PAC Attacks and Advice to New Grads

March 11, 2015 | Author: HDIAndrew

Many colleges and universities bring in groups of industry experts to advise them on how to improve their program or help their graduates find jobs. Tonight the Art Industry of Atlanta brought in a particularly good mix of veteran game designers, animators and former grads to share insights. Many of the PAC’s comments were spot on, but I wanted to share three highlights:

1. Few art directors want to look at DVDs anymore. Have an easily navigable web site showing only professional quality work (well, and your resume). Send out links to reels that have been customized for that company, and don’t put up anything you think might not belong in a commercial product.

2. Update your web site at least once a year. Continue to show your best work, and if you are not employed in the industry, show that you are still honing your skills anyway.

3. This one was from David Hensley at Tripwire Interactive – check out Valve’s guidelines for selling user-generated content on Steam. If you have products up there proving their worth, you have already shown your ability to be an industry pro, and are probably making money as well.

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FSNA Bug Hunting

March 9, 2015 | Author: HDIAndrew

One of my personal GDC highlights was meeting with the Fading Suns: Noble Armada programmer and getting the latest build of the game working on my new iPad. Now the playtesting starts in earnest. Playtesting, also known as Quality Assurance (QA) and bug hunting, gives people the idea that all we do is sit around and play games all day.

And that is correct.

However, it is an insane kind of playing. The old joke is that insanity is defined by doing the same thing over and over again in hopes of a different result. In playtesting, we do the same thing over and over but with minute differences in hopes that we may get different results and pinpoint what causes bugs. Or we do the same thing over and over again in order to document exactly what it is that causes the problem.

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GDC Day Four

March 6, 2015 | Author: HDIAndrew

Thursday of GDC is usually when I try to find time between meetings to hit the expo floor. I only got to visit half of it, but there were lots of interesting new exhibitors this year. I thought I had gotten less freebies this year then in the past, but by the time I got back to my hotel room, I realized just how much I had gotten. If you are in Atlanta, join us Tuesday at the Microsoft offices in Alpharetta to share in the haul of knowledge and swag.

There were more announcements Thursday, including that Zynga was shutting down Cityville. I find it hard to believe that it was not making at least enough money to continue maintaining it for loyal players, but I have a feeling Zynga decided closing it would move players to games where they would spend more money.

My main surprise for Thursday was hearing from various developers how unhappy they are with Apple’s lack of compliance with DMCA takedown notices when their copyrights are being violated in the app store. I have heard this complaint occasionally, but I guess having this many developers in one place amplifies those concerns. Have you had that problem?

The best session I attended was on using the Laws of Armed Conflict in video games. It’s funny that other games ignore these, as in strategy games players expect there to be negative consequences of harsh tactics. In Civilization, the more you tax, the more unhappy your populace becomes. In Emperor of the Fading Suns, trying to change the population’s religion makes it more restive. Consequences are one of the main things that make games enjoyable, and consequences for violating the laws of war are a natural inclusion.

And, while I have avoided posting photos of the SF skyline (the view from one of Wednesday night’s photos was especially beautiful), here is one from the terrace of the W Hotel at the Microsoft Blacks in Gaming Party:

20150305_SF_Skyline

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GDC Day Three

March 5, 2015 | Author: HDIAndrew

Wednesday of GDC featured all kinds of announcements. My favorite was that Atlanta’s own Molly Proffitt was named one of the IGDA’s VIPs this year for all her work on the IGDA scholars program.

The least favorite announcement was that EA is closing the main Maxis Studio. The one upside to that is that most game industry closings get announced after GDC, in a vain hope to minimize press on the subject. EA at least announced it right before, so Maxis employees have the chance to job hunt here.

Other major announcements were that the PS4 has sold more than 20 million units, Phil Harrison left Microsoft, Monument Valley and Shadow of Mordor are good games and Valve is still doing cool things.

Between meetings and parties I managed to pop into a couple sessions. The best was, of course, the IGDA Advocacy training 🙂 It went well, and the attendees left very enthused to expand their work as developer-advocates.

My second favorite session was Drew Crecente’s session on using games to combat teen dating violence. Drew runs Jennifer Ann’s Group, and has found games one of the best ways to raise awareness of this issue. He had a great audience, and it’s always good to see a crowd leave a session revved about about making games on a topic like this one.

The last session I attended was one by a journalist who figured out a way to determine how many Steam uses had licenses for various games, the best method currently available to the public to determine what games were doing the best. He seemed concerned that the top 15% of games had 80% of the Steam sales. Of all the games on Steam, only 213 have sold a million copies. That does not bother me as much. It just shows how much space there is for everyone else.

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