There was a meeting of the minds tonight.  Although it was only an hour-and-a-half long, the density of information flow, the honesty and overall quality was spectacular.  I volunteer some of my time, with a few other industry professionals, every year to help ACC keep its focus on delivering the highest quality students, with the skills most needed by employers in the games industry.  We do this by reviewing the curriculum, asking questions about topics that are important to us but may not be covered by educators, and commenting on emerging trends and needs of game studios.

It’s amazing to me how many folks–studio leaders and long-time veterans both–show up to make contributions of experience and more importantly their personal time.  You can’t really put a price on that.

Even more striking is how vastly different some sectors of the industry are from others.  Rich Vogel, co-BioWare studio head, was there representing the 800 lb. gorilla approach to game development, with massive teams with very diverse skill requirements and super specialized hiring.  Tony Bratton, Technical Director of Disney Interactive/Junction Point, was there representing the mid-sized studio approach with significant outsourcing and practical AAA development.  I and a handful of others were there, representing small teams of 3-10, and our desire for super-competence and generalist cross-disciplinary talent.  The venerable Cyrus Lum represented the 1-man iPhone team, though I don’t think many people can pull off that kind of range in skills and ability. And in general, we all agreed on what was important for each variety of graduate, whether programmer, designer, or artist, to learn before attempting to get a job in the marketplace.  Further, as the team size shrank, the expectations rose significantly, presumably because smaller teams generally means indie developers without a lot of resources and lower budgets, which in turn demands less time wasted and higher labor throughput per hour in a wider variety of tasks.

I also think it’s the curse of the small developer, to be in a precarious situation where, with small budgets, the only people we can afford comfortably are those who will actually cost more to have on-staff (due to training, mistakes, doing things the hard/slow way, etc. that experienced folks don’t do). The question is, is it more efficient to hire someone experienced and pay them more in payroll, or hire someone less experienced and pay them less in payroll per hour, but get less finished work per hour?  You never know the balance until that person is already working… sometimes it works out, sometimes not.  The risk is sometimes worth taking.

That said, we’re looking to hire a seasoned generalist with recent graphics experience, and a solid Flash programmer with UI, design, and gameplay interests.  Contact us if either of these sound like you.

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