Ask HN: Dilemma of a Gamer and Programmer

24 points by tiensi 12 years ago | 18 comments

I would like to ask for some advice. I've been mulling over this for months and haven't come up with a solid solution.

I'm currently juggling a computer engineering curriculum and one particular video game in college. The need to find an actual job and become a true autonomous adult looms closer with every semester. Logically my gaming time should be shortened and replaced by personal coding projects that would give me marketable experience. Unfortunately I'm hesitant to quit gaming, I've played this game (League of Legends) for a long time and have reached a point where I have my own fanbase and make enough money from streaming/youtube to cover my monthly food/luxury expenses.

I hesitate because playing this video game has been a pretty big chapter of my life, it has affected the friends I met, the experiences I've had, and my outlook on life. At the same time I like to be a realistic person, I had multiple opportunities to play this video game professionally, but have chose not to. My opinion is that having actual applicable knowledge to the real world lasts a lifetime as opposed to having a short lived video game career. What should I do? Suddenly quitting and leaving part of my life behind just doesn't feel right, but at the same time I need to do something if I want to get a app development job in such a competitive environment.

What should I do? Suddenly quitting and leaving part of my life behind just doesn't feel right, but at the same time I need to do something if I want to get a app development job in such a competitive environment.

patio11 12 years ago |

I also play LoL, although I've given it up for Lent, and used to run the server's leading raid guild in WoW back in the day. So I hear where you're coming from.

Congrats on your accomplishments. None of the following is meant to lessen them.

When I was young and impressionable, it struck me as absolutely freaking magic that you could make whole hundreds of dollars appear out of the Internet without doing "real work" with an office and tie and deadlines and all those things that sounded a lot like my least favorite parts of school. Being older and wiser, I now realize that hundreds of dollars is rat spit next to the going market rates for engineers, and there exist plenty of options to get compensated in 2014 for things which are much closer to LoL than they are to office/tie/TPS reports.

I also hear you with regards to the social issues. I lost a lot of friends, including some of the people who probably knew me best, when I quit playing WoW. We made the usual non-specific promises for hanging out later. It never happened. I eventually made new friends, some on the Internet (waves) and some off.

I'd suggest simply titrating down on your LoL play per week (cap it to, say, 12 hours a week to start [+]) while you start getting ready for Adulthood (TM).

Also, although it's sort of tangential to the LoL issue, you may not be accurately apprised of the current state of the hiring market for engineers as a college student. God knows I wasn't. Here it is: it is absolutely on fire right now. You know how you've been in a cutthroat meritocratic competition for essentially every gate you've ever passed through in life up until now? Your next gate is going to be people bidding against each other to give you six figures in starting salary and a signing bonus larger than your career earnings in LoL. (Those are Valley numbers -- it isn't quite so white hot in every geographic area, but it's still a seller's market rather than a buyer's market.)

Bonus points: It's quite possible that you've learned enough about marketing over the Internet to be dangerous during your streaming career. The returns for having hundreds of thousands of people following you and moving them through multiple types of conversions are, for LoL streamers, not high numbers. Many of those same skills can be cross-applied to selling e.g. business to business software. B2B software is substantially more lucrative.

[+] Guesstimate of current play time arrived at by years of experience rather than by latent contempt for videogaming. It's, um, "more than 12 hours a week."

rmc 12 years ago | |

you may not be accurately apprised of the current state of the hiring market for engineers as a college student.

When you're in a computer degree, you're surrounded by people who know computers, they're comfortable with them, and know the basics. You may joke about your granny not knowing how to hook up her printer and all that.

When you get into business world, you'll come across people with Serious Responsbilities™ and Real Jobs™ in Positions of Authority™ who won't know what a zip file is. Or will ask you how long it'll take to sort that large list of numbers ("ummm.... command line?").

Once you get out of the geek bubble, you'll realise you have a magic superpower to make the magic computer boxes do magic.

(Like patio11, I was young and ignorant in college once)

thenomad 12 years ago | |

Speaking as someone who stumbled into marketing and lead-gen skills by way of something video-based, online, and not particularly lucrative (Machinima), I thoroughly and enthusiastically second patio11's "Bonus Points" section.

If you can build up a living wage from streaming games, you can make large sums of money in comparatively short order by applying those skills to areas where the value per customer is rather higher.

I've done reasonably well doing exactly that whilst also pursuing my passion (filmmaking), and I know people who have focused solely on the moneymaking side from a similar background, and have done extremely well out of it.

rprospero 12 years ago | |

I see this sentiment quite often and it always surprises me. To put it into perspective, it took me seven months after graduation to find a position that pays $50k and I had to leave the USA to find it. Now, I'm not complaining - the project is pretty fascinating and I'm quite excited to be working overseas, but I'm also not the only person I've known who couldn't find work.

pchristensen 12 years ago | | |

I've given some helpful critiques to people who had skills but had a hard time finding a job (see [1] for example). Email me if you'd like me to go over your work history, resume, skills, etc. My email is in my profile.

[1] http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/what-your-resume-reall...

wikwocket 12 years ago |

Good grief kids have it hard today; to go get a high-paying job writing code all day long with 10% raises in the future, or to keep on playing video games for a living... we are really failing this generation!

