Hey,
Since I only purchased an Expo pass I could not attend the majority of the sessions at GDC. They did allow us to attend 1 session each in each discipline and one of them was a session on using Microsoft Project. I have very little experience with Microsoft Project but I wanted to go to the session anyways to at least get a small introduction to it. The session was very informative and well put together. The speaker clearly knew what he was talking about and had come up with proven techniques that helped make using Microsoft Project easier and more efficient. At the session I met an engineer who works at a small development house that makes games for the iPhone. He got his start in the industry right after he graduated college and has been making games ever since. He talked about how he really likes working at a small developer because he gets to fill many different roles since they have such a small staff.
The next session I attended was about running a development house with as little money as possible. The session was proposed/written over 6 months ago and acknowledged that fact that many things have changed since then. They explained how to keep costs low and that growing your company might not always be the safest route to take. They also emphasized seeing the code of a game they might work on before taking a new contract. During this session I only met some students who were exhausted after having driven all night to make it to the conference.
In between the sessions I went to the career pavilion to start getting acclimated and look to see which companies were there. I spent most of the day observing but I did talk to several graduate schools who had booths. I'm still not sure whether graduate school is the right choice for me but I looked anyways. Finding a graduate school that teaches video games and has a production track is very rare and in the end I only found 2 that had them. The companies I did talk to were not taking resumes so I felt that it didn't matter if I talked to them then or the next day when I had my resumes. I was not really good at starting up a conversation when I went up and would basically just ask about the job then move on to the next booth. I need to practice and come up with some questions that I can ask just to get a conversation started.
After being in the career pavilion for a few hours I went over to the expo/booth crawl. This is where all the game engines/new technology/anyone who wants a booth go to show off their products/give presentationts/answer questions. The highlights for me were this giant touch screen that had floating windows on it. You could throw them across the screen or resize them similar to an iPhone. It was just really cool to play with but had no real purpose. The other interesting thing was when I was walking around I saw a game I had played before on addictinggames.com called Castle Defender. I stood and watched the preview on the tv for a few minutes before being asked if I needed anything. I responded that I simply recognized the game and before I knew it I was talking to the developers. I was so in shock that I was talking to the developers that I completely failed to talk about myself and only asked a few questions about the game and moved on. I wish I had talked to the developers more and at the very least asked a few questions about breaking in.
After the expo were the Game Developer Choice awards. My friend was going out for his birthday with his girlfriend so I was alone for the night again. I found a group of what looked like students and sat down and started up a conversation with them. They ended up going to being in a video game program in Minnesota and were interesting to talk to. They had a very different view of college and seemed rather limited because of their very specific majors. They are probably more knowledgeable in the technical areas of game creation but they had no knowledge of anything else. I think you want a mix of both specific knowledge and general knowledge in order to be able to succeed in anything besides an entry level position. It'll be interesting to see the dispersion of video game majors and other majors once I get my first job in the industry.
The award ceremonies were very entertaining and exciting to be at. It was a cool experience to actually be there when they announced the winners rather than sitting at home reading gamasutra the next day. I'm not sure if I would necessarilly go again unless I had something in the running or someone I knew did. It was a good experience though and am happy I went.
Cyaz
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
GDC: The First Night
Hey,
I haven't written in a while but I'm at GDC and feel like what I'm learning/doing should be recorded somewhere. In the past I've kept my posts mainly to what I've read but I'm going to do several entries about each of my days at GDC. At first they will be in outline form as notes for myself. Once I get back to school I will go back and add more detail, descriptions, etc.
Once I got to San Francisco I dropped my stuff off and went a casual games party hosted by Zynga. My friend who I was staying with was at another party so I had to go alone which was pretty intimidating. I did finally start talking to people and received some interesting insights. The first person I talked to was a designer at a start up who I asked what advice he could give an aspiring producer. He told me that being able to talk to each part of development (art, programmers, design, etc) and then translate to other departments is one of the most important skills for a producer. He introduced me to a senior level employee at Microsoft who repeated much of the same thing to me.
I started wandering again at this point and met an artist at EA. He told me about how when he applied to EA he didn't have a college education and his portfolio was nowhere near today's standards. The times have clearly changed a lot and breaking into the industry is much more competitive. He also talked about the structure of the production department at EA. The production department is split between project managers and producers. The producers work with the development team and help with game play etc. The project managers work on the schedules and budgets for the games. He said that because of the split it creates a lot of "discussion" between each side but in the end having the powers seperated is beneficial. I can see how it can work effectively but I think that in certain situations it can cause large rifts between each of the sides. My friend finally arrived and i followed him around the room as he said Hi to everyone that he knew. I met a few flash developers bujt didn't get a chance to have a full conversation with them.
