Roads Less Traveled: Specialized Careers in Game Dev

Hello everybody. We're going to go ahead and get started. Thank you all for joining us today. We have a bunch of amazing speakers here with us. Uh so first little bit of housekeeping, please silence your cell phones, noise makers, whatevs. Um and at the end of the session, please make sure to spill out fill out your speaker evaluation. Sorry, this is the third talk I've had this week, so I'm running a little uh little off. So first up, this is me. I'm Tara J. Brannigan. I'm the community lead at 5CA. We're customer support outsourcer in the Netherlands. Oh, Sorry about that. Thank you guys. Um but yeah, we're the I'm the community lead over at 5CA. I'm pretty much always on Twitter. That's my icon. I'm easy to find. And I'm also the least interesting person up on stage today. Um

So why this talk? Uh there is a certain element of you can't see it, you can't be it. So there are a lot of really interesting niche specialized roles within the industry that I think a lot of people don't even know are possibility. And when I put out the call of hey, who does something interesting in the game industry, I came up with so many responses that I just had never even considered myself. And keep in mind, I've been in the industry about 15 years. So to uncover these new disciplines was just amazing. And then on a more personal note, I really like getting people into GDC, so I tried to sneak as many people in as possible that are excellent speakers. Uh so there's a wide arrange a wide array of amazing speakers up here today. I would go ahead and introduce them all, but that would take forever and that is literally what this talk is about. So first up, I'm going to hand you over to Victoria.

Thanks for the lovely intro, Tara. Um so, my name is Victoria Dorn. I'm a software engineer in uh the R&D department. So, my portion of the presentation is called what does R&D even stand for? Because this was pretty much what I was thinking when I accepted my internship in R&D about 6 years ago. So, who am I? So, I'm an audio-focused software engineer working in research and development. That's what R&D stands for. I found out like later that first day. Uh So, I'm mostly working on spatial audio for VR and non-VR devices. Um so, I do a lot of developer support and a lot of other stuff we'll talk about in a minute. So, my career path is kind of interesting. So, I originally went to school for composition and sound design for games. From there, I started as the audio engineering intern in development. And after uh the summer, they actually kept me on, which was

great cuz I had student loans I needed to pay for. Um so, after working on the audio team uh working as an audio engineer for quite a while, I was seeing all the cool stuff my co-workers were doing via code and uh in in the software development realm. And I thought, well, you know, university was so fun the first time around. Let's try it again, but with uh you know, like more math. Math's fun, right? We all love math. Yeah? Yeah? Cool. So, um I finally finished that up about a year ago and uh during that time and currently, I am splitting my time a lot more between more audio engineering type roles and actually software engineering type roles, which is really great. So, before we dig into what I do, what have I kind of worked on? I thought it might be interesting to go over some of these little projects I've worked on. So, the first thing I worked on at Sony was the PlayStation VR headset. So, it uses a spatial audio functionality. Uh so, during my first uh summer of working at Sony, I was giving PSVR demos at E3. So, that was pretty cool. I've also

worked on the Platinum Wireless Headset, uses similar technology, and then of course the PS4 actually has the the spatial audio functionality built in, so I work on that thing, too, and it's cool. So, for this talk, I thought it might be interesting to talk a bit, just a little bit, about both working in research and development and also working on spatial audio, cuz I think both of those are kind of not so typical careers or things that people might not think of when they first think of like I work in games. So, what is research and development? I kind of think it um consists of three big tasks or big things that people kind of do inside the department. So, first is kind of researching topics, so researching things that you're interested in or you have a specialty in, just seeing where academia is going in certain areas. After you've figured out some cool stuff or maybe you just came up with cool stuff on your own, uh it's prototyping those things. So, actually making something real out of these ideas. And finally, if your ideas actually fit within the flow of your company or your

group, actually developing those into products, which is awesome and so fun, and we'll talk a bit more about that in a second. So, I thought it could be interesting to also talk about the people that work in R&D. So, when people think of research and development, you might think, oh, only software engineers work in research and development. So, I'll be one of the first examples, maybe. Uh like I was not a software engineer, I was an audio person. I knew a lot about writing music for games, and I worked in R&D for quite a while. We also have artists, and we also have uh non-engineering QA folk that work in R&D as well. So, we have a lot of different people with a lot of different specialties, at least in our department. Um so, some of the cool stuff about working in R&D, at least my R&D group, we have hackathons twice a year, which are really fun and uh really awesome experiences to get to learn new skill sets and throw something together in a couple days. So, that's always very fun and lots of collaboration in that realm as well. So, in R&D, a lot of people do a lot of different things. So, there's always

