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Archive for the ‘Gaming’ Category

Making Games Talents and beyond

Sunday, October 17th, 2010

Yesterday I “Making Games Talents” finally was held in my area (at least near enough to attend it) and the company set that was presenting itself contained all the company’s I ever wanted to work for: Related Designs, Crytek and Spellbound. First of all I’d like to thank Game Star (and IDG) and especially Heiko Klinge for making this event possible. It means a lot to us crazy devs, designers and artists to have the possibility to actually shake some hands instead of just writing one application after another and get ignored. This way we can show the company’s why we matter and why we stick out of the crowd. It was a quite rainy day yesterday and the first hard thing was to find the place ;o). Honestly guys.. next time a better description would be nice (or was this the first test?). However during my search I met some people who where also looking for the right place and so we made a team effort out of it. We sticked together for a while and met again later on. What will become out of this group is uncertain, but we exchanged e-mail addresses and you might here from us again (On this blog or maybe even on a bigger scale) ;o).  I first attended some lectures. After that I tried to get started with shaking hands. Getting to someone wasn’t really the easy part. Because the company’s like Crytek, Related Designs and Spellbound where all but overrun. I took my place in the line and finally had the chance to shake the hand of the CEO from Related Designs (if that isn’t already something ;o) ). Sadly though they don’t have a position open for a junior programmer at the moment. He took my portfolio and wrote some infos down. To bad. I’d really enjoyed working for them! The Crytek booth was badly crowded, but I tried my luck. When I was finally in front of the booth I met Cortney. He’s talent manager at Crytek. He took the time to look at the game I developed together with the GDIG at FH-Trier and listen to my explanations. I found him to be quite patient and friendly (considering what he had to all day). Last but not least I went to the Spellbound booth to present my case. They also where very patient (considering my notebook crashed before I could start the game and they had to wait on it for quite some time) and especially very friendly. All in all my hopes have somewhat risen (concerning GamesCom they have rocketed). Now comes the hardest part: wait and see. In the meantime I’ll look for more opportunities to get into the gaming industry. Keep your thumbs crossed!

Gamescom or Why the gaming industry is bleeding out

Monday, August 30th, 2010

So.. I finally made it to gamescom this year.  Last times this event took place I was buried under tons of university work. This time I could shake myself loose. Not only for fun reasons as some of you might think, but because I want to become a game developer (yes I’m positive and yes I AM crazy). GameStar was hosting a career booth for all the crazy people to get some insight into game development. So this was the place I spend the most of my time. But I get ahead of myself. The first thing I did of course was looking around a bit to see what the industry has to offer this year. I was dismayed to say the least. Basically there are 4 genres which you can buy games from at the moment: Browser Games (boring), MMOG (even more boring), Casual Games (boring like hell) or the 1924739th continuation of the “new” whatsoever. There wasn’t a SINGLE NEW idea on that damn exhibition. OK OK maybe I missed something.. after all I wasn’t there to buy games.. I wanted to get into the Industry. So back to the GameStar booth. There I was.. sitting in the audience of one talk after another and trying to hold back on my tears. One Browser Game Company after another came forward to show how NICE and SPLENDID their games (which all looked and DID the same) where and why we should work for them. Excuse me? Where are the GAME COMPANY’S? I mean the ones that MATTER!?! That made the gaming industry the way it is today!? Guess what? They either make browser games now or are finished! To make it short: The gaming industry is nearly dead. Nothing new.. only titles which where successful in the last 21239 years are continued and the rest is just a pile of browser and mmog stuff. What have we come to :-(. Don’t get me wrong.. I understand the standpoint of the industry in this matter.. making browser and mmo games is much saver that spending millions on new stuff which might not work out. The problem is with the gamers! We have gone gaga! We let the industry feed us with ever the same content and still keep on using and buying this stuff! After this shock I was looking forward to the EA talk (imagine that). But guess what? This one gave me the death blow. De facto they told all people sitting in the audience that you can only work in the gaming industry if you work in the gaming industry.. a coterie! I always knew they would go mad some day! Now they have! That I’m disappointed is an understatement. Disenchanted is more like it. What have we come to?