Get paid thanks to games: A game developer

This one's been a long coming. Over a year, actually. I was putting it off because I didn't quite know how to put it together in one short article. I mean, studios can really vary among themselves. And the roles within the industry are very different as well. A blanket article on how to become a part of the game-making industry is likely to become either very general or very long and both these options will make it pretty useless. Finally, I've decided on a format that has a chance of making some sense. If it doesn't, at least I tried. Oh, and some of it might seem very obvious, but after talking to some high schoolers about game development, I feel that there's a lot of people that still require this kind of knowledge.

When you decide you want to make games, the first thing you have to realize is how many options you have. Game industry is very diverse and there are tons of doors and windows you can enter through. The biggest question though is what kind of games you want to make.

Inside of the Blizzard Entertainment studio.

On one hand, you have games done by single people and very small teams (under 5 people), like Banished, Darkest Dungeon or Undertale. On the other - huge blockbusters like Assassin's Creed, GTA or Uncharted, with hundreds of people on board and hundreds of millions of dollars in the budget. The rule of thumb here is that the smaller the team, the more skills you need. However, they don't have to be as highly developed as in the big teams. What I'm saying is that in small teams, you will often have to wear several hats. When there's just two of you, one becomes (for example) a programmer and a designer, while the other one draws, animates, writes and takes care of the soundtrack. When you're trying to do so many things at once, nobody expects you to be the best at everything. You just make a game you can make. In the big teams, you don't have to be a few people in one. You get to specialize. If you want to be an animator there, you need to be a good one. That's not to say that a great game desiner can't make a smaller game. Or that there are no average people in bigger companies, but they seem to rather be an exception. It's quite logical, really - Blizzard won't hire guys that are mediocre but some small company with small budget and less applicants might.

Once you know what kind of game you want to make and how big the company you want to work for is, there remains a question of what role you will play in it. You see, there are many elements of games that need to be made while the game is being put together. To get a job in the industry, you need to have skills needed to make some portion of these elements. Also, these skills need to be in demand. Let me give you an example. A lot of people think they can write and could write for games or could come up with game ideas. Now let's put aside that it's actually not that easy and that at least 99% of those people are wrong. Let's assume you are indeed an excellent writer and would be perfect for games. Still, most studios don't need full-time writers and ones that do rarely look for them, because the job is taken. And with maybe 20 openings like that in the whole world, you can imagine how huge the competition is. On the other hand, in an average studio, there's around 10 times more 3D graphic artists than writers and many of these studios constantly recruit for the 3D art positions. That means it might be much easier to get a job in the art department rather than writing and the required skill level might also be a little bit lower. It's a simple function of supply and demand, really.

This graph might seem funny but it is actually very accurate. Thanks, SharkBomb!

So what roles are there? Let me give you a very quick overview to help you decide what you might be best suitable for:

1) Programmers: need to be skilled in a programming language. Usually C++ or C# if the studio uses Unity Engine. The bigger the company, the higher the chance that programmers will specialize: engine / UI / AI, etc. Very high demand, companies are often willing to take juniors without much experience in the industry, but great programming skills are a must.

2) Designers: there's a lot of types of designers and not every type needs to exist in every studio. It highly depends on a game they are making. Free to play games will require Monetization Designers while RPG's will require Quest Designers. There are general Game Designers, story-focused Narrative Designers, self-explanatory Level Designers or Mission Designers. The role of designers is to come up with game systems and mechanics (or levels, missions, etc.), which is much harder than just coming up with ideas - you have to expand these ideas to cover every possible outcome in a balanced, logical and fun way that possibly helps tell the story and positively surprises the player. The demand for designers is quite high, but good designers are very hard to find. Also, everyone wants to be a designer (as it seems to be the "coolest" role), so the competition is very high as well.

3) Concept artists: these 2D artists design the mood of the game, characters, locations and props that are used. Their concept art serves as a reference to the 3D art team. These people also often end up producing all the 2D elements that you find in the game, so if a game is in 2D, it means pretty much all graphical assets. The requirements are simple: you need to be skilled at drawing and Photoshop. The demand is high, but good artists that have a great sense of color, lighting and composition are very rare.

4) UI artists: these are 2D artists that specialize in the user interface. They don't draw characters. They draw health bars, icons, charts and menus, which is a lot harder than it seems. You need to be great with Photoshop and to have an eye for usability and clarity of visual communication. Studios don't usually need more than one person like that so the demand isn't that high, but the good ones are considerably hard to find.

5) 3D artists: these are the guys who put together 3D models for the games. Everything from a simple stool to a huge monster. They usually specialize in either characters or pieces of environment. In bigger studios, they specialize even further: humans / monsters / buildings / rocks / vegetation. There's a lot of software that can be used for that, but the most popular programs are Zbrush for 3D sculpting and 3ds Max for blocking. There is a huge demand for these artists and there seems to be an everlasting shortage of really good ones.

6) Animators: whether it's in 2D or 3D, these are the guys that make things move. The true 2D animation is fundamentally different from 3D technology- and toolwise, but the common requirement is to have a sense of every detail of motion and what makes a movement natural. In 3D, you will likely have a chance to work with Motion Capture, which is a lot of fun. Popular tools for 3D animation are MotionBuilder and Maya. For 2D it's Adobe AfterEffects and Toon Boom. There is a huge demand for animators as the number of good ones in the world is very small and animations become a bottleneck in most of the studios sooner or later.

7) Sound designers: these people take care of the sound in our games. They don't compose the music, but make sure the ambient sound is the right volume, the sound effects are all in their places and that every single torch can't be heard from miles away.  There's a lot of tools for that: Audition, Reaper, Cubase, Nuendo and if you're fluent in any of them, you should be ok. The demand isn't huge, as many studios don't even hire in-house sound designers, but there's still some possibility to do it in freelance for a number of studios at a time.

8) Composers: the folks that actually compose the game music. And music in general. They rarely focus only on games. Pretty much all you need here is to be able to actually write music and some basic knowledge how the game music loops. Studios don't hire full-time composers so it's purely a freelance job. One where it might be very hard to get noticed unless you've won some solid awards for your music.