opportunity to work with someone who does something that you know nothing about, whether it's machine learning or or AI or actual like hardware development. Um and also science experiments. So, wrapping back around to the three of the three major things that R&D does, whilst we're prototyping things, we need to figure out if they make sense to the user. So, a lot of the time we get to partake in the science experiments, which is rather fun, I think. So, what do I do, too? So, it's the spatial audio aspect of what I do. So, first off, what is spatial audio? Quick like two sec- second definition is So, it's kind of like taking stereo 7.1 and making it better. So, making the sounds come from all around you, but usually being output via headphones. So, it's like stereo, but like the next level. So, in the spatial audio realm at Sony, I do a lot of things that involve developer outreach and support. So, figuring out what developers need for the functionality that we're creating and trying to implement that. So, trying

to get them to use our technology to the the best of its ability, really. Um so, I also do a lot of work with spatial audio ver- verification. So, trying to figure out what we're throwing into our what we're placing into our algorithm is this is correct when it's coming out the other side. So, there's a lot of interesting stuff with audio QA. If you haven't worked in audio before or in software development or in any other realm, I would encourage you to do so because it is a rather interesting field and presents lots of debugging problems. So, there's a lot of different people that work in the spatial audio realm. So, there's software engineers, DSP engineers. These are the people actually making the algorithms in themselves. There's also game audio artists, the people actually like creatively using what uh the the functionality that some of the DSP engineers are creating and using it to to tell bigger, better, more immersive uh stories and games. So, finally, why should you do what I do?

So, why why would you work in R&D? So, really the people in R&D, at least in our R&D group, are creating the tools and frameworks and code that's really being used by a lot of different games. In our case, it's all the games on the platform for the most part, which is really awesome. Another thing, as I mentioned earlier, collaboration is really readily available in research and development. Uh there's a lot of people doing a lot of different things. There's always chance to learn something new, which I'm really into. And finally, releasing products uh is really feel-good moment. When the PlayStation VR launched or when the PlayStation VR was announced and developers were so excited to try to use what we had been working on for so long, uh it it creates lots of really good feel-good moments for you. And finally, spatial audio. So, spatial audio I think is a very interesting realm because it's constantly evolving. There's still academic research, really active academic research being done in that area. So, lots of new stuff, lots of intriguing things for you to think about. And in my experience, it it it's kind of given me

the ability to flex sort of my creative and technical muscles. So, I can take my experience of learning about music and sound for games and kind of applying that to sort of the the back end, the functionality of our our libraries sort of on the console itself. And then finally, little plug, we need more people interested in game audio. So, if anyone is uh is even remotely interested in it, I would encourage encourage you to research more into game audio. And that's the portion of my slide. I will pass it on along to Jill. Thank you, Victoria, and I promise I'm looking into game audio. Um so, I'm Jill Murray, and I wanted to do this panel because I know a lot of people feel like they have to kill themselves doing all the right things uh to break into the industry. And so, I'm mostly here to just say, "Yeah, you could do that, or you could just be a giant weirdo." Um I am kind of a narrative director game

designer sort of person, which is not um you know, an especially rare niche in games, but uh the way I work is kind of different, um which is uh kind of freelance and in both uh indie and AAA. I've tried to provide you with relaxing fish slides because it's Friday. Um So, uh my my journey to game design, just to give you an idea of uh who I am and how I work, is I started out in school for theater production, um and then I kind of ended up accidentally in web development, um and then I published a couple of novels um with like Random House. And then, all of that was still somehow unsatisfying, and I realized that I could do everything maybe uh that I wanted to do at the same time if I went into games. So, I transitioned into the industry quite late. I was uh 34 when I

first got the idea. Um Yeah. So, it was a a rather big career switch. Uh my background included lots of relevant things like visual art, drafting, um environment design, coding, UX and UI, story development, project management, product production and business development, and audio production, um but so, obviously, I decided I wanted to focus on game design. Um It's been 8 years. I'm still trying to break into game design, actually. What I did was focus on my transferable skills, which were writing. Um so, I transferred uh into game writing. And that essentially almost went too well. Uh I got to work on some really big games like Assassin's Creed and Tomb Raider. Uh won like a Writers Guild Award. Um and I'm really grateful grateful for all of that, but I know that deep down I'm still just this weird tinkering kind of person that needs to have her hands in