At the end of the event I was satisfied even though I didn't meet as many people as I would have liked. It is really hard going to an event like that without knowing anyone and in the future I'm going to try to always have someone there I know.
Cyaz
I haven't written in a while but I'm at GDC and feel like what I'm learning/doing should be recorded somewhere. In the past I've kept my posts mainly to what I've read but I'm going to do several entries about each of my days at GDC. At first they will be in outline form as notes for myself. Once I get back to school I will go back and add more detail, descriptions, etc.
Once I got to San Francisco I dropped my stuff off and went a casual games party hosted by Zynga. My friend who I was staying with was at another party so I had to go alone which was pretty intimidating. I did finally start talking to people and received some interesting insights. The first person I talked to was a designer at a start up who I asked what advice he could give an aspiring producer. He told me that being able to talk to each part of development (art, programmers, design, etc) and then translate to other departments is one of the most important skills for a producer. He introduced me to a senior level employee at Microsoft who repeated much of the same thing to me.
I started wandering again at this point and met an artist at EA. He told me about how when he applied to EA he didn't have a college education and his portfolio was nowhere near today's standards. The times have clearly changed a lot and breaking into the industry is much more competitive. He also talked about the structure of the production department at EA. The production department is split between project managers and producers. The producers work with the development team and help with game play etc. The project managers work on the schedules and budgets for the games. He said that because of the split it creates a lot of "discussion" between each side but in the end having the powers seperated is beneficial. I can see how it can work effectively but I think that in certain situations it can cause large rifts between each of the sides. My friend finally arrived and i followed him around the room as he said Hi to everyone that he knew. I met a few flash developers bujt didn't get a chance to have a full conversation with them.
At the end of the event I was satisfied even though I didn't meet as many people as I would have liked. It is really hard going to an event like that without knowing anyone and in the future I'm going to try to always have someone there I know.
Cyaz
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Response to Reshaping the Game Industry
Hey,
I read this article last week on Gamasutra and wanted to talk about it. The article is very wordy but was a really interesting read. The author basically says that the video game industry needs to change the way it operates. He suggests that rather than having development studios that keep the same staff project to project instead new teams should be put together for each project. This is similar to the current movie industry format.
I think that this format could work and would help some of the weaker studios. It would also help for projects with a lot of potential get the skilled development team they often lack. My main argument against it is why fix something that isn't broken. While there are studios that seem to peeter out after releasing a few successful games there are also studios that manage to keep producing great games with the same teams. Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware all come to mind when I think of succesful studios that have become known for consistently releasing high quality AAA titles. They have no incentive of sharing their talent with other studios when they have proven they can be successful using the same people. I understand that it could help the industry overall I just don't see studios letting their proven talent get away.
I also find the idea that developers would be willing to be out of a job after every production cycle unrealistic. Although the video game industry is not known for its job stability changing to the new format would be an extreme. Developers would demand much more pay and game prices would soar.
I think that the idea is an interesting one but I don't think it will come into existence anytime soon.
Cyaz
I read this article last week on Gamasutra and wanted to talk about it. The article is very wordy but was a really interesting read. The author basically says that the video game industry needs to change the way it operates. He suggests that rather than having development studios that keep the same staff project to project instead new teams should be put together for each project. This is similar to the current movie industry format.
I think that this format could work and would help some of the weaker studios. It would also help for projects with a lot of potential get the skilled development team they often lack. My main argument against it is why fix something that isn't broken. While there are studios that seem to peeter out after releasing a few successful games there are also studios that manage to keep producing great games with the same teams. Blizzard, Valve, and Bioware all come to mind when I think of succesful studios that have become known for consistently releasing high quality AAA titles. They have no incentive of sharing their talent with other studios when they have proven they can be successful using the same people. I understand that it could help the industry overall I just don't see studios letting their proven talent get away.
I also find the idea that developers would be willing to be out of a job after every production cycle unrealistic. Although the video game industry is not known for its job stability changing to the new format would be an extreme. Developers would demand much more pay and game prices would soar.
I think that the idea is an interesting one but I don't think it will come into existence anytime soon.
Cyaz
Sunday, January 25, 2009
PC Game Development
Hey,
I read an interesting article over at Gamasutra and wanted to write a bit about it. You can find the article here. The article covers 3 different issues facing PC games: accepting the differences between consoles and the PC, team size and returns, and myths about big budgets.
