Lockwood Publishing & Outso Lecture 08/12/10

The guest lecture from Lockwood publishing and Outso was more or less the same information as what the previous guys have come in and told us about. They basically came in and talk about what they have achieved from studying and graduating on the same course as us. They went on for a while about how they went and did some work in their 2^nd and 3^rd years of the course working for two companies that honestly I’ve never heard of before and I not sure many others may have heard of before. It was intriguing to know how popular one of the companies has only been around for 4 years but in that time has built up a good reputation and just two years ago was when it started to produce games and gain that better reputation. Reminds me of the Game Art course itself and how it hasn’t been around that long and yet it comes as far as the House of Commons wanting to the work from the course (or something like that as Chris put it).  But it’s amazing in such a short amount of time something can become so popular, the way it’s going this course will be up there as the best in the world, which I think it is already to be honest. It shows how much dedication has gone into it and like how the company the guest was talking about has gotten far and she went onto explain (like we’ve been told before) how much every member of staff that work there in Europe are so committed to their work and are always look for better ways to produce work.

Of course we all know that it’s no walk in the park to become a success in the industry, we was all shown this week actually how much more effort we all have to put in to get far in this course. It no joke to those who take their work seriously and they are always going to be rewarded the most since we’re all simply giving it ‘adequate’ and inadequate performances at the moment in the first year. One them talked about how she’s an Art manager for one for the companies and how she gets to help with coming up with all the idea for the games they make, in particular she gets to come up with mini game ideas. They showed some videos for the games they made which looked cool, one of them was a golf game set in a jungle and they all helped design the settings for the game and some of the concepts. These games are sold on the PlayStation Network for Sony, which is the equalivant of Xbox Live and how you can spend points on there to download mini games. Another game had a Halloween type of theme to it and the game was meant for release by that particular event, so it also sort of shows how they work to deadlines, I mean every game works to deadlines but however they must be a lot of planning far before that to make sure the game however how small it is, that there is enough time to produce such game for when it should be released, and the whole mind map of everything to think about within the production itself.

One other thing Sophia talked about was how presentation is important, just lately we’ve been given a lot of information about presenting work in class, which is a whole big part of Art and game production, it basically has to look good and at an interview you have to present it well and sell as much as you can really to the interviewer, she even said how she gets tons of emails which are just a waste of her time because they haven’t presented it well, the links to their web sites or she simply cannot find a person’s portfolio which is all down to the person trying to get in contact. It’s important and it’s sort of taught a bit about presenting in time for our presentations that take place next month, as much as we’re all dreading showing our work to all three years, it’s kind of important even if it is for about 5 minutes. I remember my interview for the course early this year, it was nerve wrecking but at the same time I just drifted into it and sold as much as I could even though my portfolio was a bit all over the place, I explained as much as possible it was over quite quickly, but most importantly it was successful which I’m grateful of, and with an idea of how hard the course actually is now, I’m going to have to step it up even more. A lot of hard work is ahead but like I’ve heard and seen in the lectures and with the guests working on projects with companies that are globally famous, doing more will make it, or at least should make it all pay off in the end.