Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Things That Surprised Me About the Gaming Industry

I have learned a lot since I started the gaming program at Matc but many of the things that I learned about the  gaming industry in general really surprised me when I first learned about them. In high school I was very enthusiastic about films and film production and lately I've been thinking and comparing the two industries in my head vigorously. I feel like coming from a school of thought that searches for a deeper meaning and looks for ways to express the feelings of one person is what causes this confusion.

In my film classes and in all other school experiences in general using other peoples work and using it to supplement your own work was a very touchy matter. Teachers encouraged students to quote external sources. How ever they must give credit to the person even if they are long dead. Teachers wanted you to come up with your own ideas entirely on your own. The way of thinking seemed to be that you should come up with all your ideas on your own and in return you will receive 100% of the credit for your ideas.

In the Matc program it would seem that team work is a huge focus. Any ideas that you come up with are free to use by anyone else and any they come up with you are free to use or modify in any way. For example if you need a script  that applies jumping to a character I would be entirely acceptable to go online and copy and paste a script without giving any credit to the original creator.

The mentality  of  film makers seems to be that only one person is responsible for the success of the movie: The director. The director is made out to be the only person that makes the movie even though he really isnt because there must have been at least a few other people involved. Yet the Director gets all the credit and all the blame if something goes wrong. The mentality of game devs is that everyone is in a project together and credit is split equally among everyone who worked on the project. When some body is talking about who created a movie its always a single person that is referenced. For example somone would say "James Cameron made Avatar." even though plenty of people worked to make Avatar what it is. When somone is talking about games It is always the studio that is referenced. If the studio cannot be remembered the creator is still referenced as they. For Example nobody would say "Gabe Newell made Portal 2" even though Gabe Newell might have lead the making of the game he is not credited as the sole creator.

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