Hey guys. With the help of the admins I thought I could shed some light on what goes on behind the scenes of the video game industry. The following is some info on what I would like to start building on the forum. I will keep updating these throughout.
The purpose of this Game Theory thread and section is to establish a link to the members of GATT who are focused on building a career in the game industry. This is a professional forum guys, I will be showing it (provided it has good data and professionalism) to people at the Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco in March. I hope to have some good stuff to show them.
Why am I qualified?Well I guess I am somewhat qualified. I am currently finishing my fourth degree, masters in video game production management at Full Sail University. I have a Bachelors in Game Design, Associates in multimedia and a Masters Diploma in Business Management. I have dedicated the last 10 years of my life specifically to the video game industry and its development.
My final project for my masters involves the following
1. I am writing a thesis on a team cohesion matrix for establishing new members of teams that ranges from 10-15 in number. I focus on the four attributes of a team; behavior, tenure, roles and responsibility and communication. I will link this directly to multiplayer games (Halo 3, COD, BF2 etc) and establish a reason as to why they are necessary for a successful team and therefore a successful game.
2. The last 5 months will involve me being in charge of 10-15 bachelor students. They are programmers, artists, audio engineers, designers. The school gives us a 500,000 US budget and we must create a game from scratch. This involves game engine, assets, artwork, storyboards, documents, pitches, feature frags, alpha, beta and gold. We have to present it in order to succeed
This is happening while I am doing my classes. The master’s degree is compressed into 1 year, instead of the standard 2. It’s pretty tough, but then that is why this industry has a 90 percent attrition rate. Burnouts are pretty common here.
The roles and responsibilities of the industryI have received tons of messages, emails, phone calls…whatever from Trini’s with the following starting lines
“I have an idea to make a game but I don’t want to tell anyone because dey go teef it”
I can guarantee, as original as your idea is, it has already been thought of. Not only that, I can also guarantee that the idea is envisioned but it is already well documented detailed and saved, and either made into a game (that sucked or not) or is sitting in the vault of a game company.
Speaking with some of the developers at Blizzcon last year they mentioned that people always approach them with ideas, something they say Blizz has never thought of yet. They want to set the record straight and let you know right now, they have thought of it. They have it documented; they have it locked in their vault. Why is it not used? It makes no money. Why? Simply because whoever pitched the idea was just awful at selling it.
“So how can I get a job in the industry?”
Well it isn’t that easy. You can’t walk into a company and ask for a job. Because you can program or animate does not guarantee you a job, because you write on your resume “I like games” will DEFFINITELY not land you a job. The industry is far more complex than playing a game, writing a paragraph (or six) on a forum as to why you think something is what it is. Don’t get me wrong, if you are a gamer, love being one and want to stay as one, I am sure Kotaku can indulge you with their BS posts (there are tons of them, all invalid).
We look for validity. What evidence do you have to back up your data? Why? What is your argument? We are not going to invest in you unless you can prove to us that you can do what you say, and that you can do it under crunch.
Crunch? This is when work turns from fun into hell. The last 4-5 months (sometimes more) or production involve some long hours. Hours like 20 hour work shifts, hours like the ones where your significant other wants to file for a divorce because she doesn’t understand why you are never home, hours where you put on 20 lbs in those 4 months. Can you handle that? Managing time is key, and being able to prove that is what they are looking for
Best way? QA….Quality Assurance. Game testers! Try to look at your favorite genre, make mods! Post the mods on sites and get feedback (good or bad). People are looking on those forums, and they could be looking at what you are posting!
The producer
Essentially this is what I do. We are not programmers, artists or designers. Although my bachelors makes me a proficient designer, that is not what we do. In some cases different companies have different roles. The head of Naughty Dog dabbles in programming. However for a large company like EA or Activision, you will be one of 2 or 3 producers who fill the role of a title.
Internal producers (myself) fill the role of a SINGLE title. We are responsible for all the programmers, artists and designers on that title. We build a management plan, a production pipeline and establish all the assets and funding required for the game in the time given by our stakeholders. And we MAKE SURE we hit that mark. We fail? Were FIRED..and more than likely will never end up in a large position again till you can prove yourself again. It is VERY difficult managing a programmer who is completely different from an artist. Currently we take classes in leadership, introverted/extroverted individuals, handling failure and rewarding success. Learning the production pipeline and how to motivate and encourage a time (especially in crunch). We are there from the beginning to the end, first to arrive at work, last to leave at night.
The programmer
These people write the code established in the game document. They do nothing else! They are innovators ONLY in the scope assigned to them. Clean code, efficient code. No cutting corners. Good programmers are able to communicate with one another and their team in order to produce a final product. This goes for every team member; if you cannot get along with your team then get out! Teamwork is the backbone of a successful game development team. I can guarantee a programmer that is 1337 at programming and terrible with his team will be fired.
