Interview Questionnaire Request
My son is busy with a school science project and his chosen topic is about gaming and who the most avid gamers are... men or women or both. He's a Grade 6 pupil and as this is quite a large undertaking, I'm trying to help him gather resources and information. I think we have a good handle on who the gamers are or rather which kinds of people prefer specific types of games but getting info directly from the people involved in development would be ideal.
Most of the resources on the net applies to the countries with massive populations, such as America, China or Europe as a whole and there is very little about South Africans.
I thought that as actual developers, you would have insight into the demographics of who the gamers are and the possible trends in our country. He also needs to gather background information on where developers start and how you decide what sort of games to develop, how long it takes and all the details such as graphics, music etc
I have already set up a questionnaire and would be grateful if I could either email it directly to those of you who wouldn't mind taking time to answer the questions (14 of them in total) or I could post the questions here if that's easier.
Thank you in advance for the help.
Michelle
*Edit*
The online Questionnaires:
From the Gamer
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nEGkp8DohfkSXkPuYKHzni-3gEAyO-SkQGzye995hMQ/viewform?usp=send_form
Game Developer's Form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PALnI054GpKfmHhY1-0ASJz8rCHrMBIfZMyp7M7sECo/viewform?usp=send_form
Most of the resources on the net applies to the countries with massive populations, such as America, China or Europe as a whole and there is very little about South Africans.
I thought that as actual developers, you would have insight into the demographics of who the gamers are and the possible trends in our country. He also needs to gather background information on where developers start and how you decide what sort of games to develop, how long it takes and all the details such as graphics, music etc
I have already set up a questionnaire and would be grateful if I could either email it directly to those of you who wouldn't mind taking time to answer the questions (14 of them in total) or I could post the questions here if that's easier.
Thank you in advance for the help.
Michelle
*Edit*
The online Questionnaires:
From the Gamer
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nEGkp8DohfkSXkPuYKHzni-3gEAyO-SkQGzye995hMQ/viewform?usp=send_form
Game Developer's Form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PALnI054GpKfmHhY1-0ASJz8rCHrMBIfZMyp7M7sECo/viewform?usp=send_form
Comments
Drop me an email at my work address (hanli.geyser at wits.ac.za) and I will send on some research we have on SA. There is very little, but it may help. You may have to help him read it, it is a bit heavy going.
If you set the questionnaire up as a Google form, you could post the link here, and I will send it on to my student body as well.
I am sure that many of us would happily help out!
Good luck to you and your son :)
best
Hanli
I will send you an e-mail right now. As it's a hotmail address it's often ends up in a junk folder so if you don't receive it, please have a look in that folder.
Regards
I think you'd get a good response if you posted the questions here.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mnb39tYInk9-hl9glPei73ncEkzW8wLwmQwPKfB9Y5w/edit?usp=sharing
If there is an problem please let me know and I can try to fix it.
I have also created a form which addresses the pure Gamer more so than the developers...i.e. End users
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YeOxFqp_pnTd-34p7dtyOT6WxN4YA6a4XkzfGG0SDac/edit?usp=sharing
Thank you in advance
Michelle
I'll check my mail now :)
You have set them up as Google docs, I'll help you set it up as a form that people can fill in online :) I'll try do it now, and share it with you :)
M
Company: Primarily at Luma Arcade, though I have other smaller clients.
Gender: M
Age: 26
Nationality: South African
1. At what age did you know you had a passion for gaming? Sometime in primary school.
2. Do you remember the first game you played? On which format or platform? I think the first game I played was Scorched Earth on the PC. It was kind of what eventually became Worms. I think the first game that really made me excited to play games was Full Throttle, also on the PC.
3. How did you move from being a gamer to being a developer? I didn't know making games was an actual, viable career path in SA until a friend of mine joined Luma Arcade as a programmer. When he showed me some of what he was doing, I immediately switched career paths. This was when I was 20-21.
4. Did you study coding or graphics or were you an apprentice to another experienced developer? I studied a BSC in Computational and Applied Maths, and two years of a degree in Visual Communication (before dropping out because I felt I would benefit much more learning on-the-job than from lecturers who had almost no game development experience). However, the vast majority of what I learnt that was actually, genuinely useful every day comes from involvement in an online game art community called Polycount.
