfully taught myself a fair amount of German, and have been more successful with that than I was with French at college. (My Japanese studies, which happened about ten years ago, were actually magnificent, but cut short when my private tutor moved away.) It would require a lot of discipline, but there are entire communities dedicated to facilitating language study. There are even many smartphone apps that are completely free and capable of providing a reasonable amount of lessons (Busuu being one of the providers).

Now, teaching yourself to complete fluency isn't as feasible. I wouldn't fault you for being unable to do this. There are a lot of free and/or cheap online resources that can bring you very close, however. Something that's been gaining steam for years are live online teaching offerings, such as LiveMocha's.

Thanks though Kohan.

Absolutely.

[Petitssk]

With the sheer excess of online language-studying communities available today, I'd have to completely disagree with your stating that teaching yourself won't work. That isn't true. By using an intelligent approach, I've successfully taught myself a fair amount of German, and have been more successful with that than I was with French at college. (My Japanese studies, which happened about ten years ago, were actually magnificent, but cut short when my private tutor moved away.) It would require a lot of discipline, but there are entire communities dedicated to facilitating language study. There are even many smartphone apps that are completely free and capable of providing a reasonable amount of lessons (Busuu being one of the providers).

Now, teaching yourself to complete fluency isn't as feasible. I wouldn't fault you for being unable to do this. There are a lot of free and/or cheap online resources that can bring you very close, however. Something that's been gaining steam for years are live online teaching offerings, such as LiveMocha's.

I apologize for barging into your explanations like this, but I'd just like to mention that this is true from my experience as well.

I don't mean to denounce Japanese language classes, but in some aspects, I'd even prefer self-tuition over them.
From my experience, lots of students choose to study Japanese language because they are too lazy to do something that bears significance to them, which reflects strongly in their performance. A lot of these are weeded out early, but even now in the later semesters we have people who find themselves unable to read 4 of 5 words in a sentence because they don't know the, in parts, very basic Kanji. What's more, bad pronounciation can stick with you if the class is too full for your teacher to notice etc. etc. - classes definitely have advantages, but from my experience diligent self-tuition is required in order to reach whatever goal you're aiming for. Add to that the horrible, horrible order in which you learn Kanji in most classes, (finishing Heisig before entering university helped a lot, read Heisig, even if you're way into your classes!) and you quickly find yourself with lots and lots of disadvantages.

However, I do not want to say that classes are bad - I'm just saying that they aren't effective by themselves.

As for actually becoming fluent - as Kohan has pointed out, immersion is the key. I highly recommend looking for someone to do Tandem with in your area on top of whatever you might have in mind now - I looked for a Tandem partner in my first semester and, even though she moved away after my first semester, we occasionally met afterwards and now remain pen pals of sorts. The Tandem itself was a highly valuable experience since talking with native speakers (as opposed to whichever "partner" happens to sit down next to you) allows you to learn much more than you'd learn in classes. What's more, assuming you meet on a regular basis, you can find easily become integrated into a foreign-language environment if your Tandem partner also has friends from Japan - hang out together, listen, learn. Opportunities can be found pretty much everywhere.

Adding to the story about lack of perspectives as to what to do with a degree in Japanese language - quite frankly, I find myself in a similar situation.

I began studying Japanese language quite some time before entering university and figured it was what I wanted to do, so I also picked it as my major of sorts.

However, to tell you the truth, the more I studied, the more I realized that it just happened to be an important part of my hobbies, but not necessarily what I wanted to do with my life, or rather, a field in which I wished to seek a profession.

My part-time job for a translator also helped me realize that. What I had yet to realize was that translating a language and speaking it are two entirely different pairs of shoes - when I speak a foreign language, I kind of switch into that mindset. I don't translate German sentences into English as I type, I just think in English, kind of.
Translating, on the other hand, requires you to 100% understand what is being written in one language, picking up all nuances and hints, then converting that accurately. While I found that hard at first, I eventually got used to it and my boss gradually became quite pleased with my work. Nonetheless, thanks to that, I managed to realize that translating is not something that I would actually consider to be fun - I enjoy using foreign languages, but translations are far from the same, from my experience at least.

This put me in a predicament since I often thought that, in order to pursue my hobbies, I'd have to move to Japan since I pay several thousands of Euros in shipping and customs fees every year.
I also thought that with the current economy, getting out of Europe would be a good idea, but saving some money by moving into a culture I don't even fully understand, which also has many, many aspects which I realized I did not like at all, really didn't sound all that great the more I thought about it.
Not to mention, I like my homecountry, and there is no economic safety anywhere right now, so I decided to let this part of my life remain a hobby and look for alternatives.

