Work in games, but don't play many games?
Is it really bad that if I want to work in the game industry, but rarely find enough time after work/doing tutorials/watching documentaries to play the bunches of awesome-looking games that are out there? Is that important research I'm sadly missing?
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It's pretty much up to you, if you feel that playing/researching games will make you a better artist then go for it.
I played a lot of games growing up but as soon as I made the decision to enter the industry, I quit playing regularly. Work-life balance is crucial to staying afloat in any career, especially a creative one.
I think it's important to keep up with games and to play here and there but the last thing I want to do when I get home at night is sit and stare at a screen. I've got too many other priorities and responsibilities when I'm not at work to give gaming much time anymore.
haha. so trueee *G*
This!
Sure, I "beat" Dark Souls...
And Skyrim.
And XCom.
ye second that.
although if you are working on a smaller team and have the ability to influence other parts of developement other then art, it might be a good idea to stay kinda up to date if you want to use this chance to influence the game for the better, and not just try to mold it to your own personal preferences.
other then that i wouldn´t say its necessary or that benefitial.
But I buy games, and play them for a few hours to see the art and the mechanics. That more than does the trick for me.
I think that is quite normal when you start to have a job.
Personally I think that as long as you were a gamer at one point in time or another you are no different and still have the love to create art for games.
I'm just saying this because when I and some others I feel get into modeling I find games incredibly boring (except to go around peoples games observing their awesome art!) and vice versa. It's like two slippery slopes
I enjoy playing any moment I get.
I practice a lot in my spare time and do a lot of reading, but every once and a while a new game will come along which I want to play. The week of spare time spent finishing the game is nothing in the grand scheme of things, as long as it's not every week.
When in University I saw many students in my class bath themselves in every new game/piece of content that was released and low and behold they ended up doing poorly in assignments. The people who did well still played games just not every new release, only specific titles on their radar.
This year was my final academic year and I finished DMC, Tomb Raider, SC2:HOTS, Bioshock:Infinite and spent some time on Ni No Kuni in the space of 3 months, I managed to balance my work/play ratio by blitzing them in a couple of focused sessions.
Games which I'm super curious about I'll either watch/have on in the background on Twitch.TV or Youtube.
There are a few titles a year that I make it a point to buy/play, but gaming is usually the very last activity in my day. If I can devote a weekend to a game, that's ideal, but not always feasible.
You should probably play at least something over the course of the week, just to have a better sense of what's out there. Many artists will wander around games looking at how assets are constructed. The indie market is also a great place to find fresh ideas that don't demand hours of your time.
just quoting this, as it's my exact thoughts as well.
My only issue with this is that it makes it seem like you can't have any hobbies when in the game industry. If you can produce great art and have time for a hobby you like be it games or football or whatever then good for them.
I totally get where you are coming from but it also makes it sounds like you cant have very much fun outside of what you do for a career. Just comes down to balancing your hobbies,relationships and art. Some people will have more time for it than others but they wont make them less of an artist if they produce good work or show constant improvement in their craft.
I balance my day between spending time with my fiancee, doing art/tutorials/ any other learning and playing games. Sometimes games crosses over with my fiancee. On a good day ill get in 5-6 hr of art, 1-3 hr of games and the rest go's to her and sleep.
Edit: Just wanted to add, if you dont play games, then what do you do as a hobby outside of doing art?(Not aimed at anyone in particular just general question to everyone)
I'm just more or less trying to argue for the point of a experienced artist who has the job already and doesn't need to do art 80% of the day to prove himself to get a job. And also that it's ok to take a break for an hour and do something for fun. Don't want to get burned out. An hour won't ruin your chances of getting a job forever.
not really an apt comparison - you don't become a better artist by playing games... you get better at playing games, after a while it feels like I'm wasting my time. I'm 33, I don't know if that has something to do with it :P
We'll see how my experiment goes, the time I would spend playing games is getting replaced by making art. So that means more illustration, environment art, character art, refreshing my rigging & animation skills, etc...
also, this isn't about enjoying games. I enjoy the hell out of them, I enjoy them too much. When I stopped playing games I've found that I go to bed at a decent time, spend more time with my girlfriend and I'm just overly more content.
Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of great looking games released all the time and I appreciate the artwork, but I can just see the artwork online. It's just that most of the actual game play is been there done that for me.
The thing is, there is soo much you learn inside the industry that during the first 1-2 years you don't even have to make personal art because you're learning industry standard techniques and get that behind the scenes knowledge. So that's the reward xD
But I've also told you stuff like it before, when you feel that you're at a point where you're not progressing as much as you want to you might want to sit back and ask yourself why. Look at your art and ask yourself : What can I make better? Why is somebody elses art better than mine, is it technique or is it basic composition?
Important questions that might help and you know, it always help to stay in touch with other artists and ask them straight on.
