t3h-v

steam has to get much better before its useble, hell even for HL2 it seems to be more of an obstacle than a usefull tool. its a good idea on paper, but it'll be awhile till all the problems with it are fixed and it works as intented. self publishing is difficult nowadays, you still need money for development, the "we'll pay you if this sells" type of policy will not attract alot of developers, especially good ones. And the distributing takes alot of work, publishers take care of all that, but if you try to do it all yourself you'll find that you have to go through alot of **** just to put the game out there, even if the box is empty. Internet is cool, you could distribute things on the internet, hell thats how id got where they are at, thats where steam comes in again as pretty much the ultimate distribution medium, its not perfect, but it kinda sorta works. BUT you still have to make the game, which is pretty much your main battle, just to get it done, takes alot of effort to make a game. Development is the main problem not distribution, although thats difficult too, all in all there are alot of difficulties associated with making and distributing games, and it takes alot of people to get things done, and you need good capable people to guide the game every step of the way to make things work.

http://boards.polycount.net - register here and post your models, there's lots of professional artists there who can help you get better, and don't give up on it, your next model will definitely be better than your previous one, and so on and so forth, just keep doing it. btw there's plenty of people who got jobs through modding, 70% of employees at Epic got their jobs from mods. Most production artists (modelers, texture artists, animators) tend to be completely or partially self taught. The tools change all the time and you have to catch up on your own, if you can't teach yourself you won't make it.

EA, as ea_spouse described it is pretty extreme, but thats pretty much an accurate description of what you will have to deal with if you go to work on games, it might not be as bad, maybe you'll have to do less extra hours, or for shorter period of time, depends on the company, but you will have to do it, and if won't be pretty.

union is not really a solution to the problem, with a union you get a ****load of other problems. All you need is for people to realize that they can run good business, obey the laws, and keep the workers happy... and still produce hit games and make money. Then again there's always the option of freelancing, if you're into content creation theres plenty of contract houses that do art, sound and level design exclusively, coding and gamedesign could be pretty rough to get around without working for a company though. Seriously this industry is not that great, and there's always options.