Each point hits key issues facing PC gaming and need to start being taken into account. Large NPD driven publishers put out AAA title after AAA title and churn out iterations for each console and the PC. Games like this barely ever fulfill expectations and often give the company a bad reputation. All of the consoles and the PC have something that they are better at than the others. This fact should be embraced by developers rather than fought with.
When a developer decides to put a game onto the PC they should look at all of the strengths of the PC and decide if it really is the appropriate place to develop. If you're a game that has a really complex interface and lots of differnt commands the PC is a great place to play it. There are other instances where developing for one or more of the consoles might be the best choice.
I think a lot of people underestimates the amount of people that play or even prefer playing computer games. Obviously the price stops a lot of peoplebut it does not stop everyone. The combined benefits of the PC being easy to develop on and the ability to have smaller teams makes the lack of as large an audience okay. As the article states some of the largest PC developers have the smallest teams.
One of the largest points thae article missed but was mentioned in the comments was personalization. The consoles are starting to realize that people love personalizing their space. The new interfaces for the Xb0x 360 and the PS3 are proof of this. Even with all that personalization the PC trumps them. The PC is an intimate experienceand gives you almost limitless options. Most PC games allow the player to edit the UI and customize it to their liking. This personalization is something unique to the PC and should be added to developer's lists when deciding to develop on the PC.
Cyaz
I read an interesting article over at Gamasutra and wanted to write a bit about it. You can find the article here. The article covers 3 different issues facing PC games: accepting the differences between consoles and the PC, team size and returns, and myths about big budgets.
Each point hits key issues facing PC gaming and need to start being taken into account. Large NPD driven publishers put out AAA title after AAA title and churn out iterations for each console and the PC. Games like this barely ever fulfill expectations and often give the company a bad reputation. All of the consoles and the PC have something that they are better at than the others. This fact should be embraced by developers rather than fought with.
When a developer decides to put a game onto the PC they should look at all of the strengths of the PC and decide if it really is the appropriate place to develop. If you're a game that has a really complex interface and lots of differnt commands the PC is a great place to play it. There are other instances where developing for one or more of the consoles might be the best choice.
I think a lot of people underestimates the amount of people that play or even prefer playing computer games. Obviously the price stops a lot of peoplebut it does not stop everyone. The combined benefits of the PC being easy to develop on and the ability to have smaller teams makes the lack of as large an audience okay. As the article states some of the largest PC developers have the smallest teams.
One of the largest points thae article missed but was mentioned in the comments was personalization. The consoles are starting to realize that people love personalizing their space. The new interfaces for the Xb0x 360 and the PS3 are proof of this. Even with all that personalization the PC trumps them. The PC is an intimate experienceand gives you almost limitless options. Most PC games allow the player to edit the UI and customize it to their liking. This personalization is something unique to the PC and should be added to developer's lists when deciding to develop on the PC.
Cyaz
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Portal (spoiler alert)
Hey,
I know I'm around a year behind but I finally played and beat Portal. I'm really bad at sitting down and completing a game so it took me a while before I finally got around to Portal. After completing the game I fully understand why it won so many awards. They managed to merge a great story with an innovative mechanic making an excellent game. Obviously I'd heard a lot about the game before getting a chance to play it but the game still managed to surprise me.
The start of the game made it seem like the game would be short and quick and simply show off the portal mechanic and mock you as you move through each floor. The only really surprising thing I ran into was the companion cube. I knew you had to kill it and maybe that made me feel no attachment but everyone else who has played the game felt bad about it. For me as soon as I realized I had to kill the companion cube I did it.
The supposed end of the game was when the real game began for me. I had no idea that the game wasn't supposed to end and I thought I had just found a cool secret area that led nowhere. It was perfectly done and accomplished a great balance of player skill and reward. I was completely confused and didn't understand why the game kept letting me explore. I eventually realized that I was supposed to keep going and quickly realized the great depth of the game.
I loved the ending and thought it wrapped the game up great. Hearing Glados telling me not to kill her and having her voice change as each piece was destroyed was great. The song that was rolling during the credits was even better. The story was very simplistic but it had this great comedic quality to it that made the game very endearing. You somehow feel connected to the game world and feel like your actions affect what is going on.
Although the game is very short it is a very hard experience to recreate. Most games can hold the quality that Portal does for short bursts but it never encompasses the whole experience. In WoW the quests often alude to other games or are easter eggs and you get the same feeling that Portal does. Figuring out how to create this experience in a full rpg should be a goal for designers.
