Apr
29
Paul Hollins is an industry veteran who’s worked span until his last produced game Rugby Championship Manager. Paul Hollins used to work in games publishing with most of his experience from Midas Interactive. 
He also had consultancy roles for Electronic Arts and BERR, one of the members of IGDA and is currently looking into games and learning.
Whilst working for Midas Interactive he had published many successful games. One of the highlighted games was the Mary King Riding Star. This was a success due to the fact that advertisement for this game was done more differently. This game came bundled with other items that girls usually buy, and there were very few games that were specifically targeting girls at that time (1990s). This was a strange marketing approach but made the game sell for large amounts.
Many of the games Paul had published were mainly sport related titles. The developers of Midas: Interactive Entertainment was lead by Paul to produce more licensed titles. This allowed him to linger around sport celebrities and getting free tickets to events at a young age, quoting “no days where ever the same”.
Back then (1990s) working conditions where appalling. Many developers are placed into a small room all working, eat, living in a confined space. Publishers had big pressures to meet deadlines. It wasn’t nice being in the industry back then. Developers had a hard time negotiating with publishers if you don’t have a back portfolio of released games. Publishers will simple turn their back on developers. Back then Paul would receive 20 or more games proposals a week which is one of the possible reasons that publishers have strict rules for picking up developers and their games. Eventually working conditions started to improve when IGDA stepped in. Could be one of the reasons for Paul being a part of IGDA.
Paul finished that job with a not so impressive bang. The last game he commission was an utter failure. Rugby Championship Manager he commissioned had been developed by Italians who have a different view of Rugby altogether.
The session was rapped up with Paul handing some helpful tips in getting into the industry, mostly concerning about developing your portfolio, writing your opinions down about articles you see about in the industry, and “live and breathe games”. He talked briefly about the future of the game industry were we could see development costs increase by 200%, a Hollywood style business model, online distribution of games which he brought up a question: “will publishers even be needed?”, and what effect liscencing will have in game creativity.
On the whole the session was very interesting talk from Paul and it’s always a pleasure hearing from a very experience individual. An very impressive and entertaining guest lecture.
Apr
19
Anthony Hartley-Denton one of the founders of AHD gave a further talk on starting business from a different 
perspective. Anthony began as an interior designer and got work through architect freelancing giving him extra income which eventually lead him to start his own company, AHD and has been successful ever since. AHD is an animation and architectual design studio one of leading business in that industry.
Remembering his first commission from a large company was the big initial reward for starting his own business. The company’s last turnover was over £730,000 which highlights the company’s success. With these types of business constant investments for both personally and financially are need to keep the business running.
He explained that a good good work ethic is need in the business and the business is contantly upgrading its hardwares if need be. One of the advice he gave during talk was that if time taken to do something can be reduced by spending money then have that as a main option.
Anthony gave advice and tips when you are starting up your business:
- Keep positive about things.
- Always aim high.
- Prepare for the worst, and hope for the best.
- Cash is KING.
- Don’t be apologetic about money own.
- Be upfront about the amount you are being paid.
- Be prepared to fire your clients.
- Keep in mind the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule for business- where anything in a few is vital, anything in many is trivial i.e. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers/clients or 80% of complaints are from 20% or your products.
- Keep in mind that not all clients are equal.
The rest of the session involved showing us some reels of works AHD has done for many of their clients. You can watch one of their showreels they’ve made available on their website: http://www.ahd-imaging.com/showreel.html
The session overall was most interesting due to the many advice and tips that where given out during the talk, although these were given in a more casual and informal way it didn’t change the form at hand and as successful as his business has been it’s a privilege to us for him to come and give a talk.
Starting your own business is somewhat one of the problems you create for yourselves when you decide to do so. The guys at 3D Framework have gone through all this and have decided to share the experience with us during a session.
Richard Jones from 3D Frameworks (now works for ADH) gave some interesting and humorous insight into starting your own business. The complications involve adds more strain to the thought of it.