Just teasing, OP, hope you don't mind. Trust me that these are some excellent problems you have. When I graduated, my choice was a 40k/yr job in my hometown, or a 60k/yr job 2 hours away, in a job market that had just tanked. I envy you, and congratulate you on your options!

As for advice, I would say you don't need an extensive portfolio of "personal coding projects" unless you want to be seen by a Google or Amazon right out of school. The market is in such demand for good software engineers right now that you can should be able to get a good job for decent pay with just your degree and a good coding interview. Go interview around for practice, make a killer impression at a place you like, and negotiate hard for the salary.

That said, if you want to develop some projects, look to your gaming/streaming for inspiration. Can you build a members site for your fans? Code your own streaming player? Build some LoL web tools (stats lookup, character comparisons, etc)? Mailing list manager for a LoL newsletter? It is easiest to find inspiration from your own pain points, and easiest to maintain interest in projects you use yourself.

golovast 12 years ago |

I work at Riot and it's great what you've been able to do with LoL. At the same time, I would say that finishing your CS degree (or becoming a better developer) would be definitely worth it in the long term. It's possible to manage both. I know many people who play a lot (not pros) and combine that with their engineering careers.

Also, somewhat relevant post on the question:

http://community.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/P...

warcode 12 years ago |

Nearly all the side projects I've done have been related to fixing a problem or enhancing an experience me or my friends have had in relation to games.

In general they have been weekend projects where 90% functionality is achieved in one weekend, and then I spend months adding small features or fixes.

#1 Advice when doing a personal side project is to make it something you will use yourself. If not you might lose interest quickly.

As a software engineer that usually codes all day and plays all evening (4-5 hours), I'm saying there is no need to do a full stop of anything.

staunch 12 years ago |

Use your programming knowledge to create a product or service related to your gaming. You already have the hardest thing to build: an audience. Offer them something valuable in exchange for money. Best case: you build a real business. Worst case: you gained valuable experience.

eswat 12 years ago |

Finish your degree. But it would be a shame if you totally dropped the hobby you’re passionate about right now in favour of listening to the conventional wisdom and becoming a “true autonomous adult”.

See if you can make both work out somehow. You’re not alone in this and there are many streamers that manage to pull in money to cover their living costs while still being able to pursue an education and the necessities to thrive (hanging out with friends, exercise, learning skills not related to anything in particular, etc.).

Try to combine your two passions somehow. Building gaming-related products and creative ways to give back to your viewers using your engineering skills would be good candidates.

binaryatrocity 12 years ago |

My advice: Quit LoL, install Dota2, limit your gaming time per week. :D

Fanboyism aside, I find myself in a very similar situation. I've been playing DotA2 for years (and LoL before that, a littel DotA before that) and now run a Dota-community that has a fair amount of users.

Every day I need to decide between playing a handful of matches with my users or working on coding projects, and it's a hard decision to make.

What has been working most effectively for me is "code-weeks", I have at least a week a month where I limit myself to two (2) games a day, and make sure I'm spending some hours every day working on projects.

It's not perfect, but at least consciously trying to follow this pattern has pushed me to be more productive than I was in 2013, and quitting DotA cold-turkey is just not something I think I could stick with.

noname123 12 years ago |

Nah bro, don't quit man. Be who you are. There are literally so many programmers but only a few LoL elite players. You have to embrace what you love and not let society dictate what is "respectable" or not.

I understand what you're saying, it's fine to give up LoL and try out the professional life. But don't forsake it, my guess you'll pretty soon see the absurdity of app development.

Your clients are like the noobs that call "mid or feed," your co-workers and bosses care more about farming and jungling than helping solo gank. No wards, no missing calls either, everybody for themselves.

Watch a man play LoL/HoN/Dota2 and you can see how a man truly is. Work will always be there but a elite LoL player, that is livin' the life bro.

jon-wood 12 years ago | |

Please tell me this is a parody. Please.

dsschnau 12 years ago |

I went through exactly this with World of Warcraft, and later StarCraft. I wanted to go pro playing SC but I realized it wasn't sustainable or as fulfilling as I had hoped. I ended up just giving them up, once I realized it wasn't really building towards anything in my life. It felt like a big loss, but looking back, I wish I hadn't played so damn much in the first place.

I wrote more about it here. https://danschnau.com/world-of-warcraft/

jackgolding 12 years ago |

Hi TNA,

If you treat gaming like a proper career, where you research and actually care about things like ad hits, branding etc. it will actually make the stuff you do in gaming actually leveragable when you apply for other positions, especially in startups.

If you want to talk about this stuff, my email is on my profile. I have a few ideas on how a person in your unique position can make the most out of it, for both yourself and the community.

Best of luck mate.

tiensi 12 years ago | |

Hi Jack,

I tried looking for your email but all I was able to find was your LinkedIn page.

jackgolding 12 years ago | | |

jackgolding@live.com.au

lonewanderer 12 years ago |

I think you are on good ground, behing aware is a big deal.

About choices ... i belive you have something precious, a fan base: i would think about doing something middleground, something that can involve and interest your LoL users and give you something good to put on you resumee, don't underestimate the "popularity" !!!

Good Luck ;)