Ugh...the uninformed.
So I was walking downstairs and my Father points out a tiny advertisment on a magazine he was reading. It was related to Video Game Creation. I rolled my eyes because I knew what to expect. And I was right to do so.
The article was for an Abertay University Workshop in the UK for people to go to which costs around £70. I continued reading and came across one part, at the end, which said "And take home a piece of animated video game"...
I know, right?
I could not help restrain the laughter.
What are your thoughts on people who are uninformed in game development as a whole?
I get it alot at School with people having no idea what I want to do and think I need to be a programmer to Animate.
The article was for an Abertay University Workshop in the UK for people to go to which costs around £70. I continued reading and came across one part, at the end, which said "And take home a piece of animated video game"...
I know, right?
I could not help restrain the laughter.
What are your thoughts on people who are uninformed in game development as a whole?
I get it alot at School with people having no idea what I want to do and think I need to be a programmer to Animate.
Replies
A workshop is just like a one day thing to get people actively participating, a recruitment thing if I know Abertay. Might help young people in high school get a taste of what they want to do. Guide them towards the games industry.
That was just an example that I thot was a prime example and prompted me thread it.
Just wanted to know if anyone had saw or had any similar experiences.
I also thot the sentence ' And take home a piece of animated video game' was a bit stupid.
You sound like a chick, lol.
Anyways, I don't understand why people get annoyed or angry when someone doesn't know anything about a job that they don't do or care about.
Someone doesn't know how video game dev works and asks a question that might sound dumb to you. Big deal, this happens all the time with any industry.
Edit: Thought* not thot.
You should be thankful you have a dad, let alone one that cares even that much to point and grunt at something that isn't a big pile of what you did wrong.
In general, people are as knowledgeable about any given subject as they choose to be. I can't fault someone for not knowing something that interests me deeply, just like they can't fault me for not knowing some inane fact about their job/interests.
Smart guy: Which is better Relax by Face Angles or Relax by Edge Angles?
Random guy: ... what?
Smart guy: HAR HAR HAR I iz teh smartz!!!1 Ur teh dumbz!!1
Random guy: Whatever dick, have fun pickin the curb out of your teeth!
Vig. Short answer : No, Long Answer : Nope.
...Nothing to do with my Dad. He knows I'm very interested in animation\3D art as a career choice and saw it was related. Okay?
Oh really? Ohwell =P
Anyways, I think its just the fact that they have a whole workshop for two days devoted to this sort of thing yet they don't make a good impression with advertisments like that.
so..
probably they teach you to do some game-ready animations and render off an avi to take with you. Don't know why that's so stupid?
[ame]
Example: Most of my friends are musicians, tattoo artists, and graffiti writers. Most of them think I make characters by writing code or "doing math" and have no clue that most 3d artists don't write code, but make 3d art. Is it frustrating? Sure, but I can't fault them for not knowing exactly how games are made. Just do what you do.
[ame]
Most gamers don't know how a game works. All of my close friends, that aren't game devs, have no idea what I really do, and I talk about my work all the damn time.
You cannot expect people that aren't in game dev to know what exactly a game is, or how they're made. Most people are shocked that the little jumpy jumpy man on the TV screen was drawn, modelled, textured, animated and has had the logic coded by, actual, real, living people and doesn't just exist on it's own, out there in the make-beleive Imaginaryland.
My mum still calls me an "animator", because it's the closest thing her generation grew up with.
QFT
They are partially correct actually; You need to be a programmer to learn a better control over your character's implimentation, physics, and in most cases creating events for animation cycles. As in learning DirectX where you import the xfiles and animation loops from the 3d modeling tool and later on to connect the database to your program. This is where programming comes.
As for any ad that tells you that "We will give you one 3d game for free" is very uninformed.
What are my thoughts? I think you should call them up and ask hard questions so they would feel insulted by scam and eventually admit their mistake by blasting on you.
My mom knows this.
She tells everyone that i'm an animator who plays games all day.
Anyways, in my course, certain modules are taught by lecturers from other schools, cause, you know, games dev involves all sorts of aspects. Not that I blame them, they know their field, but we don't really get shown implementation of these things into games. So half of our work is really just wrestling with our studio module game ourselves till it works right.
As it is I had to figure out for myself(and the whole course), exporting of assets from Maya 2009 to Panda3D and Torque simply because my lecturer was outdated(he's still on 8.5), and we were being taught 2009 in our 3d module. Thank god for internets.
Wondering if this is normal, these are not really big issues to me. What about you guys?
Err... sorry, but I dont know that that's true.
I don't think any of the animators at work (on an anim heavy game) are programmers at all (if they are, they don't do any programming). The programmers deal with the programming side of animation.That's why they are there.
Doesn't hurt to know how your animations will be used, but you hardly need to be a programmer to understand that. :P And you certainly don't have to know direct x programming or anything.
Yup, this exactly. I hang out with bankers a lot; my best friend is a banker. To this day, I still don't fully understand what he does (and always forget if he's an FX analyst or strategist). When they talk shop, I try and understand, but it's pretty greek to me, and it's the same way when I talk shop.