As described by Richard the thought of it must come from a reason, and he highlighted that it must be a strong reason as it is the most common place to start a business. Other reasons involve your client list. If you have a lot of contacts with numerous clients or a single large company this is one way to go and do so.
Benefits for starting your own business are the control over the work and time. With Richard, he and Tim Ash both brought up the company as they were very specialised in 3D and concept arts. What they learn is also up to both of them to decided.
It’s all fair when you have a good reason behind a company but that’s just the beginning of it obviously. You’ll need to get the company up and running, get clients, and start getting income from your work.
Richard then explained a few ways in starting a business. One of which is that one can start their own business as a Sole Trader. Setting up a business on your own has balancing pros and cons. Obviously it’s easier to setup and you have the skills need for the job. You keep track of sales and get the profit directly from them. One of the problems is that there’s no legal separation between you and your company. Products made by the company (you) that result in faultiness in some way will be held directly responsible and the sue case can cover the assets from your company and personal belongings, i.e. your house. With other types of company such at Private and Public Limited these are guaranteed safe if things do happen badly. Below is table summary of the types of business:
| Type of business Organisation | Possible sources of finance | Key issues for consideration |
| Sole Trader | Owner’ savings, banks, suppliers, government grants and loans | · Security for those lending funds
· Loss of control by owner · Evidence that business has potential to develop · Financial history of business/owner |
| Partnership | Partners’ savings, banks, suppliers, government grants and loans, hire purchase and leasing companies | · Problems of introducing new partner
· Lack of collateral · Potential expense of raising large sums of money · Should they form a limited company? |
| Private limited company (ltd) | Dependant upon the size of the private limited company, suppliers, banks, factoring, leasing and hire purchase companies, government grants and loans, venture capital institutions, private share issues | · Disagreement amongst existing shareholders
· Difficulty of finding suitable shareholders · Loss of control by existing shareholders · Lack of collateral and security for those lending funds · Element of risk in the loan |
| Public limited company (plc) | Suppliers, banks, factoring, leasing and hire purchase companies, government grants and loans, venture capital institutions, public share issues via the stock exchange | · State of economy and stock market
· Ability to move to area receiving government aid · Recent financial performance · Reputation of company and senior managers |
| Non-profit making organisation | Charitable donations, lottery money, government and EU grants | · Public profile
· Relationship with government |
You can start up with a company on your own or as a team. With a team a lot more work can be done and the company will be capable of bigger projects. The work place will be more interesting and motivational as you’re working with other people. Evenly the problems are that it’s not easy to secure a finance and possibility of team members falling out.
A company must also need a secured finance and its one of the crucial process involved. As Richard calmly explained, that you will need to have a good and realistic business plan so you can receive finance for your company from banks. Richard explained, humorously, that he managed to awe the banks into supporting his company through complicated spreadsheets. Other means of finance are from other companies your business has associations with. Usually a larger company to carry the business from the beginning. One of the problems here is that you’ll have to break your own rules to tend to the needs of the company supporting your business.
Most businesses start with very little turnover in their initial year. If the annual turnover is below £70,000 you’re company can apply for a VAT registration, but when your company exceeds that amount annually it is by law that you have to apply for one. Many will ask if the company is VAT registered. This will initially tell possible supporters how much they can get from you and how big the company can be. VAT charged on your products can be claimed back in purchasing from other VAT registered companies.
Having no idea how to get started, Richard explained that its a lot more easier to get in touch with accountants, solicitors, similar companies, lawyers and keeping note of any recommendations and opinions they provide you.
As a sum up to the session, with respect to Richard, the experience he had on setting up a business relayed very well. Although throughout the whole speech it never did change my whole perspective of setting up my own business. In fact it’s made me think that this will be the last time I would do.
Feb
27
Mobile gaming, an aspect of the gaming industry over-shadowed by current generation gaming console, is left to wander all alone whilst a war is waged somewhere else. At least that’s what I view mobile gaming to be.