In one of my conferences I attended I watched Mike Capps (Epic Games) explain about a leet programmer that was so full of himself they had to call police to escort him off the premises. They test your skills by drilling you at their interviews. Give you a white board and a pen and tell you to write code! Its SUPPOSED to make you fail, its supposed to make you freak out. Its how you HANDLE it is what they are looking for. This guy got so nervous he freaked out and started yelling at people, I guess you can assume the outcome.
The Artist
Artists can be concept art, modelers, lighting, animators, riggers, texture artists….you name it. Unless it’s a small company you have an individual role. Remember to stay on scope! There are so many times you hear of artists that keep adding to their work because they think it looks cool, without passing it by the lead, or the producer first. Artists are very creative (of course) and are quite different to programmers. For the most part programmers are seen (not all) as linear thinkers, they follow a pattern, what is not in that pattern does not belong there, and there is good reason for it. Artists are different, they make stuff work, they think outside the box! Getting an artist and programmer to think together is not easy, but not impossible. They speak different languages
The Designer
This is the person that comes up with the game idea. Lots of research (books, games, media) can influence a designer. They usually have some art/programming skills. For example I am pretty okay with 3DS Max, I can do basic models, mostly environments, but by no means can I rig or animate a character, that’s why I didn’t do an animation degree, and that’s why there are animators! The designer does storyboarding, tech trees, world design, character design. They come up with the concept and run with it. They establish if this concept is worth pursuing based on the ability of the team.
Game TheorySo what is game theory? It ranges from anything from storyboards, character design, tech trees etc. all the way into programming types, animation and modeling, texturing etc. It focuses on what goes on during the production phase and examines the reasoning behind actions of the team.
This is not something where you can deduce a conclusion. “The game will suck because they did not address the framerate..”
Why did they not address the framerate? Did the lead programmer leave? Did they go over budget? Was the idea scrapped ¾ way through the process and the final version was actually a beta release? This is all game theory. You examine why things happen, why decisions are made and try to figure out the root cause of it. You then establish a way to fix this issue. Addressing an issue with no viable solution only makes that established issue another problem.
Something that is commonly discussed in game theory is FEATURE CREEP. It is the quintessential BANE of production.
Feature creep is essentially adding assets or features to the game during the production process. Originally you may have decided to make a character jump over a wall. Okay…did anyone think of the amount of features that go into making that character jump?
1. He has to be moving..so how fast? Is it fast enough to break immersion?
2. How much does the character weigh to show how high he is going to jump?
3. What is he jumping over? Does he jump in a single motion? Can he double jump?
4. Is the jump a small or large? Can it be interchanged?
5. How about collision? Suppose he hits the object? What about collision detection?
6. What engine can be best used for this?
We even haven’t started talking about budget, if the team can do it, if it fits within the idea of the game. Before that! We don’t even know WHY he is jumping, and what he is jumping over.
So if a programmer who is unaware of this decides to allow the character to kick something while jumping, think of the additional features that need to be added! Guess how long that is going to take!
We have people in my masters examining the usefulness of achievements in games to the reason behind punishment in games (eg. Respawn times, how long and why?) These are all aspects of game theory. It ranges from what happens IN a game to the people that make decisions ABOUT the game (like my thesis).
The bottom lineGamers love to smack talk. They are very opinionated, and they can be because that is how their mind is conditioned by the games they play. It’s a pissing contest. As people within the industry we have to examine this ridiculous one line (or six paragraph) opinion with no premise or statistical information and mould it into something we can use to develop a better title.
Someone can simply say “I don’t like that game, the graphics sucked”. Well thanks for that in depth analysis fella. That doesn’t help us make something better. So they will say “well I thought it had a lot of texture popins, and screen tearing..” Okay, that’s a bit more insightful, so what do you propose? Nothing! Fix it? Fix it how? Because I am pretty sure the guys that made it didn’t fix it for some reason. Before someone starts a rant or trash understand why something happened that way, then offer some insight for it. If you are not a programmer I GUARANTEE you can find some other reason why there were texture popins. The producer was not paying attention to his programmers and they added extra features that slowed down the game, the artists used a high poly count asset and implemented it to Alienbrain without anyone knowing. All these are issues from other perspectives.
Sure a gamer can just drop the one liner and get away with it. In this thread I would like to see a little more than that. And if you don’t know that’s fine! Ask! I am sure people can venture points of view, check out industry forums instead of kotaku/gamespot/IGN and these sites.
www.gamasutra.comhttp://www.gameproducer.net/http://www.gamecareerguide.com/http://www.neogaf.com/forum/are some sites that can help get you started. Understand that 90 percent of these sites are still watered down. The industry simply keeps information close to their chest because people like to steal ideas, and not just game ideas, production methodologies, design ideas, team building ideas etc. A postmortem on a game in Game Developer is WAY different and MUCH mellower in design than the internal document that was never released to the public. But it’s a step in the right direction.
SO! Lets begin! Hope I can help, hope we can help each other.
