Today’s graduates are faced with an uncommonly steep learning curve. Coming into an industry in flux, as it heaves itself from one generation to the next, throws up all manner of additional considerations, problems to solve and, perhaps most pressingly of all, decisions to make. After all, where in this rapidly expanding machine do you hope to find purchase? And where do you want to end up?
“There is a huge disadvantage in the fact that you have new technology to master and utilise, as well as new player expectations that can turn the perception of quality on its head,” warns Niklas Fegraeus, lead designer at Battlefield studio DICE. “It’s a new creative territory you need to map, and doing so successfully requires great risk and effort.”
Fortunately, he is quick to soften the blow. “On the other hand, the opportunity provided by a generation shift can be the greatest advantage imaginable, which, if [well] utilised, can make you a vital contributor to the future of gaming.”
Crucially, there are more opportunities now than ever before, because while there’s a significantly higher barrier to entry when it comes to securing your dream job in your favourite major studio, there are also many more routes into the world of game development than there ever used to be.
“Things are more segmented than they were in the past,” says Pauline Jacquey, managing director of Ubisoft Reflections. “It used to be core/casual/kids, but there are more ecosystems now. Today, [the shape of that ecosystem] is more driven by distribution channels than the target audience: there are the big triple-A console games that only a few publishers can afford; the creative indie games that have been made possible by things like the App Store, Steam and crowdfunding; the opportunistic social and free-to-play games benefiting from the openness of the Internet; and some niche hardcore and high-quality social games.”
Jacquey’s list seems extensive, but it covers the vast diversity of today’s videogames in only broad strokes, each category being home to all manner of sub-groups, combinations and mutations. And the task of creating them all requires the combined efforts of not only designers, programmers and musicians, but also HR and management, QA, and more recently roles such as community managers, server administrators, lighting experts, business analysts, economists and even experts in ergonomics. It’s a dizzying territory to explore, but it’s also one driven by the passion of those who define its borders.
“If you want to make games – and it’s what your heart wants – you’ll make them out of cereal boxes and soap if you need to,” reassures John Baez, president and co-founder of Battleblock Theater studio The Behemoth.
Alien Hominid, from The Behemoth.
Assuming you still haven’t finished that box of cornflakes, though, what other tools are at your disposal? One of the most obvious starting points today is Unity3D, a development environment and engine that’s continually gaining in functionality and popularity. It provides the option of creating games through a menu-driven interface or full-on programming environment, the Asset Store provides pre-made 3D models and plugins (not to mention a potential source of revenue for creators), and you can export your code to almost any format you can think of. All this, and the basic package is entirely free.
And there are less powerful, but still free and popular, alternatives such as YoYoGames’ GameMaker, which is now in its eighth iteration; PyGame, which will help you learn to program in Python; or, for the complete beginner, Flash game creator Sploder.
While Unity will provide you with excellent experience – indeed, many indie developers and larger studios now use Unity to produce all or part of their games – traditionally used art packages such as 3DS Max, Maya and Photoshop are still the mainstays in most major studios. And knowledge of C++ and C# will still prove invaluable, whether you’re a programmer or not. High-end PCs and next-gen consoles have both the memory and processing power to handle much more detailed environments and character models, so digital art-creation software like ZBrush and Mudbox is becoming increasingly important. And don’t forget that many studios license engines and tools like Crytek’s CryEngine 3 or Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, both of which can be downloaded at no cost for non-commercial use.
But a technical mastery of your tools isn’t necessarily the most important thing. “Software knowledge is good, of course, but it’s also something you can train quite quickly,” says Fegraeus. “Learning new software is actually unavoidable in today’s triple-A landscape, where custom software is part of almost any development process. The important thing is to have a master’s eye for quality and detail. You need to have an edge, to be amazing at something. You need to have a strong talent that makes people go ‘wow’ when they see what you can do.”
Simon Flesser, one half of Beat Sneak Bandit and Year Walk creator Simogo, agrees. “I think more all-round skills are preferable, rather than knowing specific software. For example, knowing your way around the basics of film editing or motion graphics is definitely a plus to create good proof of concepts. But unique, out-of-the-box thinking is more important than amazing skills. Skills can always be developed, but that ‘feel’ [for making games], that’s hard to come across.”
Simogo is a portmanteau of the names of its two founders, Simon Flesser and Magnus ‘Gordon’ Gardeback.
Historically, there has been an inherent disconnect between the fast-moving game industry’s requirements and more formally structured education’s ability to provide for it. But, as you’ll see over the following pages, there are many universities today that are working hard to remain reactive, and relevant, to the realities of modern game production, offering a broad range of game design and programming courses. Do developers think it’s enough?
“I think education’s closing the gap, especially now that the industry is maturing and you can have people with decades of experience sharing their knowledge,” says Fegraeus. “It’s still a difficult issue, though, since things are still moving forward so fast – especially in terms of technology and team sizes. The other really important point is that game development is a work of passion, and education constantly needs to compete with passionate individuals who spend their free time teaching themselves, developing extremely deep skills within their field. So far, a great portion of game developers [began their careers by] spending time passionately modding or coding on their own without any game-related education. I believe that this is changing.”
Jacquey points to what she sees as a global, and combined, effort from game companies, government and universities and other schools to further refine those relationships. Ubisoft Reflections has close links with a number of universities, including Teesside and home of Dare To Be Digital, Abertay. The studio is also currently working on a government-supported initiative that aims to link its internal “expert training programmes” with wider education. But there are still some skills graduates aren’t bringing with them to their first jobs, foremost among which is source control (also sometimes known as version control or revision control), a method of keeping track of changes made to code and documents.
