Game Industry Rants

Visual Novel Community Anime/Otaku Discussions
#1

I attended a seminar this morning, about finding new talent in the game industry. A lot of the conversation was boring rhetoric drivel that many of you’ve undoubtedly have heard elsewhere… however one key matter was very attention getting.

As some of you might know, CAPCOM created a brand new Mega Man using 8-bit techniques. It cost peanuts to make (hell… the advertising cost more than development): it earned back millions. Now game companies are looking into finding new retro titles to mirror the same success. No big surprise, right?

Back in the 8-bit days all it took was four or five people and a few thousand dollars to burn (sometimes only a few hundreds), for the creation of a full NES game (the game itself obviously… not production, distribution, advertising, etc). Guess what you can create as a sure fire portfolio attention getter? It doesn’t have to be a full 8-bit game either… just one complete stage would suffice.

Let’s say you REALLY want to work for CAPCOM. Why not create an imaginary first stage using NES graphics/sounds/etc for the 1944 that you just made up? Include that in your resume to them. According to the buzz: Human Resource is looking for that kind of creativity and “one man does it all” type drive. Doesn’t require incredible talent, and you can even sprite rip the hell outta stuff - although I STRONGLY recommend changing things enough to look new. Obviously you can’t claim ownership of such work… and CAPCOM would instantly own such a submission (since its their IP and all). But it does get their attention.

Now I know a common retort is: “I can’t draw/compose/program. I only want to DESIGN games.” Well… if you can collect/pay a small group of people to help create this demo, it shows that you have talent as a design team leader. Not to mention skills in budget management. Did you know it’s easier to hire artists/composers/programmers than it is to find people with genuine talent as successful design team leaders? Sure it costs out of pocket money, and still doesn’t ensure you get a position like that, but first impressions are always important. HR would rather see a working first stage, than a 50 page Wordpad document on a game proposal.

Anyways… the people in the seminar discussed how so few people were doing that ¬ñ when it’s the perfect time to be doing that. Cause… ya know… anyone can create an 8-bit era game, without having the backing of a multimillion company… then submit that to a multimillion company. Plus the multimillion dollar investors in these companies, are taking 8-bit serous again. :wink:

#2

I know a lot of people doing that, and the big companies don’t return their mails. :slight_smile: A lot of them are kids or not any good at it, a lot of them aren’t. It’s really not that difficult to find talented people making retro/indie games. If the big companies don’t know where to find them, they have their heads up their asses.

Hell, make an open post somewhere saying “Our company would like to sponsor new developers onto XBLA/Wiiware/something” and watch the applications flood in.

#3

You say that, as if they don’t have their heads up their asses. I can fully vouch that they do. :slight_smile:

There’s sites like that: this one for example. Some companies have special pages on their sites. Most people either:

(1) Don’t know where to look.

(2) Don’t have the qualifications or experience.

(3) Don’t know how to package a resume.

(4) Don’t know how to sell themselves.

(5) Send it to the wrong address.

You don’t send game proposals to CAPCOM’s Customer Service address… but you’d be surprised how many thousands (I’m not kidding), are sent to it.

#4

Heh, I don’t doubt that either. I suspect that most of the under-18 brigade ends up there.

#5

And remember, they only want to hire entry level personnel in India or similar countries where they don’t have to pay people much to get good work out of them.

#6

That’s where mine ended up when I wrote Nintendo and said “hey, you guys should make a Game Boy / cellphone combo” like 18 years ago when I was ohletssay 10. (I can’t actually remember exactly …) Got back a nice form letter and everything. 15 years later, Nokia made the N-Gage.

They totally ripped off my idea, and I’m afraid I must ask – no, I demand – that they never give me any credit for it whatsoever. Keep me out of it :smiley:

#7

That’s what happens when you don’t patent your ideas first. :wink:

Game companies immediately destroy game submissions, that they don’t get to sign a liability waver for… because… well… they could be held liable for IP theft. Given how easily two people can come up with the same idea (as all these patent wars show), it’s not worth the trouble.

#8

Humm… well, Narg, that isn’t new.

The game industry, from the beginning, has always said that the best thing to have is to have a demo of a game you’ve developed. Just a level or two for action games, or the first couple of chapters for text style gaming. That’s been the “best way to get hired” since— oh, the fourth game company was created. Seriously.

Of course, being a basic entry position (ie, tester) helps too. Or a get scenario or level designer (for the moddable games). But those act like a demo for YOUR game design-fu, so we are back to that.

Aren’t all the “Game Design” schools sending out their grads with a demo/small game or three in their portfolio? I thought I recalled reading that, through the years I’ve check up on them.

I’d think the only problem game companies would have is finding someone TALENTED… which is what the demos show off. How fun can you make something? That’s all that is important— they can always find artists to make great art for the project, musicians to score it, programmers to code the game engines, and even team coordinators/managers. But fun? That’s the important thing.

#9

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/11/01/rps-interview-portals-kim-swift-and-jeep-barrett/

Granted, this isn’t how most developers get hired on, but this is the kind of thing I could see happening. I’ve played Narbacular Drop (after playing Portal), and while it does have flaws in it, you can see the fun factor there that inspired Portal.

Agreed, agreed. Getting away from the tried-and-true, getting designers who think “outside-the-box”, and people willing to stretch an idea. And you’re right about one thing: given the ratio of artists, musicians, programmers and managers to people with good fun ideas for games, it’s almost trivial providing the rest of the stuff to a compelling game concept.

I feel we’re getting to the point where flashy graphics and cool technological advances aren’t winning over gamers like fun and refreshingly new game ideas are.

Consider Valve’s new release Left 4 Dead. Survival horror game… now that’s a tired genre. What’s the difference? Co-operative play. Dynamic generation of situations and enemies. Shoot, the last co-op FPS I can think of on the PC (that wasn’t modded in) was… ummm… System Shock 2? And that was with a patch from the developer. I mean…a survival FPS with co-op play. It seems so obvious, you wonder how the idea didn’t get picked up sooner and made into tens of dozens of “survival co-op FPS” games. (And to be frank, my knowledge of the myriad of console games is lacking, so I’m sure there are probably some co-op FPSes on the consoles. I was speaking from a strictly PC perspective…)

#10

PC, you’re right… kind of… Valve has lots of team play FPS’s. Not sure if those really count or not. Console, the last one I can think of is Halo… which allowed you to progress through the main campaign in Co-Op mode. This functionality was woefully removed in the lackluster PC port.