Making Games
As gaming appeals to a wider spread of people how does that affect the design process?
With games becoming more mainstream, we are seeing a big push for casual gamers to start taking up gaming, such as with the DS and the Wii from Nintendo. Game designers have to be mindful that they are going to be catering to an audience that aren't necessarily au fait with the vocabulary of old school games. Some of the standard things that we do in game design would rely on people remembering how a game always works. For example, always know the x is jump and being comfortable with the controller. A lot of people find picking up a controller intimidating. There are a huge number of buttons there and if you haven't really gotten used to that before, you don't know where to start. Appealing to a wide gaming audience is all about simplifying. It's also about thinking about content that is actually going to interest people beyond what we've been seeing up till now, which is often quite genre specific. It's about shooting, for example. Lifestyle games are coming into the fore now, sing-along games, general quiz games, and they're doing extremely well. It's a big market and you have to be aware of the audience.
Is it possible for anyone to make a game?
To protect my job, I would say that only very, very special people can make games! It's possible for anyone to find the tools to make the games, whether or not they're actually going find that they enjoy it or have an aptitude for it, they can give it a go. Just like any other job, making games takes practice and experience, though certainly anyone can have a go.
What tools do I need to make my own games at home?
There used to be a lot of tools for making games at home, all variously inaccessible. Increasingly, however, we're finding that a lot of the tools are now being made more widely available for people just to have a go with. The current generation of consoles, I think both Microsoft and Sony, are supporting grass-roots level game creation. Basic tools are available for download and it would be a matter of just going to those particular holders websites and they'll probably point you in the right direction. Things like XNA will give you the tools you need to start and get up and rolling. You might need some additional things for game-making, like Photoshop, and a 3D modelling package might be useful, but that's probably over-complicating it. Actually, you can download a good version of Flash and there's a huge, thriving industry of Flash games going out there at the moment, doing really creative, very interesting things, and stuff that you probably couldn't get away with in commercial games, as they are quirky ideas that wouldn't really make much money. But they're great games to play.
Who are 'QA' and what do they do?
QA stands for quality assurance and QA are the people who work along side the game team. They are a core part of the team and they test the game throughout its development cycle. QA will be looking for bugs, glitches and problems, but they'll also be feeding back on the systems that are being made. They'll tell you whether or not something, in essence, is working and whether or not its fun. QA have an opportunity and a responsibility to feed back to you and say, "This game idea that you had that we all thought would be fun isn't working, it's no fun actually. We need to come up with something better." QA are a great sort of tool to be used by everyone. Usually they are the most unique people in the studio, quite young. QA is sort of an entry level position, but you can choose to become specialised in that area and become a QA lead, or often QA people will go on to become designers or producers as well.
