Game Dev Business

So I attended a networking seminar and afterwards the Orlando IGDA meeting yesterday. One of the speakers there spoke about starting an supporting your own small business in the industry. That, along with the networking talk by the other speaker, got me thinking about my career choices. Right now, I’m stuck between basically three opportunities. All have their own advantages and disadvantages, and it’s getting really tough to decide what’s best. However, the biggest problem right now is money, even with my loans helping me out. If this is a problem now, I’m pretty sure they are going to be even more of an issue after graduation, and therefore I’m leaning more towards one of those options. However I’m still undecided. I’m trying to get an appointment set up with career development to not only help me with getting some sort of income, but to also make this decision- because I cannot trust myself to make this decision on my own, given my terrible history with finances, and pretty much all decisions in general =/ Anywho, I’m getting close to graduation and the first huge job search time, so wish me luck guys

Passion

So…I’ve been having a few interesting discussions lately with classmates about game design and basically games in general. It surprised me coming to this school how ridiculously unmotivated some people were. I had been dreaming about going to this school for years, I’m on record for calling and applying in the 7th grade =/ funny I basically got accepted that long ago. It’s just strange to me how one could come to this school, spending so much money (as most if not all scholarships do not apply here), and not really caring about what they’re here for. But this far into the program most of those kids have left, however an unsettling number of those remain. I’m not going to lie, the most disappointing thing at this school (aside from schedule changes from what I was told would be here) was the amount of lack of effort. It only matters to a certain degree how smart/clever one is in how well you do in school – especially at an entertainment-driven school like Full Sail. However, some students tend to spend more time cramming in at the last minute and only doing what they have to to get the grade as if it were any other degree they were trying to get. I know I’m practically whining here but it just hits me at least once a week. The whole reason a took a month off about 6-10 months ago was because of the fact that I felt basically disappointed in my class. No one had put any effort into our first 1 month individual game project. Although I’m quite aware it’s not any different out there in the industry, I just hope that I will be one of the lucky ones to work with people who love what they do, like myself.

springBreak.End(); finalProject.Resume();

So I had a very eventful spring break…well at least an eventful first day of break, and an overly eventful last day. As far as work getting done, there wasn’t much more than research. I did get my hands on copies of Nvidia’s GPU Gems 2 and 3. They are extremely interesting but almost a little over my head in some of their implementations. Not impossible, just not exactly favorable for a five month development cycle for something like final project. I’m reasonably excited about getting back to work, although not as excited as I should be. This probably has something to do with the 8 hour drive I made back to Florida yesterday, and not getting to bed until somewhere around 2 a.m. Anywho, I plan on getting some design stuff up on here soon, I just seem to have misplaced the notes I had taken, and don’t have a working copy of photoshop

Spring Break

So…spring break starts today in about…3 hours. This is something that has come up in our group, as to whether or not we are working over break or not, and so far we’ve all agreed that the extent of the work that will be done is research. This is good for me, because I bought a World of Warcraft account yesterday, and plan on taking full advantage of it over the next week

Well  that’s about it for my break, aside from the fact that I’ll be doing it all at home in South Carolina instead of Florida. Lecture today was interesting. It was more of a discussion on potential risks during development, such as gold plating and having a simply “un-fun” game. Gold plating is a weird one for me, because I understand that spending too much time on a feature is risky for the project, however I also feel that the more polish the better. Anywho we learned a lot about risks, documentation, proper handling of the two, including a “fail-safe” process.

Also, I’ve had a lot of awesome game design ideas going through my head recently and I can’t wait to blawg about them eventually O.o but yeah…that’s about it for this one.

Game Production Architecture – Final Project Month 2

For starters, I’m going to apologize to my non-existent readers about the “promise” of coming features, and then the failure to follow through. Now for the excuses…So I just entered Final Project here at Full Sail University: a 5 month long process of game production and development. This involves programmers, artists, and internal producers that are all pulled from their respective programs here at the school to work collaboratively on this project. As you can probably imagine, this is a pretty involving and time-consuming process, and thus brings with it my excuse for my lack of support inthe bloggerverse. Over this past first month of Final Project, some misfortunes came myway. Not the worst, but not exactly favorable either. To be blunt, I got sick. Twice. The first of which was not too bad, but because of the laughably contagious viruses that traverse through the students here at this school, I thought it best to stay athome and trust in the almighty nyquil. The second time – just this last weekend in fact - I contracted bronchaitis, or asthma, or something. The doctor still isn’t sure, but tobe safe prescribed me three different pills and an inhaler. Anywho, excuses aside, I’ve decided to take this sick session of blogging…bad puns ftw…to talk a little bit about communication and my team. While this is the most commonlyaddressed issue in team building books, lectures, and meetings it still remains to beone of the most common problems as well. The reason is obvious, but not so obviouslyfixed either. Some people just don’t like communication. Those that do, do not alwayslike it for the right reasons. I’m a Pisces. Or a blue, or a horse, or whatever you useto stereotype personalities. As such I tend to be the one that worries about the individualsmore than the team itself, but as it turns out I find that they usually go hand in hand. As long as everyone is happy individually, the team usually functions better and everythingruns smoothly. As a team we haven’t really had many issues so far, except for a few minor disagreements. These disagreements are usually over minor issues that – at least in my opinion – were never really issues until they were made so. And, without naming names here, I’m pretty confident that the individual that brought up these disagreements (and yes it wasalmost always the same individual) might have some grudge against either being put in this team, or against the particular pitch that was picked over the other pitch we presented. Another reason my also be because as a group we kind of skipped our “storming” phase and have therefore never had the chance to rage out our differences. Anywho, I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say here except try to keep everyone in your group/company/partnership/guild happy as individuals because in the end the cause of most group issues stem from the individuals themselves and/or lack of communication over those issues.

