Come on in, the Water’s Warm!
by Eric Marlow
Graduation season is upon us, and some of you might be contemplating what you may do next. If you are a graduating high school student, then you may want to consider what lies ahead for you as you continue your education. If you a university senior, then it’s high-time to get out there and get a job! In either realm, did you know that you can make games for a living, and get paid well for doing it? If making games for a living interests you, then read on!
Prior to 2000, there wasn’t much opportunity in the Philippines for people interested in doing game development. Slowly over the years the number of companies has increased, and now there are at least 15 viable companies that are located here in the Philippines that are doing some kind of game development. Each one of these companies tends to focus on a different kind of development, and knowing what is out there may help you choose a path toward gaming goodness!
Are you artistic? Colorful? Creative? Do you like to draw or use a computer to Photoshop pictures? Do you like to draw comics or make your own animated films? Then you might be interested to know that there are many opportunities for you to join the ranks of game artists. Whether you focus on 2D style drawings or you have jumped into the world of 3D animation, computer games require highly sophisticated art to populate their worlds. And they require a lot of it! This is why in a typical game development studio there are at least four artists for every one programmer on a project.
Are you logical? Do you like math, physics, or programming computers? Then you might be happy to know that game companies require programmers too. Every action and reaction in a game you experience must first be programmed. Such disciplines as graphics, sound, physics, and artificial intelligence are highly sought-after skills for game programmers.
Be warned though – in both instances of game art and game programming, these are unique skills and typically cannot be obtain through traditional art or computer courses. Both disciplines use unique tools and techniques, and require an understanding of how games are constructed. You cannot easily become a game developer by taking your school’s general art or computer science classes. Your training has to include specialized courses that are tailored to the skills needed for making computer games.
But all is not lost – there are some schools located here in the Philippines that are offering game development courses as electives, and some schools are starting to contemplate full blown tracks or majors in game development. Every school is unique, and I would encourage you if you are interested in a career as a game developer to inquire about game development, and even challenge your school’s administration to offer game development courses if they aren’t doing so now. Only with the specific game-related instruction and the opportunity to work on real game-related projects will you graduate with the necessary skills to jump into game development as a career.
Game development here in the Philippines is a viable career path. But learning the craft requires passion and self-motivation to seek out opportunities to learn about the process. You must seek out ways to obtain the knowledge that you will need, and sometimes this means pushing yourself and others to dive in test the waters. Don’t be shy – come on in, the water’s warm!
Eric Marlow is General Manager and Head of Studio for Kuju Manila, Inc. Please feel free to drop an email with any questions you may have. Space permitting we’ll answer your questions in upcoming editions. You can reach him at theinsider@octobereighty.com. Game On!
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Industry Insider - December 2008
Don’t Get Consolized (tm)
by Eric Marlow
“I get to play games for a living”. I have chuckled many times in using this line, but in all seriousness it’s true. Of course it doesn’t mean I play games for fun all day, but it does mean I get to play games for research purposes that I wouldn’t normally otherwise play.
I am a gamer at heart. I got into this industry because I loved games and liked to share my experiences with others. I loved it so much that I start to write articles about it, and that eventually led me to friends who I started a business with together in the games industry. But even though it is a business for me, I still play games for fun.
Given how many games I need to get through for business purposes, I am somewhat picky as to where I spend my personal time. Over the years there are many games that have caught my attention. Here’s a very small starter list of what I have played, and kept playing:
All games I play for fun stem from my love of the Falcon series of flight sims. Basically starting with the seminal Falcon 3.0, and going through to Falcon 4.0, I wasted thousands of hours in these games. Toward the end of the Falcon 4.0 development process I became involved with Microprose (the game’s developer) in the fixing the many bugs that existed in this complex piece of software, so F4 holds a special place in my heart.
Because I enjoy sims so much, my list would not be complete without paying homage to the Jane’s Combat Simulation games. Of this list there were many, but Longbow I and II, F-15, and 688i all stayed on my drives the longest. I even created word for this – the Jane’s sims had a very long “HardDisk Lifetm” with me.
The Age of Empires series of games developed by Bruce Shelley and the guys at Ensemble Studios, and those based on the AOE engine (such as Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds) got me into the real time strategy genre. From there I expanded into more recent hits such as Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander, or even the less complicated Command and Conquer series.
I have always been a fan of the first-person shooter genre, but like my interest in realistic flight sims, I also enjoyed the more realistic shooters such as Red Storm’s Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. For action I loved games such as Star Wars: Jedi Knight and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.
And it’s true – I never really owned a game console until I started to work in the industry. I considered myself an elitist PC gamer. Never would I stoop down to playing consoles. I detested the fact that many of my favorite games were becoming more “arcady” and less hard core. I even invented another word for this – when a good PC game was ported to an Xbox or Playstation (or worse was cancelled in favor of a console version), this is what I called “being Consolized tm”. Damn you Ubisoft for screwing up Ghost Recon! The PC platform rulez!
Eric Marlow is General Manager and Head of Studio for Kuju Manila, Inc. Please feel free to drop an email with any questions you may have. Space permitting we’ll answer your questions in upcoming editions. You can reach him at theinsider@octobereighty.com. Game On!
by Eric Marlow
“I get to play games for a living”. I have chuckled many times in using this line, but in all seriousness it’s true. Of course it doesn’t mean I play games for fun all day, but it does mean I get to play games for research purposes that I wouldn’t normally otherwise play.
I am a gamer at heart. I got into this industry because I loved games and liked to share my experiences with others. I loved it so much that I start to write articles about it, and that eventually led me to friends who I started a business with together in the games industry. But even though it is a business for me, I still play games for fun.
Given how many games I need to get through for business purposes, I am somewhat picky as to where I spend my personal time. Over the years there are many games that have caught my attention. Here’s a very small starter list of what I have played, and kept playing:
All games I play for fun stem from my love of the Falcon series of flight sims. Basically starting with the seminal Falcon 3.0, and going through to Falcon 4.0, I wasted thousands of hours in these games. Toward the end of the Falcon 4.0 development process I became involved with Microprose (the game’s developer) in the fixing the many bugs that existed in this complex piece of software, so F4 holds a special place in my heart.
Because I enjoy sims so much, my list would not be complete without paying homage to the Jane’s Combat Simulation games. Of this list there were many, but Longbow I and II, F-15, and 688i all stayed on my drives the longest. I even created word for this – the Jane’s sims had a very long “HardDisk Lifetm” with me.
The Age of Empires series of games developed by Bruce Shelley and the guys at Ensemble Studios, and those based on the AOE engine (such as Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds) got me into the real time strategy genre. From there I expanded into more recent hits such as Chris Taylor and Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander, or even the less complicated Command and Conquer series.
I have always been a fan of the first-person shooter genre, but like my interest in realistic flight sims, I also enjoyed the more realistic shooters such as Red Storm’s Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. For action I loved games such as Star Wars: Jedi Knight and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast.
And it’s true – I never really owned a game console until I started to work in the industry. I considered myself an elitist PC gamer. Never would I stoop down to playing consoles. I detested the fact that many of my favorite games were becoming more “arcady” and less hard core. I even invented another word for this – when a good PC game was ported to an Xbox or Playstation (or worse was cancelled in favor of a console version), this is what I called “being Consolized tm”. Damn you Ubisoft for screwing up Ghost Recon! The PC platform rulez!
Eric Marlow is General Manager and Head of Studio for Kuju Manila, Inc. Please feel free to drop an email with any questions you may have. Space permitting we’ll answer your questions in upcoming editions. You can reach him at theinsider@octobereighty.com. Game On!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)