When you speak of mobile gaming it is just a thought to many gamers whether hardcore or casual. At least that’s my thought also. That’s when Thomas Hulvershorn stepped in and gave some pointers to what happens in mobile game development and how much similar it is and more complicated it is to produce
games for various mobile phones.
First of all Thomas Hulvershorn is the Q&A Manager for I-Play mobile gaming company who’s released over 30 title since 2004 in the Q&A division. You can visit their site here: http://www.iplay.com/.
Designing games for mobile phones adds numerous complications in the process. Many things have to be considered whilst deciding the design of a game. As what you may expect from mobile phones controls aren’t that helpful in many ways. Some mobile phone companies try to create a solution to this common problem as some phones have a specific hand-held style look-a-like to them that make them feel more comfortable for gaming and for regular phone calls.
As pointed out by Thomas once control is managed to an extent the content of the game must be manage also so that the player can pick up the game and play it right away. This can be hard to get by when you try to produce a complicated games, although the genres of games mostly cover the casual aspect of gaming. Most games tend to be situated into puzzle games which fit easily into both given considerations.
Another point given out by Thomas was the difficulty of creating a software which can run on various mobile phones. As with games mobile phones in general are being produced with new/updated framework/firmware which the software has to run on. Most mobile phones are categorised likewise where testing can be done on one phone per category.
As a Q&A manager most of the speech described testing procedures in alpha and beta stages. As far as I am aware testing seems to be more vigorous and immediate feedback is required which are then handled back to the developers for some improvements.
Testing as a job in the industry is also highlighted during the talk. This itself is a discipline of games development and has become a new profession. As a graduate designer this is one ideal job to have in order to get into the games industry. Thereafter testers move on to become part of a Q&A management team or delve into a designer role.
Although this relates very little to my background, it is still a very good information to take into account. Ideally how a mobile game is produced is what made the content of the session very useful in the end.
As a rap up, Thomas has provided a new in site into mobile gaming itself. Although it is in obvious terms that games available for phone are incomparable to console/PC/Hand Hand, mobile gaming industry has it’s own section which it can be very successful at and it’s mostly dominated by casual gamers. Gamers like me.
First of all everyone should be known to Cliff Blenszinski. If you haven’t, then I suggest you go and buy this for the PC : Gears of War. Play through it and, obviously, you’ll see him in the credits
If you know already and smart to figure out what I’m trying to say, then well done, but I will explain anyways.
Recently found this interview of lead creator of GoW: Cliffy B while he was at DICE gaming summit. The article can be found here: http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/02/13/gears-of-war-creator-update/ .
First half of the article meantions some personal aspects of his life, but what caught my attention was the second half of the content.
Cliffy pretty much stated that their primary focus now is in console gaming, pointing out that the PC market was in “Disarray”. Point to that he gave was that Gears of War sold almost 4 times as much as PC the version, so we’ll probably end up seeing less Epic games in the PC.
Although, console market right now is huge, I just thought that his point of view at that moment was partly irrational. Initially PC gaming market was hard to get into, but monster games like World of Warcraft are what Cliffy B stated is partly to blame for the overall drop in PC gaming. He has a point, but Cliffy also forgot that Gears of War was pretty much “the” next-gen game for the Xbox 360 and it was made initially exclusive. With EPIC changing over to console, we’ll probably see more of this occurring during the year. I don’t know about you my thought are that VALVE are also showing signs…maybe.
The artcle got me also thinking about PC gaming market prospect. The future is slighlty bleak. I mean as last year stated that 14% of total games sold was for the PC: http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/pc-games-hit-ma.html. Initially my thought, in general was, that big games like the Sims and World of Warcraft made it difficult for other genres to get it’s spotlight in the scene, but what these are also doing a good job of keeping the PC gaming market intact.
I think what this effects are mostly the hardcore PC players. There will still be gaming in the PC but more as casual Bejeweled players rather than your PC overclockers nerds, like me I admit, trying to squeeze extra processing power for a few extra framerates, and I think that’s why it has it’s effects on me.
My tuppence worth.
