D3 - DoomSayer’s Dev Diary     

Here is an article from Gamasutra that can ultimately effect all past, current, and potential game development students.  I went through DeVry’s Game & Simulation Programming cirriculum, so I have a vested interest in the outcome of this controversy.  Basically, the article states that certain game development schools are saying that any and all student created assets belong to them, and not the students.  The schools won’t ever publish them commercially, but neither can the students.  Last year, DeVry sent me a letter asking if I could release my student created assets so that they could showcase them at GDC.  I never signed the letter.  If DeVry is sending out letters to ask for permission to show our work at public events, that should mean that they feel they don’t own the rights.  If that’s the case, I applaud DeVry.  As for other, more-well-known, game development schools, I present this Gamasutra article in it’s entirety:

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Tags: Game Development, Game News // Add Comment »

Since the idea is to start on small projects first and work my way up to bigger and more lucrative projects, I decided to create some content packs for the Torque Game Engine. I’m currently putting my first one together, making sure that each model is professionally complete with LoDs and collisions for players and projectiles, and that shaders are in effect when these assets are used in the Torque Game Engine Advanced. All of it needs to be plug-n-play, drop it in your game and it just works, out-of-the-box experience, whatever you want to call it.

After this content pack, I already have my second content pack laid out, so I’ll just jump right into my next one. My goal is to get some kind of revenue streams in place, even if it isn’t much, so that I can start my indie game studio proper. I’m sure that I won’t be able to find too many developers who will work for free, so I need to be able to offer them something…anything.

We’ll see how things play out. I emailed Garage Games yesterday, requesting more information in regards to content pack publishing. I haven’t heard back yet, but I’m sure they are very busy, so it may take a little while to get a reply.

If I can’t get it published through them, well… I can sell it myself and chaulk it up as a learning experience… plus I get to keep my developer’s abilities sharp.

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Article by:  Codemaster’s Principle Designer, Phil O’Connor

I have the incredible fortune of being paid to design games. I consider this a privilege, the result of some luck, but at the same time, it’s something I worked for years at achieving. I wanted to be a game designer from a very young age, and I built up the experience and knowledge that eventually convinced people to hire me to do this.

As someone who worked so hard to break into the industry, I have a somewhat stronger opinion than most about the quality of game designers that get in. I feel that every designer should pay their dues before they’re allowed anywhere near game design, and that they should be supremely qualified as students of gaming! Sadly the demand for designers has created a situation in the industry where many people getting into design positions don’t fit the bill.

Game design is one of the most tricky and contentious positions in the game industry. No two companies I have worked with have treated the position of design in the same way. Some designers have producer-type duties/powers, others treat them like artists, and yet others don’t have design positions at all but instead assign the job to a producer, coder or artist.

The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that you need game designers. The problem is, however, that everyone is a game designer, or thinks they are. What I mean by that is everyone can come up with game design ideas, ideas are a dime a dozen.

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Well, I’ve been busy working on a few of my classes. I graduate at the end of this semester (all that I have left to do is complete the Senior Project). In between my classes, I’ve been trying to strengthen my Demo Reel with some better images. I just finished touching up my urban props image as part of my Demo Reel. This image is a straight 3DStudio Max 8 render with a PhotoShopped watermark of my name in the lower right corner. This version of the image is a nighttime-with-flashlight scene. I think it turned out pretty good so far. There’s a few things I could do a little better, but I’m considering this scene DONE…at least for now. Time to move on to something else…

Tags: Showcase // Add Comment »

I moved to Pittsburgh last year, so this information is pretty vital to me:

Pittsburgh has been gearing up over the last several years in an attempt to become the next big market for game development studios.  Carnegie Mellon University started offering a Master of Entertainment Technology program which has recently spun off many school projects into independant game studios.  There are currently about 6-7 small game studios working in the Pittsburgh area (several of them doing work for Disney products, such as Pirates of the Caribbean Online and Disney’s Toontown).  The Art Institute of Pittsburgh also started offering a Bachelor of Game Art & Design program that prepares artists for the game development scene.

Now, Pittsburgh is the front-runner to become the U.S. headquarters location for a British videogame developer looking to expand its operations abroad.

Eutechnyx, the driving force behind such games as “Big Mutha Truckers” and “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift,” is “awfully close” to settling on Pittsburgh after considering Montreal and Atlanta, said Todd Eckert, the local movie producer who has been tapped to head the company’s U.S. operations.

Mr. Eckert, best known for “Control,” the biopic about Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, said the primary attraction of Pittsburgh was the talent being developed at local universities.

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Tags: Business, Game Development, Game News // 1 Comment »