Mat
New Member
Posts: 19
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Post by Mat on May 11, 2005 3:59:47 GMT -5
Quite interesting... news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4530583.stmDoes anyone know John Sear? On a related note, I know someone who wants to get out of Business IT and into games programming - any of you guys know where he might start? Write a demo? Approach companies directly? How are ex-Business IT people perceived in the industry? It's not me by the way Thanks guys
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Post by Gary on May 11, 2005 4:13:11 GMT -5
Mat,
I really don't want to sound negative with this, but I would try and dissuade your friend from this. The UK games development industry is EXTREMELY tough at the moment, and there are more developers than actual jobs at the moment (and we are talking about experienced games developers. Your friend might be lucky and get a job, but there are very few smaller development companies perceived to be 'secure' in the UK.
Best bet for him (certainly as a start) would be to apply to someone like EA Chertsey or somesuch. At least there will be an element of security and would be a good place to develop the necessary experience.
As I say, I hate to be negative, but take a look at some of the development forums (www.thechaosengine.com) to get a feel of the climate.
GB
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Post by Simon Butler on May 11, 2005 7:01:24 GMT -5
Very nicely put Gary.
How MCV and Develop manage to find things to write about and fill pages every week/month is beyond me.
It's saddening to see the state that the industry is in and increasingly so when almost every week another studio goes to the wall.
Sometime you want to scream "Where's the game??" because you know that at times the reasons they have bitten the bullet is because of the pretensions that abound within what is first and formost a GAMES industry. But these guys insist on trying to create something they percive as having some artistic "worth" rather than something that kids will clamour to play because they know it's fun.
It's just like the comics industry...people think that because their core readers, the guys who have grown up with them have matured that they want more mature themes in their comics.
Bollocks to that!
I want the Thing punching Doctor Doom or The Hulk fighting "Puny Humans!"...I don't want to hear them bleat for twenty pages about how nobody loves them...
And it echoes through the games industry. Adult content. Mature themes.
Nuts to that.
Give me guns and aliens and lots of them. I don't want some 25 minute FMV exposition about a "science twisted by dark hands to serve and evil master blah blah yakkety shmakkety"
Load game, press start...begin the carnage.
Same with all games. Who in their right mind wants to wade through a 30 minute tutorial?
If a game needs a tutorial then it's badly designed.
You learn by mistakes. It's a game for crying out loud...so you have to start again...so what? If people complain about having to start over then your game is obviously crap and they shouldn't have started it in the first place.
We all complained about games and how they kicked our collective asses. But we kept going back and playing them again...getting that little bit further, showing off to our friends that we had reached a level they hadn't. That's what it's all about.
Nowadays it's all massively, multi-layer-online tedium.
They're just chat-rooms with bullets and orcs.
Games are designed by committee these days and take forever to develop.
I've worked on over 100 titles in the last 18 months. None of them will top the charts or set the world on fire...but I had, for the most part...good fun working on them. they're simple, you don't have to have a PHD in nanotechnology to play them and almost without exception all the studios I have developed for are still around.
Can't say that about the console developers now can you?
But I digress...as per usual.
The games scene is frighteningly bad at the moment...you can see the tumbleweeds blowing through the streets and it's a depressing scene.
How it's going to save itself is anyone's guess...
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Post by johnnyboy on May 11, 2005 13:14:59 GMT -5
Gary's advice is highly sound. Conservative as it sounds, you would be well advised to heed it.
Few publishers are taking risks with new concepts and unknown quantaties. VC take even less risks now, having taken a bath with many speculative investments.
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Mat
New Member
Posts: 19
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Post by Mat on May 11, 2005 17:12:19 GMT -5
Wow guys, things must have changed! Simon seems to have hit on some of the reasons why?
It's not too different on the other side of the fence in the supposedly 'sober' business software industry; It goes like this: A product manager decides what the customer wants rather than the customers deciding for themselves, and the whole team are ordered to go along with it. What's finally delivered is an irrelevant ego-trip for the product manager disguised as a 'leading edge' CRM package or something. The Customer goes away fuming at the cost and lack of content (in gaming terms he wanted a playable experience and got FMV with a crap script), the product manager on the other hand thinks he's impressed everyone, then wonders why the company are haemorrhaging customers. Then it folds, funnily enough.
Looks like you guys have the same problem.
Thanks for the info - i'll pass it on!
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Mat
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Post by Mat on May 12, 2005 3:42:35 GMT -5
It's really quite sad when you think about it. I mean how can the government justify funding this degree when the industry is clearly saturated? Did they think they could somehow re-invigorate the industry? They must have consulted someone on this - maybe a bunch of VCs or local businesses who said they would consider backing a 'fresh new team' of british games developers? But surely this university will be churning-out games programmers to an over-subscribed british games industry who will immediately cross the pond to contribute to the american economy? Maybe there should be an extra module in this degree - the 'Simon Butler reality check' module - where Simon goes in and lectures on the history of the British games industry - and maybe even inspire a revolution! I will check-out www.thechaosengine.com and see what the opinion is there - but I wanted to know what you guys thought because you were there when it all started, and you've been through the ups-and-downs first hand. Pity John Sear didn't consult you guys!
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Post by Gary on May 12, 2005 5:10:15 GMT -5
It's really quite sad when you think about it. I mean how can the government justify funding this degree when the industry is clearly saturated? Did they think they could somehow re-invigorate the industry? It's to maintain a good supply of talent for the US development industry. That's where many of our top people end up as the emploment market in this sector diminishes here in the UK...... Simon has made a number of valid points, perceived by someone who has experience in this area. Much has changed over the past 25 years and not all of it for the better.
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Post by Simon Butler on May 12, 2005 8:46:49 GMT -5
Me again...
Things have reached the point where I'm actually moving to Germany to find full time employment.
Hurrah for fine beer and bratwurst!
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Post by Gary on May 12, 2005 10:51:19 GMT -5
. .
.... I'm actually moving to Germany to find full time employment.
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Brian
Junior Member
Posts: 80
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Post by Brian on Jun 30, 2005 14:40:46 GMT -5
more nails hit on the head by simon..
it's funny, even the most (by rights) simple and fun mobile games are now over baked cakes, designed by comittee and vastly overcomplicated.. my latest mobile game I'm working on is an incredibly confusing, boring crappy looking affair.. and why?
Every good idea was vetoed by management, we were forced to add ridiculous elements due to management deluding themselves they actually knew anything about videogames, every pixel I plotted had to match the art directors "vision", (50 versions of one SPRITE before the suits made up their mind!!) and the designer tried so hard to create something "cutting edge" it's become an overcomplex visual mess...
developers need stop being so pretentious about what they make..
I'm becoming so pissed off with making games nowadays , in fact I feel that I don't even make games 9-5 anymore.. they sure as hell don't resemble games to me!!,
I've actually bitten the bullet and started working on my own game at home, it's a happy fun game designed to be picked upand played by anyone... I'm doing all design, music and graphics myself as it's the only way i'll ever get to work on an original (meaning not seen before!) project without some fucking idiot trying to dilute the original concept and make ridiculous changes just because they can, and not because the game needs it...
hopefully I can sell it at a fiver a throw and sell the mobile rights, hopefully to someone that won't ad a "dark, edgy storyline" and give the main character an "extreme attitude" , tatoos and a gun..
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kev
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Post by kev on Aug 8, 2005 19:31:00 GMT -5
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kev
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Post by kev on Aug 8, 2005 19:38:58 GMT -5
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