As dorky as it sounds, right now, I'd like to become a librarian or work as an archivist, something in that field at the very least. For the time being, I'd still like to continue with my classes a little since I'd like to improve a little more, plus I just signed a rental contract, but I'll definitely try to get some job experience in that field as soon as I can.

I don't know if any of this will actually help you, Silenka, but trust me, you're far from the only person in that situation. While I'd recommend to continue pursuing this dream you have if you're sure about it, I would, at the very least, urge you to maybe reconsider and see if there are other ways to make use of what you have learned/what you want to do. Don't drive yourself into a corner, as terrible a time as it is, you've got plenty of options, always.

[Aksannyi]

All right, here's some real random fail.

A few months ago I requested official transcripts from all of my schools, to include two colleges and one high school, to be sent to another school which I plan to attend. Both of my previous colleges had no problem sending my records over, but it seems like my high school fails at simple tasks. Now of course I had to pay for my transcripts. It wasn't a lot, but the high school wouldn't accept debit so I had to mail them a check.

They cashed the check. However, my new school never received the transcripts. Knowing it was possible that there may have been a mix up with my maiden name, I called and asked the school I want to go to if they'd gotten it in that name instead. Or if they had any transcripts from my high school, as it's from Erie, PA, and the chances of another student trying to send transcripts from up there to down here are pretty low. Nope. Nothing was received.

Turns out a classmate of mine had the same issue ... so it seems that my high school, the same school which is always begging for money from its alumni and has no problem sending me out mailers every few months, can't send my fucking high school transcripts so I can move on and go back to school.

Although considering I've joined the military and attended two colleges since I've graduated high school, I'm not entirely sure why they even need my high school transcripts in the first place ... this whole scenario is fail.

[AoE]

So I went to Wal-Mart, bought a new PS3 controller for full price (ugh), get home open it up, it's clear as shit to me that it's used. Play around with it a little bit, buttons are being pressed without me actually pressing them and the buttons don't feel brand new at all.

The fun part is how I almost lost the receipt while not being home more than 10 minutes because it somehow fell out of my bag as I was walking into the house and if I didn't have the urge to check the mailbox and find it halfway down the street, I would've been fucked.

[Brill Weave]

I'm shocked that they would take it back. Usually with electronics it's the once you open it you own it deal.

[Manako]

I think Myrrh_Quetz lived in Canada? There are a few game companies in vancouver, Ubisoft is in Montreal and Bioware has an Edmonton office, might be easier to find a smaller company unless you want to leave the country. My suggestion would be to go to GDC and meet people, it really seems like knowing people is the way to get ahead. That way you can also get a better understanding of if its something you really want to do as well. It is a lot of work, you don't get paid as well as you would in another industry BUT it is making games so if that makes up for it you're golden

[AoE]

I'm shocked that they would take it back. Usually with electronics it's the once you open it you own it deal.

Yeah this is why I was so diligent in getting the receipt. The only thing keeping the box closed is two pieces of tape on the sides as opposed to it being sealed in that annoying assed hard plastic like most other electronic stuff. That's probably why you need an associate to even get the controllers in the first place because you could probably steal them easy if nobody's paying attention.

Went to Targer instead. Even got complimented. Don't even know why I went to Wal-Mart. I hate going there anyway.

[Talint]

I think Myrrh_Quetz lived in Canada? There are a few game companies in vancouver, Ubisoft is in Montreal and Bioware has an Edmonton office, might be easier to find a smaller company unless you want to leave the country. My suggestion would be to go to GDC and meet people, it really seems like knowing people is the way to get ahead. That way you can also get a better understanding of if its something you really want to do as well. It is a lot of work, you don't get paid as well as you would in another industry BUT it is making games so if that makes up for it you're golden

Yeaah... Ubisoft and EA-Bioware are Triple-A development studios. Even top-tier graduates (read: went to the critically acclaimed development schools and placed at the top of their class) have difficulty getting into a Triple-A studio, let alone someone without that background. These studios want demonstrable experience more than anything.

I also feel it's worth noting that this myth of "long hours" only happens with poor management decisions. It happens, but it's not like you're getting in at 7am and leaving at 10pm every day. Maybe when Alpha comes around and you're about to release that the cramming happens. To that end, if you're at a company where that's a routine thing, then it's time to move on.

