Lecture 6, Sony

29/11/10

This lecture was delivered by Dave Bromball, an ex student from Bolton Uni and Vicky, who works with Sony’s human resources team. This lecture was primarily about how to approach getting into the industry as well as what the actual rolls within industry.

The first thing they covered was the various rolls within the industry, these are set into 3 clear groups, coders, artists and designers. I obviously wish to join the last of these three, and the clear impression was given by both speakers that there are fewer designers than artists or coders by far, making it yet more apparent how competitive the job market I am intending to enter is. In addition to this they stated that the normal way to enter the design side of games development is via games testing. Various companies have promotion from within structures setup, designed to give testers a chance to move on to design, coding or art if that is their aim.

They also discussed some of the more important skills required to work in the industry:

• Communication: both written and oral skills are vital, I need to be able to communicate ideas and instructions concisely
• Documentation: this coincides with communication, but is not the same. Its vital to have an understanding of how to write the various documents the industry requires from its employees, as well as being able to make presentations using PowerPoint
• Knowledge: this specifically relates to industry standard software, such as max, Maya, and unreal editor, to be most effective, and be a desirable employee it is important to have a broad knowledge of software commonly used in the industry

This lecture presented quite a lot of information, and while most of it was echoing earlier lectures, there was still some useful information about the skills needed to be effective in the industry. It also cemented the idea that to get into the design sector I will first have to work my way through games testing, while this is a prospect I am dreading due to what I have heard about it being less than enjoyable, it is a necessary hurdle to overcome.