Pull your head in a little and it won't get chopped off so often mate.
"Those lazy developers should get off their butts and finish that game I want!"
Mom - "What are you doing?"
Me - "Playing the game, looking for messed up stuff.."
Mom - "You are always playing games at work. You said that's not your job. I thought you made buldings?"
Me - "Yeah, environments. We play Call of Duty at lunch. And you always call around lunchtime."
Mom - "Is that a game where they shoot people?"
Me - "Yeah, a lot of people."
Mom - "Oh, did you do that game where you kill hookers?"
Me - "Grand Theft Auto?"
Mom - "I think that's the one..."
Me - "Momma, I don't make all the games for PS3.."
Mom - "It says Playstation 3 at the end of the commercial, so I told the girls at work you played that one and made it."
Me - "What!? Just tell them I make porn or something..."
Mom - "Lamont. That's not funny.."
Me - "Yes it is."
Spoken in truth.
Or when they judge art competitions.
I'd play that. A city full of people trying to survive Zday? As long as it was like a FPS and no RPG.
You'd probably have to restart the zday every month or so, but you need to encourage people to play as zombies, more people you infect/hunt down, the more money so better weapons next time you start off as a human again?
Starting factions/clans. Trading/warring with other clans. Setting up a base of operations and upgrading it with defenses.
Fighting government hit squads that're chopperlifted into the quarantine zone. Scavenging downed military vehicles. Running missions for the government science teams, collecting samples of undead specimens.
Day and night cycles that see the undead scourge stumble into the city at night, sometimes with anomalous mutant variants that're bigger, faster, more cognitive.
So, uhm.
Dear forum of game devs. Please make this game for me?
Like GTA, L4D and STALKER combined, just better. haha.
You are completely correct, I do not understand much of what you say.
Did you even bother to research the school you are so quick in dismissing?
It took about 20 seconds for me to find this:
http://www.abertay.ac.uk/studying/schools/amg/
http://www.abertay.ac.uk/studying/schools/amg/gamelab/
http://www.abertay.ac.uk/studying/schools/amg/courses/
This doesn't sound half bad for someone still in school such as yourself, sure its not high end but you need to start somewhere.
Every single piece of info you can get is useful to you, stop wasting time pretending to be someone/thing you aren't.
If your dad is kind enough to show an interest in you and pay for a games workshop...take it...use the knowledge you gain from it, even if it is bad you'll learn something from it.
As for your OP:
...I continued reading and came across one part, at the end, which said "And take home a piece of animated video game"...
I know, right?
I could not help restrain the laughter.
Seriously, look past the marketing blurb, ring up the place and check out what they mean before you get so god damn judgmental.
You sound like a 14 yr old girl, "I know, right? Like whateva..."
What are your thoughts on people who are uninformed in game development as a whole?
They don't bother me unless they attempt to screw with us, the R18 rating issue in Australia for example.
Anyway Taylor, you still fit into the uninformed category compared to the vast majority of people on here; you have zero experience, no training and little to no practical examples of any knowledge you may have aquired.
I get it alot at School with people having no idea what I want to do and think I need to be a programmer to Animate.
In that case maybe you should be proactive and get some information for your school on local games developers, workshops etc.
Your careers advisor might even be able to help you get some work experience.
And you probably need to do some programming or scripting if you are still looking at getting into Web Development.
http://www.zdaygame.com/index.php - I worked on this MOD for a little while before joining Realtime. Was shaping up pretty nice.
This. I've recently been trying to decide my best path to becoming a good environmental artist and my Step Mom keeps trying to get involved when she doesn't know anything about games or their development. She and her side of the family keep trying to give me advice about what to do when they can barely use a computer. I just try to ignore it and change the topic because it's really annoying to have to listen to her talk about it or try to explain what I'm trying to do to someone else.
Hey, honestly that's a good thing. They're intentions are in the right place. A lot of people don't have a family that gives a shit. Don't knock it.
And I always feel like thats what I am doing when talking about my car with my dad. If somethings going wrong, or making a noise, I'll say "maybe its such and such causing it!" and my dad will look at me and go, "uh... nah thats probably not it" clearly knowing something I don't.
As for my Game industry career, I'm glad my parents are so interested. My dad makes an honest attempt at understanding, and he knows the difference between a modeler and an animator now. My mom still doesn't but she'll go "phew!" making a hand gesture over her head to let me know that im talking about things that are completely beyond her. Its funny because its usually something really simple to us, like the difference between modeling and texturing.
Actually, In a bit more detail, after observing the behind the scenes of Blizzard Entertainment and few other games, the animation part can be done using any 3d modeling tool (3ds max in general) and than it can be exported as Xfiles to be implimented in your program to be run by events, so you can play that animation on the trigger (button press, Mouse-Down, Mouse-Up, etc) Unless you intend to use UDK and not any open source game engine or create your own open source game engine with core code blocks. You need to understand programming first.
Thats why I said you eventually will have to learn programming at certain point.