9) Narrative designers / writers: Narrative designers put the story together and are the ones that make sure it goes well with gameplay. Writers are the ones that create all on-screen text. Very often, narrative designer is also a writer. Don't be fooled: it's not like these people write a script and then everyone follows it. Most often, they have to adjust the narrative to what's going on on the screen to give it at least some logical continuity. The requirements here seem to be very easy to meet - you need to be great at writing. Unfortunately, there are thousands of people who think they can write when they actually can't and they spam companies with their applications. The demand itself is pretty low as many studios don't even need a dedicated writer for their types of games.

10) QA testers: one of the most crucial and underappreciated roles in the industry. Testers are the ones that play the game over and over and over while it's being made. It requires a lot of patience and eye for details. There are no hard skills required, but deep interest in games, displayed by messing around in game engines, learning to draw or code or at least making your own maps in popular editors is very welcome. The pay is the lowest in the industry, but so is the required skillset. There is a high demand for testers, but also a lot of people apply, so when you do, make sure to stand out somehow.

11) Producers: the "managers" that essentially take care of the schedules and budgets, but they are also responsible for making everyone's job as easy and smooth as possible, by solving problems, providing good communication and resolving any conflicts that might arise. The top producer is often the product owner and is personally responsible for delivering the game to the market. Producers need to be skilled in business, management and development methodologies and software, as well as have great communication skills, because they are the link between all the departments in the studio. The demand isn't too high, though good, experienced producers are hard to come by.

One thing to keep in mind when thinking about salaries in gamedev are usually lower than in other industries. An average business software programmer can earn even twice as much as a game programmer, even though their skills are comparable. That's, unfortunately, what you get for working your "dream job".

Nowadays, even Barbie can develop games.

There are generally three ways of getting into the industry. First is assembling your own team and just starting to make games. Nowadays, with digital distribution, it is relatively easy to publish your own game. And it doesn't even have to be very complex either. You are most probably just learning and you never know where it might lead you. You may continue to work on games on your own for years to come, eventually turning into your own business - your own studio. Getting better at what you do and working with more talented people. Even if your first 30 games were absolute crap, you will learn from them. And even if your team splits up before actually making money on your games, the games you did are now your portfolio. Portfolio that will help you a lot when applying to a gamedev studio as a programmer, designer, writer, artist, producer - whatever you learned to do while making those games. I can assure you that having finished some, even small projects, helps you land a job tremendously. Just remember to know where to aim. Making two small 2D games won't help you when applying for a Senior 3D Artist position.

The second way is to become a QA tester. Even if you want to write or code, there's nothing wrong with starting out as a tester. I know lots of testers that managed to move on to design, programming or production. Being a tester lets you get to know the industry from the inside. Watch closely how more senior positions work and what is really needed in your studio. Then, when the time is right, you might be able to move on. I believe it is actually the easiest way to get into the bigger companies. The biggest drawbacks are the low salary and often long working hours which is okay early on in your career, but won't let you support a family if you're planning on getting into the industry later in your life.

The third way is the hardest, but often the only way acceptable for people that already have a career and cannot afford being a tester or staying in their mother's basement figuring out how to make a game. It is using your current career to transition to games. If you are a really good programmer, you might be able to transition quite smoothly. If you're a writer, graphic artist or a project manager you'll have to make some adjustments to be suitable for games, but you still can land in the actual development as well. There are other professions, however, that let you work in gamedev studios, in roles supporting gamedev. If your skills and professional experience allow it, you might get into the marketing or PR team. Or become an in-house lawyer. Or an HR manager. Or a finance manager. It might not be that easy then to transition into development itself and you might discover you don't even want to (game marketing can be pretty awesome with all the travels and game fairs). If you show enough interest though and prove you can be a great addition to the team, you might be able to become a dev. Oh, and keep an open mind - being a manager in a gamedev studio can be quite different from your usual work at some bank or consulting firm and sadly, the salary will likely not be as high either.

You should also remember that not only development studios are involved in making games. And I am not talking about youtubers or journalists here. I mean companies that play a supporting role for game development studios. Backend solutions companies that maintain servers for online or mobile games. Motion capture studios. Motion capture actors. VoiceOver studios. VoiceOver actors. Orchestras that record game scores. All sorts of 2D and 3D outsourcing companies. Localization companies that translate mostly game texts. These are all highly involved in production of many great games and it might be a good idea to start in one of those if you can't find a place for yourself in a gamedev studio.

Whichever way you choose, the success will highly depend on your skill and knowledge of the industry. The more you know how it works, the better chance you have at learning the right skills and attitude. Then, with just a bit of luck, it's a matter of time before you are able to call yourself a game developer. Good luck!

Jobs in gamedev: writer / narrative designer

Having finished my first game and being heavily involved in the story production for it, I now have a general idea what the job of writing for games requires. What's more, I've been neglecting the "Jobs in gamedev" series, so all the more reasons to bring you guys this article.

So you write stories...

Good for you! Unfortunately, it doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to write for games. There are hundreds of professional screenplay or novel writers that have failed miserably while trying to deliver a narrative for a game. And many of them weren't mediocre either. I'm talking awarded writers recognized for their achievements in movies or books. If they were so great, why did they fail in games? To explain that, I have to give you a brief tour, how the writing process for a game can turn into a nightmare, but first let's talk a bit how the narrative designer differs from a game writer.

Not every writer is a designer... and that's fine.
There is a huge difference between a writer and a narrative designer. Basically, a writer is the guy who deals with words. There are lots of game elements that require only that and the writer doesn't have to get concerned about how these words affect the game mechanics. These elements are the static pages in the menu, like bestiaries or equipment descriptions, stuff like that. Sure, the writer has to be careful to make sure they fit the general theme of the game, but these flavor texts won't really break the game or heavily interact with the gameplay. Dialogues and quest descriptions are a bit more complicated, as you have to know what's going on at a certain point of the game. What dialogue options need to be included and what information the dialogue or description needs to give to the player. That's still quite easily manageable if you are a writer, not a designer. As a writer, you have to be great with words. Your sentences have to be brilliant and snappy, your dialogues need great pacing.