the engine. Um people do not like to let writers touch the engine. And, you know, life is not just work. Um the way that I work is important to me. It's important to me to be able to work diligently, but at like a humane pace that allows time for things like uh thinking and time off. Um and in my background, when I spent all that time as a web developer and novelist, I worked for myself. Um when I started in games, taking a full-time job seemed like the best way to learn a lot and make contacts. Um but after a while, um I started to want to go back to the old ways. Oops. I just went back two slides. Wait, did I do that? Yeah. So.

Um freelancing. I like it. Um I have uh just to offer one caveat, which is that I live in Montreal, which is um a city with a huge video game industry, um Canadian socialized health care, and extremely low rent. Um so, I understand that you might not have exactly the same opportunities available to you, but I would still like to encourage you to take a look around at what your your opportunities are within your environment and look for the right fit for you because maybe you have opportunities that you're not currently aware of because so much of our training is focused on these like employee career tracks. Um, a lot of people automatically assume that they couldn't handle freelancing and I think a lot of studios are counting on us feeling this way and planning on taking advantage of it.

We know what the risks are. You have to find your own clients. It can be a lot of work. Maybe those clients don't pay on time and there's no benefits package. Um, for me I think the trick is if you decide to do something like freelancing you have to make a conscious decision to be your own best boss. Think about the kind of person you would like to work for and become that person. Um, so make sure you set up things like health insurance. Make sure you're paying into some sort of retirement savings plan. Plan for sick days. Plan for vacations. Hire people to do the things that you are bad at and anticipate crunch and don't get yourself in a position where you're actually forcing yourself to do it. And I think if you do the research and think it sounds impossible then maybe really freelancing wouldn't be for you. But if you look at the numbers and can

find a way to make it work then maybe you have more opportunities than you know and more opportunities to be yourself. If you don't fit into a specific box and would like to do you know games and theater or audio design and art this can be a good way to approach it because you're unlikely to find one employer who wants all of those things just from you. Um So, whatever you do, the thing I'd like you to take to take away is that your career might not go the way you expected. Um you might not wind up with a specialization you planned at the beginning, but I think that you find what you love by doing things, and it could turn out that uh what you arrive at is even more satisfying than you could have planned. Thank you. And I will turn it over to Angelo now.

Hi. Uh my name is Angelo Alcid. I'm an attorney. I'm going to put a timer here to make sure I don't talk for an hour um because lawyers like to talk. Um lawyers in the video game industry, it's true, we do exist. Uh there are dozens of us. Um I realize I came to GDC and uh I'm going to talk about law, but I'm curious, is there anyone else in the room who's interested in this? If not, I can just go. Uh okay, cool. Um a little bit about me, um I have an engineering background. I got my undergrad uh degree in computer engineering. I decided um I didn't want to be an engineer. Um and then I didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up. So, I did a bunch of other odd jobs and ended up in law school. And I uh didn't know what kind of lawyer I wanted to be either. And then I realized throughout my whole life, the one thing I've consistently been doing is playing video games. So, I was wondering if there was a way I could apply all of the things I've learned um and finally make my parents realize that

those degrees were worth it. And actually do the thing I uh loved. So, here I am working in uh games. Now, you might be asking, "Do game devs even need lawyers?" Uh you might have heard this, it's a common uh piece of advice. It's easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. I gave attribution because I'm a lawyer. You might have heard this and it's you know, maybe good advice to kind of show initiative and get out there and do what you have to do. A lawyer will never give you this advice. No good lawyer will ever say just do it and then get get forgiveness later cuz usually the consequences can be worse. This is I took this screenshot from just as one example. There was a Kickstarter for a Star Wars fan game. They were going to do engine refresh of I think it was Knights of the Old Republic which was a great game and

everyone I'm sure would love to see a revamp version of it, but you don't want to say we believe so to the to to the question is this legal. You want to know like that's kind of a yes or no question, right? And so we exist to tell you yes or no. And if you go and do it anyway, Disney might not be so happy. The mouse is known to send the lawyers after people. Some other examples of maybe where a lawyer might have been handy. There's I don't know right in the middle there Ragnarok Online. Everyone has probably at least heard of the GDPR. If for no no other reason than you got a ton of privacy policy updates around May of last year. It's a new privacy law that came into effect right around that time in Europe and you know, there's some steep penalties for failing to comply with it.

