WIGI Conference Notes Part 5 - The Executive Perspective

... continued from Part 4 ...

Panelists: Samantha Ryan from Monolith Productions, Stuart Moulder from Wild Tangent, Gano Haine from LimeLife, Sheri Hargus from Her Interactive
Moderator: Laura Fryer from Microsoft Game Studios

This is in some ways a "higher level" talk in that these are high level executives sharing their thoughts and experiences. It was a nice way to end the day, kind of looking at the future and other aspects of the industry. I'll do my notes here in more of a summary format as well.

In general, the panelists are hopeful about the game industry's future. For one thing, there are more and more platforms for playing games, so all of them require people to port the games for that hardware. Also, so many people game using electronics these days. They are expecting games to become more and more integrated into the living room experience as well.

The good and bad news is that while programmers have historically been the biggest growth and employement area in the game industry, art and design is already in the process of taking over. In fact, programmers are already the minority in many companies. They are becoming more the enablers for the creatives, helping to deliver the art and design people's vision, rather than the driving forces behind features and look. Interestingly, this drive toward huge and complex is also changing due to cell phones and other mobile technology, with the game industry in a way splitting between delivering to small targets (mobile) and large ones (big fancy gaming units and PCs). Flash games also fall under the smaller, more nimble game development that's getting more popular today.

Game revenue is shifting more from brick and mortar retail to online transations. Since games take longer and longer to create, the companies are also looking for ways to cut costs. Programming is already being outsourced, with those who can customize existing tools being the most valuable on home turf. Since storytelling requires extensive understanding of cultural references, it is anticipated that this aspect of games will be harder to outsource. In order to attract larger audiences over time, the storytelling aspect is going to have to include more diverse characters and topics. Focusing on just a certain demographic ignores huge segments of potential customers. The more diverse and interesting the games get, the more designers will be attracted to joining the industry.

Ways to fix the problem of there being way too many games that are just clones of each other include:

1. More diverse content. This draws more diverse gamers, as discussed, and more diverse creators.


2. Larger companies need to create scholarships to help emerging, traditional education-based game programming cirriculum take off.


3. The industry needs to be more creative on where they go to recruit talent. Always recruiting from the same source means that many of the games will end up similar.

Those who are looking for jobs or to stay in the industry:

1. Taking a chance on a smaller company can help you get into the industry and climb the ladder, but of course there are risks. The company could go under, for example.


2. Biggest challenge isn't what to do to get your first job. It's actually what to do when you lose it. Expect to get laid off.


3. At one speaker's first job in games, she was told: "Don't get involved in the dramas here. There are dramas here every day. Don't get involved in the dramas here. Just love the games."


4. You won't succeed unless you're a risk-taker. It helps to be an optimist too, and to have confidence in your company and co-workers. Ultimately, everyone in the game industry is a risk-taker to an extent.
   


5. Remember that games are never boring because you can't know it all. One speaker said he loves getting to deal with art, tech, design, and so many different aspects of things.

Expect more fitness-related games to appear. Virtual reality, however, tends to make everyone throw up. (Personally, I can't play first person shooters, they make me motion sick.)

My favorite quote of the day was from Gano Haine: Working in games is "an obsessive activity performed by obsessive people so people can obsess over it."


That's it ... thanks for reading! Hope you found it interesting, I sure did.

Edit, 17 Jan 2006:

I found a loose sheet of paper that had fallen out of my notebook with more notes. Here's the gist:

A huge systemic problem is where pre-production and up-front design tasks get short-changed in the schedule. This factor causes a lot of insanity because the game wasn't thought through well enough. Also, when management knows that crunch time will be eight weeks long rather than two weeks, this is a huge problem. People function a lot better under heavy pressure and long hours for two weeks and eight. Worse, often management doesn't tell anyone, meaning that people aren't expecting it. Sharing the "why" with employees really helps morale, too.

One person asked how to help stop the insanity. An answer was to get rid of Christmas, which is still 80% of sales, so games have to be ready for then.

Also, a note on women and games. The biggest area for female gamers is MMORPGs and "casual games" (think Tetris).