“That’s one field that’s not taught at all in universities, but that is used by 100 per cent of a dev team,” says Jacquey. “We use [software called] Perforce at Ubisoft, and if applicants arrived with a good knowledge of [that program], it would definitely give them a head start.”
Though you may have got the impression that every role in the game industry is oversubscribed, that’s rarely actually the case. Right now, our interviewees variously cite a lack of programmers, UI (user interface) artists and programmers, ergonomists and SFX artists. Naturally, the categories in such a list ebb and flow continuously.
But assuming you’ve got a knack for game or asset creation, and you’re able to handle the relevant tools, there are still other considerations to take into account if you intend to start your own studio or singlehandedly code The Next Big Thing on iOS. Flesser reveals that, as a small studio, only half of Simogo’s time is spent actually making games. Without an admin department, someone has to get through those emails and tax returns.
Funding a game is a more significant hurdle than keeping on top of admin, of course. There are many options for doing so, but one method that can’t be ignored today is crowdfunding, which has risen to prominence thanks to the high-profile success of projects on sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Crowdfunding, in combination with the similarly democratising effect of digital distribution, has allowed the riskier and idiosyncratic ideas associated with smaller projects to flourish.
Niklas Fegraeus, lead designer at DICE.
“It enables people who dream of making games to have more viable options when trying to realise their dreams,” says Fegraeus. “Regardless of whether you want to become the new Kojima or the new Notch, there’s now a visible path to that goal.”
It’s an intoxicating idea, but, as Flesser warns, it could be worth gaining some experience before you try to become the next Phil Fish. “[Crowdfunding] has created this notion of ‘everyone can do it’. While that’s true to some extent, and it’s certainly a great mindset to have, a lot of really great creators got their experience from the traditional industry.
“No matter how much you study, there’s really nothing like hands-on experience. And, honestly, working for The Man for a few years will probably be a great way to see how you would do things differently. Try to see that those early years with art directors, producers and suits breathing down your neck as espionage!”
But is indie and mainstream development really as polarised as it used to be? It’s increasingly difficult to define what indie really means nowadays, in a world where Kickstarter continues to fund startups and vanity projects without discrimination, scalable tools like Unity3D are used by individuals and teams alike, and budgets for downloadable games – mobile or otherwise – soar.
“Since the industry has not agreed on what is ‘indie’ or not, it’s a difficult one,” says The Behemoth co-founder and art director Dan Paladin. “If we were to enter the IGF again, I think there’d be some people raising an eyebrow. And if Double Fine enters, is that OK? What about if Valve enters? All of these companies are independent, but which ones are ‘indie’? All? None? Some? If the company has over ten employees, is it no longer ‘indie’? What’s the budget cutoff before you’re not indie any more? What sorts of funding or partnerships are OK?”
“I think it’s all a bit fuzzy,” says Flesser. “The word ‘indie’ is used so broadly that I don’t even know what it means. Some people talk of it as a sort of ‘indie spirit’, while others see it as being financially independent. But, again, I think it’s more important to have ideas people – people who are just generally creative – if you’re a small company rather than a bigger studio.”
Dear Esther.
Fegraeus is less sure that the definitions have shifted to any great extent, but worries that attitudes towards the two camps have. He laments what he sees as a widening cultural divide reminiscent of that seen in the movie industry, where big-budget productions are sometimes looked upon with no small amount of disdain by the self-proclaimed sophisticate indie scene. While the majority of players are probably isolated from such prejudice – we can’t imagine many gamers snubbing Battlefield 3 just because they’ve recently played Dear Esther – it may well affect new developers’ aspirations.
“I personally hope this has a very limited effect on people looking to break into the industry,” Fegraeus says, “as I can’t see these judgmental attitudes as anything but bad.”
But whether you’re an auteur exploring the breakdown of a relationship through the medium of platforming or an artist creating the metallic texture for a bullet in the latest blockbuster FPS, you’re still following your passion and making a game. And that, after all, is why you’re reading this article. So, does the added complexity of development on next-generation PCs and console hardware, and the increasingly competitive jobs market, mean that it’s harder than ever before to bag that dream job in the game industry? Or does such a diverse spectrum of roles and ways to make games actually mean it’s now easier?
“I think it’s easier,” says Fegraeus. “By that I don’t mean it’s easy – far from it – but considering the constant growth of the industry as a whole, there are simply more options and opportunities than before. It’s an extremely competitive space, though, as evidenced by all the heartbreaking stories of studio shutdowns and commercial failures that happen quite regularly. There’s a saying that ‘you’re only as good as your last title’, and this is very true. It’s particularly difficult to survive on old merits in the game industry, and you need to constantly push yourself in order to stay relevant and successful.”
Jacquey: “Well, I probably wouldn’t have become a producer at 23 if I [started today rather than] in 1997. But back then, there was little support because we were all working out what it takes to make great games. There’s much more support now – teams are more structured and when you start, you have a manager. Young team members get constant feedback and training, too. So I would say it’s easier to work and feel supported, but today people usually follow more structured career paths than 15 years ago.”
Baez has one final thought on the matter. “For super-creative people who have always wanted to be in the industry and worked hard to get there, it’s probably easier!” he says. “For people who want to be in the industry because they think it might be a fun thing to do versus working at local grocery store, it’ll probably be tougher than before!”
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