The narrative designer kind of needs a higher awareness level than the writer. He has to take into account all these elements the writer doesn't worry about. He needs to make sure all the tools are being used, especially the gameplay, to tell a compelling story. The narrative designer needs to help guard the concept of the game, make sure all quests are in line with the story, all dialogues serve their purpose, all characters have their place. Paradoxically, the narrative designer doesn't necessarily have to be a brilliant writer when it comes to the use of words, although it is very often expected of him/her. Especially in smaller studios, the role of narrative designer is either held by the writer or by creative director or lead game designer. Also in bigger studios, there are many cases where the writer never designs a story, he/she just puts it into words. Let's get back to our story of a potential story development nightmare.

Image stolen from theiddm.wordpress.com

Step 1: World creation and preproduction.

This is the step where the general idea shapes up. Art style is chosen. The development team decides or learns whether they will be doing a game about pirates or ponies. Based on this, further decisions are rapidly being made - all the guys on the team have to start with their work. Concept artists are drawing characters and enemies, 3D artists are starting on the blocking of the locations, game designers are inventing game mechanics. And very often, they are doing it completely independently, exploring on their own based on their individual understanding of the theme. They do coordinate, but mostly on the most "gamey" things. For example, game design coordinates with level design on the metrics used in the game, but they do not talk about how the game mechanics work with the mood of the locations to deliver a story to the player. Of course, the "right way" to do it would be to have a creative director who would make sure every person does his/her work according to the same core esthetic and sometimes this "right way" actually occurs. Still, majority of creative directors focus more on the gameplay than on the story and we see results of that even in big titles.

At this stage, there's usually some kind of problem with a writer. In some cases there's no writer at all and all these assets are just being produced because the team knows the theme and knows there's supposed to be some enemies and some NPCs. In other cases, there is a designated writer, but he/she doesn't really deliver or delivers a first draft of the story that the dev team just keeps filed "for later" while doing their thing. In yet other cases, there are some guys on the dev team that have some story ideas put together in a more or less chaotic document. You as a writer, more often than not, are not present at this stage. 

Step 2: "But our story sucks!" also known as production.
This is the moment when the prototype has been done and accepted. The gameplay is shaping up, the locations are being produced, there's a few characters implemented, maybe some dummy dialogues or even a prosthesis of a tutorial. It's the moment when the general player's path is being decided on and suddenly, the dev team wakes up. They either pull out the story document someone created and realize it has an army of holes and irrationalities in it, that the current gameplay ideas have evolved way beyond the script, that one of the locations has been cut. That a key NPC won't be produced. That there's been a side quest system implemented or that there will be no more side quests. If there was a writer that was hired from outside of the game industry, this is usually the moment he quits, because "the dev team is unable to execute his vision".

The prototype is approved, the deadline for alpha is not far away, and in most cases, the team has no writer and only some general premise of the story. This is the moment when the writer is hired. It might be a full-time position. It might be an oversea freelance. It might be some person within the team stepping up with hopes of doing a decent job.

Whatever your origins are, the writing task before you is not trivial. There's already a lot of things that have been decided without consulting them with you. If you got in early, it's just going to be about getting into the theme and getting around some things, like having a fixed moment when the peak happens or having to meet some character sooner or later. The longer the team waits with bringing you in however, the more things like that get included. Suddenly you have a character that's in a specified place, having to go the specified route and very soon, what could have been a straight walk in the park with going around some trees once in a while, becomes a crawl through a tropical jungle with a rusty machete. Instead of creating a story, you end up creating justifications for what's happening on the screen. And then, whenever you fix the problems of NPCs appearing out of nowhere and doing things that are completely out of of their character, the dev team just comes up with another idea for something that doesn't fit the story no matter how you slice it.

With a bit of persistence and luck, you end up with a satisfactory story that makes sense.

Step 3: Story implementation.
If you were hired as a freelance writer, this is very likely the step you won't be involved in. If you worked closer with the dev team, you are likely to stick around and be able to prevent a shitload of things that can go wrong at this point. Dialogues that you've written might not exhaust all the gameplay options and game designers will try to fill the holes with so-called "designer art". Some tired designers will implement the dialogue trees all wrong and suddenly they will make no sense at all. There will be another change in the game scope and a key character will be cut out, making the current story pointless. Casting for the VO (voice acting) will be done by a deaf person and every character in the game will sound the same or lines of an old man will be played by a young girl. The VO script will be poorly prepared and the actors will read their lines completely out of context. The cutscene that was supposed to deliver the backstory will never be produced. Someone will add equipment descriptions that do not match your story or your world. The letter that was supposed to give clarity after the story twist will be accessible way before it, spoiling everything. The character animations will break and in the middle of a serious, heartbreaking dialogue, one arm of an NPC will start a pop & lock dance. And these are just some of the possibilities.

If you are still with the project at this point, this is the moment where the real video game writing skills get tested. This is where you see how your story holds up its limbs get cut off. How well the rest of the team understands it and how much they feel and agree with your vision of the story. This is where you find out whether you are able to solve the problems that pop out on the fly without generating too much additional cost and workload. This is where you really see the difference between writing for games and for any other medium.

"But I will do it right"
Of course you will. What I described was an extreme case where everything gets out of control, but don't fool yourself - it's not a domain of small and inexperienced studios. If you take a closer look at the stories of big titles with 80+ metascore you will easily find story holes, ridiculous moments, terrible execution and many, many more. It ranges from high-level absurds like going hunting to enlarge your wallet instead of rushing to free your friends in Far Cry 3 to choices between "No", "Not now" and "Not really" in Mass Effect. Most of the games have their narrative sins and most of them aren't necessarily the writer's fault. No matter how good or bad the writer is, it's not the writer that makes all the decisions. A game can be still pretty decent with a crappy writer and it can be a disaster with even the greatest writer in the world.

"So what do I do?"
First of all, the poetic lone wolf writer approach will get you nowhere. You have to be a team player and accept the fact that the dev team is not there to execute your vision. You are to support the vision of the team with your excellent storytelling skills. You have to get invested in the project. You have to be as close to the development team as possible and support them as much as you can. There's no other way to see your script really come to life than to help implement it. Your job will never really be done until the game ships. You can't just assume what you have written is enough and leave it in the hands of others. You have to remember, that the game narrative is way more than words. Gameplay tells a lot of the story too. You can't just write the words completely independently from the rest of the team and then just hope the game mechanics will tell the same story as your words.

