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Junior Game Designer

BloodCageBloodCage
edited in Jobs
Hey guys and gals

I've recently finished in the United Kingdom with my BSc (Hons) in Game Design. Currently Im in the states but looking to see if there are any positions available in the homeland for sombody like me. I have lived out of the country for around 7 years now so curious to see if anything there worth returning for. From the looks of things most developers in SA seem to be working with unity which I have experience with but program of choice by far is Unreal Engine 4, blueprints i have found to be a life saver and the general interface a breeze to work with.

Please feel free to ask any questions if you have any :)

My portfolio: mikelevithan.com

Comments

  • EvanGreenwoodEvanGreenwood
    edited
    Hi Mike!

    I can't really speak for the demand in SA for game designers. I'd expect there is a demand, but none of the studios here are big enough to hire a game designer without it being quite a risky move (as in, a bad game designer can wreck a small company if they are given control over a company).

    With that said, your portfolio looks pretty rad!

    The presentation is great as well, though it's hard to tell what your game design skills are from it (for me anyway). As an independent game developer (our company is only 10 people) we don't use game design docs (and I have no way of evaluating them, and I'm generally distrustful of written texts about game design as they seldom capture the problems the design represents), and the rest of your portfolio is images, which gives me some idea that you've got experience with level design, but little else (videos would have been most useful, especially alongside playable builds).

    I imagine the way you've set up your portfolio is more in line with what larger companies are looking for? (where I understand documentation can be useful, so I suspect I'm not your target audience).

    Is the design doc of "Mechanical Depravity" held secret? (I don't mean to be confrontational here, but as a developer who practices open-development (you can follow the development of our last released game from an early prototype here), keeping a design document secret seems quite foreign (although I'm guessing it might have been quite a huge document?).

    Hope you do find placement in South Africa. We really do need game designers, and I know a couple companies have been held back by their lack of game design skills in the past. Though hiring a game designer is tricky!

    FWIW. We are a Unity studio, though we are going to be experimenting with Unreal before one of our next projects (as the project is an FPS and Unreal probably is better suited). There's at least one really successful Unreal studio in South Africa, and definitely a couple others that use it. Although you are right in assessing that most South African game developers use Unity.
  • BloodCageBloodCage
    EvanGreenwood said:
    Hi Mike!

    I can't really speak for the demand in SA for game designers. I'd expect there is a demand, but none of the studios here are big enough to hire a game designer without it being quite a risky move (as in, a bad game designer can wreck a small company if they are given control over a company).

    With that said, your portfolio looks pretty rad!

    The presentation is great as well, though it's hard to tell what your game design skills are from it (for me anyway). As an independent game developer (our company is only 10 people) we don't use game design docs (and I have no way of evaluating them, and I'm generally distrustful of written texts about game design as they seldom capture the problems the design represents), and the rest of your portfolio is images, which gives me some idea that you've got experience with level design, but little else (videos would have been most useful, especially alongside playable builds).

    I imagine the way you've set up your portfolio is more in line with what larger companies are looking for? (where I understand documentation can be useful, so I suspect I'm not your target audience).

    Is the design doc of "Mechanical Depravity" held secret? (I don't mean to be confrontational here, but as a developer who practices open-development (you can follow the development of our last released game from an early prototype here), keeping a design document secret seems quite foreign (although I'm guessing it might have been quite a huge document?).

    Hope you do find placement in South Africa. We really do need game designers, and I know a couple companies have been held back by their lack of game design skills in the past. Though hiring a game designer is tricky!

    FWIW. We are a Unity studio, though we are going to be experimenting with Unreal before one of our next projects (as the project is an FPS and Unreal probably is better suited). There's at least one really successful Unreal studio in South Africa, and definitely a couple others that use it. Although you are right in assessing that most South African game developers use Unity.
    Thanks so much for taking the time to reply :). During my time at university we had various heads of games companies coming to talk to us about the importance of game design documentation some of them Indie developers and some of them AAA developers ( One of them that i remember was the design lead for the lego games "TT Games") what you've said is true in regards to game design documentation that is more geared towards the AAA companies. How ever throughout university we wrote concept documents almost on a regular basis. My reason for not making that particular piece public is simply so that the idea was not stolen, it was actually a piece that my lecturer sent in to two independent developers but sadly they decided not to pursue development of it.

    In regards to my skills i agree that perhaps adding videos would have been beneficial in showing them off abit. So i will definitely try get some videos up soon :)

    Once again thanks for taking the time to reply to me and give out some advice :)
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • EvanGreenwoodEvanGreenwood
    edited
    That's interesting about writing concept documents throughout University . There isn't a lot of game design education in South Africa, but the industry here has been encouraging the educators here (like Wits University) to teach students prototyping skills and to focus less on design documents (although I imagine some design document creation does get taught, especially as it's a far easier task to evaluate by an educator).

