This week Media was very pleased to welcome Steven Watt to the department.
Several media groups are studying game design and the Year 13’s have just begun writing a 30 page Game Design Document based around their own original idea.
Steven came in to talk about the gaming and said this about his experience starting off in the industry:
“I was lucky enough to get noticed by EA games purely through luck. At that time i had the highest gamer score on the first xbox – back then gamers had only just started gaining points for completing goals and having them recorded on xbox live. And because i was always playing on xbox i managed to get up to about 60,000 gamer points which was the maximum back then. It probably doesn’t seem so much now. Anyway EA saw that and gave me a job as a games tester.”
Testing games might seem like a dream job to us, but Steven explained it is very low paid and you work long hours. ” It is one of the best ways to get into the game industry though”
Steven worked his way up through EA games eventually becoming lead designer on games like Burnout Paradise which was one of his favourite projects.
He gave the students a few tips when writing a game design document: “One of the most important things when you are trying to sell a game idea is the ‘elevator pitch’ – this is the 30 seconds or so you might get in a lift when you’re stood next to the head of the company. If you can sum up your game and make it sound cool and interesting in about 30 seconds then you might be onto something”
Harry Lee pitched an idea to Steven which he liked, saying it was really original. It was a humorous black comedy game about rich & poor people, however he pointed out that bigger games companies would probably not develop it because businesses like EA do not often take risks.
One final point Steven made to the students was how important it was to really emphasize the whole gameplay experience of a new game, and not dwell too much on the small details too soon. ” Game developers want to hear about the overall gameplay experience – what is it like? Is your game like a film, what emotions do you want your players to experience?”
For the record we asked Steven what his favourite games were – he’s a big fan of most football games, including FIFA, but just wishes you could play as Brighton & Hove Albion…
Categories: Uncategorized, Video Games
Visual Arts 