So please buy some PC games. *smiles*
Feb
14
For graduates, who are especially related to games industry, finding a placement in a games company is getting tougher every year, and that’s primarily due to the amount of competition involved as more universities are pulling up games related courses. Initially, I was slightly skeptical about Agencies in general, and my first idea was to pursue a job on my own, and that I have already began. I’ve sent a CV off already to Sega and will be sending more to other companies which have opennings that relate to a particular role.
During the Business of Computer Games seminar our first guest lecturer was Lisa Corbett from the Aardvark Swift, well know for being a specialist agency for games recruitment. Website can be found here: Aswift.com
Lets first begin with a simple overview of ASwift (in short). Established in 1989, and they help graduates or games veterans to find new jobs in the games industry. As explained by Lisa, 90% of it all is related to the games industry. We found out, also, that the 10% left over was on gambling games, which was intriguing.
Guest lecturer Lisa Corbett, has been working for ASwift for a number of years and she specialises in helping programmers get their jobs. They have other specialised consultants for different aspects of the games industry ranging from Artists/Designers through to Sales and Marketing. As for the guest lecturer, this benefitted most programmers in the session, that includes me.
Lisa explained that, there is more demands towards games agencies now than there was a couple of years ago. One of the points given was that specialised agencies is able to pick up graduate or appropriate candidates for a company looking to fit someone to an open role. If you read development magazine you will definately see alot of recruitement advertisements from many companies. Magazines like Edge, GameDeveloper magazine, Games etc all have an abundance of games recruitement ads. One particular reason I found slightly humourous is the fact that some companies are now getting put off by advertising on magazines as they reach numerous amounts of audience in various age range, and alot of the companies and frustrated by the fact that they received unwanted CVs/mails from 14 year old people that loves to play games and would like to join a company. But since the games industry has evolved this much, it has become a much more serious business, involving more than a dozen people to create AAA titles. With an agency, this can all be filtered out, giving way for more appropriate applicants to get their CVs read.
In the recruitement process, as a games developer, you obviously need to have an enthusiasm for games. With Aardvark Swift, as explained by Lisa, they help you get your first job in the games industry if you are a graduate student. They also help you find placements for different locations you prefer. Although ASwift mostly concentrate in UK placements, they have sent applicants abroad. Now living areas, especially close to London, expenses rises but ASwift also help in negotiating a good salary so that you are able to live in the area and earn at the same time. As Lisa mentioned, most graduate salaries start around £18,000 – £20,000 per year, weekly wise divide these values by 52 and you get around $340 – £385. Technical directors receive over 1k weekly, thats over £60k a year, obviously one aspect in getting into the gaming industry.
Over the years salaries have risen quiet alot in the industry. I would like to sidetrack a bit and show you an article for last
years industry salary survey found here: Game Industry Salary Survey 2007
Now I’ve linked directly to programming section, because it’s more apparent for this article. As explained in the article there was a slight drop from the previous year but still for applicants with less than 3 years experience the average income is around $57k, half that and that’s what you will be receiving in pound equivalant, which is not at all bad for a graduate income. Obviously hard work pays you back hansomely. I would also like to encourage you to read all of this article, just to get an overview of the business in the games through the salaries point of view.
As well as negotiating salaries, they will also help you refine your CVs to get that interview you are looking for. They have a large amount of clients in the industry. A list of their client can be found here: Client List. They have links to many industry giants, and in the future will see more companies working with agencies in picking out the appropriate applicants.
And to the final point, What is the catch?…well there IS no catch, which sounds as though a fairy just whispered it into my ears, but yes it’s absolutely free. As explained by Lisa, the companies pay Aardvark Swift to recruite for them, essentially having a recruitement section of your business. It’s a big plus sign for graduates, and will help alot in getting the right first entry job.
Aardvark Swift have recently introduced the Graduate Game Programmer, which highlights the most successful graduate. Their career prospect will be followed through the press, which is good to make a name for yourself. It’s a good opportunity and it’s obviously something I will be taking part of.
Finally here’s a large list of graduate vacancies made available through ASwift: Graduate Vacancies
Or should I say old BBC report. It’s always good to bring these things up and compare it to whats happening in the gaming industry as of now.