Cyaz
I know I'm around a year behind but I finally played and beat Portal. I'm really bad at sitting down and completing a game so it took me a while before I finally got around to Portal. After completing the game I fully understand why it won so many awards. They managed to merge a great story with an innovative mechanic making an excellent game. Obviously I'd heard a lot about the game before getting a chance to play it but the game still managed to surprise me.
The start of the game made it seem like the game would be short and quick and simply show off the portal mechanic and mock you as you move through each floor. The only really surprising thing I ran into was the companion cube. I knew you had to kill it and maybe that made me feel no attachment but everyone else who has played the game felt bad about it. For me as soon as I realized I had to kill the companion cube I did it.
The supposed end of the game was when the real game began for me. I had no idea that the game wasn't supposed to end and I thought I had just found a cool secret area that led nowhere. It was perfectly done and accomplished a great balance of player skill and reward. I was completely confused and didn't understand why the game kept letting me explore. I eventually realized that I was supposed to keep going and quickly realized the great depth of the game.
I loved the ending and thought it wrapped the game up great. Hearing Glados telling me not to kill her and having her voice change as each piece was destroyed was great. The song that was rolling during the credits was even better. The story was very simplistic but it had this great comedic quality to it that made the game very endearing. You somehow feel connected to the game world and feel like your actions affect what is going on.
Although the game is very short it is a very hard experience to recreate. Most games can hold the quality that Portal does for short bursts but it never encompasses the whole experience. In WoW the quests often alude to other games or are easter eggs and you get the same feeling that Portal does. Figuring out how to create this experience in a full rpg should be a goal for designers.
Cyaz
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
The Game Pitch
Hey,
My last post really focused on pitching my game idea to my class and coincidentally Game Career Guide also had an article about pitching a game idea. http://www.gamecareerguide.com/news/21322/gamecraft_teaches_students_art_of_.php
The article really hit home on the problem with the majority of the pitches including my own. We all had the mindset that words could acurately describe our games. This was completely the wrong approach to pitching a game. Instead we should have found as many visuals as possible and used these to sell our game idea for us. Visuals are very easily understood and would have communicated our idea across much more strongly. The idea of designing the box for the game while designing it is a great one for getting the team to make the game concept into something understandable.
The other difficulty in pitching our games was that we did not have any prototype to show. Over the summer during my internship my boss was preparing for the green light of the project we were working on. This is different than the initial proposal but still similar in a few ways. She had to prove that the game was actually worth continuing to produce. She prepared sales figures of past games in the franchise, had a complete rough draft of the game design document, concept art for each scene, and a short playable demo. This is way too much to have expected from us in our class but shows that having a prototype available is invaluable to showing off a project.
Next time I have to give a proposal I will focus on making my game idea more understandable and increase the amount of excitement surrounding it. Looking back I realize that although my game idea was easily understood the game was not as exciting as some of the other less understandable games.
Cyaz
My last post really focused on pitching my game idea to my class and coincidentally Game Career Guide also had an article about pitching a game idea. http://www.gamecareerguide.com/news/21322/gamecraft_teaches_students_art_of_.php
The article really hit home on the problem with the majority of the pitches including my own. We all had the mindset that words could acurately describe our games. This was completely the wrong approach to pitching a game. Instead we should have found as many visuals as possible and used these to sell our game idea for us. Visuals are very easily understood and would have communicated our idea across much more strongly. The idea of designing the box for the game while designing it is a great one for getting the team to make the game concept into something understandable.
The other difficulty in pitching our games was that we did not have any prototype to show. Over the summer during my internship my boss was preparing for the green light of the project we were working on. This is different than the initial proposal but still similar in a few ways. She had to prove that the game was actually worth continuing to produce. She prepared sales figures of past games in the franchise, had a complete rough draft of the game design document, concept art for each scene, and a short playable demo. This is way too much to have expected from us in our class but shows that having a prototype available is invaluable to showing off a project.
Next time I have to give a proposal I will focus on making my game idea more understandable and increase the amount of excitement surrounding it. Looking back I realize that although my game idea was easily understood the game was not as exciting as some of the other less understandable games.
Cyaz
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Human Body Presentation and Rambling
Hey,
Today my group got to presented our game to a panel. The first day of presentations our class had a developer from EA with a few years experience and a video game analyst who has studied the industry for many years and has years of experience. The second day of presentations we were supposed to get a past editor of Computer Gaming World and been a part of the video game industry for a lot of his professional life. He was unfortunately unable to make it and instead two graduate students sat in for him.
