First Week of Work at Shanghai

It's the fifth day of work for me at Gameloft Shanghai.

The only reason that I'm blogging right now is the fact that my PC's a bitch. Apologies for those easily offended, but I bet you can't find a more appropriate word for a PC that reboots every now and then. The technical minded would ask me to narrow the problems down to a few conditions that would trigger the problem. It's impossible. She(a bitch's a she right?) reboots while I'm reading a document, running a virus scan or even copying files, there is no telling when it would throw the next tantrum. Worst still, she would definitely screw things up when I'm running a game. That means everybody gets to play Warcraft except me, boohoo. I asked for technical support from the company, and am still patiently waiting like a good employee... The only reason I'm not kicking her right now is that she doesn't belong to me.

Work's been pretty bland and uneventful, as expected for the first week of every job. I'm painfully adapting to reading Chinese IT terminology. Check these out, if you know programming and Chinese.

全局变量 = global variable
局部变量 = local variable
静态 = static
函数 = function
常量 = constant
指针 = pointer
类 = class
汇编 = assembly
传值参数 = pass by value
字节 = byte
Exciting aint it?

If you think reading is bad, talking to a mainland Chinese techie is even worst. Everybody takes me as "the guy from GuangZhou or FuJian" due to my Malaysian accent. Some say I'm from Singapore, some say Hongkong, some Taiwan, none hitting the bulls eye so far. Somehow not surprised, as I'd gone through a local magazine introducing cuisines of different countries, Malaysia was again conspicuously(to me) absent. Adding insult to injury is the presence of "Singaporean Cuisine". What do they have in there? No other than the likes of Penang Chaw Kuey Teow and Nasi Lemak, which are all authentic Malaysian food! I am making an assumption, so if I am wrong, you can kick me.

My colleagues seem to be from everywhere - Hebei, Hunan, GuangXi, Shandong, ChongQing, Shanghai - except GuangZhou and Fujian. Under these circumstances, I would really love to meet a "lesser alien", and see if I could kick up a smooth conversation. Xiao niao just gave me a call, and dude I got to say that speaking Malaysian was very pleasing!

The quote of the week?
The head of department told me this: "A review score of lesser than 8 at Gamespot is deemed a failure." I was also told that several projects were cancelled in Alpha stage to protect the brand name. Releasing an inferior product is not an option.

This morning, I came across this piece of news at Mobile Game Developer.

On the day of its release, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory was made available to Gameloft’s 130 operating partners, as well as 150 affiliates. Seven hundred different versions were developed in Gameloft’s internal studios to accommodate 180 mobile phone models and 5 languages. The game is available today in 65 countries worldwide.

700 different versions of the same game! That provides the best evidence that developing games for the mobile is such a hassle. My only hope is that I won't be stuck doing game porting for long periods.

Yesterday afternoon, I attended a 1 and a half hour internal training for the BREW platform. BREW is only available on CDMA phones, and that means it is not available in Malaysia. That was the highlight of the week, that is otherwise filled with code reading and document studying.

One of the more popular inquiries I often get from friends is the cost of living in Shanghai. Nothing better to explain with a picture of the food I'm having now for lunch.

RMB8(equivalent to 3.67320 Ringgit) for 5 side dishes, a fruit and a soup of the day, delivered to my office! I am definitely getting fatter.

While you Malaysians are heading to a weekend, I have to work tomorrow(Saturday) as a replacement day for the one week labour holiday(May 1st to 6th) that everybody in China is getting!

I better publish this before the PC reboots again. Pardon any mistakes in the post, as I can't even view my own page, anonymouse and other web anonymizers are not accessible for reasons unknown.

Shanghai Adventures, Part 0.00001

No intro needed, now right on to the pics!


Old(er) folks have various interesting activities in the morning. Here they are seen learning to dance with a little drum hung on their body. Sometimes there is a group learning swordfight.


For those who don't read Chinese, it reads "blablabla...dog meat". Benhurism would love this.


Some Xin Jiang folks barbecueing one of my favourite snack in China - mutton on a stick.(yang nyiok chuu in Shanghai dialect, having a helluva time learning to pronounce it)





The multi facets of Shanghai


A station by the roadside at a tourist spot, it charges mobile phones, for a fee of course.


