Alix Games

Games Design Courses - Are they worth it?

Please note: When I refer to game developers, this means I am referring to everyone involved in the development of the game such as programmers, artists, producers, designers, etc. There has been increasingly more enquires about becoming a games developer in forums related to games careers such as the ones on IGDA and GameCareerGuide. As much as I am happy that more and more people are interested in entering the games industry, the majority of these are asking on how they become a games designer and which games design course should they choose because they naturally see it as the best way to get into the industry. After all, if you want to be a plumber, you do a plumbing course. So if you want to be games designer, you do a games design course, right? If only it was that simple.

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Medal of Honor controversy

On Monday, Britain’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox was calling for a retailer sale ban on EA’s Medal of Honour that is due for release in October this year. Fox was calling for the ban as it allowed players to play as the Taliban and shoot British forces.

When I first read this, I thought this meant it was in the single player mode which left me curious and interested on how EA has approached this. Is the player forced to play as the Taliban? Do they force the player to kill in order to progress or allow the player to choose what they want to do in the boots of a Taliban solider? Would the player’s performance affect the story?

Unfortunately, it appears that Fox hasn’t played the game since EA has mentioned in reaction to his comment that there are no British Forces at all in the game and you only play as Taliban in multiplayer mode as someone has to be on the ‘other’ team.

Personally, I don’t think his argument is completely invalid as it is based on a very recent war and the losses are still fresh in people’s minds, especially where they loved ones were killed. As EA knew when they started this project that it would cause controversy, it can be seen as bad taste on their part.

However, I do think it is wrong to call for a ban on the game outright when he hasn’t even played it to evaluate and criticise and even then, it is already a 18+ game. It should be a consumer’s choice on what they do and don’t play.

Hopefully retailers won’t cave into the pressure and allow games to reach the same level of subject depth as films and books.

Game Coding Complete, Third Edition

One of my personal favourite intermediate programming books, if only for the ‘Tales from the pixel mines’ that are dotted throughout the book which are the author’s first hand experiences from developing games professionally. Some of which a very entertaining and gives an insight on how some features were in done in the real world. 

There are also other highlighted tidbits for ‘Best practise’ and ‘Gotcha!’ that helps break up the pages of text to make the very large book easy to digest. It covers a huge range of topics relating to using C++ in games developing which includes memory management, smart pointers, resource handling, 3D math and programming style which are explained in a matter that is straightforward, understandable and if need be, are accompanied by clear diagrams.

The last few chapters of the book cover areas of software development for scheduling and testing which are a nice addition that sets it apart from other programming books and shows that development is not just about code.

Unfortunately, it focuses heavily on using DirectX which means a lot of the sample code is not directly applicable if you are using OpenGL or developing on Linux or Mac. However, all the principles still apply regardless of API and the book is well worth getting for any programmer that is past the beginner stage and starting large projects.

Game Coding Complete, Third Edition by Mike McShaffry

How to be a Games Tester

This is a commonly asked question with surprisingly little resources for information available. There are a few sites such as Only4Gamers which will provides information on testing and a list of jobs that are available for a membership fee. However, similar information is already readily available freely but is just scattered across several sites. I am writing the this article to consolidate all the freely available information into one place so aspiring testers do not have to resort to paying for information, that in my opinion should be free.

Playing games for money? Awesome, right?

Games Testing is sometimes referred to as ‘Getting paid to play games’ and from that, it sounds like an awesome job. After all, most (if not all) aspiring testers play games every day, why not get paid to play them? The reason is because the quote is wrong, testers are not being paid to play games, they are being paid to test them and that is the crucial difference. Playing games involves choosing the games you want to play and playing them the way you want to play. Games testing involve neither of these. Testers are assigned games to test and will need to play the games according to test scripts. To give a real life example, the article ‘Testing Video Games Can’t Possibly Be Hardware Than an Afternoon With Xbox’ describes a tester’s short experience on the job at Volt. The article doesn’t exactly paint a pretty picture. Games testing is effectively the minimal wage job of the games industry and the turnover of staff is the largest out of all departments in development. People get promoted, leave on their accord, get fired or are made redundant. Whatever you do, don’t expect to get rich just ‘playing’ games via games testing.

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How I got into the Games Industry

A small recap of events starting from I decided I wanted to be a games developer to present day including all the mistakes and turning points along the way.

Young and lazy

During A-levels, I started to get really lazy at school and more or less went through a rebel phrase where I honestly didn’t care about anything let alone my future and just wanted to have fun with my friends. So, when it came filling in the UCAS form (UK University forms), I really didn’t know what to put in and I didn’t talk to my parents about it. The deadline loomed so I literally made a snap decision that I wanted to do something with computers since they interested me somewhat.

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