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Tim Closs, the Chief Technical Officer at Ideaworks3D in Notting Hill, London talks to David Smith of Game Careers and Interactive Selection at Develop in Brighton. Ideaworks3D Ltd is a leading developer of mobile games and mobile applications technology. Tim had several 8-bit games published whilst still at school. He gained a Maths degree at Cambridge University before returning to the games industry. At I3D, Tim has overseen the creation of Airplay, a binary-portable solution for native applications on mobile devices. His advice for those looking to apply for a position at Ideaworks:

“If its on the engineering side, we look for people with really strong core skills. We have a gaming side to our company but its not all about games, there is a real strong technology core to what we do. We do look for people who have a strong degree in mathematics or computer science or one of the related sciences. And also some real demonstration of interest and ability outside their coursework, so a portfolio that’s purely based upon projects that are done within your course is not going to get us excited, but if you’ve done something, however small, however esoteric on your own, then that’s gold dust to be honest. Especially in today’s app store economy where you can build a Facebook game and put it up yourself, or build an android app and put it up on Android Market without any cost investment, then we are really looking for people to do that extra step as part of their portfolio.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

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Nominating Resistance 3 As The Buggiest Console Game

The buggiest game in consoles, at least in our eyes, has arrived, and it’s Resistance 3 for the PS3.

There have been a lot of buggy console games, especially after standard-issue local storage made it acceptable for game publishers to burp out a buggy videogame and then patch it with an online update. But this game writer says that Resistance 3 (R3) has taken the cake as the buggiest.

What’s An A Bug?

In game testing, an “A bug” (as opposed to a B or C bug) is a showstopper. When encountered, an A bug halts gameplay entirely, forcing the player to restart from a save or reboot the console completely. These are the kinds of bugs that cause games to get bad reviews. They’re also the kind of bugs that get games to be thrown out open windows.

In my day, whippersnapper, an A bug got serious attention. No game went out the door with such a bug. In fact, one of the final tests of any game on its way for approval (by Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft, usually) was a full start-to-finish playthrough in one session, usually performed by one ace game tester. No mean feat.

What Makes R3 The Buggiest

Simple: I’ve never seen this many A bugs in one title, and this is after a weighty patch.

Last weekend, I rented R3 and shortly after, hit a bug where the NPC I was following failed to open a door that led to the next part of the mill level. This lost me many minutes of playtime as I explored the sprawling level again, looking for possible exits. I wasn’t sure if it was an A bug or simply an NPC brainfart. Guess which it was? Fortunately the game came back to life after a full quit and restart. This happened on the second level of the campaign – not exactly hard to find.

Next up was the coal tower level in St. Louis. This level was clearly trouble for the game engine. Merely pressing the “aim” button caused a hard lockup for my PS3, twice. (The aim button is pretty important.) Once the lockup even corrupted the autosave, which meant the game reloaded at a black screen when restarted. Pieces of furniture don’t draw in the level, and picking up data folders causes crashes.

More St. Louis Bugs

Later in that same dadgum level. That big white space is… nothing. It should be the interior of a warehouse. Was it draw-in? A bad texture? A corrupt object?

It’s always a bad sign when you look into the next room and see infinity. This next shot, facing what should be the warehouse’s floor and corner, was taken shortly before I advanced a few feet, fell through the bottom of the level, and died from hitting the bottom of the worldbox. Not a draw-in problem. Worse.

I got a little bit further and hit yet another stopper: my avatar got stuck in “run” mode when a cutscene triggered while I was running. I still had movement control when the cutscene ended, but my guy was stuck in his running pose. What else happens when you’re running? Right. You can’t shoot or change weapons.

That’s where I stopped playing this buggiest game of all console-o-rama.

What About Multiplayer?

I rented R3, and guess what? Sony has a new scheme where each copy of R3 ships with one code that enables online play. This means that renters can’t even sniff online play. Thanks a lot, Sony.

I definitely fear the day when we start seeing “standard” and “online enabled” versions of games, and online play is considered something “extra.”