But it's not so hard really. Like it just makes sense. It's just a way to protect users. The people who make Ragnarok Online decided it was not worth it. So rather than pay someone who knew anything about privacy law to just come in and tell them how to comply with this law, they decided, "All right, you can't play our game in Europe." I mean, which I guess is one solution, but I feel like you could have just paid me or someone like me a lot less than, you know, I'm sure what you make from users in Europe to just kind of tell you how to operate there legally. Um I got another Star Wars fan Stop making Star Wars fan games. Um I found out about another one this week. And like I love Star Wars and I love games, but Disney is going to find out. Um Uh Halo These uh screenshots are from Halo. You may have noticed, if you like little details, that uh the health packs changed somewhere along the way. Um

That's because actually I think this was Prison Architect got a letter from the International Red Cross uh people, and they said, "You actually can't use that red cross, cuz that's kind of our thing." And I know it's kind of ubiquitous in games. Like you look at that and you're like, "Oh, I'm hurt. I can pick that up and get health." They actually frowned on that. So, suddenly all of the health packs started changing, and now it's just a big H in Halo. Um you I'm just going to running through these, but there was a mobile game for uh Westworld that looked a lot like another popular Fallout Shelter game. Um you may have heard about them getting sued. And uh cars, uh you can't just put any cars you want in a game. Uh these have to be licensed. For a long time, uh you know, like Porsche had an exclusive license with EA. So, if you wanted to make a racing car game and you would put a Porsche in your game, they would come after you. So, I'm just putting these as examples of where a

lawyer might have been handy. Uh what do we do? I I like to describe it as I like to take care of the boring stuff so that all the more interesting people here can do what they do well and focus on that. We're either janitors, we come in and clean up the mess after, or we're policemen and we have to tell you, "No, you can't do that." Um so, there's all kinds of lawyers, all kinds of lawyers. Um you could be a solo, you can join a law firm, or, you know, you can work in-house at these video game companies. I've worked um kind of all three of these. So, I've worked at um medium, big companies, and just for myself. So, there's all kinds of different law um areas of law. You don't have to focus on all of them. Um I I focus primarily on intellectual property, uh hence all of the copyright and stuff. But, um there's big needs for just general contract drafting, business law, privacy, uh like with the GDPR stuff, tax law, labor law. If you're freelancer, you want to know about how to do taxes. So, um there's all kinds of

opportunities. So, that's that's my spiel. And I'll hand it over to Donna. Okay, so hello everyone also from my side. I just noticed I didn't even put a title on there. Um so, I'm a professor, so maybe you can also call me the confused professor or not well prepared professor sometimes. Might be a fitting. Um also, thanks for still bearing with us. It's Friday at GDC. This I also have my lectures on Friday. They are not full. Let's put it that way. So, thanks for still being here and um I would like to talk a bit what I'm doing. So, I'm also a researcher, but I'm academic researcher. So, basically, way beyond what what um you guys might be doing. And um I'm a lecturer, so this means that I try to teach people, or really, really bold try.

And I'm organizing events. I'm organizing community events. I organized for example the biggest Austrian game developers conference and also local hackathons and game jams. And I really love what I'm doing. But I want to share with you how I got there because as a researcher, as soon as people would ask me what do you do and I say, "Yeah, I'm a professor." Yeah, they would move away. But it's pretty cool. I'm pretty proud of what I'm doing and I want to share this with you. But I would like to tell you a little bit of um of my backstory. How did I actually get there? So at the moment I'm a professor at Graz University of Technology, that's in Austria as you might hear. I did also study um at some sometime in Boston at the MIT. I did my master thesis there. I have a PhD in computer science. Um I also used to work at EA. I started there as a QA tester um and was credited on a couple of games. I still do a lot of games as a research consulting for studios, for big and small studios just next to what I'm doing now. So it

