What do you do?
We have multiple projects on the go.
At the moment we are dealing with four projects at any
one time – that’s a big deal. Projects last
anywhere from a year to eighteen months to two years
if you are really lucky.
On an average day a lot of my work is dealing with
the different team members and what they need, looking
through the games that are being made, giving critiques
on the direction the game is going. It’s a hundred
and one meetings a day sometimes. It’s
a lot of communicating with people.
The number of people I’d be responsible for would
be about 50 or 60 people directly, but the company has
about 220 people, so technically as Creative Director
I’d be responsible for most of those people.
How did you get to where you are today?
I sort of fell into it because there was no industry
in Brisbane when I started out. We had to start our
own company. So I was basically doing all of the work
from the ground level artist up, and having done all
that, I moved into the role of the Creative Director.
I started out doing graphics and games design as well,
but as the company grew, it needed someone to be responsible
for all the creative output. It’s grown from a
single person job when I first started out fifteen years
ago to managing other people doing what I used to do.
The company has just grown that way. This is pretty
much the only company I’ve worked with.
What skills are necessary for you
to do your job?
Most important is being able to communicate
with the staff and other people. This involves being
able to convey your ideas to them;
being able to look at other people’s work and
critique it but in a fair way; keeping up to
date with information in the industry like
current trends to know what’s going on and technology,
and basically just keeping creative.
You don’t necessarily need technical skills yourself,
but I think it helps if you have the ability to know
what’s happening on a technical level. The more
you know the better basically.
How important was your education/training?
I started out as an animator, so in my case probably
not that much. I did a course the Queensland College
of Art. It was a three year bachelor degree. It was
a 2D animation course. I learnt a lot from that –
art history, film history, a lot of theory. It helps
in what I’m doing, but it’s not necessarily
needed for what I do.
I didn’t do any programming in the course. I
did that in my spare time for fun. A lot of stuff I
learnt in my spare time – I did some programming,
art on computers. But as the whole industry got bigger
you need to specialise and I specialised in graphics
more than programming because I had more of an artistic
background.
Where do you see your career going?
There is not really anywhere else to go [said smiling].
It is pretty much either more of what I’m doing
now which is good fun, or retiring maybe. The business
is pretty big, so I will just keep going. What I’m
doing now is fun so I could keep doing that for a long
time.
What advice would you give to someone
wanting to enter the games industry?
Work out exactly what you want to do in games and work
hard at being the best you can. People will
say you really can’t do it. Ignore them if you
really want to do it. It’s a lot of hard work
so you have to be prepared to work. Study.
All of the things people usually tell you is pretty
good advice.
To get your foot in the door. Now-a-days there are
plenty of places out there where you can learn. Definitely
try to get into a course – they
are not easy to get into but they are worth doing.
If there is a games industry in your area, try to get
into quality assurance - get your foot
in the door that way. That gets you into the building,
it gets you interacting with the teams and how games
get made, and from there you can either continue on
as QA or move to another part of the industry. That’s
probably your best bet. |
