LAFS SVI Session 1 - Introduction

INTRODUCTIONSession 1

David Mullich

Survey of the Videogame Industry

The Los Angeles Film School

Who Are You?

1. What is your name?

2. Where are you from?

3. What is your favorite movie?

4. What is your favorite game?

5. What is your career goal?

Who Am I?

My name: David [email protected]@David_Mullich

From: Los Angeles Favorite Movie: 2001 A Space Odyssey Favorite Game: Civilization Career Goal: Prepare you for a career in

the game industry

Wannabe

Cal State Northridge

Computer Science

What Does A Programmer Do?

Computer Confusion

Interactive Fiction

Rainbow Computing

EduWare

EduWare

Designer

Programmer Programmer Programmer

What Does A Game Designer Do?

What Did I Learn?

You may love to play games, but a game developer loves making games. And that means you need skillz.

Bought Out And Crushed Down

Electric Transit

Distribution

Publisher

Distributor

Retailer

Over Production

What Did I Learn?

Game development is a calling, because success does not come easily. Most games don’t break even.

Disney Licensor(Creates intellectual properties)

Licensee(Uses others intellectual properties)

PublisherPublishing Company(Markets/Sells Games)

Development Studio(Creates Games)

Pitches and Greenlight

What Did I Learn?

Anyone can have a good game idea. You need to also be able to persuade, plan, and prove you can deliver.

Cyberdreams

Cyberdreams

Voice Over

Music

Artist

Designer

Developer

Licensor

Producer

What Did I Learn?

The game industry is full of people even more talented than you, but that's one of the benefits.

What Do Game Artists Do?

3DODirector

LeadDesigner

LeadProgrammer

LeadArtist

LeadAudio

Assistant Designer

Writer

Level Designers

Engine

Gameplay

Artificial Intelligence

User Interface

Audio

Multiplayer

Tools

Concept

Textures

Characters

Environments

Special Effects

User Interface

Cinematics

Sound Effects

Music

Voice-Over

What Do Audio Engineers Do?

What Did I Learn?

Game development is a team sport for geeks. You need to be able to communicate and work well in a team.

Activision

Activision

Operations

QualityAssurance

Marketing

Finance

Legal

Developer

Producer

What Does A Game Producer Do?

What Did I Learn?

Game development is a business. A big business. Bigger than the movie business.

Abandon Mobile

What Did I Learn?

Games can now be played anywhere, any time.

Spin Master

What Did I Learn?

Gamers are no longer just teenage boys. People of all ages and types now play games.

Jet Morgan

What Did I Learn?

You can learn just as much working on an advertgame for cats as working on the latest gazillion $$$ mega title.

Boy Scouts

Game development is no longer just for geeks. Everyone now wants to get in on the action.

What Did I Learn?

PROFESSIONALISM

Professional Gamer

Team Newbee – ChinaTotal earnings: $1,005,661 each

Valve’s International Dota 2 Competition

Lee Jae DongSouth Korea

$519,086: Starcraft

Danil IshutinUkraine

$452,841: Dota

Johnathan WendelUnited States

$454,919: FPS games

Jang Min ChuSouth Korea

$453,926: Starcraft

Gaming Professional

John RomeroCo-Creator DOOM

Id Software

T.Q. JeffersonVice President, Game Production

Marvel Studios

Kathy VrabeckPresidentActivision

You may love to play games, but that doesn’t make you a developer.

I love to eat dinner, but that doesn’t make me a chef.

Do You Have Skillz?

Gamers are good at digital interfaces

Gaming professionals are good at both digital and human interfaces

How to Succeed in LAFS

Be your own Career Entrepreneur 3 Keys:

DevotionPersistenceRe-invention

This is a College Class

Studying game development at college is still college study.

Take Notes Study Read

Take Notes

Having one of these is a minimum requirement.

At all times.

Study

Review the Lecture Notes

Think Understand Reflect and

Connect

This means communication.

With grammar‐Nazis.

“...the different ways they done it like in the game play and the scenes ad the props”

...is not communicating and will incur their wrath.

Game development is a team sport for Geeks.

All Business is Communication

Publisher to Customer Developer to Publisher Boss to Team Team to Boss Team Member to Team Member

Good Communication

Precise

Clear

Brief

Written Communication

Informal Communication

Its cool to werk in gamez.u get too do anything u want & stuff

Formal Communication

It’s cool to work in games. You get to do anything you want and stuff.

Written Communication

Capitalize the beginning of sentences, names, game titles, and the word “I”

Use proper spelling and punctuation Put a space between punctuation mark

ending a sentence and the start of the next sentence

Don’t use “u” for “you”, or “&” for “and” Don’t confuse “its” and “it’s”

Attention to detial

It matters.

Assignments

If you can’t be bothered to: be creative strive for originality even within established

norms or constraints look beyond your initial idea actually enjoy and actively want to do the above

Then get used to the phrase

“Would you like fries with that?”

Assignments

Word counts are there for a reason.

Use them wisely and avoid: Padding Going off topic Repeating yourself Padding by stating the obvious in a way that takes quite a lot

of words but really isn’t saying anything new Repeating yourself but in a different way Padding, wadding, lining, extemporising, extraneous content

or going on any other kind of Synonym Safari TM

Assignments

“On Time” means 5 minutes early.