[Manako]

Yeaah... Ubisoft and EA-Bioware are Triple-A development studios. Even top-tier graduates (read: went to the critically acclaimed development schools and placed at the top of their class) have difficulty getting into a Triple-A studio, let alone someone without that background. These studios want demonstrable experience more than anything.

I also feel it's worth noting that this myth of "long hours" only happens with poor management decisions. It happens, but it's not like you're getting in at 7am and leaving at 10pm every day. Maybe when Alpha comes around and you're about to release that the cramming happens. To that end, if you're at a company where that's a routine thing, then it's time to move on.

Right, what I mean is that he is more likely to get hired at a small company, that large canadian companies are few and far between. I really do think its more about who you know that what grade you got at school though, especially for design. In theory he could get a job starting in QA at a larger company, but I really think smaller is the way to go.

Even if most crunch is purely created by poor management, it is certainly not a myth. It also depends what you define as long hours, many people in lots of jobs have no issues working 60+ hour weeks as salaried employees. I work at a small company and I get the general impression from friends who have or work for larger companies that they are worse off. Some people can work multiple 12hr days and weekends no problem, but I find that working 3 12-hour days is enough for my brain to fry and I personally would rather eat dinner at home. I'm just saying its not sunshine and rainbows 24/7 because its very easy to see all the positives of making games.

[zoobernut]

If you want to work in a game company it is even less about who you know and more about your portfolio (if you want to be an artist) they do like it if you graduated from school but generally don't care about your grades. Getting into the game industry is hard and takes a lot of work. If you go to school for game art make sure you go to GDC and E3 as much as possible and spend time networking. Also get to know your fellow students. Chances are one of them will end up somewhere big and you might be able to leverage off that. I have a good friend I graduated with who started at lucas arts working on small stuff then moved to working on the Clone Wars cartoon then slowly worked his way up now he is at Pixar Canada. Game designer, and concept artist and similar jobs are extremely difficult to get into and you have to work at a lower job then work your way up. I would avoid Game Tester jobs though. They are sub entry level jobs and usually don't lead to anything better.

Also crunch mode is not a myth at all! Even at my company with the games we make are small and we do rapid development we have crunch periods. It happens because of many different factors. The major reason that we see crunch mode is because of contractual release dates coupled with scope or feature creep. Also keep in mind unless you are unbelievably talented and lucky together it will be many many years of working on boring projects that don't interest you before you get to work on a triple A title that you would like to play yourself.

[Acevalefor]

My cousin works in CG for the video game industry. He started at Pixar working on Toy Story 3 and got his foot in the door that way. Now he runs his own firm contracting trailers and CG design for Bioware. Even with his relationship with Bioware, he still ends up getting shut out of many deals because he doesn't know the right people. The way he talks about the industry is exactly what you are saying Zoob. It's a very tough industry and is incredibly easy to get discouraged and walk away from what you love because of how difficult it is to get in.

[hey]

My point is that we spent almost no money building our school. It just took time and work. So why "impossible"? You need roughly the same things for a martial arts school or a dance school: an instructor and a giant empty floor. The other classes taught at the same timeslot on other days of the week were belly dancing classes.

You may have missed the word "almost".

Dance studios also need floor length mirrors, appropriate flooring

These are also kind of important for martial arts.

[Talint]

Also crunch mode is not a myth at all! Even at my company with the games we make are small and we do rapid development we have crunch periods. It happens because of many different factors. The major reason that we see crunch mode is because of contractual release dates coupled with scope or feature creep. Also keep in mind unless you are unbelievably talented and lucky together it will be many many years of working on boring projects that don't interest you before you get to work on a triple A title that you would like to play yourself.

I consider this bad management. A good producer will not let this happen.

Additionally, most producers I've worked with have been almost useless and are more interested in design-by-proxy than production.

[Silenka]

You definitely don't need to visit Japan to become fluent. While there, you'll probably run into people who will try to speak in (broken) English to you when they realize you aren't a master of their language, which will complicate matters further. Of course, it's true that being in a country where the primary language is the one you're studying can be helpful, but you're better off enforcing immersion in other ways.

