I work in the games industry, AMAA

[fruckert]

This really has nothing to do with getting a job in the industry, but how do the people in the industry think of indies?

[Osmose]

I'm [hopefully] be going to college for Visual Arts next year, maybe I could use that to start working at something somewhere when I'm done with college.

Hey Moose, any unannounced EA titles that you feel like leaking?

3d animation or modeling is your best bet, concept art is not a very easy field to get into, nor do companies usually keep on a bunch of permanent concept artists.

And no, there are no unannounced EA titles that I feel like leaking.

When they hire, do they hire one person to be responsible for that area or do they hire people who knows a lot of many things?

'Cuz videogame educations over here pretty much expect you to learn about everything. 3d graphics, programming, planning, storyboards, sound effects, music ect. Would be kinda nice to know if it's worth anything.

I just echoed this question to my roommate, who is a production intern. He says that the jack-of-all-trades type of education suits a designer or a producer. In terms of a designer, having a shallow knowledge in many fields helps you communicate the design you create for a feature better to the people who will implement it.

As for producers, a producer is a sort've creative manager. There are management duties involved, but you are a lot closer to the product than one normally thinks when one thinks of a manager. You definitely have creative input, although again this is through discussion and suggestion with designers. You won't code, but you may sit in on high-level technical discussions for the game. You won't do art, but you may be able to talk to the art director and influence his thoughts on where it should go.

Getting into an entry level position for either of these disciplines is difficult. Your best bet is either starting in QA and moving up, or becoming an intern. The former I've mentioned, but the latter is a bit different.

The primary source of interns is through recruiting at colleges. Each company has a few schools that it recruits at, although others have none at all. If you can't/aren't going to a college with video game companies recruiting, then you can still submit a resume or portfolio to a university relations rep at a company. You may get a screening interview and just have to work the job-getting magic from there.

So, in short, yes. It's worth it for a producer or a designer. For any other position, not so much.

If you've witnessed the making of a game from start to finish, how long is the process from pre-production to the final project?

I haven't witnessed a game from the very start to ship date, but I've seen many games in each stage. In general, games take about 2-3 years to make, but it is very much dependent on the game (think Duke Nukem Forever). Sequels may take a shorter amount of time, while new IPs(Intellectual Properties) may take up to 4-5 years, or even more.

This really has nothing to do with getting a job in the industry, but how do the people in the industry think of indies?

Depends. Are you a passionate indie or a pretentious one?

The problem is that there's a large group of indie developers who feel that they're "better" than the big development companies. Some have been burned by companies, others just don't like big game publishers for silly reasons.

The Indie Gamemaker Rant from GDC 2010 has a few good examples of the "bad" kind of indie: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012312/Indie-Gamemaker-Rant

Nathan Vela and Brandon Boyle are good excerpts from that video to give you an idea of the bad indie. They claim to be more passionate, but really it just seems like they're on a power trip.

Now, that's not to say that there aren't passionate indies. Quite the opposite. It's just that when guys like these make it to big conferences like GDC, they give indies a bad name.

Now, for the question itself: It varies. Some people (like me) love indies; there's quite a few people who have worked on a few indie games and used them as leverage to get a job in the industry. Others think that they're a group of pretentious hippies who will never be financially successful. A lot don't even know much about indies; some people just view the games industry as a place to work rather than a way of life.

[fruckert]

How exactly does the flow of game production start?
At the moment, with Myrdia (yes, I'm still working on that), I'm kind of going through a writing phase at the same time as the concept drafting, which I've found is kind of a bad idea, as I'm doing A LOT of stuff at once...mostly doodling and trying to figure out the core "look".

[Osmose]

How exactly does the flow of game production start?
At the moment, with Myrdia (yes, I'm still working on that), I'm kind of going through a writing phase at the same time as the concept drafting, which I've found is kind of a bad idea, as I'm doing A LOT of stuff at once...mostly doodling and trying to figure out the core "look".

So first I'll summarize how a professional game is made:

Pre-Production / Concept
This is the first stage. At this point a few key ideas on the game's subject matter and concept are made. The big focus here, however, isn't art or story as much as gameplay. Since gameplay is the meat of the game, you really want to get a good idea of how the game will flow, what the main segments of gameplay are, and how they fit together in a cohesive way.

A big thing here isn't to create art for your game, but rather to get art references so you know what you want te game to look like.

By the end of this phase you want to know what the player will be doing every step of your game.

Vertical Slice
A vertical slice, as I've mentioned before, is around 30 minutes, or a level, of your game, and complete. Although the final product may differ, the vertical slice should feel like it could be the end game vision. It covers all the main features of your game. Compare this to a (theoretical) horizontal slice, which would be a single mechanic, but features all occurrences of that mechanic over the entire game.

