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WIGI Conference Notes Part 3 - An Array of Career Options
posted Friday, 28 October 2005
... continued from Part 2 ...
Panelists: Dana Hanna (freelancer), Rick Lambright from Sony Online Entertainment, Sandra Rumsey from Mobliss, Kiki Wolfkill (which gets the vote for my favorite name of the year) from Microsoft Game Studios, and Maurene Farley from Real Networks
Moderator: Laura Fryer from Microsoft Game Studios
This seminar focused on the longer term, the types of things that people in the various career tracks should be good at and the type of work they do. Each time, the panelists were asked what makes an exceptional member of their profession. Reading these descriptions makes the people sound like they can walk on water but of course they're talking about ideals. They're talking about the kinds of people who really stand out and get noticed. Another area of discussion was what skills a person should display in each area after about 3 years, which should be about when they're ready to move on to the next level of their career.
Producing
Producers need "vision" but on top of that they have to build skills involving scheduling, budgting, defining milestones and meeting them, working with all of the teams involved on a project, understanding why a game is being done in a particular way, defining what success is ... versitality is obviously an important quality for a producer.
The entry level production jobs tend to be production assistants. These folks often come out of the QA department. Their job involves coordination, asset management, and particularly helping develop new ways to organize things.
More senior level producers need flexibility. Each game produced turns into a different job than the one before. There are different design issues, different scheduling issues, small or large teams, and so on. As far as "vision" goes, in particular the producer has a huge responsibility to the team itself. Part of the job is motivating team leads.
At three years, producers should know all of the basics of making the business work. Their people skills should have grown, including their ability to resolve conflicts, help team members grow, and solve team needs.
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance professionals make sure a game is fun and they track down and report every bug they can possibly find. Attention to detail is a must, even being able to see a single pixel when it's out of place. Good written and verbal skills are essential as the bugs must be clearly documented. When programmers have to come back and ask the QA team for more detail, time is wasted by both groups.
Exceptional quality assurance people can just "go" with a project, knowing how many people will be needed to handle the QA side, what needs to be tested, and how. They need a thick skin since the programmers can get defensive and angry, particularly when they're under a tight deadline. They file clear bug reports that no one needs to ask for clarifications about and are good at stepping into other peoples' shoes on the types of games that they don't personally enjoy.
Most people in game QA are not intending to actually make a career in QA. They're hoping to step sideways elsewhere into the game industry. For those who do enjoy QA, after three years they should display excellent organizational skills, should be able to start a project without having to redo things, and manage and lead teams of QA people.
Corporate Communications
Corporate Communications essentially boils down to marketing and public relations. Some of the duties are internal, within the company, while others are external. Active listening skills and writing skills are crucial.
Exceptional marketing and public relations people are curious. They want to know what makes a game tick and what's important about its features. They're detail-oriented and have to be able to work both independently and on teams.
Corporate communcations people may start as interns and may be working for a separate agency rather than for the game company itself. They need the ability to not tell people solutions instead of "the problem with their problem."
Art Director
Art Directors oversee game visuals, driving the look and feel of a game. These folks work with the individual designers and manage the art team for the game they're overseeing. Their most important skill is communication. They have to be able to get their vision across.
Exceptional artists have of course top notch art skills. On top of that, they have detailed tool knowledge, a knack for creative leadership, and good judgment that allows them to make decisions on what cool things to keep and what to drop in order to meet time, budget, and technology constraints in order to otherwise produce incredible results.
After three years, artists should be able to become team leads or be interested in moving to another type of art, such as moving from modeling to animation. They should be self-directed, be able to resolve their own problems, have improved their software skillset including with the proprietary tools and be able to quickly get up to speed with new tools. They should demonstrate leadership skills and the ability to innovate, either creatively or technologically.
Engineering/Programming
Again, communication skills are important because everything is team-based in the game business except for on extremely small projects. It helps to be a self-starter as well as there is a lot of work to do. Specialists are necessary in areas such as networking (for MMORPGs in particular), and generalists are nice and flexible and are needed as well. There's a lot of experimentation in this industry so strong engineering skills help with this.
Exceptional programmers are natural leaders, highly regarded, and enthusiastic. Their first approach to design tends to be useful rather than having to go back and fix things, so they're often used to start projects out. They also tend to have novel solutions to problems, write code with few bugs, and rarely need to redo anything so they have ultimately high productivity.
After three years programmers are still considered junior engineers. However, those who are exceptional can have a chance to move out of areas where they may have felt trapped or cornered into new ones. Some might be put on "strike teams" to help projects in trouble. Due to the hours involved in being a team leader (since you have to write code and do lead things), more people who actually want to do this are needed. Those who want to be team leads should be showing interest in the big picture of a project, offering solutions to problems, working with minimal direction, have improving skills, show strong team communication skills, not be territorial about their part of a project, be results-oriented, and start specializing in something even if you intend to be a generalist. It is of benefit to be the person that everyone comes to for particular types of things such as clever network code.