Be prepared for changes. Lots of them. Game production is iterative. That means your script will have iterations as well. It will have to be adjusted many, many times. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but you will have to accept it. In the end, the gap between the early draft of the script and what gets shown in the game will be extreme. Way, way bigger than in any other medium. You have to know that from the very beginning.

Oh, and one more fun bonus: you will never be the author of the game, like you would be an author of the book. Your name won't be on the cover. It won't even be the first name in the long list of credits. You won't be able to say "this is my game". Or "this is a game I've written". Or even "I wrote the story for this game". A lot of people will chip in to the extent of making your story not yours. All you will be able to say is "I have worked on the story of this game". If that is not enough for you as a writer, I can't blame you. This is one of the reasons so many traditional writers don't write for games. This is also the reason why good game writers are so rare and so highly valued. If you are able to harness all the chaos that comes with making games to tell your story, the impact your game will have will leave millions of people on their knees. Even, if they don't even realize it was thanks to the writer.

Image stolen from writerscabal.wordpress.com

"So how do I get the job?"
This is actually a very hard question, because writing for games is one of the most blurry areas of the industry. A lot of teams still live by the outdated story = words definition. In other teams, having someone hired as a writer seems like a waste of office space. Games that require vast amounts of words are actually in a minority and the narrative designers often derive from the team of game designers. So here's the first problem. Writer or narrative designer is not a position like a coder or a concept artist: not every studio needs one.

Another thing I have mentioned before is that just being a good writer doesn't necessarily mean you will be a good games writer. There are some personal traits that might help you in succeeding. Like being a team player, being open to feedback and being able to scratch or tweak your ideas according to the requirements of the project. All the time you have to remember you are the writer or designer for the game, not its author.

As for how to break into the industry as a writer, keep a portfolio of your writings. Preferably short, brilliant stories that show off a lot of your skill in a short period of time. Get published in some literature magazines, win a contest or five. If you have already published a novel, that's all the better. In general - have some relatively objective proof that you're far from illiterate. When you have all that, start spamming the companies with your portfolio, but do it wisely. Studios like Telltale or Bethesda are way more likely to need writers than Riot Games.

There's of course a lot of different ways to get your hands dirty with game writing. I'm working as a producer, but still had my chance to work on the story a lot more than the producer's job description requires. Game or quest designers with a knack for storytelling can move to the narrative section of their team quite easily too. And as always, there's QA, from where you can jump to anywhere in the game industry, if you are good and persistent enough.

Jobs in gamedev: Game Designer

The problem with not writing for so long is that when you return, you should get back with something that will justify the long lag between posts. This way you can say "hey, I know I was away for a while, but here, I've been doing research for this baby!". Sad truth is I've been so occupied with work lately that I barely managed to finish one game in the last month. Still, I wanna deliver something nice to all the people that waited. Here goes another one of the "Jobs in gamedev" series and definitely the sexiest one - Game Designer. And speaking of sex...

What does Game Design have in common with prostitution?

There's at least two things that these two jobs have in common: they are the oldest jobs in the world and they both can start at surprisingly young age. Remember when you played hide and seek when you were kids and then, when everyone started to run too far, someone came up with a rule limiting the hiding area? Remember when there were only two of you to play soccer so each of you stood at the different side of the field as a goalkeeper, kicking the ball from one side to another? And then, when it was too hard to score, one of you said "ok, but we can't use our hands from now on". That was applying new rules to the game. That was, in a way, designing a new game.

People always needed some kind of games. Something fun to do. Ancient Greeks had their olympics - someone had to come up with the rules. When our apelike ancestors were hunting and the prey was too easy to catch, I am pretty sure they were coming up with ways to make the hunt more entertaining for them. Like competing which hunter will catch most of umm... I dunno, mammoth snails or something. 

Yup, a little mindfuck for people who only read the bold text and stare at pictures :D

Game design is everywhere nowadays. Teachers design new ways to teach their students. Sure the game isn't too engaging to any of the participants, but there are clear rules, goals and quite a lot of competition. Politicians are designing our surroundings, applying new rules, shaping the reality around us. Too bad they are rarely similarly skilled or logical as game designers and, unlike the latter, they get paid in spite of the outcome. 

I think you get the idea. Game design was present in our world millenias before Super Mario Bros and will continue to be a discipline that will never limit itself to electronic entertainment. And that's what I find extremely cool.

Everybody wants to be a game designer

As soon as I thought of getting into gamedev, I decided that being a designer is the ideal job for me. You can utilize your creativity, make up your own games and man - I had so many cool ideas for games! A vast majority of people who want to get into game development has this one job in mind. Programming sounds boring, to create assets you need some artistic skill, but here you just need a head full of ideas! Of course, this perception of the role of a game designer is distorted by a terrifying lack of knowledge, which is quite common among the wannabe designers. It still doesn't mean the job itself isn't cool. Scott Rogers in his book Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design says that "designers have more fun [than people doing any other job in gamedev]" and he has some pretty damn good arguments for that, but I won't quote them here. If you wanna know - buy his book. It's a really good read and will let you get some nice knowledge on the game design topic.

If you can figure out what this picture is doing here, well... congrats.

The common desire to be the designer comes from the basic oversimplification that a game designer designs games. Sounds logical, doesn't it? A car salesman sells cars. A portrait painter paints portraits. It is only fair that the game designer designs games! Well, in AAA industry, that logic leads to a bitter disappointment.

What is it that the game designer actually does in gamedev?
A game designer creates a set of rules for a game. In the "good old days" it pretty much meant that he's creating a game. Games didn't have much story, they were made by small teams... Setting the rules of Tetris equals creating Tetris. Nowadays however, in biggest productions, roles are extremely divided and designers get their own pieces of the pie. Take a look at the credits of a few big games and you might find out that apart from the "game design" section there can be things like "combat system design", "quest design" and many others. Sometimes, the "game design" section can even be completely gone, replaced by all the smaller design teams. That's because making and designing a game is a team effort and - in the AAA industry - hardly anyone can say "I've designed this game" without either oversimplifying or being a swaggerer.