Production
This is where the team ramps up and most of the game is made. At this point development on all fronts proceeds, usually tied to milestones that are defined beforehand. Using milestones helps guide your development so that you don't spin on any one part of the game and get stuck in a rut. Milestones define a date by which certain parts of the game must be finished. If you don't hit a milestone in time, you can either readjust your schedule or move on to another part of the game and come back later.

Polish
As main production winds down, heavy QA and polish begin. Although bugs have been popping up and being fixed throughout development, at this point there is a cutoff for feature development and the focus shifts completely to making the game suitable to ship. There's an alpha, beta, and gold phase here, usually.

---

(Note: The following is my opinion rather than anything someone told me about game design)

Now for you as an individual, this process won't work perfectly. The biggest idea here is probably the very first phase: Gameplay is the single most important part of your game. Even with a story-driven game, the gameplay is still more important, because gameplay is what the player is doing all the time. You can write the most interesting story in the world, but if the gameplay is sufficiently bad, players won't bother to read it.

We're an RPG Maker forum, so we have the basics set down for us by the engine, but there's still a lot your game can do to add to the formula and make its gameplay compelling. Sai'Kar's Outpost is a great example of a game that took the standard RPG Maker formula and shifted the focus to an interesting mechanic.

The hardest part is not seeing results immediately, which is why a vertical slice is also a good idea for a demo. It'll give you something to show for your work early, and helps to eliminate the fatigue you get from spinning on an idea for too long. And you can get input from others on your game pretty early.

Learn to study other games and find out what makes them great. For example, one of the greatest things about Chrono Trigger was the amount of hits it requires to kill an enemy at any point in the game: if you notice, the rule of thumb is that weak enemies take 1-2 hits, medium enemies take 3-4, and only the strongest of all enemies take more than 4 hits to kill without some sort of special mechanic (Don't quote me on this exact thing, but you get the idea).

Two good takeaways from that are: 1. Battles with enemies should be long enough to be gratifying, but short enough to not hinder progress, and 2. You should be consistent with enemy difficulty relative to the expected player level. Entering an area where enemies break this model of difficulty should mean that that area is not meant to be explored yet. You'll know an area needs some more balancing if you find that players have to grind to get through it.

The biggest thing I've learned about game design from working at EA is that a ridiculously large amount of thought goes into gameplay, far more than you can imagine.

[fruckert]

Oh...I also heard that some companies prefer making an overlying engine, and then producing a toolset for the designers to monkey around with for the final product. I know this is mostly true in games like Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 and beyond, and Torchlight, but have you seen this often?

I am going to take all of your advice to heart though (as well as the vertical slice...that's a really good tip), because if there's anything that I want to do in the world right now, it's bring my ideas to light/life.

[zuhane]

Polish
As main production winds down, heavy QA and polish begin. Although bugs have been popping up and being fixed throughout development, at this point there is a cutoff for feature development and the focus shifts completely to making the game suitable to ship. There's an alpha, beta, and gold phase here, usually.

I take it the Fallout 3 developers didn't realise this phase existed.

[drenrin2120]

What are some reputable colleges that gaming companies frequently go to when searching for interns or new employees?

[Archem]

I take it the Fallout 3 developers didn't realise this phase existed.

Bethesda likes to give us half-finished products. I take the optimist approach, and see this as a "let the community decide what's best" situation.

[Osmose]

Oh...I also heard that some companies prefer making an overlying engine, and then producing a toolset for the designers to monkey around with for the final product. I know this is mostly true in games like Neverwinter Nights, Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 and beyond, and Torchlight, but have you seen this often?

More than often. Pretty much every game I've ever seen is built in a reusable way. Most start off with a base engine, like Unreal or Frostbite, and then modify it from there to fit their game.

Of course this helps with things like making sequels or developing DLC, but the biggest benefit is simply that it makes development of the game easier. There are a TON of resources in any given game. Textures, models, maps, items, sounds, etc. Even within the scope of a single game it just makes sense to develop a reusable engine so that adding new levels is easier. A game is very much a living thing, and changes over the course of development; rarely do you see a game that has not significantly changed from its initial concept.

Now this doesn't mean that programmers create an engine and then designers create the game; it's not as clean as that. Through every phase of development there are roughly three levels of work, functionality-wise(don't take this for gospel, of course):

• Core Engineers: These are usually experienced developers who create the core engine upon which the game runs. Throughout the course of development designers and GPEs will work with Core Engineers to figure out what features the core engine needs to support the game. Think of it like having a Ruby coder who can edit the RPG Maker XP engine for you while you code events like normal.
• Gameplay Engineers (GPEs): These are developers who work on a layer "above" the core engine. They usually use a higher-level language like C# that doesn't have direct access to things like rendering graphics, but rather can use functions exposed by the engine to make things happen. Often they work on the specific features that are requested by designers, such as an item that can teleport the player from one place in the world to another.
• Designers: Designers usually don't code, or if they do, they don't code heavily. The extent of their coding is making tweaks to features the GPEs have implemented to balance the game or change how small things work. Designers instead focus on how gameplay will work and what the player will be doing with a feature. Once this is mapped out (in detail), they pass this info onto a GPE, who implements the feature.

