Hi there, i'm Rodi's classmate and i was an eye wittness to the horror that unfolded in front of our eyes.
anyways not to over dramatize things i was kind off offended about how the man (playlogic) reacted. Seemingly he was in awe of big market leaders and kept reffering to them as tough business men who would not listen too young developers and made developers get down on they're knees to pray for devkits. He talked about the harshness a bit too much, and tried too ingrain a feeling that there was no space left for the newbies in the industry. Also he talked about how specialised people have too be if they want too enter the industry.
And this in front of the not soo specialised students of the GDD. And that's exactly the problem i had with the speaker, the subject and the entourage. Is that there is no such a thing as a trained Game Designer. Even the speaker said this, that there was nothing like that.
But yet the GDD people train in bits and pieces of gamedevelopment. And yes Jake not everybody wants to become a Games Designer! But neither will they be trained good enough to be a junior animator or a rigger at a Games Company.
This is the same story i heared from a friend of mine who interned at Games Company (that will remain unnamed) were the execs there (as at another unnamed Company) hated the untrained ppl comming from the GDD, because they could'nt do anything with 3d nor with animation nor with anything else for that matter. They were just sitting ducks waiting for the unemployment line.
And that brings me to speaker himself the man was an old ID (interaction design) student. He studied webdesign and made games in shockwave. When he left the HKU he was unemployed too but called Appoint (job agency) and got a job at Davilex. A company he even spat at but nonetheless it gave him the chance too become a 'true' game designer. So even he got lucky and here comes my point the man was a programmer. He programmed Director Lingo and because of that he could ad to the production pipeline and he was hired.
This is a familiar thing among small companies people have to be able to produce too so there are mainly technicians on board of those kinds of companies. But that does not mean that they're creative or could make a concept float, and seeing and hearing this guy i felt like a piece of code being boxed and linked to another piece of code. The whole Aura of what he told us just did'nt click in with my 'naive' beliefs of what games and what creativity is because i know that i've played a couple of really really well crafted games in my life (NINTENDO RULETH)
gr Lars
