AAA games make up the minority of games released each year, but receive the vast majority of news coverage, consumer hype, and cultural mindshare. Because of that, you’d assume that anyone would be able to definitively say which games are and are not AAA, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
At first, games were just games. Good games, bad games; big games, little games. Then came the rise of the AAA game. Suddenly a game either was or was not AAA. Inevitably, other classifications followed. In this article, we try to dig into what those are and what they mean. Along the way, we also propose some clearer and more concrete definitions for those terms than currently exist.
I have been doing design and development tests for over a decade now (I even did some art tests early in my career) and I have come to the conclusion that most tests are bad. The idea of testing people isn’t bad, in fact, it’s imperative in the games industry.
With the rise of social media, blogs may have passed their heyday. But, as you might guess while reading this very blog post, we’re still strong believers that a regularly updated blog full of well-crafted posts can be an invaluable source of both learning and entertainment.
This Game is a Business Card is a short visual novel that gives you, as the player, the chance to become an Executive Producer or some other kind of senior manager on a game development project. You will encounter the kind of problems that such a person is likely to contend with and you’ll be given choices that will let you solve them, or perhaps, make them worse.
One of the weaknesses of the game industry is that we are fairly slow to adopt new processes. A great framework that has come out in the last few years is GIST. It allows teams to eliminate the use of road-maps and stay Agile in their planning as well as their implementation.
When talking to teams that are early in the development process, they often tell us they want to make either a vertical slice or an MVP (minimum viable product) of their game. We find these two terms get used interchangeably when in fact, they are very different. To clear up any confusion, let’s take a look at what the two terms mean, and better yet, how to use the concepts behind them to make a great game.
A Technical Designer is a facilitator, helping to move concepts from ideation to implementation. They serve as a practical bridge between disciplines (design and engineering), and as a professional “unblocker” for the design team.
Do you want access to talks and conversations by the games industry’s most interesting and informed personalities, but you don’t want to buy an expensive ticket for an overcrowded convention? Podcasts to the rescue! Within the 18 podcasts on this list, you can find hundreds of hours of discussion about every aspect of the games…
Crunch is an ugly monster that eats time, money, and energy; then spits out buggy games and unhappy employees! In light of our CEO Martin’s upcoming panel at PG Connect, I thought now would be a good time to take a look at one of his previous talks. For the opening of the social platform…
Job boards are one of the quickest and most straightforward ways to apply for jobs. Luckily, the games industry has a whole bunch. The advantage of industry-specific job boards is that they are much more targeted than general listing sites like Indeed or Monster, meaning you don’t have to wade through a ton of FinTech…
I’m often asked by my former students, “What skills should I really be learning to get into the industry?” The answer to this question is really complicated, and depends largely on what the person wants to do. However, there are a few jobs that are very difficult to fill for many companies and if you…