Nowadays, you can easily find information about business in game industry if you attend conferences about games. GDC(Game Developers Conference) is one of these conferences which offers information about game market and business to the audience.
One of the main focus point in these conferences is about small social games like famous Farmville. The interest of the social games is growing in each day and this attract big designer who is famous about designing "old school" games in 80's and 90's similar to the today's social games.
The biggest differences between small social games and the today's big games are budget and their team work. A social game needs small teams and a very low budget. Thus, it affected the production time span of the games and makes it easier to funding the necessary resources. Social games can be created in six months with small teams however big games like "Dragon Age: Origins" needs more team work and a bigger budget around 40 million dollars. Chris Kohler, the author of GDC: Big Designers Find Satisfaction in Small Games, describes the comment of Brenda Brathwaite as:
“It feels to me like 1981 or 1982,” said designer Brenda Brathwaite at a Game Developers Conference panel here Tuesday afternoon. Brathwaite worked on the classic Wizardry role-playing games and is now creative director at San Francisco social media company Slide. “I remember, early in my career we would make a game in six months. I love the idea of just putting a game together with a small group of people. I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do.”
Of course with the support of great designers, small games reach high quality. Small games attracts big designers for numerous reasons. Some of them like to work in small teams which, Eskil Seenberg implies that there is no office politics in small teams.
Even though small games are growing and they possessed more quality with the support of great designers, the big games (which described by the game industry as triple A games) still defend their throne with their physics (physx technology) and visual technological power.
11/15/2010
11/01/2010
Importance of Team-working in the Game Industry
Marc Mencher, the author of Becoming a Stellar Games Industry Manager, Part 1: Building a Great Team, describes the meaning of team as;
"A team is a group of people working together to achieve a goal, which can be anything from winning the World Series to creating the newest FPS. At its best, a team uses a ton of mad skills to come up with (hopefully cost-effective) non-traditional solutions that give their company a major edge on the competition. At its worst, it’s a bottomless pit with the potential to sink the company ship forever."
Team-working is a must in the game industry. This factor applies all games not just RPG games. Developing a game needs knowledge and skills that can not be provided by one person. Like designing, programming, testing. Also, it's too complex to handle by just one person. Because of these reasons a game can not be created by one person even you have the enough money to do it. So, you need to create teams and merge these teams with your leadership skills in order to create a game.
Creating these teams are also the crucial part of the game development for the leader of the project . A leader of the game project had to think about who he/she is going to work with. The most important requirement in a team is the fact that members must have skills and knowledge in their related fields. Especially they need to have problem solving skills because game development means: Solving various bugs as well as common problems that may occur in the development process.
After the process of creating teams, the most important process of the team-working in game industry is scheduling the meeting between team leaders and leader of the project. Because of the numbers of teams in the game development process, the communication between the team members and the leader of the project is nearly impossible. Therefore, the meeting between the leader of the project and team leaders is crucial part of team-working in the game industry. The Leader learn everything about teams and team members with these meetings or the reports of team leaders.
Also the video which is an interview with Patrick Curry shows the important factors about game development process as well as team working;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vassKL9bbbE
In the conclusion, team-working is an essential part of creating a game. But a leader of the game project have to understand the importance of recruiting team and communication between the team leaders in order to have maximum effect on their project.
"A team is a group of people working together to achieve a goal, which can be anything from winning the World Series to creating the newest FPS. At its best, a team uses a ton of mad skills to come up with (hopefully cost-effective) non-traditional solutions that give their company a major edge on the competition. At its worst, it’s a bottomless pit with the potential to sink the company ship forever."
Team-working is a must in the game industry. This factor applies all games not just RPG games. Developing a game needs knowledge and skills that can not be provided by one person. Like designing, programming, testing. Also, it's too complex to handle by just one person. Because of these reasons a game can not be created by one person even you have the enough money to do it. So, you need to create teams and merge these teams with your leadership skills in order to create a game.
Creating these teams are also the crucial part of the game development for the leader of the project . A leader of the game project had to think about who he/she is going to work with. The most important requirement in a team is the fact that members must have skills and knowledge in their related fields. Especially they need to have problem solving skills because game development means: Solving various bugs as well as common problems that may occur in the development process.
After the process of creating teams, the most important process of the team-working in game industry is scheduling the meeting between team leaders and leader of the project. Because of the numbers of teams in the game development process, the communication between the team members and the leader of the project is nearly impossible. Therefore, the meeting between the leader of the project and team leaders is crucial part of team-working in the game industry. The Leader learn everything about teams and team members with these meetings or the reports of team leaders.
Also the video which is an interview with Patrick Curry shows the important factors about game development process as well as team working;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vassKL9bbbE
In the conclusion, team-working is an essential part of creating a game. But a leader of the game project have to understand the importance of recruiting team and communication between the team leaders in order to have maximum effect on their project.
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