All of these people continue to work until the game is finished, so there's no handing off of a toolset, really.

What are some reputable colleges that gaming companies frequently go to when searching for interns or new employees?

First, a disclaimer: Choosing a school based on who recruits is not a good idea; researching the school you want to go to is the right path. Also, going to a school where a company recruits is by no means a guarentee. Taking initiative and being good at selling yourself as a good employee is infinitely more valuable.

Having said that, here's a very incomplete list of colleges from which I know a lot of interns have come from:

• Carnegie Mellon: Entertainment Technology Center: ETC is the biggest program I know. Everyone I've ever heard of who went through the program has gotten some sort of position in the games industry.
• University of Southern California: I've heard of quite a few people from USC also getting into gaming companies.
• SMU Guild Hall: This apparently is the third of the big three schools, along with USC and Carnegie Mellon
• Georgia Tech: Georgia Tech I hear is much more active in getting students to start projects/companies and getting into large companies, including gaming companies.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Duh.
• Florida Institute of Technology: Blatant plug, it's my school. EA is the only big recruiter who comes here.

Some of these schools are geared towards different disciplines. For example, I've heard that USC focuses on producers and designers for their games program. But if you're really interested in the games industry in general, it's worth a look to see if any of these schools piques your interest.

Know that for new employees, often people are suggested by others inside the company, so getting to know a few people in the industry and keeping in contact with them can go miles in getting you a chance to interview for a position.

You sure? Because gameplay doesn't seems to be EA's strongest point.
See: Spore. Creating creatures? Awesome and fun as hell. The actual game? Fun for a week. After that? Just . |:

I never said gameplay is EA's strongest point.

Now, keep in mind that this is all my opinion, not fact or anything EA has told me. Personally, I am a fan of some EA games, but not most. I liked Dante's at points, I like Mass Effect, hate Madden, hate FIFA, etc.

But even with the games I hate I appreciate the amount of work that went into them. Spore specifically had a ton of stuff that was reportedly taken out later, which may be the biggest reason why it didn't live up to the hype. But whether it was a good or a bad game you bet your *** a fuckton of effort and thought was put into the gameplay.

Designers and producers spend huge amounts of time thinking about every little thing. One of my roommates spent the majority of his summer making flowcharts of how the player moves through the menus and UI. He had to take into consideration how many steps it took to do anything through the menu, do research on how successful games before it have done menus, think and re-think every single little thing. And that's just for menus(Note: He did this because he has a background in UI design, not because he was an intern and got the crappy job ).

People make mistakes. They make a decision based on the market, and sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes, yes, there are a few people who are lax in their judgement and overlook things that they shouldn't, but don't take that as a standard. There are always tons of good people working very hard thinking about things you won't ever notice.

[fruckert]

The engine in Spore is actually rather awe-inspiring. The animation layer in combination with the creature building/mesh building is just intense.
That and the fact that a creatures species is encoded in a fairly small PNG.

[Archem]

EA is a publisher. Gameplay has little to do with the publisher. Spore was a Maxis game; other titles published by EA include Dead Space, Battlefield series, Rock Band, and Mass Effect series. All have fantastic gameplay. What I'm trying to say is:

[HobomasterXXX]

Yeah EA is just a publisher, they don't make the games, generally speaking.

[Osmose]

Yeah EA is just a publisher, they don't make the games, generally speaking.

Wrong.

Dead Space and Dante's Inferno were developed by Visceral, a studio within EA (they're actually based on the fourth floor of the building I work in). Spore was developed by Maxis, a developer within EA (the technical word is subsidiary; I went on a tour of their studio a few weeks ago). The Sims franchise is developed by the Sims studio, again a part of EA (actually, my team, the Sims Internet Group, is a part of the Sims studio).

Madden is developed by teams in Tiburon, Orlando, about an hour from my school; again, they are part of EA. Bioware is owned by EA, as well as Playfish, Brightlight, Pogo, etc. All development studios.

Some good examples of games published by EA but developed externally are: Rock Band, Deathspank, Crysis 2, Left 4 Dead, Portal, Reckoning, Alice: Madness Returns, Bullet Storm, Shank, Brutal Legend, etc etc. All these go through EA Partners, which handles making deals with the studios that make these games.

Not to toot EA's horn. Just to dispel the myth that EA is only a publisher.

[ZeroKirbyX]

'Grats dude. Good to see someone make it. The only question I have is that, now you're movin' on up are you gonna try for a deluxe apartment in the sky?

[HobomasterXXX]

I generally see in-house studios as their own, not that of the publisher that owns them, but you do have a fair point.