... to be continued in Part 4 ...
Panelists: Dana Hanna (freelancer), Rick Lambright from Sony Online Entertainment, Sandra Rumsey from Mobliss, Kiki Wolfkill (which gets the vote for my favorite name of the year) from Microsoft Game Studios, and Maurene Farley from Real Networks
Moderator: Laura Fryer from Microsoft Game Studios
This seminar focused on the longer term, the types of things that people in the various career tracks should be good at and the type of work they do. Each time, the panelists were asked what makes an exceptional member of their profession. Reading these descriptions makes the people sound like they can walk on water but of course they're talking about ideals. They're talking about the kinds of people who really stand out and get noticed. Another area of discussion was what skills a person should display in each area after about 3 years, which should be about when they're ready to move on to the next level of their career.
Producing
Producers need "vision" but on top of that they have to build skills involving scheduling, budgting, defining milestones and meeting them, working with all of the teams involved on a project, understanding why a game is being done in a particular way, defining what success is ... versitality is obviously an important quality for a producer.
The entry level production jobs tend to be production assistants. These folks often come out of the QA department. Their job involves coordination, asset management, and particularly helping develop new ways to organize things.
More senior level producers need flexibility. Each game produced turns into a different job than the one before. There are different design issues, different scheduling issues, small or large teams, and so on. As far as "vision" goes, in particular the producer has a huge responsibility to the team itself. Part of the job is motivating team leads.
At three years, producers should know all of the basics of making the business work. Their people skills should have grown, including their ability to resolve conflicts, help team members grow, and solve team needs.
Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance professionals make sure a game is fun and they track down and report every bug they can possibly find. Attention to detail is a must, even being able to see a single pixel when it's out of place. Good written and verbal skills are essential as the bugs must be clearly documented. When programmers have to come back and ask the QA team for more detail, time is wasted by both groups.
Exceptional quality assurance people can just "go" with a project, knowing how many people will be needed to handle the QA side, what needs to be tested, and how. They need a thick skin since the programmers can get defensive and angry, particularly when they're under a tight deadline. They file clear bug reports that no one needs to ask for clarifications about and are good at stepping into other peoples' shoes on the types of games that they don't personally enjoy.
Most people in game QA are not intending to actually make a career in QA. They're hoping to step sideways elsewhere into the game industry. For those who do enjoy QA, after three years they should display excellent organizational skills, should be able to start a project without having to redo things, and manage and lead teams of QA people.
Corporate Communications
Corporate Communications essentially boils down to marketing and public relations. Some of the duties are internal, within the company, while others are external. Active listening skills and writing skills are crucial.
Exceptional marketing and public relations people are curious. They want to know what makes a game tick and what's important about its features. They're detail-oriented and have to be able to work both independently and on teams.
Corporate communcations people may start as interns and may be working for a separate agency rather than for the game company itself. They need the ability to not tell people solutions instead of "the problem with their problem."
Art Director
Art Directors oversee game visuals, driving the look and feel of a game. These folks work with the individual designers and manage the art team for the game they're overseeing. Their most important skill is communication. They have to be able to get their vision across.
Exceptional artists have of course top notch art skills. On top of that, they have detailed tool knowledge, a knack for creative leadership, and good judgment that allows them to make decisions on what cool things to keep and what to drop in order to meet time, budget, and technology constraints in order to otherwise produce incredible results.
After three years, artists should be able to become team leads or be interested in moving to another type of art, such as moving from modeling to animation. They should be self-directed, be able to resolve their own problems, have improved their software skillset including with the proprietary tools and be able to quickly get up to speed with new tools. They should demonstrate leadership skills and the ability to innovate, either creatively or technologically.
Engineering/Programming
Again, communication skills are important because everything is team-based in the game business except for on extremely small projects. It helps to be a self-starter as well as there is a lot of work to do. Specialists are necessary in areas such as networking (for MMORPGs in particular), and generalists are nice and flexible and are needed as well. There's a lot of experimentation in this industry so strong engineering skills help with this.
Exceptional programmers are natural leaders, highly regarded, and enthusiastic. Their first approach to design tends to be useful rather than having to go back and fix things, so they're often used to start projects out. They also tend to have novel solutions to problems, write code with few bugs, and rarely need to redo anything so they have ultimately high productivity.
After three years programmers are still considered junior engineers. However, those who are exceptional can have a chance to move out of areas where they may have felt trapped or cornered into new ones. Some might be put on "strike teams" to help projects in trouble. Due to the hours involved in being a team leader (since you have to write code and do lead things), more people who actually want to do this are needed. Those who want to be team leads should be showing interest in the big picture of a project, offering solutions to problems, working with minimal direction, have improving skills, show strong team communication skills, not be territorial about their part of a project, be results-oriented, and start specializing in something even if you intend to be a generalist. It is of benefit to be the person that everyone comes to for particular types of things such as clever network code.
... to be continued in Part 4 ...
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