Hello everyone. I’ve finally updated again, this time adding a contract game I worked on and that was sponsored back in February, as well as finally updating the Flashplok project page. Check them out via the sidebar or portfolio page!
I’ve also added a PayPal donations button, so if you feel as though you want to help me out (everything helps as I’m a poor freelancer these days!) you can drop me a dollar or two. Thanks!
In other news, I’m working on my third Flash game, due to be finished in the upcoming weeks so there’ll be more news about that as it begins to surface. Music is also going exceptionally well; I recently composed the score to the epic game Castaway 2 which is among the most followed and anticipated RPG Flash games around. I absolutely love composing for RPGs and I’m currently working on the soundtrack for another upcoming RPG in the form of Amiran developed by Zac Linton. Lots of projects are coming up and it’s looking to be a fun and busy month for music and programming alike!
I’ll later be adding some of my more recent music to my music portfolio as well as creating a page specifically outlining the terms of my music contract work so that more people can use my composition services.
Considering I am and want to be a programmer (or possibly a musician as backup), I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years working with programs like 3DS Max and level editing tools like Hammer and UnrealEd. I don’t really have any interest at all in being a 3D artist or level designer myself, but I feel that one of the most important aspects of being a good game developer is team play. A large part of being a good team player is knowing your other team members and how they work. This is even more important, of course, if you want to be a tools programmer, but any programmer should strive to have some experience with the tools their other team members use.
Here’s a short video I created using my rudimentary knowledge of 3D Studio to give an example. While I personally may not use the program very often, I’m really glad I know how it works because it gives me insight into how the artists in my team are going to be doing what they do; I don’t need to be an expert at it, but since I know the workflow I could theoretically step up to the mark if I needed to fill in as a tools programmer. Not only that, but I can design an assets pipeline around how the artists are used to working, making everyone’s job easier.
Video is hosted on Vimeo. Also available on YouTube.
Rock Band is a game I’ve been playing for a long time – about a year. Actually, I’ve been playing Rock Band 2 mostly, but since I’ve moved I only brought Rock Band with me and have gotten back into it. For those of us who’ve been living under a rock or are otherwise uninformed, Rock Band is technically a casual party game involving the use of pretend instruments to form a pretend band and do a pretend tour around the world. The available instruments are guitars (standard and bass, both play the same), drums and vocals. Having been a fan of Guitar Hero for a while I’m pretty experienced with the guitar gameplay, so my primary interest for the last year has been the drums; an instrument I’ve had relatively little experience playing over the years but one I’m extremely interested in. The thing that makes Rock Band great is the escapism that comes with playing it; for the few minutes you’re mid-song you can actually believe you’re playing these instruments for real, and as silly as it seems, this makes you want to play it more and more as you improve.
The first thing I’ll admit is that I’m not normally a big fan of First-Person Shooters… Very rarely do they manage to keep me interested, especially when they have no unique or defining qualities. Most of the major FPS IPs are ones I have very little interest in including but not limited to Unreal, Call of Duty, Quake and Far Cry. However, if there’s one games company that anybody who’s anybody seems to love, it’s Valve. I’m no exception; although I haven’t found the time to play through all of Half Life and I don’t play Team Fortress 2 that much, there’s an undeniable quality about the games they make that is only seldom seen these days. Now that the obligatory introduction is over, I’ll say this – Valve + Zombies = Fun.
Having played and greatly enjoyed Persona 3, Persona 4 has been on my radar for some time. Reviews of the game have praised it as being significantly better than the 3rd game, particularly referencing the fact that some of the original problems I found with Persona 3 have been addressed; mainly the inability to control the party members other than the main character. This bodes well for the game as Persona 3 with these fixes would’ve made an absolutely stellar game. The thing that took me by surprise is that Persona 4 seems to be so much more than just a fixed Persona 3 – the characters are excellently developed, the dialogue captivating and the game mechanics polished to a mirror shine. Where Persona 3 was a great game but fell short on a few counts, Persona 4 is one of the strongest offerings of the RPG genre.
