Disclaimer: Everything here is of my own opinion and do not necessarily represent any other party’s views.

Note: When I refer to game developers, this means I am referring to everyone involved in the development of the game such as programmers, artists, producers, designers, etc.

There has been increasingly more enquires about becoming a games developer in forums related to games careers such as the ones on IGDA and GameCareerGuide. As much as I am happy that more and more people are interested in entering the games industry, the majority of these are asking on how they become a games designer and which games design course should they choose because they naturally see it as the best way to get into the industry. After all, if you want to be a plumber, you do a plumbing course. So if you want to be games designer, you do a games design course, right?

If only it was that simple.

There are a number of reasons why I don’t recommend doing a games design course and to be honest, they have more to do with the industry then actual courses themselves.

Games design is hugely unspecific in industry compared to other roles available, what a designer does can differ from company to company or even on a team to team basis. While I tend to find that they agree in principle of their responsibilities, the actual specifics of what they actually do and the skills needed are often disputed. This in turn makes it extremely difficult to create a list of skills needed for the games designers compared to programmers or artists where the role is well defined which in turn makes it difficult to create a course curriculum.

To compensate for this, design courses will teach a bit of every discipline which is usually programming, modelling, animation and level design or a subset of these. While I agree that some knowledge in a number of these disciplines is useful for any games developer and works well for a designer where the role is not well defined, the level of that knowledge is usually relatively low compared to studying an entire course in one of those disciplines which leads to the next problem.

Games design is a narrow field and the skills you learn on these courses and not easily transferable to other industries or professions. Additionally, game designers only make up a small number on each team and in my experience it usually 1 designer to every 10-15 developers. This means that there are comparatively very few roles available already before we even start looking at junior or graduate roles for design and the skills learned in the other disciplines isn’t at a high enough level for the jobs in those disciplines unless you did a lot of self study.

In short, if you can’t find a game design job after the course, what can you do instead with what the course has taught you that you couldn’t have done yourself without it? Ultimately, that is the question of any education you plan to undertake to ensure that it is worth the time and money.

The flipside of this is although I recommend not during a game design course, I actually don’t know what to recommend instead that is relevant and also teaches transferable skills. I am still researching into this and was wondering if there was something that the industry could do to help and funnily enough, Skillset have just announced a Games Design Accreditation Initiative so it will be interesting what comes out of this.

If you are looking at doing game design as a career, be sure to research into the role and the methods of getting into it. Useful links:

• 2009 GameCareerGuide guide
• Sloperama Games Design FAQs
• Skillset Career Advice
• EA Career Paths – Games Design

Finally, I actually get to say this after waiting for it to be publicly announced: Here is a video on Harry Potter – The Half Blood Prince Potions game which I was primary working on during development of the game, enjoy!

“Perhaps you remember Marissa, a 19 month old baby girl who was diagnosed with Infantile Spasms when she was a mere two months old. Her stuffed bunny Fairfax travels the world, sharing not only Marissa’s story but also spreading awareness of the serious paediatric epileptic condition that she, and other young children, suffer from. Approximately eight months ago we pulled together for a community project titled Fairfax ‘n’ the Chief in honour of her father (who is a fellow Halo fanatic). Today I’m proud to announce The Fundfax Fairraiser, a very special fundraising effort that will benefit sweet baby Marissa and those that are helping her through this very difficult fight.”

Read it here. Comments and feedback welcome.

The popularity of Metacritic has grown over the last couple of years as a yard stick to measure the quality of one product to another. The premise is fine, after all what better way to judge the quality of a product then average of the scores from all the reviews for it? However, the problem I have is that the sources for the reviews are not consistent from product to product and because of this, Metacritic scores can be heavily skewed depending on which review sources are included.

This is because not every reviewer works on the same relative scale so while one may perceive 5/10 as average, another may think 7/10. Therefore, comparing two products against each on Metacritic scores alone can be grossly unfair if the review sources for each product are different.

I am not completely dismissing Metacritic as it is still a great source for the consumer to get a rough idea of a product’s quality and also provides a list of review sources to read through, but when an industry starts using it as a target (e.g this must get at least 80% Metacritic), then it can easily become more of ‘Who are we going to get to review this’ rather then focusing on increasing the quality or concentrating on the target audience.

Now that I have my own house, I have a little less each month to spend/save so I have been investigating ways to earn money in my free time, preferably at home and substantial (at least minimum wage equalivant). So far, I haven’t been able to find anything that generated enough money for time spent. Examples of these include Mystery Shopping and earning tiny amounts for writing reviews/filling surveys.

I did contemplate about writing games or applications for XNA and the iPhone but my current work contract doesn’t allow it and there is an upfront fee to become a developer for either of these two platforms for something that isn’t guaranteed to generate a profit. However, with some negotiating on the part of the contract and making sure I have a viable idea to develop, market and sell before putting any money down, this path may still be an option in the future.

This left me with the idea that I am currently trying and been thinking about for several years now however, the reason why I consider it ‘crazy’ is because it involves gambling and we all know how this could end up once you are on this path.

The base theory is simple and sound but assumes you have a bottomless pocket and a no limit roulette table. Essentially, you place your initial stake on an even money bet (i.e double or nothing bet with ~50% chances of winning) and keep doubling the stake every time you lose until you win and then revert to your initial stake. Everytime you win, the amount won will always be the initial stake.

This method is mathematically sound as the chances of losing X times in a row decreases dramatically, going from 50% from the first bet to less then 1% on the seventh. However, 1% is still not 0% hence why a bottomless pocket and a no limit table is assumed as an initial £5 bet becomes £320 after losing £315 on the seventh and it keeps doubling after each loss.

