Video-Game Programmer: Making a Passion Profitable

  By Daniel Margolis —

“One of the things I’ve learned from doing a start-up is there’s a lot more than writing code,” he said. “When I was a programmer — even a lead — my time was programming or directly managing other programmers and doing things on my own. [Now] there are all these other things, which include getting the word out, sending copies to review sites, updating the Web site.”

The only task Llopis is not handling is art design, but he says this is minimal.

“The art doesn’t even include the flowers because they’re procedurally generated,” he said. “It’s DNA-like structuring code that makes them grow, so there’s no art that goes into the flowers. It’s mostly the flower pot and the texture playground and some background and stuff like that.”

While Llopis sees development of iPhone-based applications as the biggest growth industry in gaming at present, he noted that the computer-generated imagery of gaming dovetails with Hollywood’s appetite for special effects. As video games become big business, the game programmers of today may be the movie-makers of tomorrow. 

Daniel Margolis is a freelance writer based in Chicago, Ill. He has extensive experience covering information technology topics. He can be reached at editor@certmag.com.