There's a common misconception that a game designer more than anything needs to be an extremely creative and innovative person. These elements are of course very important, but from what I have seen so far, the best designers didn't really come up with many ideas. They group the ideas, they review them, they design systems based on them. And if you think about it - it is getting harder and harder to come up with an original idea that will work. There's millions of ready ideas out there to mix and match. At the end of the day, a designer that can cleverly combine the existing ideas is way more valuable than a guy who just comes up with ideas, reinventing the wheel for the nineteenth time.

Systems over ideas
What are these systems I am babbling about? They are the very core of game designer's work. The ideas alone are neat, but they can't work without a proper system built around them. Let me explain on a simple example - jump.

Let's say we are designing an action game where a big pile of goo fights with oversized fruits. At some point (probably very early on) there comes an idea: "it would be cool if the goo could jump!". That was an idea. An idea that could have come from anywhere, not necessarily from the game design. To implement this idea, we need a jumping system that will have an answer to every question we can come up with:
- how high will the goo jump?
- will it bounce off a ceiling if it touches it or will it stick to it? Is the type of ceiling a factor?
- what will happen to the goo when it lands?
- how far will the goo jump?
- if the goo doesn't make it to the other side of a cliff, will it bounce off the wall it or stick to it? Is the type of the wall a factor?
- will the goo be able to crawl up the cliff if it sticks to it after jumping?
- what will happen if the goo jumps onto an enemy fruit? Is the size of the fruit a factor?

Suddenly, you start coming up with a system that derived from a simple "let's jump" and has all these cool possibilities and all these problems that you have to solve. Thanks to this jumping ability, you are building ceilings with spikes, hard floors to splash your goo on and creating mechanics of swallowing strawberries with the goo, but bouncing off the watermelons. Then you realize that this jumping system closely connects to the battle system, movement system, special skills system, scoring system - most probably every system that makes it into the game.

Yes, it all starts with an idea, but the idea itself is worthless without a careful analysis, problem solving and lots of crash testing. If you are a game designer, the coming up with the idea part might happen without you. What won't happen without you is turning this idea into a logical and complete system that the player will have a very hard time breaking and that will work well with all other systems in the game.

One more idea-related myth to bust while we're at it: A game designer rarely comes up with the game idea. In many cases the game idea is thrown at the design team from above. Be it from the company's CEO, the publisher who simply ordered the game at your company, the marketing team that decided that the next title should be a platform shooter with experience system "just like Skyrim" or a movie company that wants a game based on the movie they are releasing next year. In lion's share of cases, none of the designers that work on a game has actually come up with an idea for it. If you have a game idea and think that by becoming a game designer in a big company will let you bring it to life, stop thinking that.

A game designer does not need to code
I am giving this one a separate section as it is a very, very common question. The idea that a designer = coder comes from the times when small teams of people were producing games. The coder had to be a designer, a producer and ideally, a marketing genius. Nowadays it is quite unique for a designer to actually code. They do need to think logically. They do need to know what an algorithm is and even be able to think in algorithms, but they don't really need to get their hands dirty in low level programming. Sooner or later, a designer will have to learn how to script the things in the engine, but scripting is about as complicated as using MS DOS, so no real coder would call scripting programming. Therefore, programming experience is never a requirement for a game design position. If it is, you are looking at a job offer for a designer/programmer in a relatively small gamedev company.

If the designer had to code, there would have been only Two Amigos on this picture :)
Awesome image stolen from http://blog.teamtreehouse.com

What is it that you need to get a job as a Game Designer?
There are generally two ways that lead to becoming a game designer in an AAA industry. First would be to start at a different position like QA or a producer and then join the design team as soon as you prove yourself worthy and there's an opening. Second would be to get the internship or an entry-level job straight away. In both cases there's a number of things you will need to prove.

Simply having ideas is not good enough, as I think I have emphasised a few paragraphs back. You need to show that you can make your ideas work. This is what a portfolio is for. There's a lot of software nowadays that lets you easily create your own games. They come with some generic assets that you can use. There's really a lot of them:
- UDK (Unreal Development Kit)
- Unity 3D
- Construct 2
- RPG Maker
- Engine 001
You can easily google for many, many more. Both free and paid. Both basic and user-friendly and very advanced. Countless small game studios use these kits to create their games. Just choose one that looks best and create! Start with something simple and see how far you can get on your own. The further you will get, the better it will show off what you could accomplish if there was some actual game designer that could guide you. Don't worry that you're using generic assets. What counts is how you connect them. If using all this software baffles or limits you, try the good old pen and paper. Design your own universe, rpg system, board or card game! Anything that will scream out "this guy knows what it is to design a system around his ideas!". So yeah - portfolio. Get it.

If I had to choose a second most important advice it would be "experience as much of various media as you can". Swallow everything - books, movies, TV shows, music, blogs, games. Whatever the modern pop culture spits out, you lick it off the ground happily. Good or bad. I don't mean you shouldn't be critical - be as critical as you wish. The more the better actually. If you know what the second image of this article is doing in it, you are probably on a good track. As a designer, you need thousands of examples of how certain things worked in different media, how they appealed to the audience and how much fun they delivered. This will help you decide things like what topics are worthy of touching and whether it's better to go with an 8-player hot-seat or an online multiplayer. When you are interviewed for the position and a book, movie or game comes up you will get silver points for knowing it, golden points for having something interesting to say about it. And believe me - there will be titles coming up.

Read at least a few books about game design. I cannot stress the importance of this point enough. If I followed this advice two years ago, my early interviews would have gone much, much better. Following this point will let you set your head straight and actually more or less know what the game design is instead of imagining what it is. Some books worth checking out:
- Jesse Schell: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses
- Scott Rogers: Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design
- Ernest Adams: Fundamentals of Game Design
It also won't hurt to watch the popular Extra Credits series. Their episodes are short, fun, insightful and informative.

Know what's going on in technology. Gamedev is an incredibly dynamic industry. New inventions revolutionise the whole business within few short years. When things like 3D technology, motion control, touch screens or Oculus Rift happen, game designers need to already be able to use these to their advantage instead of hoping people will keep playing their games in the old way, without new possibilities.

