Posts for Blog: The Future Shop | Straylight-Studios

Technological Modelling

2008-07-21T03:11:00Z

Recently I was flown up to Wellington by the Ministry of Education, to participate in a Focus group on “Technological Modelling.”

Some researchers have been looking in to how schools teach technological practices to students, and they’re trying to improve the curriculum. We technologists (lol) were there to explain how we use modelling in what we do.

There was a range of people that were invited, from civil engineers to food technologists, a software engineer, a game developer (me), Electrical Engineers, and a Plastics technologist.

We in the game development industry are luckier than we think (well, those that get to do original IP) – other industries have a lot of things set out for them. They start off with many given constraints and starting conditions… whereas our constraints are our imaginations and our abilities.

Perhaps we just have the paralysis of choice… a world of possibilities.

The researcher talked about how in the process of finalizing a product/service/solution the ‘technologist’ has less and less influence on the final result. The questions at the start are somewhat like “Is it worth doing?”, but by the end they’re like “Should the upper widget be slightly more colourful?”.

We (the so-called technologists) talked about how that process plays out in our field, and the different ways we use modelling to prove concepts at all stages of the development.

Hopefully this is of some help to the Education sector in working out how to teach students about technology in a way that is far more relevant to the industry in general than it is now.
...in other words, I hope they get a better foot up in technology than I did!

Getting into game development in NZ

2008-05-28T03:42:24Z

We were approached recently by someone with a game idea who was interested in getting it off the ground in New Zealand and seeking some advice on where to get started. We thought we would share the advice we sent back, which went a little something like this:

If you want to gather more hobbyist developers to band together to create a game, then we’d suggest jumping on the GamePlanet and NZGDA forums to find people.
If your looking for inspiration and like minded individuals to discuss your designs then the IGDA and GameDev are great places to start.
If you’re interested in learning more about game development and getting into the industry, the MDS have a great education program specifically for games. Straylight has many graduates on staff from the Otago University (particularly the Comp Sci department), and Otago now offer a dedicated computer design course.

We hope it will help some of the aspiring game developers out there to get into the industry!

Getting Involved

2008-05-20T04:47:25Z

A few months ago, there was an email passed around about being an ambassador for the technology education sector. I thought it looked interesting, so after discussing it with the futureintech team, I decided that it’d be a good thing to get into.

Basically what it involves is going into schools and giving talks to those that are interested in what I do for a job.
Because I love my job, this is pretty easy. What I try to do is give the kids a good idea of how their study is used in the workplace, and I try to get them to be game developers… It’s pretty much just a sneaky way of recruiting future Straylightians.

The most useful part of what I’ve done so far, (as far as I know) are the question times. The students ask me anything from “What’s your favourite game?”, to the kind of subjects they should be taking if they want to follow a particular career path.

Most recently, I gave a presentation at Otago Girls High School – a surveyor and I talked to one hundred year 13 students about what we do, and how they too could get involved. The response was to be expected – one hundred very quiet year 13 girls and a lone cricket.

I think that the current paradigm of computer games doesn’t initially draw girls to the genre of entertainment, and I don’t think that it has been a common aspiration for girls when they think about what kind of career options are available to them. I talked about all the different ways one can get involved in the computer game development industry, from concept art to graphic design, experience design, producing, graphics programming, 3D modelling, texturing, AI, etc…

Hopefully I inspired some to aspire to a career for a computer game dev company… or at least opened it up for consideration.

Finding Inspiration

2008-05-07T03:59:18Z

I really like the “Surfer Girl Reviews Star Wars blog”http://softrockhallelujah.blogspot.com/. Short, sharp, and to the point, it provides an excellent insight into the biz dev and general politicking of the games industry.

One thing of interest she (might still be a he!) pointed out the other day was the use of a “game to beat” during development. While we’ve always used reference from similar projects and games we admire, I actually really like the idea of pinning something up on the wall and saying “our game’s going to be better than that.” It makes me feel like an Olympian track runner being rattled by his coach or something…

All rattling aside though, I think the point is that actually picking a game and making such a blunt statement gives a very real point of reference for a team in a development process that is usually rather troubled with this concept of deciding exactly when a game in “fun” or not. Far more concrete than: “it’s going to be like Grand Theft Auto, but with Ponies!”