doesn't mean if you focus on one career that you cannot do side careers. Um and again um I'm really loving the indie community. So I really try to also push forward the local indie community in Austria and Graz. But let me start with research. So why do I think research is um im- impo- um really really important? I love doing research because on the one hand I get paid to play games and call it research basically. And it's all about being curious. It's all about trying trying to find new things, trying to find ideas for the newest technologies. So that's also pretty cool. I always get to play uh sorry, work with the newest technologies. Um it's all about being a some sort of a project manager but also idea um finder. So you want to find out what can you do with the new techniques and the new technologies. Um it's about thinking and it's about puzzle solving. So I solve a lot of puzzles. That's how I have at

least how I like to describe it. Um and I love to do games user research. So, for example, if you look at this guy, this guy has fun, right? Even though this was maybe not designed that way, this this guy is still having fun. And I want to find out what is engaging players. What do they find interesting? And not This is maybe not the fun graph fun graphic to have. But basically, this is how I look at data. I do data analysis for that. So, a lot of machine learning, statistics, blah. And I love to look to see what is driving people, what is engaging people. So, in this graph, you can see for example Destiny players and how they play with with each other or against each other and whether or not this is more or less engaging. This is data analysis we did for Just Cause 2 where we tried to look to see where we are losing players. So, if you if you see the different bars basically, um those those represent different

levels and we are interested in where we lose players. So, we do pretty interesting research here. And I find it super fun to work with this sort of data and be able to say what people like or players do like or what they don't like and how we can improve games. And the second part which I find really interesting and important is being a lecturer. Being a lecturer means being a multiplier. So, maybe I'm not credited in all the coolest games that you might might be when you work in the in the industry and be affiliated with a studio. However, I'm a multiplier. So, all of my students will be at some point be part of those studios. And that's what I find extremely important. Um what I also I I love for example reading. I love to to learn. And being a educator, being a researcher also means being a lifelong learner. So, I get paid playing video games to do research. I get paid reading books to um to learn.

And never forget the community. So, this is something which you can do as a side project. I love organizing small events. I love um organizing those game dev days. I love organizing game jams. And those are things which you can always do to learn new skills yourself and try to get maybe out of your comfort zone and learn all about the different other aspects you can do. Thank you. Oh, yeah. That's what I called it. Um I'm going to put my timer on as well. Cool. Hello. Ahem. This has been around all day. I know. I mean all week. It'll probably go at one point. So will my voice. Uh hi, I'm Louie. Um so, here's a slide about me. Sorry. So, I I run a bar.

Um so, if you're ever thinking about running a bar, there you go. It's a good uh good way to get in the industry. Uh no, I I started off I started off in the games. Um I I did I used to be a environment and sort of narrative Oh, sorry. Level designer in mobile games. And I moved back to Australia and started making games for social spaces. Uh I was always really interested in uh a game as an artifact in a physical space and what people do to games and how people interact with games and you know, what people are drinking while they're playing games and uh yeah, so I started making hardware. I started doing a lot of different things. Um and And I sort of started making events and putting games at events and eventually had to call myself curator. And which leads on to isn't it a bit wanky? Yes. It was very It was a long time

before I could call myself a curator. Because it's a it's a it's a term that mhm yeah, has certain implications. So I never liked to call myself a curator. And and if you talk to curators now, there's like difference between curators with capital C and lower case C. It's all a bit like that. So basically I just wanted to I don't I don't believe anyone here should make a bar. Um it's Actually no, do it. Try it out. It's terrible. You'll love it. Um but curation's interesting. So I'm just going to go through like the three kind of sort of area like main areas of curation. Uh and hopefully something sparks or at least you can just think about it when you know, you go on to actually make games. Um So archives. So archiving's probably the most um like uh archiving and museums are kind of the more like academic-y focused ones. Um

Archives are more about thinking of games as uh like artifacts and it's usually to do with like older games. Um but it's sort of like you see a lot of people now trying to preserve old games or at least sort of make some sort of bank of these are things that we need to preserve including like the technology and you know, how do we even play it nowadays? Um but those kind of thing that kind of thinking leads into what do you record like now? Um if you're releasing a game, what do you record? Do you record like the first the the release or do you record like after the patches come out or do you record like the launch party? Um there's a lot of things around uh, games and archiving those is a huge sort of question. Um, actually all of these are questions. All of these slides end with questions because no one who does what I do knows what we're doing. So, that's why it's only a 5-minute talk.

