Welcome to week 1 on an entirely new project called Industry Awareness. During the next two weeks with the project, I will be looking into a research career in the games industry and creating a career plan around what I will do before leaving NUA and then delivering a group presentation about an entry-level job.
The first was assembling a group and creating a career plan to head after NUA to start with this project. However, before discussing and collaborating ideas across to the group, I needed to research different company studios in the industry based in the UK. I decided to explore Creative Assembly, Jagex and Sumo Digital. The reason for this is that I enjoy playing strategy games, and while I have not played any Total War games, it has wanted me to look further into Creative Assembly. With Jagex, I looked at the company due to my enjoyment of playing MMO and understanding Runescape. Finally, with Sumo Digital, I know of someone who is currently undertaking an apprenticeship, which would help give me more information about Sumo Digital, which would be helpful to share with the group.
After researching the chosen companies, my finding was that working for Jagex while filing the role as a gameplay programmer would be my career after leaving NUA because of the location and my knowledge of MMO and understanding of RPG games mechanics. However, if I am to take my career plan into action, I would need to start developing my skills around making some RPG projects to understand creating specific mechanics used in RPGs. These mechanics could be a levelling system, battles and story progression.
By collecting as much information as I could from researching the different game companies in the UK, I could bring this all forward to the group and use the information I had gathered for Sumo Digital and Jagex. I also looked into the QA game tester role as another option for the presentation because the position is the easiest to get a foot into the industry due to the low requirement. Also, I have a passion for testing out new games by trying them out and being critical of how the game is designed.
Below are screenshots of some of the slides I had worked on for the group presentation.