These would be the most important things you need in order to get a job in game design. Whether you are "just" migrating from a different role within the same company or you are coming from the outside. Already being in the company obviously lets you show off your talents much more easily. And don't get concerned when all these websites that tell you that a game designer needs drawing, 3D, programming, software, storytelling, communication, presentation, marketing and whatever other skills and knowledge you can come up with. Yes, those can be very helpful, but are not always crucial and since it's an entry position job you are most probably after, they can always be learnt along the way. You have all the time in the world to try to learn everything.

Jobs in gamedev: Tester / QA

When I told my boss I wanted to write about testers, he just said "oh, boy...". When Extra Credits did an episode on game schools, James Portnow wrote "Ask the school what their hire ratio is in the industry (not including jobs in QA)". When an executive of our befriended studio visited our new office, he asked me "How many people are working here? And how many of them are QA?". As you can see, there seems to be something weird going on here. Why is QA (Quality Assurance, a more "official" name for testers) often treated like a spare wheel? Why is it such a complicated topic? 

Let's start with some undeniable facts. Compared to the other jobs in gamedev, it is relatively easy to become a tester. A vast majority of testers are in their 20's, most of them start their jobs in the first few years after finishing high schools, no university degree is needed. Creativity, art / sound / programming proficiency or even a high level gaming skills are not required on the entry levels. It's really no wonder that the job in QA is statistically the lowest paying job in gamedev. Another reason, why testers are low paid is that QA is often outsourced to low-cost countries. These outsourcing companies often give feedback of relatively low quality and importance for the developers. Apart from the average cash the developers are willing to pay, it also affects the general reputation of testers. There is also an ongoing debate in many studios, whether QA is even a part of development. There is one quite solid argument against - testers don't produce anything. On the other hand, QA is usually engaged in the development process from the early stages, it takes a significant part in it.

All these factors explain pretty well, why the QA is often treated as a completely separate department. It seems to justify why getting a job in QA isn't a measure of the game school quality. It explains a question how many QA people are working in the office, as it is easier and cheaper to hire more testers, so the number of testers can quite easily boost the number of employees, creating an illusion of a bigger studio.

Now as much as all these statements are true, they are also highly unfair for all the testers out there. Getting hired as a tester might be a bit easier than being hired as a programmer or an artist, but it doesn't mean that you can just walk in to the studio and get this job.

What are the requirements for a tester?

- you need to love games and to play a wide variety of them;
- knowing foreign languages is a real asset - the more exotic the better. You will often work with different language versions of the game - being able to find spelling errors increases your value as a tester;
- you need some proof of logical, analytical thinking - to understand how the game mechanics work in order to break it down. You have to be able to find a way to reproduce it so the developers can fix it;
- you should be really resistant to stress and routine - you will be given repetitive assignments, be ready to play the same game over and over and over again;
- you should be quite flexible - overtime is very common;
- the better you know your gaming platform, the better - only being able to run the game isn't enough. You should know about the hardware and software your platform is running. The more platforms you know (PC, PS, Xbox, Android, MacOS, iOS...) the better;
- having an eye for the detail is a must - you are supposed to catch all kinds of bugs: gameplay, visual (including lighting, physics, etc.) and sound.
- interests like art, music, game design, history, science fiction, fantasy, game theory, math, coding, creative writing, travelling, literature - all these can really come in handy.
- showing that you took part in some open (or even better - closed) beta tests can certainly be a big plus.

As you can see, it's way more demanding than it seems at the first glance. Yes, all these requirements are for the lowest paying job in gamedev. Yes, this is the job that gets so underestimated and looked over. Sadly, QA very rarely gets used the way it should. Imagine having a room full of dedicated, demanding players that aren't heavily invested in the project, since they weren't directly developing it. Sure, they might have less experience that than the game designers or artists, but still they are one of the best focus groups you could possibly dream of. Incredibly often feedback from this group is looked over or belittled. Incredibly often QA is pushed down to be just mechanical bug seekers. And that's a shame, really. In most gamedev studios QA is dependant on all other departments, never the other way round.

A great thing about guys in QA is that they are always ready to help. It's usually the youngest team in the studio and a lot of testers treat their current position as their first step towards their dream job in game development. That's why they love being included in all kinds of activities outside testing. For example, when we were preparing a trailer for our game, we weren't sure about one of the elements, we made a focus group out of our testers. Not only they were really happy to help and share their opinions, but also they gave us some very valuable points and insights we would never gather all by ourselves.

How does work as a tester look?

There is actualy a movie (heavily sponsored by Konami, Microsoft and Mattel), where the protagonist is a video game tester. The movie's name is "Grandma's Boy". It is quite fun and worth watching at least to see how hot Linda Cardellini looks in a business suit or how hillarious Jonah Hill is when he sucks on a pair of plastic tits for a few hours straight. However, if you want to base your opinion of gamedev industry on it... Well, don't. It's like learning woodcutting from Monty Python's lumberjack song.

The biggest mistake you can make when it comes to being a tester is thinking it's about playing games. It is about testing one game. Over and over. For a long period of time. And you don't even get to enjoy a game that's finished. You get a half-product, that is more or less playable, often with placeholder textures, basic lighting, generic music and dialogues written by whoever took a pen and paper to their bathroom break. If you are a player that gets easily annoyed when a game just randomly crashes and you need to go through the same gameplay elements again without being able to turn off the long cutscene... It's not a job for you.

What's more, while playing the game, you are obliged to find all the issues you are able to and describe them in some bug-tracking system, for the other departments to review. It requires not only patience and resistance to routine tasks, but also lots of precision. You also never know when a new task will arrive and you may rest assured that most of them will be "for yesterday". This means that no matter which part of the studio is crunching, the QA is always crunching with it.

There is of course the plus side. You get an access to the new technologies long before they hit the market. You get to work in an amazing, young team, as testers are usually the best integrated parts of a gamedev studio, who work hard, but play even harder. Being a tester also means you have access to a lot of knowledge that would be otherwise very hard to get anywhere else. Since QA works with all departments, it also learns from all of them.

Ok, let's start with QA... What next?

