My aim is to be competent enough to be able to play a big part in a small development team. Originally I am an artist, and that is the skill set I choose to develop and specialize in, but I also use my creativity in areas such as game design and writing. I even make sure to understand the basics of programming. This means I am quite capable of working together with all sorts of game developers, and taking part in the game design as well as the graphical design and the development of the graphics.
Creativity is a key word in my life and design is something I value greatly. This can lead to some problems as I have difficulties trusting computers to do my work. It is my strong opinion that the artistic work of a human being is vastly better than anything else, and if I could I would let even the tiniest leaf in a game be designed by an artist. This also gives me problems trusting new software, as I may worry that I do not have ultimate control of the product and design decision can be made accidentally through the computer.
I am quite devoted to what I am doing and confident in my own skill. I believe that I can work out solutions to practically any problem, and by believing it strongly I am not afraid to try and thus prone to success. Again, however, my need of control over my own product may lead to situations where I do not trust new software to do a job that I can do manually.
I always try and avoid conflict as much as possible, especially with new people. This means I never get aggressive and angry. It may also mean I let things I consider faulty slip though and continue down the pipeline as I am not prepared to fight for them. But, as I said, I am quite devoted and design is very important to me. As I get to know the team and become comfortable with working with them I have to learn to stand up for my ideas. I learn what exactly it is that is important to me and what I can let others decide, and then I use that to bargain in my own ideas into the product.
My number one plan for the future is to be part of a smaller game development studio, which I have played an active part founding. The work I play to do is mainly that of a concept artist, but I also aim to work with game design, writing and the actual developing of in-game graphical artefacts. No matter what area I work in it is clear that I begin in the very beginning of a pipeline. My skill is to invent something new out of nothing, be it a character concept, an idea of a gameplay or an intriguing narrative. As mentioned, my most strongly specialized area of expertise is as an artist.
I am a creator, and I intend to remain so. I have little interest in running a company smoothly or selling products effectively. There are other people who can do that, while I focus on what I’m good at. During the course of this course I will, however, most likely develop my management skills, so as to be able to understand what it is that the true managers are doing in the same way that I understand what the level designers and programmers are doing. If I could have my wish I would rather focus of further development of my creative skills, becoming a better artist and designer, and let the business people develop their business skills.
I have been making games for a couple of years now, designing and working with the art. That is what I want to continue doing, and get even better at. The reason I’m good at what I do is that I work devotedly and effectively on the things I find worthwhile and rewarding. The biggest challenge during this course will be for me to find ways to see it as relevant to what I am doing. It is difficult for me to spend my time and energy on things I cannot see the point of, and I am moving into a part of my life where school and academic studies no longer gives me the satisfaction I need. I will have a hard time finding the motivation to write things like this when I would rather work on my games and the starting of my game studio. This leads to the rather uncomfortable question of why I am taking this course in the first place. I have yet to discover the actual rewards of this course, seeing as it just stated and I am not sure what it is all about.
And speaking of things of which I see little point, I shall now attempt to use the Five Factor Model. I seem to have a quite high Openness, not-quite-as-high-but-not-very-low-either Conscientiousness and Agreeableness and quite low Extraversion and Neuroticism. That is to say, I thrive on new ideas, imagination and the abstract. I have a solid order in my head and am always prepared for what is going on around me but I do not write down schedules and I do not impose on other people to follow my plans or tell be about theirs. I do not care much about other people and their feelings, but not to the point of being a jerk. I can be nice to you without caring about you. I am quite introverted and do not go to many parties. I wait until I have something to say and someone who listens before I speak. And finally, I am not neurotic at all. I am happy-go-lucky and optimistic and I never worry about things.
Intention
I have at this point a base experience of creating game that I feel confident with. What I have never done before is finalizing a product to the point where it is ready to be released on the market. I also have no experience of releasing a product on the market. My plan for this course is to tackle this. I will participate in a team with the singular goal of manage a whole game production to the point where the game is available for buying in a store of some sort.
I have a good idea of how it is to start a project. I can even say with a decent accuracy how good a game will be and who will like it. What I need to experience is the final finalizing of a product: The de-bugging and over all love-giving to every tiny part of the final product.
The plan, as I said, is simple: I will now spend a year with my team, building a full game and get it out on the market, facing all the challenges involved with this. That should give me the experience I lack now.
Ambition
As has already been stated I am very creative. I come up with new ideas and I design. Proof of this can be found in previous game productions in which I have participated, smaller project I have worked on in my free time and pretty much in the sum of all my actions for the best part of my life so far.
What I need to do is to take as much advantage of this creativity as possible. By increasing my drawing speed I can compose a greater number of sketches per day. But that is not my only limitation. Ideas do not come by themselves. I have to work on them and be in a good mood. What I have to do in order maximize my skills is to find the ideal circumstances for me to design and make sure to let that happen as often as possible. This includes things as being interested and passionate about what I am doing, but also things like not being sleepy.
It is also very hard to schedule creativity. When we choose to industrialize the game industry in order to make as much money as possible it becomes important to be able to deliver ideas and artistic quality as part of a production pipeline. While it is good to maximize my creativity for things I am passionate about, I should also be able to create even if I’m not in a good mood. The game industry cannot afford to wait for my good ideas.
Despite the fact that an industrialized mindset is expected and required I would still choose to, when selling my skills, focus on my artistic abilities. They are my strongest and most unique. I need to work on a way to tackle the industrial world, but I do not have to brag about it to possible employers.
During this course I will participate in a full game production, from the beginning to the very end. It will be my responsibility to deliver on time, but also to make sure that the final product has artistic value and good design. My focus will be to make sure the product is as good and interesting as possible. I am a worker and creator rather than a manager or salesman.
Inspiration
In Pixar’s movie “Ratatouille” there is an unsympathetic character who is a food critic. The first time he is introduced to the audience his typewriter is shown, and the backside of it is designed to look like a human skull (his office is also shaped like a coffin). This is the sort of design work that interests me and the type of puzzles I like to solve; hidden messages within the graphical design which are hardly noticed but adds a lot to the viewers impression. Another good example is the movie “Megamind” where there is a superhero who stages his own death and hides in a trailer in an American desert. His superhero costume is designed to remind of Elvis Presley, which is a hilarious reference.
(These are by the way not things I have read online or otherwise, but my own analysis from watching the movies.)
When it comes to how I want my life to be there are many examples. One that I can take from the top of my head is Bumblebee Studios, a newly created Swedish game studio who has recently released their game “Bloodline Champions”. They are about ten people and they can pretty much life from the games they make.
Conclusion
The goal of this coming year is to be able to create a full game that is complete and finalized enough to be proud of when it is out on the market. The three biggest challenges that I see in doing this is to have the technical competence to actually perform this, to set up a realistic project plan and follow it, and to manage to keep the team happy and doing their best throughout the entire project. My technical competence is what I am most interested in developing, and also what is needs the most straight-forward training. Project planning and human resources issues are not what I want to focus my work on, but I cannot do my work unaffected by either of them.
In conclusion the one big goal of this year is to acquire the necessary experience, not skills, needed to keep a smaller game studio functional. It is my firm belief that I already posses the basic skills I need. What I need is to put it all together and experience that process in order to see that it works. What I mean to say by this is not that I think that I am perfect as I am and that there is no room for developing further. I mean that I, at this point, do not need to learn any new skills, or even develop the ones I have, but rather put the ones I have to the test. I need to try my wings and see how it goes before I can deduce what needs to be done next.
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