itb/itn751 games production lecture 11 - game culture

Queensland University of Technology

CRICOS No. 000213J

ITB/ITN751 Games Production Lecture 11 - Game Culture

Ross Brown

CRICOS No. 000213Ja university for the worldrealR

Lecture Contents

• Game Culture• Guest Lecture – David Waller, Senior Trade

Officer, Export Capability, Trade and International Operations, Department of Premier and Cabinet


Readings

• Textbook Chapters:– None

• Websites:– Placed within the lecture slides


Culture

• “It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.” - Jerry Garcia


Why?

• In the IT industry there is the notion of a wider understanding of obtaining work

• People can be working in IT, but not in the hard areas such as software/networking/hardware

• One could call them Para IT


To the outer reaches of space and beyond…

• In some ways we have touched on these positions within the industry already via the education and research lecture

• Now we move further out from the “Core” to other positions that support the Games Industry

• Positions that probably are not usually a target for games graduates


Games Journalism

• But still form a part of the game industry universe

• The first being Games Journalism• Journalism: “the profession of reporting or

photographing or editing news stories for one of the media” - wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn


Games Journalism

• Magazines• TV/Radio Shows• Blogosphere• POD Casts• Portals


Magazines

• An old but trusted medium• Latest circulation figures are not good.• [1,2,3] cite a number of examples of falling

circulations• A lot of people don’t read print medium anymore,

except for books – just for the sensual experience


Example Magazines

• PC Gamer - http://www.pcgamer.com/• Hyper -

http://www.next.com.au/magheaders/hyper.html• Official Xbox Magazine -

http://www.officialxboxmagazine.com/


A neat segue to TV/Radio Shows

• Often in the hands of very few people of “assumed” high authority and with lots of money behind them

• Broadcast TV is a costly medium• For Example:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/• Now often combined with blogs, podcasts,

vodcasts etc. from New Media


BlogoSphere

• Blog a portmanteau of web log • Basically an online diary• Includes multimedia components – images,

audio, video• Has feeds to allow people to be notified when a

person creates a new entry via RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds


BlogoSphere

• BlogoSphere - the universe of bloggers on the web

• Technorati blog search engine site: http://www.technorati.com/ is considered a good place to start to find good blogs

• Technorati is tracking more than 100 million blogs


Some Game Blogs

• Destructoid - http://www.destructoid.com/• Games and Politics - http://gamepolitics.com/• An Age Game Blog -

http://blogs.theage.com.au/screenplay/


POD/VOD Casts

• With the advent of the IPod and the easy compression of audio and video

• Entire radio and video shows can be placed on web servers for people to download

• A form of self publishing in the radio and media spaces


Some Video Game PODCast Directories

• http://www.podcastdirectory.com/genre/video_game/

• http://www.gamercastnetwork.com/

• http://www.digitalpodcast.com/browse-games-21-1.html


Blog and Pod/Vod Quality

• However, quality will vary as the information is self-edited – depends on authority of authors

• There is simply no peer review of information, except by comments in feedback areas

• It is worth thinking about with regards to quality of information available from such sources

• This is why academic journals have such high standards, to avoid misinformation


Portals

• A portal is an aggregation of all the previous forms of media into a portal for particular topics

• The “go to” point for people interested in a particular topic

• Gamasutra is an example – tied to a journal and other media content

• Good Game website is an example – tied to a TV show

• Often include fora for people to express their opinions (often badly)


New Media

• So in summary, these previous media presentations are about Journalism for Games

• But what is different, is that the work is often generated by laity

• People like you can generate this content and self-publish

• One of the few positions where you can start working at any time…


You

• Which is why Time magazine had the person of the year for 2006 as “You”

• The person who can take part in controlling the content available on the Interweb

http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20061225,00.html


Skills

• Obviously you must generate the content• Which will require excellent written and oral

presentation skills for blogging and podcasting• A journalism degree would be useful, if it is to be

a fulltime career choice


Roles

• You may be attached to a magazine/portal/webzine, under the control of an editor

• Or may work as a freelance journalist taking assignments, and/or developing your own content

• Or you may simply put your own service together in your bedroom

• Can be done as a game industry employee – see www.passfieldgames.com/

http://www.synthtopia.com/content/2007/01/30/namm-behringer-intros-podcaststudio-usb-bundle/


Other Positions

• Conferences• Organisations• Stores/Distribution• Government


Conferences

• Not that many conferences organised• But can be a place to influence the industry and

academia by bring people together in a non-online manner – yep, really old technology

• A good source of inspiration as they bring together luminaries from many backgrounds


Conferences

• Is also a lucrative industry• Can make a living working in this area• Humans tend to work better when they have

face to face time for networking purposes


Conference Examples

• Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP)- http://www.gameconnectap.com/

• E3 - http://www.e3expo.com/• Game Developer Conference (GDC) -

http://www.gdconf.com/• DIGRA (Academic Conference) -

http://www.digra.org/dl/


Organisations Associations

• Conferences are often run by organisations and associations within the industry

• Such as International Game Developers Association http://www.igda.org/

• Games Developers Association of Australia http://www.gdaa.com.au/

• They employ people to work with the industry with regards to advocacy and professional improvement


Stores and Distribution

• Relates strongly with the business ownership example given in the last lecture

• I know at least one person in this unit owns a games shop, maybe more?

• Large Franchised example is EB - http://www.ebgames.com.au/home/home.cfm

• Market is very crowded with toy stores having a large market share


Stores and Distribution

• Steam and Xbox Live are examples of distribution points for games

• Careers may be found around this trading area of the games industry

• But traditional game distribution methods are under threat from online media sources

• This issue is being faced by other media businesses – I would not want to be an Australian TV channel now…or a video store

www.megagames.com/news/images/pcstmstrtgfdlyo_s1.jpg

http://www.command-tab.com/images/photoshop/xbox_360_live/xbox_360_live.png


Government

• Another area is in the government sector supporting the games industry

• Games industry is important to government departments due to its export earnings, profile and technical nature

• Is a growing component of ICT and entertainment industry

• Can anybody remember when we had a film industry in SE Qld…


Government

• Roles here are about facilitation:• Access to government resources for games

industry via grants• Setting up trade missions• Receiving trade delegations from overseas

investors• Creating an overall environment by policy which

helps the games industry to prosper and compete in overseas markets


Guest Lecture

• David Waller - Senior Trade Officer, Export Capability, Trade and International Operations, Department of Premier and Cabinet


References

1. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2006/11/us_game_magazines_hows_the_cir.php

2. http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=8192

3. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/76037-U-K-Game-Magazine-Circulation-Continues-to-Decline

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