What About The Game?

It hurts to dump on Resistance. I’ve played both of the previous Resistance games all the way through — and enjoyed them and Resistance multiplayer too. It’s a fine franchise. Although R3 suffers a bit from the chunky, camera-so-tight-you-can-barely-see-the-end-of-your-rifle gameplay that makes Gears of War such a self-parody, it’s still a hot blast of fun.

Insomniac’s website says that patch 1.05 is getting final Sony approval now. This is nice, but read between the lines. The fixes are almost entirely focused on multiplayer; out of some 40 items, the campaign gets one bulletpoint, “misc fixes.” Hmm.

I know MP is more important than SP to a lot of players. Even renters. And I know Insomniac had to kick out this puppy for the holiday season. But I saw a campaign that was vaporizing at the seams. And 1.05 means there have already been four patches.

With R3, Insomniac has taken some of the grind and repetition out of R2 gameplay and replaced it with some fun strategic challenges and chokepoints. Best of all, the game keeps upping the ante with the introduction of nasty, roided-up aliens, each badder than the last. I was looking forward to seeing several of them in play at the same time. I also was intrigued by the addition of upgradable weapon levels, much like Battlefield 3.

I wanted to keep playing. But the game wouldn’t let me. If this is the future of console gaming on the PS3, show me the exit now.

game writer central

Greg Robinson, COO and Co-founder of Connect 2 Media talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at Develop in Brighton. Greg has worked within the mobile content arena since 2000. He has lead teams responsible for several ELSPA top ten games working with brands such Sonic, Monopoly, Guitar Hero and Tetris as well as launching several successful original IP’s such as Go Go Rescue Squad. Previously he has held senior management positions at iFone and Hands On Mobile Inc. He tells us what he looks for when recruiting:

“Mainly enthusiasm. When we do interview you see so many people . They come along for the job but don’t come along quite mentally prepared for what the job is. We are a highly professional company and people misunderstand what the games industry is. The games industry is a multi billion enterprise in the UK alone. Its highly professional – but we are not looking for people looking to escape from the real world. Yes its fun, and its a lot of fun, and it certainly beats working in a band, but we demand the highest professionalism. We deal with huge project budgets, high development times and costs and we can’t afford to be anything less than utterly professional. Come along, be enthusiastic, make a difference in your presentation to people. If you come across as enthusiastic, professional and have a love for the subject then you do tend to stand out from everyone else.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Rob Davis, Founder & Director of Playniac in London talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at Develop in Brighton. Rob founded Playniac and has been game designer and producer for many games productions, as well as programmer for quite a few. His games include International Racing Squirrels (Channel 4), The Big Generation Green Quiz (British Gas), Battlefield Academy (BBC History), Fashion Fixer (UKTV), Alien Farm (CBBC), Springwatch Trackers (CBBC), Kung Fu Panda The Adversary and The Field of Fiery Death (Nickelodeon / Dreamworks), The Lost Army of Fu Shi (BBC Bitesize), Feel Up (Getty Images), First Aid Action (BBC), and Survive Dickens’ London (BBC Drama).

He graduated in Computer Engineering at the University of Bristol with a thesis on artificial intelligence and created his first commercial game, a text adventure that reached number one in the UK charts, at age 14. His advice for those applying to work at Playniac:

“We like people who are passionate about games, who are knowledgeable about games. People who think beyond what they are making right in front of them, who know what the implications of what they are doing are across the whole game, so we end up with games that are very beautifully designed, very thoughtfully designed, and really high quality products.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Linda Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations for Sony Online Entertainment, talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at GDC Europe in Cologne. Linda has been involved in gaming since her very first, photocopied D&D manual arrived in the mail several decades ago. Over the years, she made the transition from tabletop to online to media to industry… and now serves as the Director of Global Community Relations at Sony Online Entertainment. SOE maintains over a dozen online titles, including EverQuest, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, Free Realms, Clone Wars Adventures and DC Universe Online. Whether delivering lectures at conventions, hosting SOE Webcasts as “Brasse,” (her garrulous Dwarven alter ego) or working on SOE Community Team projects, Linda is constantly inspired by the passion of the people who create and play games. “In no other field of endeavor do we see such rapid evolution of society, technology and communication,” she explains, “The gaming world is one incredible, organic social experiment, and I can hardly wait to see what’s next!” Her advice to those thinking of applying for a job with Sony Online:

“I warmly encourage anyone who is interested to contact me directly. In a nutshell, what we are looking for is passion because we are a company of gamers who make games. So passion for the product is very important, keeping in mind you may switch from product to product every year, but the joy of making things whether you are coming to the company as an accountant, or a public relations representative, or joining the community team, or if you come to us directly as a programmer or a developer of any type, we are looking for passion, so that’s the most important thing.

When you write a covering letter when you apply for a job make sure its not a farm letter, we have to know who your are. You have one chance to convey yourself, and if you blow that you are going to be lost in the sea of resumes we get. Make sure the resume is up to date and detailed. If you are coming from an artistic background or sound engineering or anything like that, make a portfolio and post it online, or if you are a programmer include examples of your code, post it online and give us the links so that we can review the cases easy for the people who are looking through 150 resumes to make yours stand out.

Understand as well that if you really want to get your foot in the door, one of the best passes to Sony Online Entertainment is to join our Quality Assurance or Customer Service teams. You start out at a fairly low wage, but it gives you direct access to everyone in the company and if you prove yourself there I can guarantee you your manager in CS or QA will recommend you for position when they come up.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Ernest Adams, a game design consultant and formerly a programmer, talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at GDC Europe in Cologne, Germany. Ernest  is a freelance game designer, writer, and professor, working with the International Hobo Design Group. He has served in the game industry since 1989, and is the author of four books, including the university-level textbook “Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition.” He was most recently employed as a lead designer at Bullfrog Productions on the Dungeon Keeper series, and for several years before that was the audio/video producer on the Madden NFL football line for Electronic Arts. Ernest is also the founder and first chairman of the International Game Developers’ Association and a popular speaker at conferences and arts festivals around the world. His website is at http://www.designersnotebook.com. His advice to games designers looking to join the industry as a first job:

“Cultivate an interest in everything. Absolutely everything and anything is useful to a games designer, whether its history, architecture, literature, art, computer programming is a useful skill even for a game designer (you don’t have to be a hardcore one), the ability to draw is a useful skill for a games designer. Learn to think, and play a lot of games… to see how they work, take them apart and think about them. Nowadays it is difficult to get a job at a large company without a college/university degree. A university degree will really help you. There are good ones and bad ones, you need to do some research to see where you are going to go. If you don’t have a university degree, a lot of companies will put your CV in the bin.”

His advice on choosing a university course: “The breadth of the program is good, if it concentrates only on programming its not a great place for a games designer to be. If it concentrates only on Art/animation then its not that good a place for a games designer to be. its better to be in a place that offers all the talents that game development requires because that way you can sample a little of each.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Seb Caniff, Development Director for the London Studios of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, talks to David Smith of Game Careers and Interactive Selection at Develop in Brighton.  Seb manages and guides the production discipline in the studio, as well as developing and tracking the overall studio budgets, schedules and staffing plans. This covers projects such as SingStar, EyePet, EyeToy, Digital Comics, Playstation Move franchises, as well as a number of unannounced titles.

His career in games began at Argonaut Games Plc. where he produced the first two Harry Potter games and various other titles including I-Ninja. Seb joined London Studio early in 2005 to help with the completion of Gangs of London on PSP. He has since worked on the Getaway and EyeToy Franchises and now has a full-time, cross-studio role. In his 10+ years in games, he has produced more than 10 games, which have sold more than 10 million units in total.