Birds! There are plenty! They fly! They are white!


A full load of people on a regular work day at the subway station. The picture quality accurately describes my state of mind at the time... dizzy. Comparatively, weekends at Sungai Wang seemed to be a walk in the park.


A Shanghai local by the roadside posed for me

Interview at China Game Companies, Part 4

All my previous interviews were with either French companies, or one that is co-founded by a French. The fourth one is part of the French Connection too.



Ubisoft does not need much introduction, if you are reading this, I would assume that you are either a gamer, or have some knowledge of the game industry, (or particularly concerned of me, thank you thank you in that case!) therefore Ubisoft shouldn't be a stranger to you. Now pardon me as I am still going to do some name and figure dropping anyway.

Ubisoft is founded some 19 years ago by the Guillemot brothers. They are Tom Clancy's ally in the quest to save the world from terrorists hungry for world domination(cough...EA...cough), also producers of nuclear warheads and biological weapons (hmmm...Burnout 3 was certainly a bomb, a good one). Their battle is hard fought, but in Splinter Cell, Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon, there is hope afterall for all mankind! (Now get me that Chaos Theory!)

Terror shall never prevail cliches aside, they also developed and published the charming Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, as well as the edgy Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Rayman, Settlers and Myst complete the diverse and well known repertoire of Ubisoft.

Getting That Interview
If there is one thing we all fear in this digital age of job application, it got to be uncertainty. Uncertainty of who's at the receiving end of the job application you just sent out. It could be
A. a mail filter finely tuned to junk emails that does not adhere to its strict format for subject.
B. a clerk that is instructed to look for keywords using the control-F feature.
C. that HR manager that does not have a clue on technology, and your impressive portfolio, neatly written stuffed with power words and bombastic tech lingo may look alien to him.

By now you would know that I am a bit of a paranoid, but who isn't?

Weighing up the paranoia scale is TIC! Ubisoft is a huge company, China is a humongous country and you never know how many thousand others you are battling with for the position.

I tried to skip ahead the competition by establishing personal contact with someone inside the company. Igda Shanghai was pretty quiet back then(it still is now), and I tried to stir up some activity with some posts(to no avail), and when I saw this post my eyes lighted up. I did some emailing, the author was pretty friendly and responsive too. To cut a long story short and fast forward to the present, I got that interview I was longing for.

Day One - Some Yada-yada
Unfortunately, on the day that I was supposed to have a casual lunch interview with Erick, he fell sick. I was sick in another way too, with my face skin all peeling off because of the Genting-esque cold weather. Anyway, he still scheduled me to meet the HR manager and the lead level designer before heading off for a rest.

My low points of the day? I fared badly when the HR manager asked me "what do you think are your strengths?" I used to program myself to answer it this way:"My strength is I am devoid of any weakness, my weakness is that I have too many strengths." This lame joke may not trigger the humour senses in the HR maanger, and obviously would portray me as an arrogant person, so I swallowed it, and I failed to give a satsifying answer. (the usual "I'm very determined" just doesn't cut it)

Another one - the lead level designer asked me what are my top 3 games of all time. I mentioned Katamari Damacy, Warcraft 3 and Winning Eleven. Katamari Damacy because thats all I have been playing and my brains couldn't stop rolling from then on, Winning Eleven because it is in fact the game I wasted the most time on, and Warcraft 3 simply because it inspired me to be competitive in gaming(Counter-Strike did the trick too, but too much of CS made me sick of it). I regretted my hastily thought out answers. Winning Eleven doesn't really fare much in the creativity department, it's all about realism, and the post that I was applying for is Junior Game Designer! Warcraft 3 I loved, but I was loving it in the knowledge that Starcraft could kick its @55 anytime(shamefully, I didn't play much Starcraft). And Katamari? I am worrying that it may be a crush, not true love. I still have not figured out my top 3 games to this day, but Grim Fandango got to hold a place up there.

Another candid moment. The Level Designer heard me saying I used to play in Battle.net frequently, and he asked what level was I. In my bluriness I blurted out "below 10, i think"(my memory was deserting me) In truth it is 14-15-ish, still a n00b, but I could see from his face that below 10 = mega n00b. I could almost read his mind: "A sucky gamer trying to be a game designer? Bah!"

