PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT.
Alex Johansson
Alex is an independent game developer and the director of ALJO Games, which created the games "MORSE" and "ALT CTRL." Alex gave an in-depth view of being an independent indie developer within the never-endingly expanding gaming industry, how difficult it is to gain acknowledgement for your indie games, and what effects being an independent game developer has on your personal life. Alex talks about how getting into the game industry is not as easy as it seems, and if you're lucky enough to get into the industry at all with your game and have a small following with it, over time people will forget about you and make you go back to square one with the gaming industry. In this difficult career choice of being an independent developer, Alex goes through his struggles when funding his game studio and the development of his game, which earns less than the national minimum wage, and how developing a studio or game can bring financial issues compared to working for a well-known gaming company, which can provide a comfortable way of life, but Alex is proof that with endurance, you can be this person who is independent of a gaming company and can provide a comfortable way of life.
Alex diverts from this panic attack-inducing section about mental health and how difficult it is to get into the gaming industry, aka "the horror," to a section about how having a degree won't save you from not having a job within the gaming industry, which was nerve-wracking, but I understand why Alex would tell us not all jobs require a degree but not all do. Then Alex went into detail about making and using custom controllers within his game, "MORSE," where he made a controller that mimics an actual morse code called a "telegraph sounder," which interacts within his game when figuring out the words in the game. This sparked the inspiration for my game idea to develop further by looking into making a custom controller for the game or making a new feature within the gameplay like using a microphone to make the character learn the language or opening doors, etc.
I want to do further research on making custom controllers for my game idea and see what I would be able to apply to the game. The next section of Alex’s talk goes on to explain networking and how important it is to gain intel or acknowledgement from people who are in the gaming industry, which creates a safety net with the people you meet. who can help you understand what it takes to break into the gaming industry, from what each studio expects from you, whether it's your independent games or your portfolio, to what companies want to see from the conceptual sketches, mind maps, etc., and the outcome from the conceptual to the reality, and to see if all the research and concepts link to each other from the beginning to the end of the project. However, it goes on to explain why networking is a good idea, beginning with your university having easier access to people in the industry because of access to past alumni who have already gotten into these gaming companies or independent studios, advising on how they got their foot in this unbreakable industry, but also having access to people in the industry because of their contacts in the industry will help you understand what was required of you to gain access in this unbreakable industry. While Alex was talking about networking, it made me think I should investigate networking events or even professional talks that could help me understand what is expected of me when I leave university and start my career in the gaming industry. With that in mind, I investigated more after Alex’s talk about upcoming events and started to plan professional talks that I could attend either in person or online. I was able to locate a few existing events that I would be returning to and attending the following year and try to attend future game jams that are outside of the university environment to further network with fellow budding game designers, either in different universities or as self-taught game developers, but it will also help me develop my social and team-building skills when working with people I've never met before and could towards my portfolio of skills when applying to future roles in a gaming company or other industries.
Listening to Alex talk about his journey in this ever-expanding industry makes me reconsider starting an independent game studio or any solo game project without the assistance of fellow game designers or even friends. But Alex has made me think about my future career within the gaming industry and has motivated me to push further development in my career in the gaming industry to make me plan future professional talks and attend gaming events to network with fellow game designers, concept artists, etc., which could help me get my foot in the door of the game-developing world and make sure I never end up like Alex, putting my financial, mental, and even physical health in a bad state that could make me regret having a career in game development and stop me enjoying games in general. But having an independent game studio and developer gave me great insight into the actual lifestyle of someone in this tough industry and showed realism, compared to someone who is also in the same proposition as Alex and even in a well-known gaming company, who makes it look pretty and simply to get into the gaming industry without showing the trials and tribulations to getting the stage they are at, which made me appreciate Alex showing his progress on being an independent game developer and owning a game studio as well become he didn’t skip anything knowing that could have made someone have second thoughts about being game designer, developer and other jobs roles in the gaming industry but was straight to the facts of how things work and not doing things that are outside of your comfort zone could lead to failure but, with this in mind Alex kicked me in the teeth and have a mental note to start focusing how I’m going start my gaming career either research my what job roles I would apply for to what kind of work I would like do after university ends either to start the bottom of ladder in a big game company or start gaining experience in a smaller studio and slowly work towards being in a larger well-known gaming developer.
Matteo Menapace
Matteo is someone we met before at the beginning of our university journey when we were doing our board game projects in year one. With his help, we explored our board game designs and expanded and developed them further so it wouldn’t be a simple board game or the same as other ones that are out on the market already. But this second meeting with Matteo was about his journey when creating his hit game, "Pandemic," with Matt Leacock. The game is based on researching a cure for these disease hotspots before the diseases take over the board. But Matteo can't personally talk about his upcoming board game called "Daybreak" with Matt Leacock yet again. The main purpose of the game is to stop the climate crisis and empower the players to create technologies and build these societies to de-carbonize the world before the world is destroyed. Matteo goes through how to create a board game, which is not as easy as it seems from the prototyping to the finished game. Matteo sympathises with always researching the topics before developing further with your ideas but also having themes that are interesting to research because doing some you're not interested in can cause issues further down the line when developing your game projects. That's why "Daybreak" is in development at this moment Matteo has a big interest in the current climate crisis we are having right now and wanted to express his feelings about it in a board game format to show there are ways to slow down or even stop climate change and teach people what climate change is in a fun way. Another thing Matteo sympathises with is always doing prototypes and playtesting. Without these fundamental aspects of making a game, the project will fail due to not even understanding your game and how the rules play out, or even if someone from the development team played it and understood it, With this, Matteo showed us a video of his team making paper prototypes and playtesting the game "Daybreak," but Matteo explained that there are many other ways of making prototypes, from using paper to making a quick PowerPoint game just to experience how the game would play and what needed to be improved when carrying out development.
