Testimony: R&D Engineer on the witness stand
1) Who am I?
My name is Eric Miffre. I’ve been enjoying video games since forever (roughly) and being interested in anything computer-related, I’ve set my professional goal to being a game designer in less than 10 years.
To do so, I went through a graduate engineering school’s curriculum to be a R&D developer. I did two internships at 3DVIA Virtools, a company mostly known for its game prototyping software, and got recruited there. I’m currently working on both the in-house 3D engine and development tools.
2) What’s my trade?
I’m officially a R&D developer. I have 2 main areas of responsibility:
Firstly, I am responsible from beginning to end to maintenance for several editors and engine parts; typically, it starts with some brainstorming with senior members of the R&D team to decide what features have to be implemented. Then comes the actual implementation, and when this is finished the Quality Assurance (QA) team starts testing the features I have implemented, and I handle bug fixing,
Secondly – and this part is more specific to working in the gaming industry – I have responsibilities regarding content generation for the software; it is made to be usable by people who don’t necessarily have the mindset of a software developer: our software relies on a library of ready-to-use templates. I am working on several of these templates. The technology used here is a lot of in-house scripting and schematics. This part of the job also consists on making tutorials and participating to demo-making.
3) What’s my professional environment?
The gaming industry is still a young one, but it’s maturing quickly; 10 years ago, programmers and artists developed their game just for fun (or sometimes just to eat at the end of the month) and terms such as “Project Planning??? and “Quality Assurance??? seemed out of place (too industry-related). Now, large game projects costs dozens of million Euros and can easily keep a hundred of developers busy, as well as an equal number of people on the editor’s side.
Being actually on an industrial company’s payroll (Dassault Systèmes’) my situation is a bit different: a lot of ‘serious’ companies are looking up to the gaming industry for what it has to offer in terms of technology and tools. DS being one of them, it’s a whole new world that opens up to the team I work with.
Mostly, the actors are changing in the industry.
4) What surprised me the most since I started working?
People care. Most of them do; when I was a student, I had the feeling I didn’t amount to much, thought it’d be different when I’d work, but expected to be disappointed. I wasn’t; pick your environment carefully and you can really grow there.
5) Have a tip?
I would have told you to go for side-quests, to build tangential skills and to learn as much as you can (you never know what you may need one day), but I’d be accused of plagiarism by my friend Benzo; so I’ll tell you this:
Be passionate! Too many people only go to work because they have to; of course, the gaming industry is an exciting one by nature, which is why most people are both interested and interesting. But there are plenty of industries out there that are fascinating to work in. Being passionate makes a difference when others look at your work: they’ll notice the important details and efforts you put in, and it’s going to be rewarding.
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