Day Two - Pen and Paper
After a few days, I finally had a chance to meet up with Erick in a casual lunch interview. He is a great guy - humble and friendly. Being an avid pen and paper RPG creator(he has a massive portfolio of publications, check it out), he casually mentioned that Dungeon & Dragons is for 12-13 year olds. Me being the frog in the well on pen and paper RPGs, it was surprising to hear, as it seemed like Malaysians only know of D&D as the ultimate ruleset for pen and paper RPGs.

Erick also told me that there were quite limited places for the junior game designer post that I was applying for, and there were 3 times the applicants, including some internal staff that are applying to transfer to the post, which Ubisoft must give priority to. To be fair, a test was conducted. As "junior game designer" is a new position in Ubisoft and there weren't any ready made tests yet, I was given the level designer test.

Again, it would be a crime to reveal what's in the test, but suffice to say, it contained quite a number of questions on gameplay that you could only answer if you played the various games mentioned. My poor gaming vocabulary was severely exposed, and for the first time I paid for not playing enough games! I just hoped that the questions does not carry much weight in evaluating the applicant, as it is more appropriate to judge someone applying for a game tester role using those questions. In the remainder of the test, my performance is mixed. On one hand I was asked to write a review of one of Ubisoft's games. This didn't pose much of a problem to me, as I am an ardent reader of Gamespot and Gamespy, and cooked up a review of MOHAA long time ago(the site I written for seem to be dead). On the other hand, I was asked to design a level of one of Ubisoft's game, on paper! That was something entirely new to me. Yes, I did design mazes for friends to play in primary school, but designing a level that needs to be logical to the environment, realistic yet with functional constraints in mind, and also fun at the same time? That is a whole different story. The question overwhelmed me, and after two hours, I was barely halfway through.

In all, I took almost 4 hours to take the test. I'm wasn't sure if I performed well enough to convince Ubisoft to go out of the way to hire me(I needed an instant answer - a firm yes or no from them), or my performance gave them a perfect reason to keep me off. To be honest, I wasn't sure whether the switch from programmer to designer was a great idea too. I just thought it would be great to learn game development from another perspective, and broaden my knowledge at the same time.

Interview at China Game Companies, Part 3

The third company is one of the two companies I have been eyeing even before arriving at Shanghai. Back at my ex-company, we often decompile their java games to have a glimpse on the way they code. Although the classes were heavily obfuscated, we slowly tried to make sense out of the a, b, c's, and I got to say we were very, very impressed. Therefore, it would be a massive opportunity to work with these guys.



Gameloft is like Ubisoft's mobile division, but not, as they are two separate companies. Ubisoft holds a stake in Gameloft, as does the Guillemot brothers, the founder of both companies. One advantage that Gameloft enjoys over their competitors is their possesion of some widely acknowledged franchises, simply obtained from their sister Ubisoft, which includes Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia. It's like a baby born with a gold ring on the finger.

Arriving at the Gameloft office, I was prompted by the receptionist to choose between taking a Java test or a C/C++ test. She also inquired about my language preference. Confused over my claim that I speak Chinese better, but am more comfortable with writing in English, at last we settled with a Chinese Java test question.(for the English version, only a C/C++ test was available, I didn't want to take the risk)

Then, I was led to a conference room, and asked to fill in a 3 page personal details form before starting the test. The form was probably familiar to locals, but was certainly a shocker to me. It required me to fill in everything from my weight, height, marriage status, number of siblings, name of father, previous salary to...are you ready?... political status. I resisted the urge to fill in "nudist". Yes, I know nudists have nothing to do with political alignment, but hey, it's a game company afterall. They would appreciate a bit of humour, right? Anyway, I left the space blank.

Now for the test. It comprises twenty two questions, topics ranging from...
1. rectify coding errors
2. bit operations
3. write programs(one sorting question)
4. general java concept questions
5. general IT questions
6. IQ test(4 questions here!)
to
7. translation of a paragraph full of programming terminology from English to Chinese(!!!)

As usual, I had difficulty understanding some Chinese tech jargon, and gave up on some questions because of that. I did circle the tech jargons however, and stated that I could answer it if the English term was provided.