Matteo also explains how important networking is as well like Alex greatly shows how networking is a powerful tool to use within this ever-expanding industry and using the people you meet may bring great success to your future projects like Matteo met Matt Leacock when developing, “Pandemic.” This makes me more determined to attend more networking events to gain more knowledge from people who are in the industry and maybe make contacts who could coach me to develop the skills and knowledge would need when I’m applying to my future career roles either in the gaming industry or another industry. But Matteo did bring up an important thing when designing anything is that always make prototypes and test them be carrying on.
Barclays Eagles Lab Trip (Mark Rands)
This professional talk was held in a professional setting in the Barclays Eagles Lab in Southampton where we met Mark Rands who explains how like a company Barclays could help these new businesses or even new independent game developers with the support of the business side of things to help with launching a new project. Mark talks about how starting a business alone is hard and this could be the first hurdle most businesses fail on if some don’t know how even start a business began with. Making some businesses go bankrupt and affecting any future developments, Barclays can help you set up your future businesses, projects, etc when it comes to making business plans explain the intentions of the business or project which are an important part of owning a business. Mark goes through to talk about how networking is important same as past speakers but goes through to say having mentors is important as well. A mentor is a handy person to have when developing anything for your career, they can help you with many things like learning skills, advice about your work and many other things, Mark told us everyone should try to get a mentor while being in university due to being about access the university library of professionals or past alumni that are already in a same profession which you're trying to be when leaving university.
After having this talk with Mark and touring this professional space it shows how different is compared to working in a university environment where everyone is more focused on getting work done but also focusing on how in this environment everyone was working as a team to deal with the everyday tasks and collaborating with other business too with other future projects. After this, I wanted to search for a mentor of my own who can help me develop further in my career as someone who could be flexible in the gaming industry and able to help anyone in a team when it comes to future projects. Look through Linkin to see if there was anyone who came from a gaming company which I like that would be able to help with my journey into the gaming industry, was about to get in contact with a few senior role professionals who were able to help me either finding a mentor or what would be needed from me if I was applying for a role at said companies. One of the seniors I spoke to was able to be my mentor, I can't say her name but works for Riot Games in the art department of the company, and she can give advice for my future projects while in university and help to build my professional portfolio which up to standard with these big companies but also helping to build a portfolio which would help me to stand out from the crowd when I apply for a role in Riot Games in the future. But with help of Mark talking about having a mentor and what they do I was able to do this and would be stuck later down the line without a mentor explaining what was needed to able these larger game companies or even smaller ones.
University of Southampton career services
The next talk was from the university careers service where she explains what they do and how they can help you with your career choices when you're in the last year of university. There you can have a meeting with them about how anything about applying for jobs, building professional CVs for areas of interest, to even helping you understand what you want to do after university ends. She went through interesting topics of how the gaming industry's never-ending expanding sector in the UK due to the demand for entertainment in the marketplace and the UK is becoming the new hotspot for new and upcoming game studios or even the larger companies opening studios in the UK due to how popular it is. She carries on explaining how this made it popular for people to change careers to join the entertainment sector of the UK but with this mind is making it harder for people to apply to these jobs within this gaming industry compared to in the past when it was an unknown and unsure career but with this popularity boom it has created a competition between everyone when applying these roles for these companies and making harder job straight when either leaving university or self-taught. She continues to explain how joining a group like UKIE is very helpful due to being able to attend events where you can network with other game designers, concept artists, 3D modellers, etc and could help you develop insight into how to differentiate from each other making more appealing for future employers than just fresh graduate with no experience when to working in a professional setting.
Which was another thing she talked about is getting experience and learning how to be professional or knowing how things work within these professional settings, I understand why larger well-known companies will only accept someone with experience working for a game company before, but that is not the only thing to worry about is also some big game companies only take you on if you experienced working in this industry for years, this is why graduates can't go straight into working in large company due not having the experience which is needed for this companies and have work from the bottom of the ladder to gain the experience which is needed when applying for these larger roles. She explains there are ways to get around these issues of not having any experience when applying for these roles she said to investigate applying for internships, graduate roles in these large gaming companies or even doing summer internships as well, but there are different types of internships and its different for each different company from full-time work with pay to some just taking place throughout the summer. There is the other route to gaining experience is working for a smaller game studio until you gained experience to be able to apply to these well-known companies or even to able to work in a more senior role within these larger companies due to having more experience compared to a graduate that just leaving university. After this talk from career services, I wanted to explore if there are events or even opportunities where I can more information on internships, gaining experience or even building a professional portfolio when I leave university.
I have been researching what I need when applying for roles as a concept artist, modeller or even character artist but just to make it simpler for research I just look for art departments roles within the industry where I learn most roles want at least one year experience when applying for a role but did learn some companies have graduate programs within their companies where you gain the much-needed experience and maybe a role in the company itself I looked into further and founded that EA, Riot Games and many more big companies do these types of programs, which do involve moving to a different country to do these programs, but I would do these just to gain much-needed experience I need understand how to work in a large company and what expected from me when working within these companies. Another I did after this talk from the careers services was to able attend a Q&A about building a professional portfolio from Blizzard, who created the hit games like World of Warcraft to the more recent release of Overwatch 2, on this online talk with them I was able to ask a question of how or what needed to be in a portfolio when applying for a job with them, I was more focus getting answers from Daryl Tan who is the lead character concept artist for Overwatch 2, he answered my questions about working for Blizzard, what needed to work with them and Blizzard expects from a graduate when applying for their graduate program, then after the talk, I was able to continue talking to Daryl and asked him to look through my current work where he able help to understand where I need to improve on and what I need to do develop further in my portfolio.