Unit 13 - Understanding The Game Industry: September 2016

Friday 30 September 2016

Task 2 - Job Roles

Creative Development

Game Designer

The Game Designer has a big say in how the game turns out, he helps come up with the characters, settings and game play, their duties are to create a game in a limitless environment where anything is possible. The avergae game designer in the UK (with some experience) can earn upto £19,000 with that rising to about £35,000.

Markus Persson is a game designer who is most recognizable as notch, created the company Mojang and helped develop Minecraft which was later sold to Microsoft for $2.5 billion.

Level Editor

Also known as level designer, this person is responsible for the oversll architecture for the game, he creates the layout for the game, the atmosphere of the game is usually set out by the level editor who designs the game with help from the artists.

The level designer for 'Super Mario Galaxy' was a collection of 5 people: Futoshi Shirai, Daisuke tsujimura, Haruka kakinuma, Ryutaro kanno and Toshihiro Kawabata who helped to develop a very good game.

Lead Artist

Sometimes known as the Art Director, this role is responsible for the entire look of the game, without this person the game would have no visuals, while working with the producer, the artists create the environment of which the game is set, the characters, etc. He also has to ensure that the team is in control of the budget and is on time for the deadline.
The average salary for a lead artist for a game £35,000 with that rising to about £60,000 with experience.
The lead artist for 'The Last of Us' was Nate Wells who was incharge of developed a game with amazing visuals

Technical Artist

The technical artists job is to act as a link between the artist and the programmer, their main criteria is to ensure a game can be incorporated into a game, the role is relatively new to the games industry but is becoming very important as PC and console hardware becomes tougher.

The technical artist can earn up to the same amount as the lead artist.
The art technical director for 'Assassins creed 1' was Danny Oros who's job was to implement the art on the PC.

Artist

The artists work with the Lead Artist to create the visuals for the game from the scenery and objects to characters and clothing, they start by creating concept art for the game and sometimes implement this into a 3D model.
The main artists involved with The Last of Us were Erick Pangilinan and Nate Wells who created a game with amazing visuals, the concept art for 'The Last of Us' was astounding.

Animator

The animators main focus is to bring life to the characters and the portrayal of movement within the game. They work alongside the art team to provide a great experience for the players. Because it can be a complex combination of movements, the animators make extensive libraries so that they can reuse the animations for each character.
The leads in charge for 'Call of Duty - Modern Warfare' were Mark Grigsbury and Paul Messerly and they helped to developed a very good game.

Audio Engineer

The Audio Engineer is responsible for every sound in the game, they create the soundtrack, sound effects and the games action such as, a gun firing or an explosion going off, things like character voices, sounds of a crowd or a car driving past are all the responsibility of the sound engineers.

The Audio Engineer can earn around £30,000 - £50,000 depending on how much experience they had

(for a AAA game that is).
The 'Call of Duty - Black ops' senior audio engineer was Stephen McCaul and with his team they developed all the sound for a very good game.

Technical Development

Game Programmer

The Game Programmer is at the main of the game, he runs the code that runs the games dynamics. Once they tested the code they fix the bugs that it has, code is added on all platforms ( PC, Xbox, PlayStation, etc.). As the code gets more complex the size of the group of programmers increases, the sometimes may work on specific jobs like the physics of the game. Beginners can earn around £19,000 to £25,000.
The team of six programmers for 'Gears of War' were Laurent Delayen, Jeff Farris, Rob Mclaughlin, Amit Mahajan, Stephen Superville and Martin Sweitzer, who all conributed to coding the game and fixed all the bugs.

Lead Game Programmer

The lead Programmer is the head of the other Programmers, he makes sure that everything within the team is running smoothly, whilst also doing the duties to better the development of the game, if a member of the team doesn't spot a bug he can step in and point it out.
For being a team leader, this role can earn you up to £70,000 +.
The lead programmer for Gears of War was Ray Davis, who with his team made an outstanding game.

Project Implementation

Project Manager/Producer

The Project Manager is in charge of the well being and successful delivery of the game, they control how well the game comes out and whether it is on time and on budget. They function in between the team and act as a link between everyone. They have a basic understanding everyone's role. Before the production starts for the game, the project manager has to find the specifications and the targets that have to be met by a certain date.

This job has an average pay of £62,000 because they are responsible for the financial status of the game and how well it works i the end.

Assistant Producer

The Assistant/junior Producer works with the team to the delivery of the game is on time and that the game is at its highest quality possible. The Assistant producer will work between the marketing team and the production team and help them to the best of their abilities, the roles can vary in the particular product they're developing. Some of the main tasks include, task and milestone planning and tracking.

External Producer

The External Producer is responsible for the delivery of the game whilst working externally from the development team. He works close to the internal producer who is part of the development of the game. This role acts like a consultant who advises the game developer without having to deal with the day-to-day problems. He is the go between for the developers and the producers.

Creative Director

This role is key during the development process of the game, he oversees any high-level decisions that are being made about the game that could affect how the game looks or is played. Not all companies employ Creative directors and instead just stick to have lead programmers or lead artists.

