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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2384 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 4, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What was your dream job/career as a kid? Was it anything remotely realistic?

I remember I wanted to help terraform Mars at NASA because I was a massive sci-fi nerd. I even went into environmental science and wanted to go for that sort of thing, until I realized everyone in environmental science was a depressed dweeb who lied about their stats.

Anyway, now my big dream is to become a writer some day, even if not a great one.

What was your dream job/career as a kid? Was it anything remotely realistic?

Video game developer - I was a huge fan of Halo but , because it took time to get anything back home, I got really involved in all of the BTS stuff like vidocs Bungie put out, identified with the team and found the idea of working on a game with 1 million daily players enthralling.

Was it realistic for an upper middle class kid in Africa? The consensus (actual laughter) was no.

For an African upper middle class teenager in the US it was more viable - and I did end up going into Computer Science - but I'd put away childish things by then.

I hear the hours and bennies are awful anyway.

(I think I also wanted to be a writer, but that was definitely unrealistic)

Nobody I know who has worked in the game industry says it's fun - the closest I've ever heard is that it's somewhat palatable from the folks who work on internal tooling and so have stable careers.

Even if you really love video games the industry ruins it for you. IMO the best approach would be to kick ass at general software development and then try and leverage it into a position at one of the few decent shops out there. I still might give it a shot one day.

Oh yeah. Maybe as a kid the idea of sleeping at the office making Halo 2 sounded cool.

But nothing I've heard since as an adult (or am still hearing about shambolic productions filled with precariat contractors like Halo Infinite) has made me regret not pursuing it further.

And I'm usually very prone to regret and worrying about the road not taken.

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