At the moment the games industry is in a bit of a mess. Due to the credit crunch, companies have been going bust, resulting in thousands of people loosing their jobs. Just think, if one company has 3 or 5 studios, that's a lot of people who are going to be job hunting, as well as the several thousand graduates from university courses around the world. Midway are currently in debt by $75 million, which has to be paid back before February 12th.
Despite all of this, the actual sales of games and consoles are thriving. For example, Sony have witnessed a 115% increase of sales on the Playstation 3 over the past year. As well as this, 3.25 million units of Nintendo Wii's were sold in December alone. This shows that the demand for consoles and new games are still high, and so hopefully companies will always have something to produce and profit from in the near future.
Anyway, back onto employment. Another thing that is going to make life tough for graduates is due to work being outsourced. This meaning that talent is found in country's outside the US/EU, where the labour rates are lower. Of course, this is good for the companies as it saves them money, the contract is usually only for one part of a game, rather than employing someone full time.
Hopefully by the time I graduate, if if graduate, the credit crunch will have cleared up and more studios will have opened. Ideally i'd like to get into the industry straight away, rather than spending a decade working in Tescos searching.
Creativity
Creativity has to be one of the most important factors when producing a game and the work force. If there were to be a lack of creativity in the game industry then every game would look the same. If someone asked me to tell them what creativity was, just off the top of my head, i guess I'd say it is what enables us to produce new ideas, concepts and generations.
Scientists reckon that the frontal lobe of the brain is a key role for creativity. So if you think like that, then everyone should be creative right? Or not. Everyone is born with some sort of creative talent, but some more than others. These people tend to go down a creative route for their career, such as a games artist, architect or interior designer.
Nowadays, different games had different levels of creativity in each area. The Artistic side of games isn't the only creative side, programmers can also be creative in the way they program the AI, make them moving in their own way, creating their own special effects never seen before. Of course the obvious way of showing creativity is through art in games. There are a lot of different styled games out there now including survival horrors, rpgs and action. Each type requires some amount of creativity, some more demanding than others. For example, survival horrors generally take place in a dark, gritty world full of zombies of some sort. Usually these places will be based on somewhere in real life, which are then converted to look interesting and realistic. However, in some games you begin to notice the influences that the designers had from other games or films, sometimes simply copying them, which lowers the game's standards and is less interesting to look at, as you've seen it before.
On the other hand you have games such as Little Big Planet, one of the latest releases on the Playstation 3. The vibrant colours and unique levels really make it appealing to look at. Even then you can customise them and create your own, to test your creativity. Another game that pops into my head is Team Fortress 2. Your usual first person shooter from Valve. However, the art direction they took was inspired by old American styles from the early 20th century, unlike most fps' which are usually modern, grey and gritty.
It's not always how a game looks to tell how creative people can be, the gameplay is also another factor. The obvious game for me would be portal, which i believe is the first of its kind. It was just a test to see if the creators - Valve - could actually pull it off. They did with great results. They showed that anything could be possible, if you put your mind to it...
Scientists reckon that the frontal lobe of the brain is a key role for creativity. So if you think like that, then everyone should be creative right? Or not. Everyone is born with some sort of creative talent, but some more than others. These people tend to go down a creative route for their career, such as a games artist, architect or interior designer.
Nowadays, different games had different levels of creativity in each area. The Artistic side of games isn't the only creative side, programmers can also be creative in the way they program the AI, make them moving in their own way, creating their own special effects never seen before. Of course the obvious way of showing creativity is through art in games. There are a lot of different styled games out there now including survival horrors, rpgs and action. Each type requires some amount of creativity, some more demanding than others. For example, survival horrors generally take place in a dark, gritty world full of zombies of some sort. Usually these places will be based on somewhere in real life, which are then converted to look interesting and realistic. However, in some games you begin to notice the influences that the designers had from other games or films, sometimes simply copying them, which lowers the game's standards and is less interesting to look at, as you've seen it before.
On the other hand you have games such as Little Big Planet, one of the latest releases on the Playstation 3. The vibrant colours and unique levels really make it appealing to look at. Even then you can customise them and create your own, to test your creativity. Another game that pops into my head is Team Fortress 2. Your usual first person shooter from Valve. However, the art direction they took was inspired by old American styles from the early 20th century, unlike most fps' which are usually modern, grey and gritty.
It's not always how a game looks to tell how creative people can be, the gameplay is also another factor. The obvious game for me would be portal, which i believe is the first of its kind. It was just a test to see if the creators - Valve - could actually pull it off. They did with great results. They showed that anything could be possible, if you put your mind to it...
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