Task 21: An introduction to the Game Industry

Well not only with Games design but in many companies such as clothing a lot of things are often outsourced for cheaper labour costs, people just don't want to spend the money.

Just typing from what iv seen from the industry so far I would list the specialisms as; Concept Artist, 3d Character Modeller, 3d Environment Modeller, Sound Designer, Programmer, Texture Artist, Graphic Designer, UI work, Level Designer, Scripting and animation.
Just for now these are the areas im aware of.

http://www.skillset.org/games/careers/article_2768_1.asp
Looking on this website what iv listed is pretty much what is listed with Skill set with the exception of Storyboarding which would make sense. Particularly with games with cinematics or scripted animation events.
The management of the project and of course the testing of the damn thing! All quite important things with quite specialised people working on them.

Even though im in the 2nd year im still quite unsure about what I would like to specialise, however its good to get a big picture of what's going on in the industry. I have had some form of experience in quite a few of these areas but being on this course I think I am more interested in the creation of the characters/environments.
These seem to be the 2 major things im interested in pursuing, for the moment Im driven more towards characters and asset creation, I seem to have gone off environments quite a lot. The problem is many people go for these roles above the rest and the competition is fierce. My skills at the moment in Character design are quite lacking, im not terribly happy with the way I go about designing them.

But yes there are other areas in game development to consider and if there is no success in the character/environment creation there may be other areas I could consider.

Task 20: Elements of game technology, part three: interaction design

Well yes, these days there is a lot more interactivity with games compared to other years. Since Iv been in Uni it started as the Wii being the King Of This Hill with the use of people physically moving around to scroll through windows and menus not to mention the game play but quite recently Xbox and PS3 Have Released Kinect and the Playstation Move.

I am yet to try these out but from videos and Tv grabs they are pretty sophisticated, more impressed by the Kinect tracking body movement as the psmove is pretty standard in comparison. The old question of when Virtual Reality will be developed is becoming sooner and sooner, maybe not in the recent coming year but certainly within the next 10 years. The gamepads as iv mentioned are becomming more slender (Even now Im using a keyboard with a curved design to prevent hand strain) basically following the forms of the body. Although it may sound sci-fi soon there may even be an entity that adapts to the curvature and shape of the person wielding it.

Not only to mention gaming input devices the actual games have become ever interactive allowing more things to be done but with the lack of buttons/input directions its starting to reach its limit. Things such as press A to open cage, to Pressing a combination in Call Of Duty for arming a bomb. Quite standard in these present games but in comparison to Super Mario on the snes its come a long way. It greatly depends on the type of game.

Obviously with the introduction to these interactive features in controlling, Game Design will change opening doors to new ideas and ways of player controllability.