Entry 1
The first lecture from Jamie Blacknell spoke about his journey from university to working as a developer. This position allows, and in fact requires him, to work on a wide variety of tasks, to use Jamie’s own words he is “a Jack of all trades”. He gave what I found to be a rather interesting example where he was tasked with determining the feasibility of making his studios games playable on very low powered devices i.e. smart TV’s.
Jamie also noted some key differences between his time at a smaller Indie studio to his time at a larger one. In a smaller studio it is much harder to justify having hyper specialised personnel for every task for several reasons for example not having enough workload to saturate a full-time position or the budget to accommodate it. As a result, personnel are typically responsible for a variety of tasks outside their job title. What this looked like for Jamie was being the only inhouse developer and thus having the additional responsibility of: Art review and implementation; creating marketing assets; distribution; sound design; and communication with the community and followers.
In contrast in a larger studio Jamie has been able to specialise more and gain “deeper understanding”, refining his skills and working with a larger team. Something I agree with is his assessment of the Indie studio experience being an invaluable experience.
Reflecting on Jamie’s talk I decided to compare his experience of working in an Indie studio to my own experience working both full and parttime in a small Engineering and Manufacturing company over the last few years. One of the best parts of my Job is the variety of tasks, responsibilities and opportunities to learn that it grants me. In a larger company I would likely be assigned to a single department and find myself in an apprenticeship role or junior position with a relatively linear and slow path of progression. Instead, I am able to fulfil tasks at every part of production from initial design, prototyping, iterative development, machining and finally batch production.
What links both mine and Jamie’s experiences in smaller companies is the understanding that you gain not only of individual roles but of process and how these roles interact and communicate. One of the key points that Jamie spoke about was the importance of learning how to communicate effectively with people in different positions. Explicitly he mentioned a direct senior, someone from a different discipline, and a project manager/boss.
When communicating with a direct senior it is important to respect their knowledge, developing an understanding of each other’s skillset helps with smooth communication but ultimately humility and respect are critical, the fastest way to alienate someone you want to learn from is to think you know better and discard their advice and opinions. Within your own discipline the shared knowledge will be extensive, and it is easy to jump straight into technical conversations utilising specific terminology as a result.
Communicating cross disciplines can be challenging and learning exactly how much to break down and simplify a subject becomes challenging. Here clarity is key, a very good point Jamie made is that you should explain what it is you want and provide the context.
With a boss/manager the preference is clear efficient communication, outcomes without extraneous details.
Reflecting on Jamie’s talk, the main point I want to improve on in my own practice is the skill of communicating with peers in a professional context. I have identified it as a personal weakness where I find it difficult to explain technical concepts without simplifying too far, I often fear that I drift too close to being patronising. In an effort to improve my communication I have applied for a mentorship position within an academic society I am part of, I hope this will benefit my practice by exposing me to people with wildly varying degrees of experience and helping me become more adaptable with communication.
Entry 2
Liv Gregory is a concept artist, and her talk covered a lot of points around art roles in the games industry. Whilst I can’t see myself in any of the traditional art roles, I feel I found some valuable points within her talk. In particular Liv mentioned several points concerning portfolios and state of the industry.
Firstly, her portfolio points. The most important thing for a concept art portfolio (and indeed for most games portfolios) is showing process. The point made directly by Liv is that concept art is concept first and I think this holds true for a lot of positions within games. What I mean by that is that the focus isn’t so much on the art itself but on the process of deriving it and how it fits within the concept of the game. A game is a cohesive entity that consists of many different attributes that all must fit together, art that fits the theme and style is more important for worldbuilding and immersion than outright technical execution.
This is self-evident for a concept artist but some other examples maybe for a level designer, showing how they leverage space to let a player try out new abilities or battle enemies in a new way; or a UX designer explaining why icons appear in a certain way or certain size to be intuitive and draw focus to the correct elements.
Process is the foundation upon which your work is built so showing a solid process and justifying why you make the choices you do is critical to building a good portfolio. This ties in well to some broader points made by many of the guests, quality over quantity. A rule that Liv set out specifically was “if it isn’t adding, cut it”. The time that someone has to spend looking over your portfolio is limited, if the only work there is good work, then you don’t have to worry about someone being able to find it.