This final guest lecture was somewhat different to those before it; the lecturer works at the University of Bolton, but used to work for a publishing company – the lecture was to give us an insight from a slightly different view; that of the games publisher.
Paul gave his views of the games industry in the 90’s when he worked as a publisher. Job security and crunch times were mentioned as major negatives of working in the games industry. Developers are put under crushing pressure from their publishers to get games finished by the release dates (understandably; a Christmas release is almost certainly going to be more profitable than a January release of the same game).
He told us about some of his personal successes and failures; a strong marketing move led to Mary King’s Riding Star, a horse sim game, being a huge success. Conversely, Paul’s backing behind Rugby Super League led to him losing his job as a publisher due to commercial and critical failure. His attitude towards publishing seemed to be that a lot of the time it’s a gamble; placing your stakes on the wrong game could mean you lose a huge amount of money, but sometimes meets with success, as was his experience with Dynasty Warriors 2.
He gave us some more advice on landing that oh-so-critical first games industry job; and that was to network with as many people as possible and to make contacts. The IGDA (of whom he is a member) is an important resource for this. Additionally, he stressed the importance of work experience, particularly team-oriented work such as modding and indie game development with teams.
The two guest lecturers were David, a producer at Traveller’s Tales, and Vicky, a Human Resources Advisor at Evolution Studios. Traveller’s Tales are responsible for the Lego Star Wars series, as well as Lego Batman. They were also involved in some of my favourite megadrive games; they did a lot of 3D work with Psygnosis (Puggsy, Wiz ‘n’ Liz), and developed Sonic 3D. Evolution Studios are the team behind MotorStorm and MotorStorm: Pacific Rift; two of the most fun racing games I’ve played.
David gave an indication of how it is possible to climb the job ladder within the games industry; he began as a game tester, and stepped through the rungs eventually making his way to his current job of producer. He covered job positions within the industry – of interest to me was his part on the programming jobs. It turns out that programmers start out working on small scripting tasks when hired to get a feel for the engine and libraries being used on the project, before they graduate to more serious roles. This is good news for me; although I would consider myself a competent programmer I was worried about being thrown in at the deep end – particularly with the added stress of a new job and making new friends. This puts me at ease somewhat, because it would give me time to learn about the programming methods employed by the team before doing any really tough work.
The lecture turned focus to job applications; some parts were reiterations of the stuff from before, but this time more emphasis was placed on knowing about the company and job you’re applying for and tailoring your CV to that. It was also mentioned (and this should be obvious) that you shouldn’t lie or exaggerate on your CV. I guess it needs to be said, but I wouldn’t have thought lying a viable way of getting a job anyway…
As a final note, and pertinent to my portfolio and blog, is that it’s a good idea to keep up with games industry news on your portfolio web site, keeping it up to date with game reviews and general information showing that you keep on top of what’s going on. I knew this was important already, but having it mentioned really set it clear in my mind and made me think about how much I need to get on this – I tend to keep this blog mostly project-centric, and it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything about what games I’ve been playing, or any industry news I’ve heard about. Don’t get me wrong – I keep up on all this stuff; I read Kotaku and Joystiq every day, play a lot of games (particularly indie and PSN/Xbox Live Arcade ones) and have a vibrant interest in the whole games industry culture – but I very rarely remember to post about it in this blog. This is something I’m evidently going to have to change.
My interest was immediately piqued when the lecturer mentioned that I-play was responsible for a port of Metal Slug 4 to the mobile platform; I’m a fan of the Metal Slug games because I believe they have some of the most beautiful graphics ever made, as well as solid arcade gameplay (the best kind!). I’m also interested in mobile game development – I spent almost 4 years developing Terra Galactica for the GBA, so I know all too well what it’s like to have to fit within tight processing and memory restrictions – sometimes to the point of hand-optimising ASM code and counting CPU cycles used by a particular algorithm, so this lecture hit close to home for me.