I realize that's the initial reaction to foreigners there for many Japanese, but a lot of them won't even try English either, so it's kind of a mixed bag. I think I could show that I speak well enough that they wouldn't need to try English though. I am beyond the point where flashcards or anything is really going to help that much. I feel what I really need is firsthand experience in the country. Experience is everything, it gives someone an actual foundation for claims to their own ability and it would be like throwing myself into the deep end and expecting to learn to swim. I guess you can say I take the difficult road more often because I'm terrible at finding/recognizing the easier path, but for some reason I just can't shake the notion that I have to go to Japan and breathe the air before I will consider myself "good enough" to get a job as a translator for their language. I have high standards for myself.

Plus, it's practically impossible to find young Japanese here in Ohio, and I don't have a car anyway so if they live more than a mile or two away it would be nearly impossible to meet up @_@ Initiating a relationship out of the blue would be rather awkward as well. So the suggestions of tandem learning are... a little difficult for me to follow, I think. But if I happen to find a program that arranges that type of thing around here I would probably pursue it.

With the sheer excess of online language-studying communities available today, I'd have to completely disagree with your stating that teaching yourself won't work. That isn't true. By using an intelligent approach, I've successfully taught myself a fair amount of German, and have been more successful with that than I was with French at college. (My Japanese studies, which happened about ten years ago, were actually magnificent, but cut short when my private tutor moved away.) It would require a lot of discipline, but there are entire communities dedicated to facilitating language study. There are even many smartphone apps that are completely free and capable of providing a reasonable amount of lessons (Busuu being one of the providers).

My problem with approaches like this, learning online and stuff is that you often don't know whether what you're learning is actually correct or not. For instance, when I was teaching myself Japanese out of books long ago, some of the information in them was stright up wrong. Then when I tried to speak with natives they were very confused because I was saying one thing and expecting it to mean another. Granted I was 13 or 14 but it was still pretty embarassing. My preference is to get a firm foundation in the language by being taught directly, preferably by a native speaker. After that, continuing learning by yourself is a little more feasible since you can at least recognize that the information being presented may be wrong.

I think this applies more to Asian languages than romance languages or Germanic ones, because Asian langauges tend to have more tricky things involved. Mandarin has tones (I seriously have a book that teaches tons of Mandarin but doesn't even mention tones or give tone markings, which is not like learning Mandarin at all), and Japanese has a ton of different levels of set phrases and polite speech that are only used in certain circumstances and with certain company. I've never seen a book (aside from Japanese: the Spoken Language, the textbook Ohio State uses for Japanese classes) that accurately conveys that information.

I don't mean to denounce Japanese language classes, but in some aspects, I'd even prefer self-tuition over them.
From my experience, lots of students choose to study Japanese language because they are too lazy to do something that bears significance to them, which reflects strongly in their performance. A lot of these are weeded out early, but even now in the later semesters we have people who find themselves unable to read 4 of 5 words in a sentence because they don't know the, in parts, very basic Kanji. What's more, bad pronounciation can stick with you if the class is too full for your teacher to notice etc. etc. - classes definitely have advantages, but from my experience diligent self-tuition is required in order to reach whatever goal you're aiming for. Add to that the horrible, horrible order in which you learn Kanji in most classes, (finishing Heisig before entering university helped a lot, read Heisig, even if you're way into your classes!) and you quickly find yourself with lots and lots of disadvantages.

I would agree with you, as my first classroom experience with Japanese was full of weaboos, a teacher who didn't enforce any rules, and ended up being less than helpful, but after taking classes at Ohio State University I would have to disagree. After taking some Individualized Instruction classes (one on one for 15 mins, 1 to 10 times a week depending on how many parts you schedule) for the first year's credits, classroom track for year 3 and a summer intensive program for years 2 and 4 there, I have come out with the best Japanese education I think could be conferred by a classroom.

I was initially skeptical about the classes because of the book, which isn't written in standard hepburn which is what I was used to, didn't contain kana/kanji (there's a separate writing book for that) and seemingly had a strange pattern of what is taught when (for example, direct style verbs aren't taught until late in year one or early year two if I recall). But we were taught by native speakers all the way through, we spoke nothing but Japanese until that shit was ENFORCED, and even things like accent (which is notated in the book) were taught and emphasized, which is almost unheard of in Japanese classes. Coming out of year 4, I honestly feel comfortable with the language and am entirely satisfied with my decision to go to OSU for Japanese. I wish I had done so sooner.

So I would definitely say there is a rare chance, once in a while, where one can gain fluency through classroom. That is, if I had continued on to year 5 and beyond (essentially graduate school or super senior stuff), I'm almost positive I would be just about "fluent", but sadly I can't afford school now XD

Adding to the story about lack of perspectives as to what to do with a degree in Japanese language - quite frankly, I find myself in a similar situation.