Liv added to these points for CV’s and cover letters as well. The major emphasis is on being both clear and concise, list relevant experience and only the highest level of it, qualifications should be relevant. It’s ok not to expand on points in the CV, you may get an opportunity to do so in an interview. Cover letters should always be unique to where you are applying and what you are applying for.
Another point raised for applications is the importance of including key words and terminology from the job listing in order to make it past the automated sorting of applications and try to ensure that your CV actually makes it to the person in charge or hiring for the role.
There are therefore two important goals to achieve, a strong portfolio evidencing your experience and capability, and a strong CV and cover letter that ensures it is seen.
Entry 3
Bea Grove is a senior designer and spoke a lot about the industry, how university prepared her and the process of getting a job in the games industry. This talk helped me gain a better understanding of the state of the industry and what the job market may look like for me when applying for different roles. The comparison of indie to triple A is of particular note and was mentioned by numerous guest speakers.
Bea made some good suggestions whilst talking about the state of the industry: there is a growing resurgence of web games; board games and other physical games still hire for many of the same roles; mobile games are a thriving industry; and indies are always about as another option.
Taking web games as an example the industry tends to change in cycles, I remember growing up, the immense popularity of various flash game sites, these saw a decline in the 2010’s and are now once again showing a significant resurgence. Several guests spoke about how this was true for hiring and firing cycles in the industry with large studios seeing massive swings in their number of employees over the years. In general people move jobs a lot in the games industry regardless as to whether they are laid off. The firing waves from large studios in turn birth many indie studios.
A key take away from this and other talks is the importance of networking. Among the guest speakers, several had found work and other opportunities through contacts made within the industry. One specific example given was where an acquaintance made by one of the guests years prior, led to them being contacted about a job opportunity that the acquaintance saw as a good fit for them.
Entry 4
Rhys Sheppard is a Technical Artist at Epic Games; I found his talk particularly inspiring as Technical Art is a role I could see myself applying for in the future. Since speaking with Rhys, I have spent some time learning how to use Unreal Engine (produced by Epic), the choice of engine is coincidental but some of the visuals Rhys showed from Unreal’s blueprint system had me genuinely excited to learn and create within the engine.
Rhys broke down some technical art roles: 2D Tech Artist; Effects Artist; Technical Animator; Environment Tech Artist; Audio Tech Artist; UI Tech Artist; Performance and Optimisation; Tools Programmer; Shader Programmer; and Graphics Programmer.
I took interest in a number of these and plan to make a portfolio piece that leverages skills from several of them. In the meantime, I challenged myself to build some unique shaders in blueprint such as a light beam texture with a brighter core that has variables for colour, opacity and control of the colour blending between the outer parts and core of the beam. I also started experimenting with light functions to build a tool that lets you manipulate a light with relation to position in space, the purpose being to build blueprints that allow for focusable light beams with real time ray tracing.
I am fascinated by rigging animation, it’s something I have come across before but mainly limited to humanoids and motion capture or close approximations made to animals, the process of making character animations for especially non humanoid creatures is something I want to learn more about as for me the natural progression from designing in 3D is animating and creating motion.
Effects Art can be used for nice scene elements but for me the most notable use is in polishing other elements like adding dust, debris and particle effects to dynamic events such as a vehicle driving or environmental destruction. Effects art is what sells dynamic events and materials visually, sure a flaming sword is cool, but a flaming sord with animated fire that changes shape based on movement though the air, leaves a smoke trail and casts realistic lighting on the character that’s wielding it is a lot cooler. Effects open the door to creating even more polished work hence why I want to learn more about making them.
The most interesting role to me was that of the Environment Tech Artist. Having seen the recent demos of Unreal Engine 5.7 I am increasingly excited to learn how to use the engine, the tools are exciting because of what I can imagine building with them. Becoming competent with unreal engine is one of the major steps I am aiming to undertake through the development of my final project as I feel it will elevate my process to a new level. One of the hardest parts of being someone who makes things, be it a woodcarver or painter, is the gap between the vision in your mind and what you can produce. I believe Unreal will not only help me shrink that gap but also serve to inspire more complex visions in the future.
I have explored how these roles fit together within the games production pipeline. Some roles have clear links such as rigging following on from 3D modelling and typically texturing coming after both (due to the possible mesh changes required to get the desired deformation in a rig). Other roles do not so much fit into the pipeline directly but build tools that improve the flow of production. An example that Rhys gave of this was a tool he built to allow a level designer to block out a level using 2D plans that would then auto-populate with 3D assets.
