work experience

[Anonymous]

My two teenage sons are desperate to assure me that all the time they spend gaming is not going to add up to a wasted youth since they want to work in the industry. One is good at art, the other science. Both are extremely good at gaming!!

What I want to know is,

i) Is there any way they can get work experience (eg transition year) while still in secondary school?

ii) Can they improve their chances of employment later on by doing something online now?

Thanks,

Ciel

[Anonymous]

My two teenage sons are desperate to assure me that all the time they spend gaming is not going to add up to a wasted youth since they want to work in the industry. One is good at art, the other science. Both are extremely good at gaming!!

What I want to know is,

i) Is there any way they can get work experience (eg transition year) while still in secondary school?

ii) Can they improve their chances of employment later on by doing something online now?

Thanks,

Ciel[/quote:a95d3e9040]

i) Unlikely.

ii) As for improve their chances my advice would be just tell them to study hard and make sure they choose good subjects in school and a relevant course for uni. For a programmer a good course would be a general degree in computer science with a significant focus on maths and computer programming. For art a course in 3d modelling or concept would be an advantage. The art guys on here can advice better.

As for doing anything at present they could get involved in the mod community or start playing around with darkbasic or simple stuff with torque from garagegames.com. Or possibly try the new xna game studio ms released a few weeks ago for hobbyist gamers to develop for pc\360. simple google searches will find all this stuff for you.

[Anonymous]

Hi Ceil,

If they want to get experience making games together, here is a way for them to have a go at working on a game of their own – and for free.

I’ve used this tutorial for teaching both Blender and also basic game design, I reckon it should take them about 2 days to start being able to put their own 3D games together. After the 1 week course that I took, all of the students ( most of which were 14 to 16 ) were able to make their own games, starting right from scratch.

Of course, making more advanced games will take longer, but with one coder and one art based, they have a great grounding for building some very cool content.

Here’s the link to the tutorial ( which includes the link to Blender, a free 3D modelling app with a built in games engine )

http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_the_Game_Engine

The tutorial also includes a link to a forum that is very busy with other people making games in Blender, so lots of tips and tricks are swapped.

Ask them to focus on making small and simple games ( with only one or a few levels ) that can be completed easily, and moving on to larger projects when they have a few of them under their belt.

The best of luck to them – they are looking to enter a tough field!
Mal

[Anonymous]

Thanks guys for the advice.

On the one hand, they have to study hard at school — just what I want to hear! — and on the other, they get to do stuff now that will help them in the future if they really want to pursue gaming as a career.

Cheers,

Ciel.

[Anonymous]

I think thats pretty cool, you being so supportive and all that.

[Anonymous]

I’m not as supportive as they’d like, believe me! Especially when I shout at them to get off that bloody machine and help round the house, tidy their rooms and do their homework!!

[Anonymous]

Hi Mal,

Thanks for the links. Number 2 son has already been playing round with the Blender site and thinks it’s really cool. You mentioned teaching 14-16 year olds — where do you do that? Is there a summer course or something my guys could sign up for?

I also noticed on the candointeractive site an ad for the Nanoquest game. I tried to interest my two in it, but after a couple of minutes, they got bored by the educational element. (I’ve always maintained that trying to teach something by presenting it in game format doesn’t work — you have to make the game compelling first, and if they learn something too, well and good.)

On the topic of good games that are educational second, is there anything out there along the lines of Broken Sword? We did that together and we all really enjoyed it. Less educational, but also very good, were Full Throttle, the Monkey Island series, and my favourite — Grim Fandango. The high street shops don’t seem to stock this type of game any more.

Ciel

[Anonymous]

Yeah I agree with you on your last point there, I love the LucasArt puzzle series with Monkey Island etc but there’s nothing that I know of out that comes near these sort of games imo. Possibly my favourite games of all time,the Monkey Island games Monkey 5 is being rumoured but will be a while yet I reckon
http://www.worldofmi.com/thegames/monkey5/index.php

[Anonymous]

Games like Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and Another Code on the DS or the newly released Sam and Max episodes online are similar to the old Lucas Arts Adventure classics, but the adventure genre is less popular than it was years ago so you wont find them in the main street stores.

The most recent release like them was Fahrenheit for PC and console, might be worth picking up if your into the genre

You should be able to find the lucas arts games on the Ebay also…

[Anonymous]

the class game incredible machine or island of doctor brain have some very good puzzles\problems to be solved in them. wicked cheapo games also nowadays

[Jamie Mc]

hi ciel,

if you’re based in dublin, we take a lot of transition year students on work experience, so get him to give us a shout.

Jamie McCormick
Xbox Live Gaming Centre
01 6750544

[Anonymous]

Hi Ceil,

> Thanks for the links. Number 2 son has already been playing round with the > Blender site and thinks it’s really cool.

Excellent – Blender can be used for creating some really powerful games, and you can’t beat the price!

If they create smaller games, they should post them on the blenderartists.org/forum website for peer feedback, and also here when they have more complete and playable games.

> You mentioned teaching 14-16 year olds — where do you do that? Is there a summer course or something my guys could sign up for?

That was a one off summer course – there might be another one this year also, they haven’t put any details out yet.

> I also noticed on the candointeractive site an ad for the Nanoquest game. I tried to interest my two in it, but after a couple of minutes, they got bored by the educational element. (I’ve always maintained that trying to teach something by presenting it in game format doesn’t work — you have to make the game compelling first, and if they learn something too, well and good.)

The game was aimed at 12 year olds, so the content had to be aimed at gamers of that age – if we were targeting older teenage gamers, we would have put in more explosions etc ( based on feedback from that category ).

Mal

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