5. Which part of developing do you prefer? The initial concept creation, the graphic design or another aspect altogether? I think the start of the game is the most fun, when you're filled with ideas, experimenting with stuff, and doing R&D. As production goes on, somehow things seem to become more and more of a drag to me, because a lot of effort goes into finishing, polish, and cutting out things that you don't have the budget to put in any more. :(
6. Do you work alone or in a team? As a team.
7. What inspires your creations? Books? Dreams? Movies or TV shows other games or something completely different? I'm inspired by just about everything in life, although movies, art and tough personal experiences usually inspire me the most.
8. Please give me a brief job description. I'm a technical artist and art generalist. For the most part I do everything the other artists do, but I'm also involved in writing tools to help them work more efficiently, and technical R&D for trying to get the best look we can get out of the limitations we have on mobile hardware.
9. Who do you have in mind when you design games? For instance, men in general, a certain age group, a certain interest group or someone specific. For the most part, I make games for myself. My tastes are pretty vast and undefined though, so my art director gets pretty involved.
10. How many hours a day or week do you manage to play games for pure pleasure? I think I average about 15 hours a week, but varies highly depending on whether I'm taking courses or doing contracts outside of the normal day job.
11. Which are currently your favourite games? I don't spend enough time on them to be much good, but I'm a big fan of Starcraft 2 and League of Legends.
12. Do you think the games of the future will be very different to the ones already released? Absolutely. As technology matures, games change. As society matures, games change. As people mature, games change.
13. Is the trend shifting more towards Apps rather than games released for PC, PlayStation and Xbox for example? The trend is currently toward making smaller, lower-cost, lower-risk games. I think this is partly because of how the budgets spend on higher end stuff makes the number of sales needed to be profitable more and more unrealistic, and partly because some game developers leave companies to make their own games after being disillusioned with being a cog in the machine and having much of what they do defined by marketing and advertising rather than making games that they feel belong to them.
14. Do you personally believe some games lead to violence? I don't think playing games makes people more violent. I think people who have a more violent leaning can explore that in violent video games, the same way that they might be more interested in watching and reading thrillers.
From the Gamer
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1nEGkp8DohfkSXkPuYKHzni-3gEAyO-SkQGzye995hMQ/viewform?usp=send_form
Game Developer's Form
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PALnI054GpKfmHhY1-0ASJz8rCHrMBIfZMyp7M7sECo/viewform?usp=send_form
Company: Retro Epic(Recently)
Gender: M
Age: 28
Nationality: South African
1.At what age did you know you had a passion for gaming? I started very young. I've been playing games since I was 5/6 years old.
2.Do you remember the first game you played? On which format or platform? I'm not entirely sure which was the very first, but some titles I remember are Sopwith, Scorched earth and Challenge of the ancient Empires.
3.How did you move from being a gamer to being a developer? For me the catalyst was the MGSA community. I dabbled with some map editors before I found the community, but only realized afterwards that it was a viable thing to do in SA.
4.Did you study coding or graphics or were you an apprentice to another experienced developer? I did study some programming in school and at university(though I didn't finish the degree).
5.Which part of developing do you prefer? The initial concept creation, the graphic design or another aspect altogether? I love the initial prototyping phase. The part I most enjoy though is when working in a team and seeing all the different parts coming together.
6.Do you work alone or in a team? I do both. I prefer working in teams though.
7.What inspires your creations? Books? Dreams? Movies or TV shows other games or something completely different? I'm not sure that I get inspired. It feels more like excitement for me. I like creating things that I would enjoy interacting with.
8.Please give me a brief job description My day to day is programming. But that seems too narrow of a description because it's mostly problem solving.
9.Who do you have in mind when you design games? For instance, men in general, a certain age group, a certain interest group or someone specific. I don't really think of specific people when I design a game. I tend to focus on how I feel about the game, and what the mechanics/aesthetics are trying to communicate to people in general.
10.How many hours a day or week do you manage to play games for pure pleasure? It varies greatly from week to week. But usually it's at least an hour a day.
11.Which are currently your favorite games? Currently I'm playing a lot of Hearthstone and Minecraft.
12.Do you think the games of the future will be very different to the once already released? I hope so. I think games are a medium that can be forever changing. As long as people/society changes and technology progresses, there is no telling what the future of gameing can look like.