To contextualise this academically, I drew on the established pipeline of production models in game design literature that cover pre-production, production and post-production and evaluated how technical art roles reduce bottlenecks, support the flow of assets and enable efficiency across different disciplines. Sometimes technical art is therefore about improving production instead of producing work that gets shipped in the game.
Entry 5
Megan Matthews is a game designer with a specialisation in level design and accessibility. Her talk gave some fantastic advice around prototyping in a rapid and collaborative fashion. Paper prototyping and focusing on testing and iterating mechanics were of note, the emphasis is on trying lots of ideas and evaluating them quickly. Collaborative digital boards are a highly effective way of getting input from medium to large teams and regularly sharing work can help with inspiration.
Megan spoke about the importance of having a portfolio and it being relevant to your (desired) role. Something of key importance is tailoring your application for a given position. To do this it is important to research the studio you are applying to and learn more about their work. This is important not only for you to be able to demonstrate that knowledge and communicate with an interviewer but also to decide if you want to apply for that studio. Studios want to hire people who are enthusiastic about the kind of games they produce and to produce your best work you need to be passionate about what you are making. Wider research around the genre of games made by the studio is also useful, it is also important to understand exactly what a given studio works on, for example larger games may be built by multiple studios and may have only worked on a single aspect from the title.
Entry 6
Jade Carter gave a relatively short talk as to allocate more time to direct feedback, but I still found there was some very useful information in her presentation. As a producer she is responsible for managing a team to produce part of a game, a major example she gave was her role in development for Hogwarts Legacy.
Jade was responsible for the team that worked on the beasts in the game. This meant lots of time planning. Keeping track of progress, arranging meetings, assigning development time, acting as a line of defence/interface between the team and studio management, communicating information to and within the team, and acting as a source of truth.
Being a games producer requires you to spread your attention across lots of different tasks and an essential skill to keep it all moving is time management. Whilst time management is critical it is all for naught if the schedule can’t be kept to, as a result, learning software that allows you to track and manage everything and view and alter in real-time is critical for modern development.
Jade says that Jira is used at a lot of studios, and I am looking into learning more about how to use it, spreadsheets are fantastic for managing tasks but lack concise and clear UI and are not suitable for large teams. I shall evaluate the best tool to use for my final project based on my research into planning software such as Jira and the pay off vs time to learn up front. Whilst a lot of things can be learnt through use in my final project such as the engine and modelling tools, management software should be setup at the very beginning of the project as issues with it will negatively impact all aspects of development.
Before populating any form of task management software, I shall lay out a rough development roadmap to show the process linearly followed by a rough Gantt chart to show the estimated time allocation to each part of development. Jade mentioned that the standard when planning is to add an additional 20% to the estimated time of any task to absorb the unforeseen issues that arise during development.
Entry 7
Some further steps that I am taking include setting up a LinkedIn profile, I have logged the relevant skills and experience I currently have and am aiming to increase the skills section greatly over the next semester as I create my final project. I have planned out some concise technical demos to add to my portfolio material that will allow me to not only show off a number of skills directly relevant to positions I wish to apply for but also show how I can combine those skills to create finished work.
The primary starting point for developing career furthering skills has of course been the series of guest lectures but I have also used other tools to aid with this process. One of the tools that I have found useful for developing my skillset has been Epic Games’s extensive documentation of Unreal Engine 5, it gives a fantastic breakdown how certain nodes work and which ones are relevant to a particular topic, the reason I list this as a learning resource is that by searching “ue5 texture based on position” I found an entire section on Coordinates Material Expressions (“Expressions that perform actions on texture coordinates or output values that can be used as, or to modify, texture coordinates”) that not only explains what nodes are useful but has blueprint examples with videos that show how changing certain values would affect the outcome in the viewport.
I have used OneNote extensively throughout to take notes during the talks, record useful information from the questions and answers sessions, and highlight which key points I should apply to drafting my own CV, portfolio and expanding my skillset. I have been able to compile a variety of different materials and link them to these points creating a strong resource to draw from when I come to apply to jobs in the industry. This will allow me to fully utilise these talks and evaluate the quality of my application by referring to these pages.