Prior to doing the good, honest work of making games, Seb was involved in various entrepreneurial activities, from being a record producer/club promoter and DJ, to labouring on building sites. He studied Medicine in London and has a Psychology degree from Bristol University. He makes the most of his spare time with his wife and 4 children. His advice for people thinking of applying for a production job in a company like Sony:

“For production, your CV should be immaculate…if you can’t produce a clear and coherent, and well laid out CV you won’t get past that stage. In terms of a Producer, we would particularly look for someone with a desire to get things done, a completer finisher type person. Someone with a desire to drive efficiency and make things better. A good communicator…there was big study where they found 70% of a project’s success is down to the communication skills of the project manager, and only 30% is down to their ability to write a schedule or fill out excel spreadsheets etc. Communication is very important, so the interview is very important.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Kareem Ettouney, Art Director at Media Molecule in Guildford talks to David Smith of Game Careers and Interactive Selection at the Develop Conference in Brighton. Egyptian by birth, Kareem’s work displays exotic cultural influences which make it truly distinctive. The breadth and scope of Kareem’s work reflects his diverse background in interior, graphic, theatre and film set design. Kareem’s eclectic creativity found its home when he joined Lionhead Studios in 2002, where he quickly established himself as the lead concept artist. Whilst at Lionhead, he became firm friends with Mark Healey and Alex Evans and worked with them on the cult hit Rag Doll Kung Fu. When Mark and Alex left Lionhead in 2006 to form Media Molecule, Kareem was their first and natural choice to join them as a co-founder. Kareem has been absolutely instrumental in the iconic look of Media Molecule’s LittleBigPlanet franchise. His advice on getting into the games industry:

“Be unique – we see a lot of CVs but the people we would like to meet are the people who show their won uniqueness, who are not shy. They are not trying to hide their uniqueness by being some generic own sort of… trying to satisfy everybody, just satisfy yourself and present yourself to the maximum capacity you can. Also, we really appreciate all the extra work that someone would do…if you have a showreel or a test, its nice to feel that the person didn’t only follow the brief, they have their own brief that is much more impressive than the one they were given. We all use the jobs to express ourselves and do our thing, its very important that that comes across. We love individuals and that’s the thing that makes them stand out.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Hendrik Klindworth, Co-founder and Managing Director of InnoGames in Hamburg in Germany, talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at GDC Europe. Hendrik began to programme when he was 14 years old and entered the browser game sphere in 2003, when he created the game Tribal Wars together with his brother Eike Klindworth and his school friend Michael Zillmer. Today, Tribal Wars is one of the most successful browser games, with 40 million registered users from nearly 200 countries. InnoGames was founded in 2007 as a consequence of this huge success. Hendrik studied IT with a focus on Information Systems and Software Engineering in Oldenburg, Germany and has remained a passionate player with Age of Empires 2 as his all-time favourite. His advice for those thinking of applying for a job at InnoGames:

“You should look at what we are doing right now for products, maybe play some of our products. Look at our website, what we think, what we do. If you think you fit the company, then you should apply and express why you want to work for InnoGames.” See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.

Mirko Gozzo, European General Manager for Riot Games, talks to David Smith of Interactive Selection and Game Careers at GDC Europe in Germany. Mirko has been in the computer games industry for more than 10 years with extensive expertise operating and publishing overseas products (especially from Asian companies) within the European market in multiple languages. He is experienced in both pay-to-play (P2P) and free-to-play (F2P) business models focussing every action on its ROI, PCU, APA, ARPPU / B-ARPU, player acquisition, retention and re-acquisition. He has successfully launched many AAA online games including World of Warcraft, Aion, Lineage II, and other top-selling offline games including Mortal Kombat: Deception, F.E.A.R., Commandos and Empire Earth. His advice to those thinking of applying for a job at Riot Games:

“If I have one suggestion that would be play League of Legends and tell us what you think – all the good things and also the bad things, which are the most important for us because we always want to improve, and having someone passionate about the game who can tell us where we can improve its exactly what we like.”  See the full clip here:

Game Careers .BIZ – Video Games School, Jobs in Gaming.