Experience

They say 'write what you know' and for the longest time I disagreed with that. As a person who writes fantasy and science fiction and occasionally crime novels (with the aforementioned fantasy and science fiction sprinkled in) it's always seemed strange to me that I shouldn't write what I don't know. I don't know how to create fire out of thin air using nothing but my mind and some unseen force, but I've written about it. I've never lead a military space ship and yet I have a fairly unsuccessful but well received short story on amazon kindle about just that thing.
In the past few years I've come to understand this phrase a little better. While there are elements of stories that may not be something that you know, there is always something that you can. Characters, conversations, relationships, whether you have space ships or pyromancers you still have simple humanity.
But thats not what I'm writing about today.
I've had an idea for a while and I've written pieces of it, but the more I write the more I wonder if I'm even able to. If I'm even suited to. The story I'm talking about is Game on, the murder mystery about a games designer. It's funny, because this is the closest to my life I've ever writen, and yet its probably the most difficult to write.
When I started work on it I decided to make the lead a woman, which instantly lent a significant amount of history and controversy to the book, which makes it so much harder to write. Theres a part of me that doesn't want to write it, but another part that REALLY wants to write it because I think it'll be good.
I'm not sure why I'm writing this, can you tell?
I guess it's just interesting that the closest I've come to writing what I know is also the furthest I've been from writing what I know.
I'm still struggling with writing in general at the moment, but I hope that one day this project gets the time it deserves. And when it does, I already know that I'll solve my worries about misrepresenting the women of the games industry by having the women in the industry that I know read it first.
Hopefully I wont offend them too much.

Questions from an aspiring games designer

Recently a Games Design student sent me a bunch of interesting questions abotu beign a games designer. I figured that other people might have similar questions so I figured I'd post them here.
James

What does your average day in the studio look like? What kind of tasks or design work do you have to tackle most days?

This can change day to day and depending on where we are in a development cycle (early, middle, end). Generally, in early stages my day to day job involves meetings with the team (mostly brain storming but if the feature is complex then there will be follow up meetings with the design team to discuss how we think it should work) and writing design documentation. Middle stages are working with other developers (Code and Art) to implement the feature. This can look like review and feedback, but also actual implementation. Finally, towards the end of a cycle I spend my time playing the feature, reviewing it, balancing it and offering feedback.

What was your greatest misconception of the games industry before you worked in it?

It’s fun. Don’t misunderstand me, I’d not work anywhere else. From time to time you do have fun with your work, but there’s a misconception that when you work in games your playing. You’re a QA tester? You just play games for a living. You’re a designer you just come up with fun little ideas. But its more than that. It’s work. Sometimes its hard, sometimes its frustrating, sometimes you aren’t doing what you want, sometimes you’re doing things you don’t want to do. That said, I wouldn’t work anywhere else.

That or ‘you’ll earn 50k in your first year’ that’s lies.

What do you believe to be the most critical skill for any game designer? Or just as a developer in general?

Understanding.
Understand your players. Understand what you’re trying to do. Understand how your getting there. But mostly the first one. If you understand what the players want to see in your game, you will have a much better time of it. Now that isn’t to say ‘make only the games that you know 100% people will buy’. Knowing someone will play something is different to understanding them. You might know that the games market will buy and play a gritty realistic shooter, but you might understand that the audience you’re looking at is more inclined towards something else but plays the shooters because that’s all that’s on the market. According to Forbes of the top 5 highest selling games of all time only one of them even had guns in. Understand that what’s on the market isn’t necessarily what should be on the market.

As someone who also studied a games development related course at university: what advice would you give to graduates with 3 years of game development experience in a simulated 9-5 studio context for getting into the industry?

Sadly, I’m not the best person to talk to about that. I’ve been in the industry for almost 9 years now, but the first 6 years of that I was QA. QA is a way into the industry, people use it as a stepping stone to the other departments all the time, but from there it’s often luck.

Best way I can think of though: make a game.

What do you feel like is the most powerful piece within your own portfolio?

Either my work with the discovery channel on shark week for 4 years in a row, or my time running Hungry Shark Evolution, specifically the times when we broke company records for player retention and Daily Active Users.

What did you do when you were in the position of applying for jobs without professional work in your portfolio?

I designed games and wrote documentation privately and put them on my site. However, it’s worth noting that it didn’t work. I eventually got the job while working as QA, writing documentation for a game I was working on and sending it to my Creative director, who allowed me to prove myself. I got lucky.

When you were a junior designer at Future Games of London, how much creative control and agency did you have within a project's design?

For the first 3 months I was given some creative control, designing things on my own but getting approval from others. For the latter 9 months of my time as a junior designer I had full creative control over Hungry Shark Evolution. It’s worth noting that this is not normal.

What was your first big responsibility as a game designer?