There are always exceptions though. I don't think there is ever a hard and fast rule. But, I can't imagine being in this industry (especially as a level artist) and not playing games.
It's not the same because listening to music doesn't involve you killing guys or solving puzzles to get to the next song. Listening to a song is the same as watching a video or looking at an art book - a big part of games are artificial hurdles between you and the content.
But I no longer can do hours of dedicated gaming now that I'm trying to get skillful at art. I was just worried that I'm not up to date with the products it'll cost me.
But even now when I see a beautiful game I really would like to go in it, and just look around at the texture, lighting, character animation, environment interaction, and such. Sometimes Youtube play through don't look at the scenery, or the vids are too blurry. And I also don't want to invest hundreds into a console when I don't even play 2 games on it per year.
@biofrost: Apart from gaming, things I enjoy as hobbies are reading niche manga, and watching nature and science documentaries both good (Planet Earth) and bad (Ancient Aliens)(don't judge me!). It's like why I played Skyrim, makes me feel better seeing wonderful sights and worlds I may never have the time/fund to experience in person.
Ultimately, my goal is to be a better artist - 2D and 3D.
Ha, I can so relate to that!
I approach games pretty much as I approach novels, looking for an escapism-like experience.
Not going to add anything to the discussion since the good points have already been made, just do your stuff.
Which after this past E3 is almost every major AAA next gen console game...
Hahaha, yeah it was watching those live vids that spurred me to ask this question, because I know I'll never be able to play them all, but they all look sooooo awesome!
I'd really rather work on my art skills, which are never as good as I think they are. I hope that doesn't come across as a pretentious cop-out. If I thought my art skills were good enough, then maybe I'd want to play more games. I don't know. All I know is that there is a mountain of things on which I need to improve, artistically, and I can't work on those things if I'm playing games. Hopefully, not being glued to a six-axis controller or not having x-many achievements associated with your name is not seen as not taking your job seriously or just being unprofessional in this industry - but I guess you can't really control what other people think.
All of this comes down to priorites, in my opinion. I love a great, beautiful interactive experience as much as the next guy, but I'm not getting any younger and I can neither afford to purchase or play even a tenth of the games out there. YouTube play-throughs, as mentioned, are great for distilling games down to their true essence and compressing the wash-rinse-repeat stuff (which is the majority of most games). Demos are good too. They give you a reasonable taste of any given experience and then you can move on.
I'm focused primarily on art and how to best use emerging technologies. I'd need four life-times to learn and create all I'd like to in those arenas. And I'm easily distracted. It's very easy for me to get off-track and spiral away hours of time that could be used more constructively. That's a personal weakness of mine, of course, and other people probably handle this differently/better.
If i was a game designer and gameplay design was my passion, I'd feel differently about this and time spent playing games, naturally. I think it just comes down to 'What are your areas of focus?'
Nope. For me it was a love of game art. I never much cared for games themselves, really. Sure, some games I really enjoy. But typically they seem too shallow, or something. I loved Journey, The Elder Scrolls, Dear Esther, and Amnesia, for example.
But all those had great art, as well as great stories and gameplay. And they suit my nature.
Sadly, there are two kind of workers in this industry, those who work for the sake of the money, doing "game art", and those who are gamers and know what gamers want.
I consider myself of "gamer race"
Yeah...I'm sure guys who spend most of their time freelancing game art paycheck to paycheck just to make enough money for rent have loads of time to kick back and get stuck into a 50+ hour RPG. :poly141:
If you draw too much inspiration from other games or current pop culture the fans get angry and accuse you of ripping off another game or movie.
Really, everyone in this thread knows who Mario is, if you didn't play games at all you wouldn't be here. Continuing to play is not a requirement, suggesting that someone isn't passionate about their work or isn't living up to their potential as an artist is just plain silly.
Of course, if one started sacrificing too much time in exchange for entertainment, then one might start to babble on about how games are wasting his time, or complain about the 'artificial hurdles' between the player and the content, because his taste in games is apparently lacking. The truth is, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time, aslong as you can maintain a fine proportionate balance between your career, social life, and whatever it is else you juggle in your daily life,
otherwise your guilt-ridden conscience might start complaining about how games are a waste of time,
Justin. -_-
I don`t play a lot of multiplayer games since you need to invest too much time in them to be able to play them.
I guess it all depends on where you want to be as an artist, if you want to be the average artist with the average portfolio then you`ll probably be able to free up time to play a lot of games.
If you want to become an extraordinary artist then there won`t be a lot of time to spend on gaming and thats just the reality of it.
If you are an extraordinary artist however with a stable job it probably frees up more time for gaming again but i would probably be so excited to do my own personal art when i come home from work that i still wouldn't spend most of my free time playing games.
I`ve always been more interested with the creation of games than actually playing them tbh , new tech in a game can excite me while i don`t really like the game itself. It isn`t losing your passion for games imo , its just having a different kind of appreciation for them.