For the 2 translation questions, I gave up without even trying. You would too. Don't believe me? Now try telling me what is the Chinese term for "Polymorphism" and "Encapsulation".

The reason that Gameloft put the programming test right at the beginning is to filter out applicants that they deem unworthy. Fair and square. That would save time for both parties too. Like a bunch of nervous schoolboys(me and two other) with thumping hearts waiting for their UPSR results, we gasped as the receptionist came to deliver the result. I................................passed. An interview is scheduled the next day.

Early next morning, I reached the office and was directed to wait in the meeting room. They had a xbox and a PS2 in the room! Stuff that I really wish we had in my ex-company. A while later, the programming director came for the drilling. Conversations weren't as smooth as I hoped, so I bailed by offering to show him my past work.

Out of the 3 games that I showed him, that mouse game impressed him the most, a big thank you to Fabio for both pointing out that this game is important to show, and for coding most of it.

He then proceeded to assess my coding style, questioning the many flaws of my unoptimized code, and demanding an answer on why I did it that way. I answered "Ah, that was a few years ago, I used to suck" - he didn't know I swallowed the next sentence, "I still suck". He was unimpressed with the way we used graphics for text in parts where a nifty text engine would do a good job, but in the end, it was all well, as I qualified for the next session.

The next session was a "get to know you" session. I was bombarded with questions without much breathing space...
1. Are you interested in code and algorithm optimizations?
2. What are your steps to solve a programming problem?
3. How long do you play video games a day?
4. What books or websites do you go to for programming resources?
5. Games or software, why?
6. What techniques do you apply to make programs run faster?
7. What games do you play?
...Just to mention a few.

He then dug out the IQ question I took in the programming test(I got 2 correct out of 4), and asked me to tell him how did I solve it, step-by-step.

The interview came to an end after a good few hours. The verdict? There was one. No typical "you go home and wait for a call". I am not going to reveal it here, drop me a mail or PM if you are interested.

Part 4 of Interview at China Game Companies is in progress, but not so soon, as I'm still in the middle of it.

Interview at China Game Companies, Part 2

On the same day as the In-fusio interview, I had another interview with another company in the evening.


Virtuos Games is a game studio made in China, with a twist of French. Of four of the founding fathers, all four of them were former Ubisoft Shanghai employees, and three of them mainland Chinese. The odd one out, the French CEO, is a game industry heavyweight. He was the Worldwide Managing Director of ubi.com, Ubisoft's online division.

Virtuos Games is taking advantage of China being the number one outsource destination(heck, even India is outsourcing to China), and have services ranging from programming, art, level design to QA. Their development team skilled across multiple platforms, from Xbox, PS2 to PSP.

Now for the meat. The interview started with an old-fashioned self introduction. Soon after, as expected, a programming test is conducted. The interviewer passed me a piece of paper, and uttered a few Chinese technology jargon that sounded more like Martian. I suspected he meant "Single Linked List", he noded.

He wanted me to write a program to reverse a single linked list. Not a big problem, I still have a vague memory of the concept. On a piece of paper. Piece of cake. Here's the interesting part: He aint leaving. I have never felt comfortable coding in front of people, let alone strangers.

Here's the next blow: He wanted pointers. Being a java programmer, I was never a master of pointer/reference operations. In other words, I couldn't blindfold myself and unleash a steady flow of pointers and references, I got to do that alone, while nobody's watching, with a handy internet connection. Too little too late to regret sleeping through that C/C++ class now. Under his watchful eye, I scribbled some code, asked him for comments, and the cycle repeated for a few rounds before he was finally satisfied(or gave up on me). When I thought it was over, he requested me to change my recursive function to a simple loop. That was so icing on the cake. In total, I took about half an hour to code a simple linked list. Shame on me.

Here's an advice: Get to know linked list operations like its your daddy! Ask yourself "who's my daddy?" before any programming test. Slap yourself if you answered your surname. Linked lists have always been a very popular topic for programming tests. Oh yeah, get your real life daddy to watch behind while you code too.

Anyway, I thank the interviewer, which turned out to be the programming director of the company, for being so patient(or pretty apt at disguising his annoyance) with me.