The Creative Director can earn anywhere between £28,000 and £83,000.

Quality Assurance

QA Tester

Quality assurance testers play a vital role, they test, debug the product and suggest ways for the game to become better. Acting as the games first audience, they find all the bugs and little glithces in the game before it is then shipped out. The are responsible for assuring the quality of the game. They work in teams and usually play together. This is a tough task and often take up a lot of work hours.

The QA tester has an average pay of £35,500 a year but this can change depending on how often you test games.
The QA tester for 'Assassins Creed 1' was Adrian Simpetru who tested the game for bugs and explained how the game could be improved in the long run.

Business Development

Public Relations Manager

The Public Relation manager deals with helping clients and tries to persuade people to buy the product that is being sold. These people come up with the stratergies to sell and promote the upcoming game, they have different wayas of doing this, things like: showing off thier game at events like E3 and gamescon, also TV advertisiments if their budget will allow it. This is a tough task and often take up a lot of work hours.

Product Manager

The product manager is there to help create marketing campaigns to help push the amount of sales the game gets. They typical work for game publishers like Sony or independent marketing companies who then work for the publishers. The job has some key features to it like publicity, sales and outside contractors that are involved in making a complete campaign. This job can earn you about £56,200 a year depending of your experience.

Marketing Executive

Marketing Executives have a fast paced work environment, they have the strenuious task of adevertising, planning, ditribution of the product, etc. they often help plan events that promote the game. Marketing executives are found in both private and public sectors that help aq variety of things form finance to retail. The responsibilities of this job depend on how big the company is, the bigger the company tghen the bigger the task at hand. The salary for this job can vary from £17,000 - £19,000 for beginners, with that rising to an average pay of £45,000 a year.

Marketing Manager

A marketing manager, who like the marketing executive, helps out in the popularity of the product and how well the game is ditribnuted to retailer and players. Their main task is to make the game look as good as possible before it being shipped off, they do this in forms of posters, TV advertisments, etc.
They have a starting salary of about £25,000 with this elvating to about £50,000 with the needed experience in this field.

Sources:

http://study.com/articles/How_to_Become_a_Video_Game_Designer_Education_and_Career_Roadmap.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/334_level_editor
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/332_lead_artist_game
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/339_technical_artist_games
http://www.indeed.co.uk/Technical-Artist-jobs
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/330_games_artist
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/325_animator_games
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/327_audio_engineer
http://www.indeed.co.uk/Game-Audio-job
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/336_game_programmer
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/337_project_manager_producer_games
http://www.cwjobs.co.uk/salary-checker/average-project-manager-salary
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/329_external_producer
http://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Creative_Director/Salary
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/338_qa_tester
http://creativeskillset.org/job_roles/335_product_manager
https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/marketing-executive
https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/Marketingmanager.aspx
http://www.totaljobs.com/careers-advice/job-profile/marketing-advertising-pr-jobs/pr-job-description

Thursday 29 September 2016

Task 1 - Structure - The Value Chain

Task 1 - structure - The Value Chain

Profile each of the main sectors within the industry:

Developers

A video game developer is a software developer who designs and creates games, The developers have the job of designing and story writing to coding and programming, other areas of work in this field include visual arts, design and audio.
There are many parts that go into developing a video game designers, graphic artists and producers all help in the final cut of a game:
- The games designer (also known as game developer) will be involved in the various aspects of creating a video game.
-The graphic artists will create how the game looks by either hand drawing of computer software, the are in charge of the overall layout and production of the game.
On the other hand programmers and software developers turn the ideas of the artists and other members of the team into code which in turn creates the games operating system. The majority of game developers have development studios such as Activision's Radical Entertainment which is based in Canada. There are also independent game developers known as 'indie' who rely on either crowd funding or any alternate form of funding for their game. An example of an indie game developer is Dark Water Studios who developed games such as Dogfighter. Who developed and published their game and had it distributed by steam.

Activision are one half of the Activision Blizzard, Inc who are one of the biggest games development/publisher companies in the world. Activison have published games such as 'Call of Duty Series', 'Destiny', and 'Skylanders' since 1979. They have a total of 38 studios and offices in a variety of locations worldwide with their headquarters in Santa Monica, California, United States. In 2014 their total assets equaled to $14.75 billion which was $0.738 billion more than their previous year. For example a game like 'Destiny' will have a much larger budget for market than an indie game, they could showcase their game with adverts on TV and posters etc.

A prime example of an indie game developer would be Psyonix. Founded in 2000 by Dave Hagewood and they still only have around 30 employees. Their first game was planned to be 'Vampire Hunter; The Dark Prophecy' but was cancelled, they then developed 'Monster Madness; Grave Danger' and 'Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars' in 2008 and released on PlayStation 3. Then in 2015 the developed a sequel to 'Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars' with 'Rocket League'. in contrast to a company like Activision, indie game developers will not have a big budget to promote their games so will rely on platforms like steam, Ps4 and YouTubers to promote the game. For example with Rocket league, Ps4 put it up for free for a while which was a major promotion for the game and gained the game a lot of publicity.