Let first start with an introduction.
The initial purpose of this report was to find significance in gaming in the UK alone. Bearing in mind that this research was taken in 2005 it could still yield valuable information in comparing the difference occurring then to what’s current in games in the UK and in general.
What is intriguing with this report is that it will initially surprise those that have been in parallel with the gaming industry and to an extent could possibly shock you. Most of which are from a negative point of view as the research was lead mainly by how a “gamer” was defined in the research.
A direct link to the BBC report:
http://open.bbc.co.uk/newmediaresearch/files/BBC_UK_Games_Research_2005.pdf
As pointed out in the beginning one of the main problems, in my own opinion, is how they claimed a “gamer” to be. Reading the introduction to this report made it far less interesting as I’d hope it would have been. The last paragraph on the second page of the report explained how they defined a gamer: “as someone who had played a game on a mobile phone, handheld, console, PC, Internet or interactive TV at least once in the last 6 months”. I have highlighted the main obvious criticism here. It’s also stated that they “also counted active play of games pre-installed on a PC”, which I also have a negative opinion on.
First of all my, straight forward, argument of this one paragraph alone. What I find surprising is how they tried to expand the reaches of gaming including what I would call “non-gamers” into the pot. In various contexts this point is fine but it can aggravate most other when thought of a different way. Parents, Grandparents and other relatives may have played a game once in their entire life and, to an extreme; it could have been within the last 6 months. With this inappropriate time frame it can snowball down and alleviate disagreements just from this one phrase. Ideally a gamer in my opinion is based mainly on how many hours of gaming they have gone through in a week preferably 7-10 hours.
Continuing on from the same paragraph, I’m not so disagreeable about playing pre-installed games in the PC as my idea behind the gamer is mostly hours being played, but many may argue that an aspect of being a gamer is the readiness to spend money on a game.
Here on the rest of the report revealed more surprising results. These come to a surprise mainly due to the fact that gamers and non-gamers are being mixed into the pot as the same time.
An interesting result in the report shows an untapped market of 1.7 million people in the age group 51-65. This is one of the results which have proven more positive for the research revealing that the gaming industry other opening to expand.
Another point to talk about is how evenly split gamers are in gender. On average most male gamers dominate ever so slightly. This could be explained by the fact with “gamers” defined in their context this has allowed more people to be counted in the results and in a sense more female “gamers”.
Initially interesting as it may seem this report only provided marketing information. Although this is not a bad thing it has drawn some initial criticism on their broad definition as a gamer. This report would have been more suitable in the current generation of gaming. The industry now is reaching out to more age groups and more people who aren’t usually gamers are now beginning to play games.
Well as far as I am aware of the Halo movie directed by Neill Blomkamp is still on the go. The pre-production is on the way and we should see this movie coming out around 2009/2010.
But that’s not was this post is about. Recently N’Gai got exclusive interview with Joseph Staten who’s the writing director for Bungie, talking about how our enigmatic Master Chief will be portrayed in the film.
To a certain degree of surprise Joseph stated, during the Q&A interview, that the exclusive main role for the movie would not circulate around Master Chief as it is highly that his role become more as a supporting character.
To my understanding and knowledge playing through Halo series, portraying Master Chief would be very difficult just as Joseph stated:
“Where the Master Chief doesn’t have a face, but he has a whole body to emote with, whether it’s his spine, or his shoulders. or the tilt of his head, or the way he slumps or reloads his weapon. There are these kinesthetic responses that he’ll have which will really easily communicate the character and what he’s feeling. That’s hard to carry as a main character for an entire film.“
Then explains that the role would best suit him as supporting character, where the people (Marines) around him will have better focus.
Real live clips released in conjunction with the release of Halo3 focuses more on the Marines that try and die to help Master Chief on his mission and ideally that’s my thought on where this movie will be going towards. If you think about it Master Chief would not be a legend himself without the help of his Marines, although game-wise portrayal they just seems to be of a nuisance and cannon fodder. What I’m saying here is that if the sophistication of the AI meets our standards as humans we here would be praising the Marines.
