Monday, April 23, 2012

From Generalist to Specialist

From Generalist to Specialist

As with everything else, the game industry is mainly developed and organized to make money. Everything is about money, and even people that have the love of video games and make something with only the help of their friends, they still have the idea to generate money from that. Like an old saying goes: there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

While you are growing up, the world progressively shows you its ugly side, and it sticks with it until the very end. When you are young and naïve you think that there still is something fun for you to do as work. As for me, I thought the game industry was made out of jelly beans and gumdrops, and working for it is going to be so much fun. But it is in its core an industry, a company, a place with lots of people doing lots of work, and demanding money for it.

But let’s take a look or a guess on what it is built upon. To start from the top, there is the major company producer that gives the money to the company to produce the game. Let’s take for an example the biggest money demanding douchebags –EA Games - that owns companies that own more companies. Lest say EA works with People Can Fly studios and they have to make a new game. Well People Can Fly create and have a vision for that game, but EA wants to make money out of it so the idea is to make it more suitable for more people and make a big commercial out of it. Why not put some horrible dubstep in it, since that’s the mass-produced fad nowadays, and it always works.

But when you look at it, the company isn’t just at one place. They have lots of different branches all around the world just because there is cheap labor all around. Lets take for example India, where you can just pay them 5 dollars a day and they will do the same amount of work as a US company that want 12 dollars per hour. That’s because money everywhere has a different value. As stated prior, the game industry is made out of companies that want money. No wonder everything we buy is made in China – cheap labor, and a large amount of people to do the work.

To be honest, I have no idea what the best way to get to the top spot in a game company is. Perhaps it requires lots of luck. Even if you are good, somebody might want to screw you over so he can have a better spot. Nobody in this world would let you take his place if he is happy with it. For a person to aim to be a great concept artist or art director, a good dose of luck and lots of balls is needed, in order to do what you have to do with success as your only goal.

There isn’t much to say on this subject, a person like myself or you, who want to get in the game industry, should think of himself as a labor donkey. You have to be able to do lots of shitty work all the time and deal with it so one day you might get somewhere, only to do the same thing again, to get a little farther ahead.

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