I began studying Japanese language quite some time before entering university and figured it was what I wanted to do, so I also picked it as my major of sorts.

However, to tell you the truth, the more I studied, the more I realized that it just happened to be an important part of my hobbies, but not necessarily what I wanted to do with my life, or rather, a field in which I wished to seek a profession.

Luckily for me I'm positive it is what I want to do - either that, or somehow go back to school for Classical Japanese and start working on research in that field, with very old texts. Classical Japanese is awesome. But yeah it can be hard to tell sometimes, I think, whether it's better as a job or a hobby. I've been so in love with Japan for so long that I can't even remember wanting to do anything else.

Honestly I'm probably to the point where I could get a job as a translator, but like I said I have high standards and really feel I need to experience the country before I could presume to know their language. It just sounds silly to me to be a translator for a language of a country I've never even been to. If that makes sense. I'm really good at driving myself into corners for lack of finding doors to open to get myself out of there though.

This has been an interesting discussion but I think I've derailed the thread far enough XD

[Kohan]

Out of shared concern for derailing the thread further, I'll keep my response brief.

My problem with approaches like this, learning online and stuff is that you often don't know whether what you're learning is actually correct or not.

You don't need to worry about this. LiveMocha uses native speakers (as do virtually all online course shops), Busuu has a huge community, and so on, so forth. It's extremely easy to verify that your source is quality. There is no reason to believe that an online education isn't as good as a live one, especially considering that you can communicate with people online with live or close-to-live response time. Additionally, plenty of domestic college courses are old and tired, employing the same unintuitive educational methods that haven't worked for years. You've said so yourself that you had a book which was wrong; if you're actively studying with other people who know what they're doing, they'll be able to tell you that as well as the natives could.

Online or in-person immersion, sprinkled with a personal motivation to learn more on the side, is where it's at. If you feel your knowledge won't be worthwhile until you've been to Japan, don't go there to teach English—go there to enlist in their immersion courses. You'll be far better for it.

[zoobernut]

I consider this bad management. A good producer will not let this happen.

Additionally, most producers I've worked with have been almost useless and are more interested in design-by-proxy than production.

My point is that crunch time is, not a myth, and a much more complex problem than just whining about bad management. It isn't always the producers fault there are other factors that contribute to crunch time. We also have a lot of crunch time surrounding major game shows to get games to a usable state for the shows. It can very well be due to bad management but it isn't always caused by that. Sometimes it is outside of the producers control. Don't forget the dreaded swoop in at the last minute from VP's or Marketing. The producer does their best to evaluate the feedback from other higherups in the company and check ROI on each item to see if it is worthwhile to do or not.

That being said my company has been having a lot less crunch time lately due to a much more robust prototyping process and rapid updates on our development machines so the artists, game designers, and producers can check content in game much faster. This is helping us get much faster at iterating.

[Manako]

My point is that crunch time is, not a myth, and a much more complex problem than just whining about bad management. It isn't always the producers fault there are other factors that contribute to crunch time. We also have a lot of crunch time surrounding major game shows to get games to a usable state for the shows. It can very well be due to bad management but it isn't always caused by that. Sometimes it is outside of the producers control. Don't forget the dreaded swoop in at the last minute from VP's or Marketing. The producer does their best to evaluate the feedback from other higherups in the company and check ROI on each item to see if it is worthwhile to do or not.

That being said my company has been having a lot less crunch time lately due to a much more robust prototyping process and rapid updates on our development machines so the artists, game designers, and producers can check content in game much faster. This is helping us get much faster at iterating.

This is pretty much my experience. Planning for flexibility and change has made things significantly better, but there is always some unknown that will rear its head.

[Melena]

This. Worst crunch period I ever saw at EA, we were CQCing Madden 2001 and the second to last day of CQC we found a 100% reproducable crash on all consoles. We litterally were given 36hrs with one last new build to blow through to ensure everything was good as the ship date was locked, no budging it whatsoever.

[BaneTheBrawler]

On the bright side, these days it doesn't necessarily doom your game to find a bug like that and not get it fixed in time, because you can keep working, get it fixed before final launch, and release a day 1 patch.

It's still obviously not good to have them at all, but at least you can fix them after launch.

[Melena]

Good first world problem, but I need to find a good magazine sleeve and a Mike Trout rookie card to go with the autographed SI issue of Mike Trout I won tonight then get that all framed.