Keeping Master Chief’s anonymity is better here in my own opinion. First of all Master Chief deserves a good rest. Secondly, some people might be as sick as hell seeing Master Chief through the trilogy and having him in movies gun-blazing down isles decimating grunts, may feel like that they’re just playing the game again in real vision.
But, for me personally, keeping his real identity anonymous allow peoples creative juices to run. We all know Master Chief, and having his name pop up on other Halo franchise is great for the game and for fans. When you put a line to his story then that could eventually end Master Chief’s reign.
In the end, what approach the film will take I’ll take in with no effect as long as the film is good itself, and in conclusion and a slight respond to N’Gai’s article, I would prefer the movie to go this way rather through Master Chief’s visor assuming that Neill continues to use his camera-vérité filming technique were everything seems to feel as though it’s filmed like a documentory or through a reporters camera.
Links:
- N’Gai Joseph Staten Halo Movie Q&A
- Halo3 Real Life Movie Clip (Youtube)
Jan
28
Back to lectures and first day sounds like good news for this blog/portfolio site. Why? well cause of Business of Computer Game module. No need to explain as time will show.
Anyways back to random ramblings. Was searching for fee prices for the halls in Bolton through Google. Yes I know, there’s a perfectly fine search feature(a hint of sarcasm) on the Bolton uni website but since Google automatically opens itself for me then why not. Anyways I recently stumbled upon a link to “Good University Guide” and well decided its a good time to wilf about the net so I clicked the link and it opened up huge information about Bolton University. If you do care about the University then you may want to check up on this here and here. I trust all broadsheet infos, even though its last years, Bolton University has some distance to go.
Now what I did was made comparison to my first choice university. That’s right, I did not get into my first choice due to 20 credits short. Wanna know where and what degree I was going to do. Check it here http://www.reading.ac.uk/Study/ug/ComputerScienceandCyberneticsBSc.asp
Reading Uni had cybernetics with computer science which what I really wanted to do. For the insurance choice I made sure that I’ll get that insurance choice no matter what, and Bolton University got the spot. Nothing against the university here, nothing subtle.
Anyways I ended up comparing the two. Here’s what I got:
————————
In my recent dev ramblings I found some nice infos and articles whilst I was wilfing around.
My AGTEngine portfolio work uses RakNet middleware and I usually ramble about how good and easy it is to integrate networking capabilities into your engine if you’re also in the same process. This awesome UDP networking middleware is great for games and I recommend it alot if you plan to get the most of middleware codes. Anyways Jenkins (lead developer) has made a feature list video which you can check out here. Visit main webpage here.
Also found a nice article today on gamasutra headlining ”
UK Government Considers Wii In Schools”. Assuming Jack Thomson doesnt get there in time schools could be a little more interesting for kids. Report suggested that child obesity trebled in the UK and this could be one way of encouraging them to get some exercise once in a while. It’s not suggesting that the Wii be used for something like cooking classes, instead of cooking, you’re simulating, instead they plan on integrating and making the console available in PE sessions, making sure that in whatever forms necessary the child will get some sort of exercise out of it. It seems to even out the idea behind the fact that playing games could lead to less exercises and to the inevitable. Thanks to Nintendo.
Anyways the article; It may also be down to the department of health stated in the short article, and if we do face with this upcoming approach then my personal opinion would be is that kids are getting good at being spoilt. With any means necessary the government will do what ever it can. It seems nice for them to encourage children to play games but there’s always nasty critics that would love to slate the hell out of this.
Just imagine when you have children-
You: “Hey matt, did you have fun today at school?”
Matt: “Yeah I played video games all day…”
For some parent that’ll appall them but if the industry is well accepted that view may be all so different.
My response: “Tell me what game you played…was it on the 360?”
Surely a gamer’s response and the inate response well here. At the moment education will just have to do with something else up their sleeves.
Just to leave with a nice article from Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=16392
Peace.