After the blunder, a desperate attempt to salvage the sinking ship was inevitable, and I showed him my past works. From then onwards, he was friendly and smiling throughout, but in the end, I still don't know whether have I done enough to reverse the bad impression I gave him initially.

My favourite part of the interview? The interviewer asked me what games have I been playing lately, and asked me to describe them. I gleefully answered Katamari Damacy, and seeing that he had never heard of the game before, I went ahead and described all the rolling, rolling, rolling. In jaywalker's lingo, its cock talking. Yes, that was my favourite part.

Interview at China Game Companies, Part 1

Yes, I know, I know, I'm supposed to be a vegetable, you must be wondering when am I going to be a man of my words and quit babbling. Perhaps its my conscience bothering me and pestering me out of my blog-coma, as I have never posted anything close to useful before.

So here you go, something that rank above 5 in the scale of 10 of the usefulness ranking! This is something to be shared with budding game developers in Malaysia.

In this series, I'm going to reveal how game companies in China conduct their interviews, as I am going through a few of it. I figured that some may come and ask me anyway, so I might as well document it here. As long as I don't reveal any confidential company information(no sane company would divulge confidential information to a strange looking interviewee anyway), I think my butt is safe. And hey, even the Chinese government is behind me in this! They have effectively blocked all prospective employers from peeping into my page!

The first company I went for interview is In-fusio, a French mobile game company.


In-fusio is a very interesting company. Established in 1998, they are a developer cum publisher cum service provider. They have their own platform, ExEn, which serves as a game engine sitting above J2ME like MIDP, embedded in some handsets. They currently hold the mobile game rights of Tomb Raider, Terminator, Zoo Tycoon and Neopets, to mention a few. To give a vague impression of how big they are, Microsoft is their partner. Oh, I forgot to bold Microsoft. Nevermind.

Interesting as they are, their interview session had nothing out of the blue. The first half of it was a one-on-one with the charming HR lady, and the second half with the emotionless technical manager. There wasn't any programming tests nor any attempt to gauge my programming knowledge, just questions about my past work. At one point of the interview, it seemed like it was me interviewing the manager instead of the other way around, as he kept on prompting me to ask questions about the company. As I ran out of questions, the interview came to an end too.

Last thoughts? I made the damning mistake of forgetting to show him my past work! They are in the mobile game business, and I brought along a CD containing a healthy 5 mobile game titles! (the number healthy, not the game) Someone please hit me. My inferior knowledge of Chinese tech jargon was killing me too! On second thought, my half past six Mandarin(Malaysian Rojak style) is more of a concern.

Nothing very interesting nor insightful in today's introductory post, do drop back tomorrow!

Still Vegetative, but China Can't Stop Me After All

Just landed in Shanghai Yesterday, and now I'm surfing through blogspot webpages!(I mentioned that they are banned in China in the previous post)

The solution? Web Anonymizers. A particularly popular one is Anonymouse.

Now that nothing is stopping me, will I continue blogging here? Still, most probably not. The fact that it is a hassle to view my blog in China still bothers me.

Will post some pictures up later if I can find the time.

GameWorld to Turn Vegetative

Today(8 April 2005) is my second last day at Malaysia. Tomorrow, my pc will most probably be in pieces to ease transportation to Shanghai. So it is best that I announce this today.

It is with grief that I announce killarkai's GameWorld will be in a state of coma indefinitely, starting tomorrow, thus it is unable to self generate crappy posts like it used to do.

The reason? (Everything).blogspot.com is banned in China. This means, I can't view my own page. Interestingly, there are still bloggers in China using blogspot, as the publishing domain name(www.blogger.com) is not banned.

The future of GameWorld is the same as its owner for now - unclear. Will I register a domain name for my personal page to evade the ban? Will I use another blogging service instead? Will it evolve to another name?(GameWorld always sounded like a shop at a mall selling game consoles
and pirated games, but what I meant is virtual world) Will I write about potato planting, breast feeding or nuclear science instead of video games? The answer to
all the questions above? Maybe. Like most people in coma, they may suddenly regain consciousness in the middle of a
fateful night. Or they may go the way of Terri Schiavo.

On a serious note, I hope to get back into the blogging world as soon as possible, and also use blogging as a means to keep in touch with my dear friends.