Taking the lead on designing the features for Shark Week 2015.

It appears that you took the QA route into game design and development: what were the best things you learned from that role and is it a route that you would recommend to others? 

There are 2 reasons to go through QA;

1. You understand their perspective
2. You learn how to see the flaws in your designs.

QA get a bad rep. people don’t like them because they tell them what they’ve done wrong. But its important. It’s incredibly important. A game comes out buggy I guarantee you that 90% of the time the testers found the bug but someone else either waived it or there was simply no time to fix them.
When you design something you need to be able to see the flaws. You need to be able to see the problems with it. Developing your critical eye within QA significantly reduces the amount of time it takes to put out a feature.

You have been in the industry for a while now, how does your present skillset differ from when you first started out and why did you learn these new skills?

I have a lot more technical knowledge than I did back then, specifically in Unity 3D and Photoshop. I learned these so that I could implement features and so that I could create mock-ups of UI. I’ve recently begun learning C#, this makes it significantly easier to develop games. It makes you a vital part of any prototyping team and it makes it easier for you to design a feature and understand how it can work.

Is there anything else that you would like to add or share with someone looking to get into the Games Industry as a professional that works within it?

The Game industry is incredibly small. I have never been at a company where I haven’t either already known someone there or at the least known someone who has known someone I know. Other industries you can burn bridges and not make a difference, but in the games industry that might be the same bridge you need to cross 6 months from now. So cultivate good relationships and you’ll do well!

That's how I got to the Newsroom Youtube

Round and around

It's been a while since I wrote on here, almost 3 years in fact, but I never stopped thinking about it. I dont think anyone follows this site, at least not religiously, so I don't think anyone has been too put out by this but still, it sucks.
I originally started this blog so I had something to do in the morning at work when I had nothing to do, so it's a little ironic that I feel that it is work itself that makes me not have the energy to post here at all.
I'm not very good at the social media thing, i rarely post on twitter and i think my instagram has a grand total of 4 posts, but it feels like social media is the future, so I'm trying to get out there a little more.

Anyway, My new portfolio website is up please feel free to take a look at it:
http://www.jvarma.co.uk/

I'm currently playing Stardew valley and developing a big D&D campaign world. more info on the latter to come.

Kit Ironsmith

Since my blog post last week on Black Serenity Studios I've had a lot of... well, ok, no interest, but I am interested in it and I share my interests.
So here is Kit Ironsmith, the private investigator that is the main character of Black Serenity Studios' first game provisionally named; Kit Ironsmith P.I. (creative, no?)

 

Name - Kit Ironsmith

 

Age - Twenty-three

 

Occupation - Private Detective

 

Role - Protagonist

 

Motivations - Initially; Getting paid. Eventually; Solving the case and saving Anne.

 

Personality -

A mixture of silly, weird, brilliantly intelligent and foolish. He has a sense of courage, morals and is willing to go above and beyond to finish what was started, but he often gives the impression of a foppish young fool of a nobleman.

 

History -

Heir to a massive ironworks fortune, John spent his youth avoiding responsibility instead of living up to it. He got poor grades in school, barely got into college - only managing because his father bought them a new wing - barely passed and then resumed his life of irresponsibility.

He set up his detective agency initially out of bordom, but when his father dies of a heart attack and leaves everything to charity, bequeathing him nothing.

His fathers Will reading will be the prologue.

 



---

As with all things much here is likely to change, but for now; thats Kit Ironsmith, the foxy detective of <Insert apropriately animal pun named town here>.

 

Youtube

- James

Job Block

So I've been job hunting for a while now and I gotta say; it's pretty shit. You go on the job websites and go through the listings, find the ones that apply to you and then send off your CV/Résumé. You could go through websites for each company and look that way, but a lot of the time the sites not up to date and they outsource their job hunt anyway.
Hopefully at this point in your career you're in touch with quite a few games industry peeps who can point you in the direction of jobs but more than likely they aren't all anteing up jobs on a daily basis (let’s be honest the economy is still shit, so there just aren't that many jobs), the only other option you have is to go through an Agency, you know them, Reed and Office angels for temp work, that sort of thing.
For the Games industry we have a wide choice of recruitment agencies that we can go to (and have to go to). I don't have a choice but to go to these companies if I actually want to find work, yet for the most part they are the ones stopping me from getting it.
Nine times out of ten when I apply for a job it goes to a Job Agency, they look at your CV/Résumé and they will only send the CV/Résumé on to the company in question if you are exactly what they're asking for. If you have every one of the qualifications, if you have all of the experience required and all of the skills that are written as 'being a plus'.
They do this because it makes them look bad if they send too many people, or if too many of the people they send don't get the job.
However this stops people like me who have worked in the industry for years as a tester with experience as a Senior from ever getting a Senior or Lead position. I have the relevant experience and skills to take a lead position, I've done it in two of my previous jobs for extended periods of time, but because none of my previous job titles have been 'Lead Tester' the agencies refuse to put me forward, not only that but they refuse to tell me who the company is so that I can put my own name forward in case I knock their applicant out of the running.
Yes it's good business practice for them but it makes it harder for other people to get jobs. It shrinks the pool of applicants down and the Company might not get exactly what they wanted because the Agency didn't send all the applications.

