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Scot Brew of LucasArts and Josh Druckman of Brainbox Games / Digital Extremes

GAME MAKERS Scot Brew of LucasArts brandishes a sword while Roman gladiators from the game Gladius look on. Josh Druckman of Brainbox Games / Digital Extremes grins at the destructive power of Desert Thunder, his new tank warfare game.

Game Careers: Three views

Geartest.com Staff
January 5, 2004.

How to get ahead in the games industry

The work demands on computer and video game makers are changing as the industry is starting to mature, and those seeking employment in the field will have to mature along with it, industry professionals say.

The changes begin with games’ most obvious feature -- the graphics, said Scot Brew, senior technical art director at LucasArts, Star Wars director George Lucas’ game company.

"The bar is raised," said Brew, 32, who recently finished work on Gladius, a hybrid tactical combat roleplaying game that puts players in ancient gladiatorial contests. "The expectations are a lot higher from the gaming community."

The art allows players to immerse themselves in a game by setting moods, conveying information, and telling stories, all of which factors into creating a deeper, more layered form of entertainment, Brew said.

That has a direct impact on game developers, who need advanced problem-solving and technical skills so they can find new ways to convey richer content to satisfy maturing gamers’ demands for a more sophisticated experience. That’s unsurprising since industry statistics from the U.S.-based Entertainment Software Association show the average gamer is 29 years old, and 39 per cent of gamers are women.

Josh Druckman, project lead for Toronto’s Brainbox games (a unit of Digital Extremes, makers of the best-selling Unreal series) agrees that the quality of games is increasingly in the artists’ hands, but all aspects -- especially the gameplay -- need to push the quality boundary. That’s something his team is trying to do with its just-realeased first title, Desert Thunder, a 3-D arcade-style tank combat game built on the Unreal engine.

The requirement to produce high-quality games means companies are now looking for a different breed of employee than they have in the past: "The level of professionalism will be raised," he said. "It’s like any other industry."

While the games industry was once a cottage or "garage" industry, it is now a $28 billion US a year industry with production budgets in the millions of dollars, and companies increasingly want highly skilled, highly professional employees.

"This isn’t a basement industry anymore," Druckman said.

Nathan Sorenson, a first-year student at the University of Calgary, might differ with Druckman’s contention. At 19, Sorenson has just released his second published game, Take-Out Weight Curling 2, a 3-D curling simulation. He made the game and its previous instalment on his own.

Take-Out Weight Curling last year sold 30,000 copies in Canada and made enough money for him to pay for his entire university education, including living expenses.

All three agree that the minimum requirements to get a job in the industry have been raised. The basic requirement is a computer science degree from a good university, such as Waterloo or Toronto, Druckman said. All said a portfolio of work and experience in the field is also critical.

Brew has aerospace engineering, science and art degrees, worked at IBM as a graphics consultant and headed technical art on Square USA’s Final Fantasy theatrically-released movie before joining LucasArts. Druckman built a traditional cel animation portfolio through his high school years, earned a degree in neurosphysiology, worked on numerous games and founded his own games company before joining Brainbox. Sorenson started building his programming skills from age 9, and made several unpublished games before Take-Out Weight Curling.

For those trying to go the independent route like Sorenson, getting an agent like Warren Currell of Toronto’s Sherpa Games, who secured the publishing deal with New York’s Global Star (a division of Take-Two Interactive), is a big help, Sorenson said. "I probably wouldn’t have had all of this success without it."

Sorenson acknowledges that he is an anomaly in an increasingly corporate world and while he would like to continue making games on his own, he hopes to join an established studio once he graduates. But that’s more of a long term goal, he said. "Right now I’m just trying to make it through calculus."