As to why I haven’t tried this before is due to:

• Casinos usually have a minimum bet of £5 or £10 on even money bets at roulette tables.
• I don’t have a substantial amount of money to risk losing to test a theory.
• The betting time between spins is too long to continuously bet in such a methodical manner.
• Normally you go with friends to a Casino as a night out and this isn’t exactly an ‘exciting’ way to bet.

This situation changed due to three things:

1. Online gambling places are now offering bonus chips (with T&C) when you signup and deposit money into the account thereby giving more money for free to try this theory.
2. I have since joined the cashback site QuidCo which has cashbacks for various online services including gambling sites (with T&C).
3. Online betting times between spins is not fixed and is up to the user when the spinning starts.

With this in mind, I essentially had a no risk situation as if this does go wrong, the worse case scenario ends with me breaking even. Additionally, the gambling site I picked had free play tables where no money is involved to further try this method and really low minimum stake of 10p on even money bets.

I started this experiment 4 days ago and have spent ~5 hrs of time over those days with the initial stake of 25p, I am now £175 up excluding the cashback from QuidCo (which is £70). That works out to £35 an hour which is a decent conversion rate of money earned against time spent. What I have found so far is:

• It is incredibly boring to the point where it feels like gold farming. I can do it while watching/listening to the TV but not when I want to concentrate on what is on.
• Losing more then 5 times in row can be a little nerve wrecking and a few times I had to cut my losses and start from the initial stake again.
• Knowing when to stop. The temptation to get more ‘free money’ is always there so a lot of self control is needed to know when to stop and call it a day.

Despite the fact that I am in profit, it is still gambling and I have now set some iron clad rules to make sure this doesn’t become an addiction or out of control:

• Transactions from my gambling site account will always be one way (i.e out). I will never deposit any money into this account.
• When the account hits £0, I will close/delete the account to remove any temptation to gamble further.
• When the account hits £75 or more, money will be transferred out of the account to the balance of £50.

I am interested to see how long this will last for and if it lasts till the end of the month, it will be a surprise. In the meantime, I am still investigating other methods to increase my income which are more sustainable and consistent without the financial risk. If anyone has any ideas, I am more then happy to hear them.

Disclaimer: I do not endose or encourage gambling in any form. If you think you have a gambling problem or wish to find more information on gambling then please go to the Gamble Aware website.

I have been ridiculously busy over the last month especially with my recent house purchase. Going from a fully furnished flat to a empty house is stupidly expensive (of course, it doesn’t help that I seem to be sticking with ‘if I am going to buy something, I might as well buy it to last’ mentality). Even the little things such as pots and pans, cutlery, etc mount up to a unexpected healthy sum.

Which brings me onto my problem, buying a TV. I have two in mind, the Samsung LE40A557/8/9 at £540 and the Sony KDL40W4000 at £750, the Sony model is definitely better but I can’t work out/decide if I will notice and/or if it is £200 better. I am going to hop out tomorrow to a couple of shops and see if I can notice any difference.

I also caved in brought an iPhone and it isn’t a bad piece of kit. The whole thing works pretty well as you expect from Apple but it is the apps that really defines the platform. Unfortunately, there is quite a high signal to noise ratio in the App store but there are truly some excellent apps to download. Qype Radar is my current favourites, using the iPhones GPS it finds points of interest that have been entered and reviewed on their website. These include pubs, restaurants and the like.

Finally, I have been trying out a interesting at work and at home called F.lux. All it does is adjust the temperature of the colours on the screen to match the lighting at the current time of day. In the day, it will be what it looks like normally but after sunset, it makes the colours warmer to match artificial lighting to reduce eye strain. It is an interesting concept and personally has worked really well especially in the office. Give it at try, I am interested to see what other people make of it.

Finally got the keys to the house mentioned earlier (took long enough) and it is a little smaller then I last remembered but I finally have my own place . I haven’t yet settled in due to a complete lack of furniture which is next on my agenda list. Later in the year, I am planning to put some effort and money towards fixing up the place.

Work is going pretty well despite all the doom and gloom with recent layoffs and studio closures. Currently working on frontend for a handheld platform which is a change of pace for me.

Still eagerly waiting for the Open Pandora and now a Streetfighter IV Fightstick which I can’t seem to preorder .

Not much beyond this I guess. Oh, I do have a personal project in the works but not yet ready to be mentioned yet.

It is that time of year again, Child’s Play is a charity set up by Penny Arcade for gamers to support children at hospitals. From their About:

Here’s the deal.

Since 2003, we’ve set up and organized Child’s Play, a game industry charity dedicated to improving the lives of children with toys and games in our network of over 40 hospitals worldwide. In four short years, you as a community have answered the call and come together to raise millions of dollars.

That was awesome. You guys have proven over and over again that you are an overwhelming force, and you really came through and made a real difference to the millions of kids that children’s hospitals care for each year. So we’re doing it again this year, only this time we’ve expanded Child’s Play to more hospitals around US and the globe so you can send toys to a hospital a little closer to home.

Child’s Play works the same as last year. With the help of hospital staff, we’ve set up gift wish lists full of video games, toys, and movies. You can go to each hospital’s list and buy a toy, and that toy will be sent to the hospital. Some of these kids are in pretty bad shape. Imagine being stuck alone in a hospital over the holidays, getting something from a fellow gamer would really raise their spirits. Some of the stuff the hospital will give away for kids to keep, while other gifts (like consoles) will be kept by the hospital for patients to use throughout the year.

We are arguably the largest community of gamers on the internet. The important word there being community. We are not a faceless corporation and you are not just a number tracked by a database and then relayed to hungry advertisers. You guys have proven yourselves to be a powerful force when stirred into action. Here is your opportunity to use that power to do some real good.

Link: Child’s Play Charity

Child's Play Charity

I caved in. You can find me on Twitter for smaller updates.