Thomas explained how limiting it can be developing for phones; some of the problems discussed were the small screen size and lack of memory – some phones have as little as 64kb of memory to work with. To give an idea, that’s the same amount of memory as the Megadrive (and that’s not including the 64kb of VRAM the Megadrive had)! Another problem with mobile phone development, which is the case in PC development as well (but to a greater degree), is the fact that there are so many different models of phone to test on, whereas with a console there’s a general policy of “if it works on one, it works on them all” since they are all the same from a specifications & hardware point of view.
Another interesting facet of the mobile games industry is that it’s much closer to the indie scene; teams are much smaller, development times are short (in comparison to high budget console titles) and casual/unique games are a large part of the market. Contrast this with the highly saturated and competitive mainstream market and it makes mobile development instantly desirable, particularly for a starting developer.
I’ve always held mobile development as a high possibility for myself; I actually enjoy working to extreme limitations and hand-optimising code, and my experience with the GBA lends itself well to mobile development – a lot of phones actually use ARM-cored processors, meaning they’re not that far removed from the GBA when all’s said and done. Definitely something to consider!
The Codemasters guest lecture was given by some students who had graduated from the University of Bolton and had gone on to work at Codemasters as game designers. Nick gave us a bit of background info about himself, telling us that he worked at Climate Studios before he got his job at Codemasters – he noted that they gave very little training and had no induction process. He found that a lot of the time he was working alone, with little guidance and didn’t fare too well. This indicates that the games industry is not necessarily going to be easy to survive in, even if you do get a job, and that it’s worth having a look and seeing if you can find any information about a company from its employees to see what the working conditions are like.
He gave some further advice about finding a job as well, building on the information given at the Aardvark Swift lecture. He told us that a CV should be concise and to the point – it should tell them that you’re a suitable candidate without going on too much. In essence, it should grab the attention of the employer and tell them your interests, skills and ability. The portfolio again has been reiterated as being a hugely important part of the application – in fact, and I have heard this before, if there is no portfolio then the application is often immediately void. This highlights the importance of the portfolio, and how it must show your best work.
He went on to discuss working at Codemasters specifically; both of the guest lecturers are working on Colin McRae’s DiRT 2 – a very high profile title and one to keep an eye on following the success of the first game. Nick explained that he goes on field trips to racing tracks to gain an understanding how the cars go on a real track, which helps him with his job of adjusting the cars’ parameters in game to give a good simulation.
This guest lecture was useful from two standpoints; firstly, it gave some more information on CV writing and reinforced the importance of the portfolio in any games industry job application, and secondly it gave an insight into both sides of working for a games company – both the good and the bad.
You hear a lot these days about recruiting agencies such as Aardvark Swift; some say it’s not worth using them at all because employers prefer direct applicants and may dock pay to cover the costs of hiring the agency, others say that it’s so much easier to land a job through an agency that its worth the possible loss of money for the first few years. I personally know someone who has managed to find a very comfortable job in the games industry through Aardvark Swift, so I’m open minded.
Hollie, the guest lecturer from Aardvark Swift, gave us some information on agencies in general, but the main focus was on more general and useful information such as improving your CV and interview technique. She told us that the most important factor of any job application in the games industry is your portfolio – I’ve heard this time and time again which confirms that it is crucial. A good portfolio should show off your programming ability, and if you’re aiming for a specific area of programming (AI, Graphics) you should have a good stock of relevant demos in your portfolio.
Interview technique is important no matter what job you apply for; in the games industry interviews are likely to cover technical questions relating to the job, but tend to vary a lot depending on the company giving them.
Applying for jobs through Aardvark Swift is certainly a viable option – although in Aardvark Swift’s case employers pay commission, I still think it’s worth getting your CV and portfolio out there to as many people as possible.