Um, yeah, and archiving play itself, like what how does that Yeah, it doesn't Who knows? So, more questions. Museums. Oh, what a wonderful photo of a great game in a museum. Um, it's my game. Thank you. Um, so, museums are kind of like where you show games to like a mix a huge mix of people. Um, you have to show it to people who come specifically because that's a games exhibition in a museum and they're expecting a lot of um, like really focused content for them. You also have to realize that they want to bring their grandma and their kids and you know, like there's a lot of people who won't know anything about games that are wandering through and they also want to walk out with, you know, like a an overview. So, trying to like display games to that kind of audience, we have to kind of expect that

they know exactly what they're doing and they expect that they have no idea what they're doing is, um, tricky to say the least. As well as like you then have a responsibility to figure out what of this content do you show and why you're showing it and is it the right content to show because if you're representing a whole kind of swathe of games and you know, like if you if you're trying to say this is video games, which unfortunately when you do like a big exhibition at a museum, you have to kind of represent all of video games. Um, what you choose is really important. Um, and the the slides from the the um, current VNA exhibition um, design to sleep, play, or whatever it is. Um, and yeah, they had a lot of issues with that. Uh, people coming in expecting, you know, different games and not finding them um, or finding my game and being like, I can't even play this because no

one can play that anymore. But, so let's go into what I do, which is exhibitions. So, this is like the less academic-y, more artsy side, I guess. Um, so it's like making exhibitions, um, cur- like I commission new games uh, and I sort of try to fill in the gaps that I see in the games industry, um, which is basically like how do you like make like there's no games that'll sort of appeal to someone completely new to games and someone who's like really likes games. But, if you go to a bar and you make a game for those kind of people, there is possibilities. There's a lot of spaces that games miss at the moment. And a lot of those may be really personal or really trashy or really horrible and people can't really make a living off those and that's where the kind of arts model comes in. So, at the moment we are running a bunch of commissions this year and we're getting local craft breweries to pay for it and that's very specific. But,

looking at games as art exhibitions is really interesting. Um, especially because games are interactive and you can do a lot more specific stuff with games than you can with other stuff. Um, I mean, who likes paintings? No one. It's fine. Um, so this is basically what I just said. And then uh, yeah. So, even if you're not interested in curation, uh, which is very understandable, um, then I still encourage you to think about games as experiences and as a holistic kind of little thing because if you're making something um, it's very important to think about how this is going to be archived or communicated to someone who's not currently there or can't play your game or um, yeah, like what's going to be left after the apocalypse? Um, hopefully nothing, but hey, we can always hope. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of questions and as I say this thing is this whole field is being pushed and explored. So,

ask me questions if I later afterwards um, if you're curious. I have no answers, but I will nod and smile. Um, thank you. My team. Okay. Hello everyone. Um, my name is Jane and I am going to talk a little bit about my career so far and the long and winding road that's led me here to games. Um, I'll just open this for myself. Okay. So, this is me. At the beginning of my journey towards games when I was navigating to this destination which I'm currently at which is unknown. Um, so my road um, into the games

industry has been this long and winding road. I really wanted to help people initially. I thought the way to do that was to be an IT help desk person. So, that was the start of my career. I then thought, no, this wasn't quite right. So, I went and did psych training. I have a degree in behavioral science and psychology honors which I then um, worked in a lot of different areas. Um, so, sleep health, adolescent health, trauma and stress studies, and spatial epidemiology, which is having a look at how the environment and the world around us impacts on our health. And I started thinking at that point, you know, we've also got these virtual environments and games and things that we engage with. They impact on our health as well. What if we could design and create new media and new games that are for helping us. So, that's led me to this point where I'm hopping along and exploring a new path, trying to combine my skills and qualifications in psychology, um to help

create games for positive change. So, you might be thinking, "Oh, she's talking about gamification." You know, the intention is there, um but what I really wanted to do with it is to go beyond where we're currently at there, and rather than create games which rely on extrinsic motivation and feedback loops and reinforcement schedules, actually have a look at the way that the human condition is and how we function, how we can change thoughts, feelings, and behavior, motivations, and attitudes. So, that led me to my PhD, which is uh basically a combination of three different disciplines: psychology, game design, and narratology. I'm creating a framework to help game designers and game developers create games for uh for positive change. So, that includes everything uh such as attitude, motivation, thoughts, feelings, right through to behavioral