Smartphone Revolution

So I’m officially a smartphone fag. Considering I’m using my Droid to update my blog right now, you can probably imagine. My comp is now dead to me…besides the fact that I can do everything on my phone that I can do on a comp, and I have most definitely been taking advantage of that, my comp’s display is busted and the power cord died for the third time. So yeah…blog updates will happen eventually, probably from my phone. Anywho I have to fanfag rant a bit. Today and yesterday I spent my two four hour lectures taking notes with GDocs, chatting on Meebo, browsing, reading rss and all my social feeds through the Slidescreen home replacement app, and streaming pandora all in super fast 3g – in comparison to our unbearably slow school wifi connection on the laptop. And with this phone it’s just as fast and even more efficient thanks to this nifty hardkey keyboard and capacitive touchscreen combo; for me at least. Anywho…thank you google! For all your amazing webapps and browser integration and this kickass multi-process OS that leaves loading times to an often non-existing low. /endrant

Feature Creep

The A.D.D. has got me…yet again. Anyone who knows me knows this is a pretty big issue of mine, but at least I see it myself. Anywho, the relevancy of that statement is a bit more than you think, most likely, mostly because my blogging consistency is probably not going to be up to my initial conviction…so I thought I’d at least give a little outline for the next couple of upcoming – or at least planned – posts.

I plan on going on plenty of these nerd rants here, most applying to the game industry. Being a programmer, the tech rants are bound to come out eventually, but I would like to use this blog as a chance to organize my thoughts more, and release my ideas more steadily than my usual approach; that is more akin to note scratching than anything else.

For starters, I’d like to talk about something more general that applies to most people in the game industry whether they believe it or not, and that is the game’s Design. No matter if they’ve had a hand in the overall design of the game or not – everything an artist, programmer, music/sound designer, or writer does has an effect on the flow of the game and the player’s eventual experience.

The first subject I would like to tap is the action RPG, something I’ve personally felt has not made any drastic changes in a while, or even been seen traditionally in a while for that matter, and is in a desperate need for one. While some of the issues I address in the coming “Features” or posts could, in fact, stretch across multiple genres. However, this is the one that shares the most complete association with my first group of issues, and therefore is easier for me to use as an example.

For my first Feature List I’d like to include the following said “Examples” to branch design issues and eventual “Solutions”, Solutions being a simple gameplay/tech design that I think best addresses most, if not all, of the issues I’ve pointed out in the appointed Feature.

Feature List 1:

1. Action RPG
2. the Casual game
3. Puzzle
4. Strategy
5. Shooter

While these may seem to not cover very much of anything, this is completely intentional. Each of these very broad genres/subgenres will have a more robust and complete assessment  than these generic titles suggest. As I go through each I will also provide a somewhat incomplete outline before each “release”. An example for, say, the Action RPG is as follows:

• Attack/Animation Flow(combos)
• Graceful Strategy and Action Fusing
• Music/Sound Integration
• Storytelling through Actions

Another fad I intend to follow is including some type of storytelling or music/sound integration with most of the genres I intend to cover. This is because these are both very ambitious game features that have mostly untapped potential; and that could, in my opinion, potentially reinvent said genres.

Sigh…anywho these are in the works so dun worrii gaiz! It’s K….they’ll be here soon.

O hai!

–Edit– I’m not sure why….but this post has an ’09 timestamp. It’s a tarp I say…but I swear it was done 02/14/10…just sayin’ — Edit –

Hello to all of you out there in the interwebs. This is my first serious attempt at a blog, or any other somewhat published writing. For a brief little overview of who I am and what I’m about, you need only read a bit further, so you can decide if I have anything interesting you might want to hear.

My name is Stephen Ringer, and I am a current student at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida. I’m enrolled in the Game Development Bachelor’s degree. This is something I have dreamed about doing for a long time; you can hear first hand from my admitions officer here at Full Sail who talked to me when I was maybe 14. Hearing this, you can probably imagine how much the Game Industry has affected me and still affects me to this day, like any form of media or entertainment does for almost anyone else. Growing up, before I had the magic that was the Gameboy Color and Pokemon Red, I had many other passions in life, all pertaining to the Entertainment Industry. Some include drawing, piano and drums – which I played religiously for at least eight years – as well as fantasy and the occasional sci-fi novel.

Being a Pisces, I guess you could say the planets have affected me in their own way – giving me the labels of A.D.D., dreamer, emo – pretty much anything unpopular but still somehow tied to the majority of the entertainment industry. I’ve sad how I never really got into writing, but I never said I didn’t enjoy it. Writing has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, if not a very experienced one.

Now that I’m rambling…as usual…I’ll shorten it up a bit. As a person, I pride myself in my abstract sense of humor. If something is funny to someone without being too offensive or simply too stupid for my attention span to handle, I’ll probably enjoy it just as much – if not more than – anyone else out there. A favorite of mine being the awkwar – Ricky Gervais is a genius.

Something else I might rant a bit on here is technology. I like tech. Any new advancement in technology – more specifically computers, cell phones, or internet – is an immediate attention stealer for me. I can’t help it and I don’t know why.

Anything else you want to know, comment or social network me up. I’m pretty much on the interwebs 24/7