Journey into making Games at UAT- Part 1

Journey into Making Games at UAT

Who makes games? How do you make games? What does it take to make a game? Can anyone make a game? What do you need to learn to make a game?

There are some many questions you can ask when you are talking about the business of making games. The answers can be as diverse as the people making the games and as the games themselves. In other words the answers depend of the person and the game itself because an answer that fits X game and X person is not going to fit or be appropriate for Y person and Y game. One thing I can say for sure is that making games is hard, but it has a layer of entertainment and personal satisfaction. So if you think its all fun and playing games then you got it all wrong. The subject of making games can be approached from different angles but at the end of the day you are creating something that never existed before with an artificial language, using your vision and your imagination. You are harnessing the power of the device you are using to create and run the game. You are in control of what happens, you are responsible for it working the way you want it. It is like magic and only a few people really understand the whole process really well.

One way to look at this subject is to see it from the game producers’ perspective. The book “GameProducer's Handbook” by Dan Irish describes this in great detail.  He draws from his experience as the producer in the Myst franchise to really illuminate the task of making games from the producer’s eyes. In chapter 1 Dan says that the role of the producer “may include all of the responsibilities of a television, movie, or record producer, plus a lot more.” In a review of the book Gamasutra, Brad Kane, said the book is a “...comprehensive, pragmatic guide to the producer's role in game development.” However even though the book focus on the producers it is important to say here that one person can’t make the game happen. It takes a coordinated team to see a game from conception to the final stages and beyond. To me the producer is like the oil that keeps the gears of complex machine working smoothly and without any issues. In this Extra Credit you can hear and see the basics of Game Development illustrated in a comic way. 

Do you need a degree to make a game? Why I am doing a Masters in Game Management & Production at UAT? Why am I making a game now? What I hope to accomplish in the next 5 years?

I am currently pursuing a Master’s degree even though a degree is just a piece of paper that supposedly says that you can do something in theory. I know some companies don’t really care about degrees to a certain extend. They care about the real work, can you do it in the tough times and the easy times. They want to know if you have enough passion to see a game all the way to the end. They care to see if you understand what it takes to complete a game as producer.

But it really doesn’t matter to me since I am not doing this to go work for someone else. I many reasons to embark in this journey but some are deeply personal. By far my experiences here at UAT have been less than perfect. I have gained some skills and I have created some relationship that I hope will be fruitful for my future endeavors. I have made some progress with the game- language app-that I making. I understand the concepts and what it takes to make a game a little better every month. I know what I need to do but I don’t have much time to get done, so it is a slow progress while I am in school. I made great progress in the last couple of months in the journey continues.