For other blogspot users, please enable full feeds(blogger -> settings -> Site feed -> publish site feed? Yes -> Descriptions? Full) so that I still can read your blogs using bloglines. Forgive me for not being able to give comments and add to your readership statistics.

Lastly, to all you readers, commenters, lurkers, blog-hoppers out there, thank you!

edit: John See's Tulips has a flowery summary on GameWorld's short life span. Thank you!

Pirates! Report Card

Initially introduced to me by my ex-colleagues , I started Sid Meier's Pirates! as a research for our mobile game project. After a good few months of yo-ho-ho-ing , my pirating career has come to a glorious end.

Here's the summary of my career.

(click to enlarge)

Now if only I get hired for persistence in gaming. Game tester anyone?

Combating Piracy, Id-style

If you can't beat 'em, use 'em.

That's exactly what Id Software did during the Wolf3D and Doom days. Instead of crying like a baby, they got the asian pirates to sell their game for $1 each. I've always admired the non-conventional ways of Id Software.

Spotted it while surfing through John Romero's page. Could be old news for some of you.

<gossip>Romero has a hot-looking Romanian wife!</gossip>

Invasion of the Seven Elevens

For the size of my hometown Kuantan (a safe estimation would be at least 10 times smaller than Kuala Lumpur?) , believe it or not, there are eight seven eleven convenience stores!

Armed with my trusty camera phone, I shot the pictures to prove it! The image quality is bad, but who cares, they all look the same anyway!

1. Jalan Beserah (nearest to my house)


2. Air Putih


3. Berjaya Megamall


4. Near Berjaya Megamall(whats the logic of having two so near each other?)


5. Near Parkson Ria


6. Jalan Teluk Sisik


7. Indera Mahkota


8. On the way to Taman Tas


Conclusion: Kuantan is a sleepless town with a wealth of nightlife!

Thanks to my mad engineer brother and Jon Wong, my companions for this crazy quest.

Another Evil Extinguished

Just finished playing Resident Evil Code: Veronica X. The ending screen stated that my playing time totaled 12 hours, and I got a big "E" for that. Boy, what a long game it was! However, the total playing time doesn't put into consideration the so called "wasted playing time". In my estimation, I must have spent around 20 hours playing the game.

Anyway, for that 20 hours, in my estimation...
1. 2% of the time is spent starring at the notorious Resident Evil style opening doors
2. 5% of the time is spent backtracking to location A, to locate that darn Item B so that I can go through to location C.
3. 10% of the time is spent loading up an old saved file, replaying parts that I have already gone through(yawn) with character A, so that I can stock that kick-ass weapon B that I forgot to put in the item box for the character C to use in the boss fight later.

(These issues I believe are well addressed and fixed in the latest critically acclaimed Resident Evil 4.)

Complaints aside, the rest of 83% of the playing time was excellent! The game has a very gripping and interwoven story line, and some very emotional scenes too. The scenes felt even more human than the movie versions of Resident Evil. Then again, nothing beats hearing the sounds of zombie heads blowing up!

While we are in the Resident Evil mood, check out the screenshots of the very, very, very, very menacing Zombie Elephant from the upcoming Resident Evil Outbreak File #2 here.

Next up: A not so significant research I've done in Kuantan

Stuff I'm Bringing to Shanghai

Some stuff to convince my potential in-laws that I'm a very productive person.


Have not touch her for a long time. Bethany's the name, inspired by the game Undying. Essential to convert more jazz enthusiasts in Shanghai using my drab and offbeat growls.


Foot gear for some "butt-kicking, for goodness!"


Everything minus the casing. What could a man achieve without his trusty sidekick?


6 boxes of Byford boxer briefs for my friend in China. He claimed that boxer briefs in Malaysia are much cheaper!


The poor man's camera - a camera phone.


The holy bible - in case the only holy book I can lay my hands on over there is the holy red little book.

And some stuff that I'm NOT bringing to Shanghai


My 4 year old Sony J-5, which made an apperance in one of the previous post. She is in the retirement home.


Books I spent a fortune on and end up not reading.


A big nippled cow. Actually placed here just to show Teddy that I have a nice cow too!

Edit:

This would come in handy too, a common phrase style guide to the Shanghai local dialect, Shanghainese.