Publishers

A video game publisher is a company that has the job of putting a game on the market that either they them selves or another company have created. in the same way the publishers of books and films the publishers often have the task of manufacturing and marketing the product and all other aspects of advertising. The majority of the time the publishing company give the development team the funds for the game which is called 'external development'. Large publishing companies often market their own game where as smaller publishing companies hire distribution companies. A lot of factors have to be taken into account when publishing a game such as; where the game is based and if the country your aiming at has any restrictions, for example if you are looking to sell your history based game in Germany you would try to steer away for things like the Nazi's. Trends are also looked at when publishing a game because if a certain type of game sells a lot in a country then you would aim at selling at that country for example if the development tea have created an RPG game and it is a big seller in France then you would target that country.

A great example of a high end video game publisher would be 'Sony Interactive Entertainment' previously known as 'Sony Computer Entertainment' who have internal staff developing games. Sony was founded in Tokyo, Japan in 1993 and their headquarters is now based in San Mateo, California, USA. They have published some very good games developed by other companies such as Naughty Dog's 'The Last of Us' and FromSoftware's 'Bloodborne' which are both primarily PlayStation games and are not sold on other platforms. the PlayStation 1, released in 1994 was a a very popular console, selling about 102.49 million worldwide, its successor (the PlayStation 2) is the most sold games console to date with its sales reaching about 155 million as of march 2012.

Another good example of a games publisher is 'Telltale Games', founded in 2004 by Dan Connors, Kevin Bruner and Troy Molander they also develop video games as well as publish them. They are a mid-sized company based in San Rafael, California who serve worldwide and only have around about 240 employees. They have published games for other development teams such as 'Hector: Badge of Carnage' for Straandlooper for IOS that has three episodes as well as '7 Days to Die' by The Fun Pimps which is for Ps4 and Xbox One.

Console Manufacturers/First Party Publishers

A very popular example of a console manufacturers/first party publishers would be Microsoft, Microsoft who created the Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox one, have stormed the console market in recent years by improving and adding to the console they added the Kinect to the Xbox 360 and the Xbox one which gave it some popularity. The Xbox 360 had around about 85.5 million to date, Microsoft, like other console manufacturers/ first party publishers, make some games exclusive to their console, Microsoft made halo sole to the Xbox which added to popularity of their console because of the acclaim of the Xbox. Halo 3 in 2007 is one of the most popular halo game and had 12.14 million sales, Halo 3 is one of the fastest selling games in recent years, reaching $170 million in sales within the first 24 hours, the game had over 1.7 million sales in preorder sales alone and in the U.S 3.3 million within the first 12 days

Another example of a Console Manufacturers/ First party publisher would be Nintendo who have been a very influential part of the game industry, they began this in 1985 by releasing the Nintendo entertainment system which was very popular at the time selling nearly 62 million worldwide.
More commonly they released the Nintendo Wii which was released in 2006 and main feature was the wireless controllers, As of December 31st the Wii has sold close to 101 million units across the world. They even published games for the Super Mario Bros. for multiple of their consoles such as the DS, the Wii and the Wii u, plus others.

Distribution and Retail

Distributors are any games company that sells their game, they sell it to the retailers, who are shops like CEX or Grainger games who distribute the game to players.

The distributor would be the publishers of the game who want to market the game and popularize it, an example would be Electronic Arts, who have developed and published games such as: Fight Night series, Battlefield series and Star wars series. Once they have these games ready to ship they will market them to companies like 'GAME', 'GameStop' and 'CEX', who will then sell on the game.

In recent times game retailers are becoming less popular because of the amount of games that are being bought online, so they also move their company online and add deals to get people to buy, places like the PlayStation store and Xbox store are part of the reason this is happening because it makes it a lot easier for the player to buy the game whilst sitting at home, I myself buy most of my games from the PlayStation store, as do a lot of the people I know. They also add deals and free games which make it harder for the shops to compete with.

Press and Media

Press and Media have increased their role in what constitutes a safe game, they are always petitioning that a game is unsafe or unfit to play because it promotes violence across a wide variety of people.

Experiments have been taken place to detect whether a game can make a person violent, In 2015 the American Psychological Association said that there is a clear link between how violent a game is and how violent the person is

On the other hand the press and media also promote games as much as they deter them, a lot of blogs depict how good a game is through the eyes of a player and not only this, YouTubers and streamers are becoming very popular among every players and most gamer's get advise on whether to buy a game from these sort of people. YouTube is seen by million everyday and if theyre saying a violent game the 'Call of Duty series' is fun then people are going to buy it.

A YouTuber like Angry Joe who has 2.6 million subscribers will have a big say in which games are good and which games are bad for instance he said 'Batman: Arkham City' is a very good game and this has 4.6 million sales worldwide, some of that can be contributed to him and others lioke him.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_publisher