13.Is the trend shifting more towards Apps rather than games released for PC, PlayStation and Xbox for example? I don't know really. My own experience with games is primarily PC. I rarely play on any other platform as I don't own any other platform. What I can say though is that consoles and mobile games usually have a lower barrier to entry as the controls are usually more comfortable to new people.
14.Do you personally believe some games lead to violence? This is something that has been an issue for me me entire life. I used to say that there is no way that games are responsible for violence as I(and many of my friends) have spent a lot of time playing violent games and we aren't prone to violence at all. This, I have come to realize, is a bit naive.
Personally I think that violent games will in some way affect the person playing them, much the same way that books or movies or any other media for that matter will affect the person consuming them. You can't read Terry Pratchett without falling in love with the characters. You can't watch something like Grudge without being scared.
So I think it comes down to each person and all the factors in their life(which includes games). I thing it's unreasonable and irresponsible to blame one factor in someones life for a specific behavior.
For the record, I also don't believe that games lead directly to violence but rather that a person who is already unstable would find a catalyst in almost anything he/she is involved in.
Name: Danny Day
Company: QCF Design
Gender: M
Age: 33
Nationality: South African
1. At what age did you know you had a passion for gaming? When my parents kept trying to tell me that I was spending too much time on them, about halfway through primary school.
2. Do you remember the first game you played? On which format or platform? Probably hangman on a briefcase computer that my dad brought back from work when I was a kid. It was all one lump, with a tiny yellow screen that hid behind the fold-up keyboard.
3. How did you move from being a gamer to being a developer? My dad made games to test learning theories on my sister and I, so games were always things that ran from code anyway. Editing things was just how you made games do other things. I started getting paid to make games in 2005, my jobs before that were always "nearly there".
4. Did you study coding or graphics or were you an apprentice to another experienced developer? I'd make games in anything I could. On paper, with cards, in person, code was just a natural extension of the same thing. I learned to program to make games, half self-taught, half voraciously reading everything I could find. I have a BSc CS degree, but I got that while working freelance as a game developer.
5. Which part of developing do you prefer? The initial concept creation, the graphic design or another aspect altogether? The bit when other people play it and smile.
6. Do you work alone or in a team? I've done both.
7. What inspires your creations? Books? Dreams? Movies or TV shows other games or something completely different? Questions. I want to see how things work, how stuff decomposes into systems of relationships. It's not hard to see games across those interactions, so that's where lots of ideas come from.
8. Please give me a brief job description. I'm a game designer that runs a company. I write code, build design specs, vet art, write documentation, handle business needs, market the company and hire people. I try to have a normal life too.
9. Who do you have in mind when you design games? For instance, men in general, a certain age group, a certain interest group or someone specific. Players. Sometimes I've been given a specific target group (like Gr 10 school girls in rural Mpumalanga, or 8-14 kids in peri-urban environments, etc.) I'll try to learn as much about them as possible and then see what feels like it would be fun/interesting/educational/meaningful for them. Sometimes I make games to answer a question or annoyance that I personally have and find out that other people share the same view.
10. How many hours a day or week do you manage to play games for pure pleasure? 10-12 hours on a relaxed week. Time spent playtesting during work doesn't count.
11. Which are currently your favourite games? By playtime, I'm doing a lot of Spelunky and League of Legends right now.
12. Do you think the games of the future will be very different to the ones already released? Yes and no. I think the medium will get broader, but I don't think we'll stop seeing the sorts of games that already exist. I think games will eventually get so broad that it'll be strange to consider that they all used to be "only" a certain thing. Like books being strictly religious in nature seems alien to us now.
13. Is the trend shifting more towards Apps rather than games released for PC, PlayStation and Xbox for example? If "app" means mobile, then I think it's actually heading in the other direction. The mobile gold rush seems to be over and more developers seem to want to release on PC first, then expand to whatever other platforms make sense for their game.
14. Do you personally believe some games lead to violence? No. I think violence creates violence. I think desperation creates violence. I think that new mediums act as a proxy for the misunderstandings of different generations, so it's not strange to see games be branded as worrying. Games provide access to systemic understanding, so while someone who played a ton of FIFA might not be able to tackle Christiano Ronaldo, someone who played a ton of Championship Manager could have a great conversation with Sir Alex Ferguson. Understanding violence (and no game encapsulates ALL violence systemically) is only a bad thing if violence and desperation are present as well, and those things have nothing to do with games.