    But there are no AAA or even AA developers in South Africa. I think the biggest team we have working on the same project is about 20 people, and that's been a fairly recent development (at Fuzzy Logic in George) (I think). So it makes sense to focus the game design students' time on learning to rapidly prototype, as it's generally a more relevant skill to our industry.

    (As a more personal disclosure, I have the belief that design documents can make exploring a game design idea more difficult, as, among other factors, they codify assumptions made before the prototyping process begins... But I don't have evidence to back this up, it just seems to be true based on my experience, and there are obviously trade-offs to not creating design documents which become more significant the larger the team)

    I don't want to say that ideas aren't stolen in this industry, because obviously it does happen, but as far as I am aware it happens almost exclusively after the game idea has been implemented and has shown some market potential. Like Muffin Knight cloning Super Crate Box (which was only on PC at the time). Or the Fez creator lifting the Fez world rotation idea from his collaborator. That said, I don't believe ideas are a dime a dozen, I think the right idea in the hands of the right studio can be extremely valuable. Just that, even if you have a good idea it's still a gamble because implementation is more unpredictable the more novel/innovative the idea (and if it's a good idea it probably has some novelty/innovation to it).

    Hope I'm not coming off as argumentative or needlessly asserting my opinions. If anything I'm jealous that you've gotten to study game design at a University as when I was studying no such course existed (and I'm envious of the Wits students in South Africa as well).

    In any case, again I'd like to wish you luck finding a rad job in this country, or, failing that, internationally!
  • BloodCageBloodCage
    EvanGreenwood said:
    That's interesting about writing concept documents throughout University . There isn't a lot of game design education in South Africa, but the industry here has been encouraging the educators here (like Wits University) to teach students prototyping skills and to focus less on design documents (although I imagine some design document creation does get taught, especially as it's a far easier task to evaluate by an educator).

    But there are no AAA or even AA developers in South Africa. I think the biggest team we have working on the same project is about 20 people, and that's been a fairly recent development (at Fuzzy Logic in George) (I think). So it makes sense to focus the game design students' time on learning to rapidly prototype, as it's generally a more relevant skill to our industry.

    (As a more personal disclosure, I have the belief that design documents can make exploring a game design idea more difficult, as, among other factors, they codify assumptions made before the prototyping process begins... But I don't have evidence to back this up, it just seems to be true based on my experience, and there are obviously trade-offs to not creating design documents which become more significant the larger the team)

    I don't want to say that ideas aren't stolen in this industry, because obviously it does happen, but as far as I am aware it happens almost exclusively after the game idea has been implemented and has shown some market potential. Like Muffin Knight cloning Super Crate Box (which was only on PC at the time). Or the Fez creator lifting the Fez world rotation idea from his collaborator. That said, I don't believe ideas are a dime a dozen, I think the right idea in the hands of the right studio can be extremely valuable. Just that, even if you have a good idea it's still a gamble because implementation is more unpredictable the more novel/innovative the idea (and if it's a good idea it probably has some novelty/innovation to it).

    Hope I'm not coming off as argumentative or needlessly asserting my opinions. If anything I'm jealous that you've gotten to study game design at a University as when I was studying no such course existed (and I'm envious of the Wits students in South Africa as well).

    In any case, again I'd like to wish you luck finding a rad job in this country, or, failing that, internationally!
    Don't get me wrong we didn't just do game design documents lol. The university I went to offered a degree in games art, game coding and games design. As games designers we where basically the jack of all trades which is a good and bad thing I guess. Thank you as always appreciate the input and advice :) end of the day you're already working in industry, I have a degree and so far it's been rejection after rejection so for now I'm working with a couple of guys on a project which I'll only get paid for when it hits market. But hey it's experience so that's a good thing :).
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • EvanGreenwoodEvanGreenwood
    Experience is the main thing that'll help you right now.

    If you can afford to, work on projects that you feel passionate about (but not ones so large in scope that they never get to the point of testing the game design input you produce). If you're motivated, and doing game design, and choosing exciting projects that are reasonably scoped for the team's abilities, the opportunities to get paid to make things will sort themselves out.
  • HJvdMHJvdM
    Hi, I am advertising 3 positions for Game designers this Sunday in the Suday Press. Will post it here as well.
    Positions at the Serious Games Institute - SA in the Faculty: Economic Sciences &IT at North-West University, Vanderbijlpark. Visit: http://www.nwu.ac.za/sgi/home Rgrds H
  • HJvdMHJvdM
    http://nwu.pnet.co.za/index.php?s=advert_view&g=11080&x=4272372&i=817&pop=1

    Please follow the above link to apply for the vacancies available in the Serious Games Institute (SGI) at the North-West University: Vanderbijlpark.

    Contact me @ 016 910 3497/8 for more info.

    Regards

    Herman
    Executive Dean: Faculty of Economic Sciences & I
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