Unless the stakes are really high, in which case it means 24 hours early. Or a week early.

Pssst....Sometimes developers make false internal deadlines to avoid calamity such as missed milestone payments. Maybe you could do the same if graduation is at stake?

First Rule of Success: Show Up

DON’T BE TARDYBut if you know you will be late, EMAIL ME!

DON’T BE ABSENTBut if you know you will be gone, EMAIL ME!

Tests

Study for your tests! Refer to the slides. If you see on a slide, it will probably be on

the test. If you don’t know the answer to a test question,

guess!There are no points deducted for wrong answers on

multiple-choice questionsI will award some points for clever or knowledgeable

answers on short-answer questions, even if they weren’t the answer I was looking for.

“All I want to do is just pass this class”

Classes are not kidney stones.

If you think about them in these terms, maybe you’re on the wrong career path?

<<<Expand your horizons>>>

Just because it doesn’t have the word GAMES in it, doesn’t mean it’s not going to inspire, inform or be useful to you every day for the rest of your creative life.

This is especially true of non‐electronic information such as: Books Museums Art History

Impressions

Your colleagues and faculty will most likely be your doorway into the industry.

How do you want them to think of you?

Leave a professional and lasting impression. They’re your first referees, either on paper or via word of mouth.

The Golden Rule

WHAT IS THE VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY?

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 1. Motion control makes gamers out of everyone

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 2. The rise of digital distribution brings convenient ways to buy games

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games

3. Independent developers are feeling the love

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 4. Online multiplayer is now a requirement


5. Crowdfunding gives developers a way to bypass publisher control

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 6. Mobile gives handhelds some serious competition


7. The rise of free-to-play makes some developers rethink sales models

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 8. Consoles became all-in-one media centers

Ten Current-Gen Innovations That Changed The Way We Play Games 9. DLC and firmware updates add hours to our games and fixes for their bugs


10. Developers now interact with their fans

Technology-Led Transformation for 2015 Games As Service Mobile Gaming Big Data Security Streaming Social Connectivity Unified Game Engines

EA CTO Ken Moss, Gamespot

StjohnColon.com

Top Ten Video Game Facts

10

Parents are present when games are purchased or rented 91 percent of the

time.

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9

Eighty-eight percent of all games sold in 2010 were rated "E" for Everyone, "T" for Teen, or "E10+" for Everyone 10+.

www.esrb.org.


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8

Forty-four percent of gamers play games on their smartphone, and 33 percent play games on their

wireless device.

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7

In 2011, 29 percent of Americans over the age of 50 play video games, an

increase from nine percent in 1999.


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6

Forty-eight percent of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly

greater portion of the game-playing population (36 percent) than boys age

18 or younger (17 percent).


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5

The average age of the most frequent game purchaser is 35 years old.


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4

The average game player is 31 years old and has been playing games for 14

years.


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3

Purchases of digital content accounted for 53 percent of game sales in 2013.


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2

Consumers spent $21.53 billion on video games, hardware and accessories in

2013.


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1

Fifty-nine percent of Americans play video games.


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Global Games Market 2012-2016

Source: The NPD Group

Source: Newzoo, 2013 Global Games Market Report

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

As of 2010, there were about 118,386 direct and indirect U.S. workers in the game industry.

The top 5 states employing workers in the game industry:

1. California (accounts for 41% of US game industry workers)2. Texas3. Washington4. New York5. Massachusetts

StjohnColon.com

Money, Money, Money

Average Salary (3 years or less experience): Programmers: $71,855 Producers: $59,079 Game Designers: $53,000 Artists and Animators: $50,000 Quality Assurance: $38,833

Rising costs of development: In 1990 it cost about $40,000 per game. In 2004 it cost about $10,000,000 per game. Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, cost about $266,000,000

to develop.

So You Want to Work in the Video Game Industry (7:41)

http://youtu.be/lGar7KC6Wiw

http://youtu.be/lGar7KC6Wiw

Take-Away

“I’m really good at ideas. That’s what I want to do in the team; be the guy who has the ideas.”

Join the queue. At the back.

Behind the guy who can draw; the girl who can code; and the ones who can write, plan, create, evaluate, debug, submit and deliver.

They’ve got ideas, too.

10 Misconceptions About Working In The Videogame Industry

1. We don’t just play games all day long.

2. We aren’t all programmers.

3. “My neighbor’s kid plays a lot of videogames. Can he get a job like yours?”

4. The Tech Support misconception.

5. It’s not just having ideas.

10 Misconceptions About Working In The Videogame Industry

6. Videogame music is still real music.

7. We aren’t gaming savants.

8. Testing takes skill.

9. We get that you don’t play games.

10. It’s a real job for grownups.

What Culture

http://whatculture.com/gaming/10-misconceptions-you-have-about-working-in-the-games-industry.php

Remember, Video Game Development is a Calling

What Is A Video Game?

This is a Video Game (1:36)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGU2B-_Foy8



LAFS SVI Session 1 - Introduction

Education

Transcript of LAFS SVI Session 1 - Introduction