The project is very similar to one I have done before so I had some experience before we started it. The assignment is to write up a concept document for an original video game idea then to pitch the idea to a group of panelists. My past experience was a good one. I enjoyed working on an original video game idea with a group of people but not everyone was excited and enthusiastic as I was. Also during the pitch I realized how hard it was to explain a full AAA title to a group of people who had not participated in the design process. It was even harder because the game was not even fully fleshed out in our minds, the actual designers! For this time around I decided to design a flash game with a significantly smaller scope and planned it as a student developed project.
I feel like the concept document came out better this time then it did the last. The handicap of having students who are not as excited and enthusiastic as me was significantly lessened because I made the game design one that anyone could understand. It was very easily translated into a language that a non-video game player. I did this with the thought in mind that for the presentation I would easily be able to explain our idea making it hard for the panel to find faults in our core concept.
On the first day of presentations the core concept is exactly what the panelists focused on. They might have commented on the details but they focused on the core concepts. One of the panelists went so far as to award the game that he thought was the worst simply because they did the best job of communicating their core concept across. He brought up a very stark fact, of the video game industry, that a lot of the executives in charge, of deciding which games are made, are not gamers.
On the second day of presentations the graduate students did not focus on the core concepts. They focused on the details and the flimsy details of what the games would be. I've heard all of the pitches twice and still had only vague ideas of what the core game play was for some of the games. The graduate students have the same optimism as many of the students and did not focus on the fact that the game play was never really explained. It was really frustrating to watch and to deal with. At the end the other two games were chosen as better presentations and better games.
I've been trying to take an outside approach as to why my game was not liked. The only conclusion that I have made is the one I made before. The difference between an experienced game developer and an unexperienced one is that an experienced developer knows the reality of the video game industry. They realize that good game play is the core of making good games. They also realize that explaining what game they are making is the most important skill to have. I am still extremely optimistic for the video game industry but I accept and am excited to work to overcome the harsh realities. The other students that understand this are the ones I like talking to and enjoy working with.
Cyaz
Today my group got to presented our game to a panel. The first day of presentations our class had a developer from EA with a few years experience and a video game analyst who has studied the industry for many years and has years of experience. The second day of presentations we were supposed to get a past editor of Computer Gaming World and been a part of the video game industry for a lot of his professional life. He was unfortunately unable to make it and instead two graduate students sat in for him.
The project is very similar to one I have done before so I had some experience before we started it. The assignment is to write up a concept document for an original video game idea then to pitch the idea to a group of panelists. My past experience was a good one. I enjoyed working on an original video game idea with a group of people but not everyone was excited and enthusiastic as I was. Also during the pitch I realized how hard it was to explain a full AAA title to a group of people who had not participated in the design process. It was even harder because the game was not even fully fleshed out in our minds, the actual designers! For this time around I decided to design a flash game with a significantly smaller scope and planned it as a student developed project.
I feel like the concept document came out better this time then it did the last. The handicap of having students who are not as excited and enthusiastic as me was significantly lessened because I made the game design one that anyone could understand. It was very easily translated into a language that a non-video game player. I did this with the thought in mind that for the presentation I would easily be able to explain our idea making it hard for the panel to find faults in our core concept.
On the first day of presentations the core concept is exactly what the panelists focused on. They might have commented on the details but they focused on the core concepts. One of the panelists went so far as to award the game that he thought was the worst simply because they did the best job of communicating their core concept across. He brought up a very stark fact, of the video game industry, that a lot of the executives in charge, of deciding which games are made, are not gamers.
On the second day of presentations the graduate students did not focus on the core concepts. They focused on the details and the flimsy details of what the games would be. I've heard all of the pitches twice and still had only vague ideas of what the core game play was for some of the games. The graduate students have the same optimism as many of the students and did not focus on the fact that the game play was never really explained. It was really frustrating to watch and to deal with. At the end the other two games were chosen as better presentations and better games.
I've been trying to take an outside approach as to why my game was not liked. The only conclusion that I have made is the one I made before. The difference between an experienced game developer and an unexperienced one is that an experienced developer knows the reality of the video game industry. They realize that good game play is the core of making good games. They also realize that explaining what game they are making is the most important skill to have. I am still extremely optimistic for the video game industry but I accept and am excited to work to overcome the harsh realities. The other students that understand this are the ones I like talking to and enjoy working with.
Cyaz
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