Old. Gamer.

So, Panzer is a year older today. (Happy Birthday, you young punk.) In his various thoughts on the day, he noted:

Anyway, I'm getting old real fast. I suppose it's time to start thinking about settling down and start a family of my own. Is a job in the video game industry stable enough to carry all of that? Maybe not.

I can say, with a degree of clarity that pondering a job in the video game industry is not too much different than pondering a job in other industries. It has its pros and cons...

Pros:
- Working in a leading-edge industry
- (Being or) working with the funniest craziest people you'll ever know
- Seeing new games and technology before other folks do

Cons:
- Long and crazy work hours
- Scope creep/the cutting floor/timelines
- The screaming

There are more in each list, but I'd really rather not go there at the moment. Hey, it's my job I'm praising and bashing here. But, in my experience, the key to surviving in the video game industry: be a hard ass.

Now, I love my job. Sure, it drives me insane sometimes, and yes, I'm looking for upward mobility at the moment, but... I enjoy what I do. Some folks miss the fact that I'm happy when I get to complain about stuff. Me grousing about long work hours means I'm being pushed at work... and I work best under pressure, always have.

But I must be honest here: I don't like the arguments. I really do hate it when I'm right, I have 20 very important people backing me up that I'm right, but some person who shouldn't even be in the industry thinks I'm wrong... and gets his way. Granted, that person usually winds up getting screamed at by his Supervisor for not listening to me, but it irks me all too often that I'm a position where I *KNOW* what I'm talking about but folks still belligerently think I'm wrong.

There will always be people in this Industry who (unjustly) believe that if your job title doesn't include the word "Executive", "Manager", "Director", or "Producer", that you are lower class and therefore stupid.

Hypothetically speaking: let's say there was a gaming company that has been around since the late 19th century. Let's say this company is huge globally. Let's say that they've been making game systems on which to play video games for decades. Let's say that they currently make three seperate systems on which gamers can play. For simplicity sake, let's just call this hypothetical company "Arigato".

If the "Arigato" company existed, my job title here The Company should be; "Arigato Guru - Finger of God". If I say that your game for an Arigato console will fail, it will fail. If I say that your game for Arigato is out of compliance, it is. If I say that I don't like the word "the" in one of your error messages, you will remove it.

So my job title isn't hoity-toity. I know what I'm talking about. Take heed, or fail.

But for Panzer... this industry will chew you up and spit you out if you aren't a hard ass. If you can't be a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, stick to your guns evern when you're wrong kind of a guy, this industry will suck the life from you like the Dark Crystal sucked Podlings dry.