At the age of 11, I wrote my own version of Space Invaders. Someone I met on the internet who I knew only as “Mit” (it was a more trusting time) gave me the code. I muddled my way through the logic of enemies sliding back and forth, collisions and player controls, and after a few weeks was completely hooked. I loved playing computer games, and now I could make my own: I knew that I definitely wanted to become a games programmer.

When I left university, it was in the middle of the last economic meltdown and buying games wasn’t really people’s top priority. The whole industry was going through a massive round of layoffs, so jobs were thin on the ground. In the end I was incredibly lucky, landing a junior role at a major UK studio owned by a console manufacturer just after they had made some more experienced engineers redundant.

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Primarily, I am a problem solver. There will be a puzzle that needs a solution, like how do you get from A to B in the shortest amount of time, and various tools at your disposal, such as algorithms and data structures, which you can use to figure out the answer. You choose your tools wisely as programming is as much an art as it is a science.

An algorithm is just a series of instructions that you give to a computer – take these two numbers, add them together, and store the result here – that you can build on to create more complex behaviours. These operations have a cost: the more instructions there are in an algorithm, the longer it will take to run. There is usually a trade-off between time and space; things that run quickly will tend to use more memory, whereas things that use less memory will have to make more calculations.

Nothing beats the rush of seeing a solution work for the first time. If you imagine the satisfaction of solving a Sudoku puzzle, extrapolate that to the feeling of writing something to solve all Sudoku puzzles, or performing an exhaustive search of all the puzzles to prove there is no Sudoku with a single solution that has 16 clues. This kind of abstraction that computers allow you to achieve as a programmer is incredibly powerful.

As a result of all the deep thinking involved, it can be hard to switch off when you leave at the end of the day. I have lost countless nights of sleep to lying wide awake thinking about work. It also leads to flashes of inspiration at strange times causing me to jump out of bed to make a note – this does not amuse my wife.

I’ve had blazing rows with my wife about the amount of time I was spending at work

At work peace and quiet is very important. This often clashes with the modern obsession with open plan offices. It only takes an impromptu meeting to start up the next desk over (or even worse, two in close proximity which starts an escalating war as to who can talk the loudest) and it can ruin an entire train of thought. You can identify programmers as the people with their headphones on, frowning at the screen.

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Relations can be difficult with the ever-present, non-technical manager who, in their opinion, has been placed in charge of herding a particularly distractible set of cats. “When will it be done?” they ask, and receive a rambling, incoherent request for the definition of “done”. The most terrifying prospect is when you find yourself weeks deep into a project and still no closer to success. It’s at this point that you really begin to question whether what you have taken on is possible at all.

One of the unfortunate aspects of games development is a combination of unknown priorities and unrealistic deadlines. Most of the time you don’t know what will be fun to play until you’ve made it, and there is a large runup of game releases before Christmas, so your release date is usually allocated months in advance. This puts an enormous amount of pressure on the team.

At my studio you needed to have the “passion” for a project to work six days a week, or put in 16-hour days. This is very much prevalent in the game industry and is seen as pulling out all the stops for your love of the project. Of course, this places exceptional stress on your quality of life and family time. I have gone through really tough periods at home, when it feels like there’s enormous pressure to put work first. Management will always talk about having a healthy work-life balance but the implication is there that you could be doing more, fixing more bugs, taking on more work. I’ve had blazing rows with my wife about the amount of time I was spending at work rather than with my children – but feeling like your effort is constantly being judged means you end up doing it again and again.

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I’ve since left games for a financial software firm. It turns out this is a surprisingly common pattern when people want to start a family, or feel better rewarded for those long hours. Most games programmer roles are salaried, and there is no overtime – so that extra day you’re putting in each week is given away for nothing.

At my new job the work is essentially the same: I’m still trying to solve complex problems with a minimum of errors in the least amount of processing time. I have regular deadlines and work comes in smaller, more manageable chunks. While jobs like finance have a reputation for being boring, there’s actually loads of interesting work to do. With the increasing computerisation of financial markets there are many opportunities for programmers to get their teeth into. I now work fewer hours, have a better family life, and have an employer who cares about my welfare.

Has the experience put me off games? I still play them, but I guess I’ve seen inside the sausage factory and they’ll never be quite the same again. If you like games and you’re a programmer, go work for a firm that will pay. You will earn enough to buy all the games you want. I lived my dream and found it coming up short.

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