But we have no choice but to keep using them and keep being used by them.

It. Sucks.

Video-of-Ricky-Gervais-Defending-his-atheism-with-dignity-and-respect.

- James

I don't think that means what you think it means...

Don't you hate it when someone criticises your work but doesn't give you any advice on how to fix it? Like a football fan shouting at a player because they missed a shot.
Yes? Well then if you were in the games industry you would probably hate me, because that is effectively what a QA Tester's job is. We're the guys who say "you're doing it wrong." and walk away, like that was enough.
So for that, games industry, I'm sorry, but you did ask what we thought.

Over my three years as a QA tester I've had a variety of responses when giving up my job title to people I've just met, ranging from condescending looks that imply that I'm not really working to excited exclamations of "Oh, wow, that must be awesome to play games all day!" and to both I offer the same response, a passive smile while I clench my teeth and try not to let out my true anger.
I've decided to clear up a few things about the role of Quality assurance in the games industry, at least from my point of view.

In every industry there's that job that nobody wants but at some point everyone has to do. That job where you get paid less than half of the next lowest paying rung of the industry, that job that requires more of you than any other job, but gives less credit or satisfaction.
For film and television it's being a runner, for legal offices it's being a Paralegal, or many offices it's that guy who makes the coffee, and for the games industry it's us; the testers.

I've seen testers asked to do code work, art work, engineer work, even heavy lifting -which our gamer bodies are not designed for dammit! - I even worked with someone who was asked to temporarily fill in for someone in art and then was made to train their replacement before they returned to the QA dungeon, all because of a simple clause in almost every contract, under services required 'Such other services as may be reasonably requested by the company.'
This means, in my experience, that so long as it's not beyond your capabilities they can ask you to do it at no extra pay.

What QA testers actually do is go through the subject game that the studio or publisher they are assigned to is working on and locate any problems with it. This means playing through a game from start to finish an innumerable number of times during their contract - just to put it into perspective, I've been working with my current company for 4 weeks now and I've probably completed the game about 350 times. it sometimes even means just playing through one section - usually the most tedious and boring section - a hundred times to make sure that it works.
We test it and test it, wracking our brains for the most complicated and unique ways of finding bugs and hand them off to developers and producers who, invariably choose not to fix them and when the game comes out as buggy as... a bee hive they blame the testers.
The game will change so many times between the first time you touch it and its release that, while you started excited, the finished product will reduce you to a grumpy mass on the floor

It's tedious and boring work that often has testers working north of 36 hour shifts - 49 hours was my record - and longer than 7 day weeks - 32 day week is my record, closely followed by me being ill for a fortnight. Often testers don't get paid overtime, instead getting 'time in lieu' that when requested is often denied, and rarely do they get bonuses. Most testers are on temporary contracts that allow companies to fire them at will, and the studios I've been in have done everything in their power to skirt laws that make it so that their employees have any sort of legal rights.

Older people say to me that their computer game loving kids would love to do what I do. I have this mental image of them running home to their kids’ and explaining how I came to my job and I just cringe.
Yes some people might like my work, but before you move onto that path please ask yourself this:
Does your child play the game, staring at every menu for inaccuracies, then, after maybe twenty minutes of gaming randomly restart it?
Do they like to play games that they have no interest in whatsoever? (your kid loves call of duty? first off how old is he? less than 18 well then stop buying 18+ games for your kid, second would he like to play Barbie’s princess adventure for forty hours this week?)
What about sleep? They don't need sleep do they?
If all the answers you gave were yes, then they're probably the ideal tester, if not then maybe you should make them focus for their GCSEs.

But then we come to the people. The funny, awesome, glorious, likeminded people that make it all worth it.
Sure the works awful, sure the hours are long and arduous, sure you don't get paid enough to eat food so you do overtime with the sole purpose of getting dinner for the first time in a week, but oh the people.
You will never find anyone quite like a tester. Sometimes that is a bad thing, but not from the point of view of another tester.
You'll never find a more likeminded, funny, intelligent group of people than in a QA studio. It's like going to work every day with your friends and just hanging out, and that's why I keep doing it. If I won £138m on the lottery Friday I would still go for the jobs, solely for the company.

This whole thing pissed me off, it was insulting, degrading, unrealistic, irrelevant to the feild of testing and offensive to me... tube
- James