For many young developers, being a tester is a starting point in their career. It certainly is one of the easiest ways to get your foot in the door. QA is probably always the team with the biggest rotation. Many people quit because of the stress, amount of work and because the reality of being a tester isn't how they imagined it to be. On the other hand, people do manage to get into other teams if they want to, and there is no real rule where they might end up. If a person shows some talent and manages to catch the eye of the lead game designer, art director, head writer or whoever is in charge of the target team, there is a much bigger chance they could become a junior quest designer (or a junior writer, junior concept artist, junior level designer, etc.), than if they applied from the outside.

But let's not treat testing like an unpleasant mid-point for thei aspiring designers. There are also people who live and breathe QA and whose personal development takes place entirely in the testing area. These people specialize. What are the higher positions in there?
- Senior Tester - he is the more experienced tester who is often responsible for teaching the basics to Junior Testers. Think of a Senior Tester like a special task commando who becomes a sergeant if less experienced people need some advice or training.
- Localization Tester - a tester who is fluent in foreign language(s) and is responsible for verification of localizations
- Compliance Specialist - something you won't learn elsewhere. Tester responsible for preparing the game to meet all the certification requirements for a release for a specific console.
- QA Team Leader - responsible for planning the tests, distributing the tasks among testers, management of the bug-tracking database, solving problems, communication between departments and preparing reports of the current project status.

The QA department is like a goalkeeper - they are rarely praised, often blamed for any fuckup. And not only by the development. When "more aware" players find a bug in a game, they think "oh, someone in QA didn't do their job". In reality, testers find much more bugs than the other departments are able to fix to deliver the game on time. Some problems just take too much time to solve compared to how critical they are.

If reading all this didn't scare you off, then you just might have it in you to become a tester. After all, it's one of the easiest ways to get into a gamedev, and I can assure you, it is an exciting industry. Being in QA is probably one of the biggest learning opportunities and one of the toughest gamedev life tests. If you dream of making big AAA titles and are in the beginning of your professional career, take a game you really, seriously hate and spend 2-3 hours with it every day for a few months. If that didn't kill you, you should apply for a job of a tester!

Quality of this article is assured by Raczyn, my awesome QA Team Leader - great thanks!

Jobs in gamedev: Producer (part 1)

Just lately this noob has been promoted to an Associate Producer (yay!). After nine months on the job, doing my best to coordinate the production tasks I think I can fairly certainly say... Damn, I still don't really know what being a producer really is all about. Therefore, I am putting "part 1" in the title, but part 2 won't follow straight after it. I will probably write part 2 in a year or two, just to revise and maybe contradict the statements I will make today.

So many producers...

If you look at all the "kinds" of producers, you can find out such names as Producer, Executive Producer, Junior Producer, Associate Producer, Senior Producer, or even such weird thingies as Art Producer, Design Producer or Technical Producer. What is the difference between them? In many cases, it strongly depends on the company, but generally speaking, the main difference is the level of competencies and responsibilities. The core concept of the job stays the same whether you are a Junior Producer or Executive Producer. The only real difference is the number of decissions you will be expected to make and broadness of topics you will have to cover.

A producer in gamedev is kinda like a manager

In this case it means that he's as much everyone's boss as he is everyone's bitch. From all the info I've gathered so far, his role varies greatly throughout the life of the project. Producer needs to know what everyone in the project is doing and why. He manages the priorities of the tasks and is responsible for achieving the milestones within planned deadlines and budget. This part is almost like any other project management in any given company. On the other hand, however, producer can often be the guy that does things others don't have time to do. It can be anything from covering for a sick animator at a motion capture session, through attending meetings that just popped out, running the team's Twitter, helping with the game's slogan or logotype, to all the things people in the trenches don't have time to do while crunching: ordering lunch, helping QA check out the latest build or the most basic and tedious jobs, like renaming files, creating backups or watching the progress bar of the compiling build as the programmer gets his 15 minutes of rest. It is also quite safe to say that if there is a task where nobody knows whose responsibility it is, it is most probably producer's.

Job of a producer, despite its name, is one of the few jobs in development that doesn't produce any assets for the game. Producer doesn't code, doesn't animate, write, design or draw. His job is to make sure everyone who actually produces assets, does the job they are supposed to be doing. There may be moments where a producer gets to add something to the game, like a line of dialogue or some idea for a feature, but it is never in his job description.

Producer = an universal translator

You need some serious people skills for this job. It is pretty common that people involved in the project are all on the same page, all wanting the same thing, and still arguing over it, mostly because they are just miscommunicating. That's where the producer can shine, serving as a facilitator, translator or decission maker. In many cases, instead of making a decission, producer's role is to make the right people talk about the right thing and just observe the result, eventually, if it's necessary, choose one of two options that are presented.

The way I see it, the aim of every producer should be to speak as many languages as it is humanely possible. I'm not talking foreign languages, although English is a must and man, I wish I knew Chinese and Hindi. There are other, more important languages though. A producer should be able to speak business, art, programming, marketing, legal, PR, hardware, software, design, poetry, math and depending what kind of game he's working on, languages like medieval weaponry, womens clothing, dogs, space travel or alien mutants ninja hot dogs. Why? Because anyone in the team can approach the producer and everyone expects him to understand what they are talking about. So he should be the nerdiest nerd when among nerds and the most reliable business partner when with investors.

I remember when I got one of the first e-mails from a guy responsible for, among other things, compatibility of the engine with APIs. The mail was somewhere around 10 sentences long and I have spent at least an hour deciphering it with help of Google and Wikipedia. And well, I managed to reply with some moderate understanding of the subject and ask questions that actually got us closer to reaching some conclusions and - in turn - solution. Sure, I could have replied "please tell me what you mean", but then I wouldn't be a discussion partner for him, and that's probably the last thing someone on a producer-related position wants.

Knowledge isn't the key - understanding is

Obviously, it is impossible for the producer to know everything: every detail of every task and every bit of everyone's job. Producer never has the greatest knowledge in any field. In any given aspect of game development there is always someone who knows more and better. That's why the producer first listens, then listens, then talks. One great thing is - as long as you are able to understand what people are telling you, it's fine. Nobody really expects you to have the in-depth comprehension of the subject.

I think that being a producer requires as much humility as audacity. On one hand, you need to know your own limitations and be able to trust the judgement of people responsible for their parts, on the other, you often get thrown into situations or dragged to meetings where you have a really faint idea what's going on and still need to take part in a productive way. Quick learning is probably one of the most important skills for a producer.

