User Control Panel
Search iVirtua
Advanced/Tag Search...
Search Users...
What is iVirtua Exclusive Community?
  • An exclusive gaming industry community targeted to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses and Students in the sectors and industries of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely related with it's Business and Industry.
  • A Rich content driven service including articles, contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads, and debate.
  • We strive to cater for cultural influencers, technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
  • A medium to share your or contribute your ideas, experiences, questions and point of view or network with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
Guest's Communication
Live Chat
Teamspeak (VOIP) Audio Conference
Private Messages
Check your Private Messages
Themes
Choose an iVirtua Community theme to reflect your interests...
Business Theme
India/Arabic Theme

Gaming Theme
iVirtua Recommends
Fly Emirates Advertising
Quality of life in Gaming Indusry: Devs: stop playing games
Digg This Digg Topic Tag it on del.icio.us Tag topic on On del.icio.us Technorati Search Technorati Search Post to Slashdot Post to Slashdot
You are currently in Business and Industry in Gaming, Media, Web, IT and Computing
Post new topic Reply to topic
Fri May 16, 2008 3:28 am Reply and quote this post
Cliff Bleszinski, the public face of the Gears of War series, addressed this in an interview with the Escapists' Russ Pitts. One of the odder things is that he seems to imply that the less gaming he does, the better he becomes at his job. "
I'm at the point now where I want to make sure I have a good work/life balance. I'll play Call of Duty 4,but I might not necessarily get all the achievements; I might not getto the next level as far as leveling up in the online experience," he said. "Imight not beat Army of Two. I'll give it a good five or sixhours and be like, 'OK, I get the experience. Now I want to check outthe latest movie.' Or I want to be outside taking my dog out or justexperiencing life in general and meeting new people.
"
He goes on. "One thing I've learned throughout my life...being tasked with creating new characters and new IP is, you have tohave that pool in your head of experience in life to draw from. Gears 1, for example—a trip to London helped me inspire so much of what the architecture was in Gears.... Andeverything that you experience in life is grist for the mill of yourcreativity. So I think it's good to have a good balance there."

This isn't a new insight, and the possibility that a limited pool ofinfluences can damage your work was also brought up by Ken Levine whilehe was working on Bioshock. "Most video game people have read one book and seen one movie in their life, which is Lord of the Rings and Aliens or variations of that," Levine told MTV News, adding, "There's great things in that, but you need some variety."
A GamaSutra article points outthat quality of life is still a major problem in the gaming industry,and the long hours, extensive technical knowledge needed to creategames, and inevitable crunch-time near the end of projects cause manyin the industry to become monk-like in their personal lives. Althoughthrough many details are different, the path to game design is oftenpretty linear: a childhood spent playing game after game, adolescenceand teen years spent learning your way around a computer, college yearsspent honing that experience, and then long hours at work actuallycreating games.
I've talked personally to enough people in the industry to know thatmany designers can sum up much of their lives as caffeinated years infront of a computer screen. That is, until everyone in the industrytakes a day off to see the same movie, which is often an event filmlike Iron Man. Which, of course, already looked like a video game.Leisure time at many companies is spent playing, you guessed it, moregames. While it may be an even larger tangent, the possibility is alsothere to mine literature for gaming content, something Bioshock did with great success.  
There can be a joke made here about why women are often treated as sexobjects in games, and Bleszinski goes for it when he said that GeorgeBroussard from 3D Realms claimed that life experience doesn't matterwhen it comes to making games. "
I guess there's a reason why there's strip clubs in Duke Nukem,"he said. An even sadder thought is how children are treated in games;how many times do you see kids as demons, monsters, or ghosts? There isa reason for the rarity of strong parent-child relationships in games:there is a rarity of the real thing among those in the business thatcreates them.

"To be a good creative, you need to be awell-rounded person. You need to have life experience. You need to haveyour heart broken. You need to experience loss. You need to raisepuppies and have a family eventually and know what it's like to put thetop down and drive 120 mph on a beautiful day with the leaves kickingup behind you, with the music playing. Because if you don't know whatthat's like, how are you going to have a real-life frame of referenceto compare it to when you try to bring that level of excitement intoyour games?" Bleszinski summed up. When you can tear apart almost everygame and see the lineage of the design, character, and story in termsof other games, something needs to give. The only question is whetheror not the industry will ever allow the people fueling it to put downthe controller.

                                  
                                   ars_technica19:http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/05/14/game-designers-please-stop-playing-games
Buzz up!

Contributed by Editorial Team, Executive Management Team
372659 iVirtua Loyalty Points • View ProfileSend Private MessageBack to Top

Related Articles
Post new topic   Reply to topic


Page 1 of 1

iVirtua Latest
Latest Discussion

Discuss...
Latest Articles and Reviews

Latest Downloads
Subscribe to the iVirtua Community RSS Feed
Use RSS and get automatically notified of new content and contributions on the iVirtua Community.


Tag Cloud
access amd announced applications author based beta building business card case company content cool core course cpu create data deal dec demo design desktop developers development digital download drive email feature features file files firefox flash free future gaming google graphics hardware help industry information intel internet iphone ipod jan launch linux lol love mac market media memory million mobile money movie music net nintendo nov nvidia oct office official online patch performance playing power price product program ps3 pst publish ram release released report rss sales screen search security sep server show size software sony source speed support technology thu tue update video vista war web website wii windows work working works xbox 360 2006 2007 2008

© 2006 - 2008 iVirtua Community (UK), Part of iVirtua Media Group, London (UK). Tel: 020 8144 7222

Terms of Service and Community RulesAdvertise or Affiliate with iVirtuaRSSPress Information and Media CoverageiVirtua Version 4PrivacyContact