Great place to... start?

Paradoxically, an entry-level producer is a really great position to start your gamedev career. Sure, it is pretty demanding right from the start and you most probably need some prior project management experience, but it has one great perk no other position has. You can learn a lot about every element of making games. Being in the middle of it all, meeting with all the people inside your team and outside of it, you have the opportunity to see pretty much everything there is to be seen. In a mere 9 months on the almost-producer job, I was taking part in countless visual art feedbacks, some music feedbacks, a motion capture session (also as an actor!), a creative session regarding the story, business meetings regarding the future of the project, QA tasks, focus tests analysis, cutscenes planning... And if I wanted and/or had any basic skills to do so, I could have tried out any kind of 2D or 3D software or played with the engine. I can't imagine any other position that would enable me to learn this much in equally short period of time.

Jobs in gamedev: Concept Artist

Job of a concept artist seems pretty self-explanatory - it is a person that draws the stuff that then gets used in the game. Since gaming magazines and gaming sites often show these concept arts, people seem to have a pretty good idea what skillset is needed to land this kind of job and what the job itself is all about. Frankly speaking, there isn't that much mystery to it, although there might be some elements that might surprise some of you. They surely surprised me.

What is a Concept Art?

Concept arts are basically drawings or paintings that then get transformed into 2D or 3D objects used in the game. Nowadays, 2D is a relic in AAA industry, but it is still being used in indie and mobile games. 

Concept arts are often confused with illustrations. Origin of this confusion is very simple. When you google for "concept arts" you get flooded with nice, detailed promo art illustrations. These are not concept arts. These are pictures produced for marketing purposes, to draw attention of investors or customers and were never actually used as a reference for assets that are in the game. In many cases, they were painted basing on the 3D assets, near the end of game production.

The purpose of a concept art is to focus on the aspects that will then help produce game assets. Concept arts may show a character, environment, architecture details, props, weapons, armors, clothes, general mood, colors - pretty much anything, but they always focus on one element, ignoring the rest. If it is character, the elements of clothing and anatomy will be well-defined, but there won't be any background. Architecture concepts will bring out pieces of walls, finishings of roofs, etc. but not characters running on the walls. For general mood, the concept will not go into details, it will be a mostly blurry image that shows colors, lights and general placement of environment elements.

Wouldn't an illustration be able to provide all these elements? Sure, but in most cases it would cause problems, like:
- composition of the illustration would make it hard to catch the proportions
- some elements would be underdefined or not visible
- some elements would be too dark to see and/or the colors would be impossible to read because of the lighting used.
- making an illustration takes a lot of time - instead of finishing one illustration, the artist could make at least 5 drawings that actually show what needs to be shown.

Look at the Tomb Raider art above. It is really cool and would probably make a good mood concept, but a mood concept wouldn't need a character in the center. Especially one that takes forever to draw. It couldn't be an environment concept, because it only shows a piece of rock and a tiny building in the background. It mostly shows a character, but if you were to make textures for it - would this art tell you what colors you need to use? If you were to model it - would it be easy to get the proportions right, when the character is in a custom pose and perspective? Now look below at a true concept art from Metal Gear Rising and how it deals with showing the character. Based on this, a 3D artist can actually do a model for the game, and that's the goal of a good concept art.

What does a Concept Artist do?

Imagine the Art Director comes to you and tells you to draw a pink panther. But not just any pink panther. One that is cuddly, commercially attractive, with realistic proportions and looks nothing like THE Pink Panther.  Then the Game Designer comes to you and tells you that gameplaywise, this panther needs to walk on only 3 legs, because in 4th paw it will be wielding a bazooka. And then you learn that all the enemies in the game will be pink panthers and all need to follow the same guidelines and all have to be different and easily distinguishable. Not so easy, huh? But that's pretty much what the job is mostly about.

The harsh truth is concept artists rarely have much to say about the game's art direction. They mostly draw what they are told to draw, their creativity gets cornered and it's working more in the area of "what kind of leg should I draw" rather than "should this characters have legs or not?" Don't fret though, the guy that's giving you directions most probably started just like you. There's a light at the end of this tunnel and a lot of knowledge and experience on the way.

The artists often have their areas of expertise - they either draw environment or characters, sometimes they draw both. Many arts are drawn basing on references and artists do spend a considerable amount of time googling for them. There are also DTP-related tasks, like designing the game covers and overpainting the screenshots. Yes, most of the screenshots you see in the gaming press are actually corrected by artists to give them better lighting, colors and details. You may now consider yourself lied to by the whole industry. Some concept artists actually get to do some promotional arts and produce an illustration or two. Another task is feedbacking models that are being produced based on their concepts.

What do you need to get (and keep) a job as a Concept Artist?

Simply knowing how to draw isn't enough here. Concept artist needs a tremendous amounts of creativity to be able to come up with dozens of variations of the same elements. You would also need lots of humility and patience. Not every concept gets accepted - at first, if 1 in 10 gets used, you may consider yourself lucky. You will have to learn to discard your drawings without sorrow or regret. You will have to accept your drawings being discarded without anger.

And even after your concepts get modelled and after they get to be shown in one of the game's many versions, a complete turn in the art direction may happen. The whole mexican town with The Three Amigos you have designed can be thrown away and you will be asked to draw The Three Musketeers and a few districts of Paris instead. Seriously. That happens more than you may think. If you wouldn't be able to deal with it, look for some other job.

Versatility is a great asset too. You won't be lucky enough to draw tits all the time. On the upside, there's a big chance you will be drawing great stuff anyway - ninjas, cowboys, demons, pirates, spaceships, deserted islands, medieval fortresses, toilets from Pulp Fiction and underwater cities. Games usually want to be cool, so the stuff you will be concepting needs to be cool as well.

Good news for last - you do not need an art degree. All you really need is a good portfolio. Degrees don't draw, people do. Some education in fields that get used in games may often pay off though. Studios can certainly benefit from people knowing a thing or two about anatomy, architecture, history, interior design, etc. It's kinda like my mother used to tell me: to be a journalist, don't learn journalism. You know how to write. Learn something you will be able to write about.


Many thanks to my awesome Art Director for giving me hints for this post.