change. And that little roundabout there, that's actually not part of the environment. That's my framework. So, if you want to speak to me about that later, I can go into lots of detail about that. Uh so, that's one of the hats that I wear is this PhD, um combining all of those disciplines. Another hat in the industry that I wear is um collaborative uh research consulting and game design. So, this is about bringing the psych skills of research and also um psychology-driven game design into uh a project one of the projects that I've worked on with a studio in Australia called S1T2. They were developing a game to help kids in Fiji uh create better habits around exercise and and diet and uh basically increase their quality of life. So, I worked with them to develop some evaluation methods to make sure that, you know, if they're designing a game for these kinds of purposes, we want to

know that it actually is doing what they want it to do. Uh another uh project that I've contributed to is with a little indie studio down in Queensland called Fatality Studios, and they're working on developing um a VR game addressing a variety of phobias. And so, I helped them create some evidence-based game design techniques based on what um what the phobias are and and how they work. Um I've also done another collaboration, just an informal collaboration with some developers from Shell Games um during a game jam. It was the Brain Jam in New York last year, and uh we created a VR education game for um basically training distress tolerance skills using experiential engagement with the skills rather than just presenting didactic information. So, the third hat that I probably wear um is the games industry research and writing.

Um so, drawing on the um psych uh background that I have, I've contributed to um a paper which is coming out soon, an industry paper on the general state of the games industry at the moment, and um drawing on that. Uh, stress studies of um, yeah, discussed some psychophysiological basis of of stress uh, in the industry. So, that's going to be great when that comes out in a few weeks. Um, also working on publications like ethical design recommendations for creating VR games. I think it's a really um, important consideration to have a look at the kinds of situations which we're and experiences that we're creating for people. So, that's coming a- along as well. And also contributing to a book um, about designing frameworks for playful interactivity based on care and connection and personal growth because I

think we can all agree it's a great opportunity to um, to create games that care um, that we care about and uh, that care about us. So, if you're thinking of doing something in like meaningful games or impact games and you have your in the games industry but you're thinking, well, how can I add to that? Then psychology is a really great option to consider getting extra training in. I did psychology first and there's a lot of other industry veterans as well that have come from psych backgrounds and brought that to games and there's lots of different ways you can utilize those combinations. So, um, yeah, just a few of them. Um, just give me a moment here. Just a few of them. Um, so, Professor Isabella Granic, she's a professor in developmental psychology. She runs a game lab in the Netherlands called Games for Emotional and Mental Health um, and game lab called the um, development arm called PlayNice Institute. So, they

actually create meaningful impact games. Um, there's Dr. B sitting down here with his clinical psych PhD uh, working in games advocacy type roles and also um providing research and providing clinical services at Safe Point Behavioral Health. So, there's lots of different ways that you can utilize this combination of um disciplines. And I think there's a lot of magic that lies in between disciplines that we can explore as well. So, the wonderful thing about doing something that is cross-industry and cross-discipline like partly sitting in a university so you can conduct research and partly in industry so that you can be part of development cycles and evaluation cycles is that there's just so much variance. One minute you might be writing a paper, next minute you're actually talking about how to create a mechanic that, you know, is going to assist people with

confronting a phobia. Um so, there's a lot of variation. There's a lot of challenges, um but each of these challenges actually presents wonderful opportunities as well. So, you're creating a new kind of role that doesn't really exist at the moment. Um but there's a lot of freedom in that because there's no path carved for you, so you get to carve that path yourself. It's um as I've said, it's multi-disciplinary, it's multi-industry, and we don't need to keep our uh our jobs in silos anymore. We don't have to stand and, you know, just be a psychologist or just be a game designer. We can actually sit in the space in the middle. So, those challenges are actually great opportunities for uh creating something new. And of course, like Jill was saying with freelancing, you can actually create the kind of career that you want. There's a lot of freedom in that. There's a lot of challenge in that. But it is quite amazing. So, I'll finish up with um yeah, there are there just this thought

that there are so many impactful perspectives and stories to be told. And basically at the heart of my work with bringing psychology to games is about creating meaning and bringing care into games. How do we create games and how do we create a better industry that we care about and that cares about us? So, yeah, that's my one talk away. Let's um let's use all our available tools, perspectives, and disciplines to uh to create new directions. Thank you. Kia ora, everyone. My name is Jade. I'm the uh senior sound designer and composer and pew pew noise maker at PikPok, which is a uh mobile game

company based in Wellington, New Zealand. Anyone here heard of PikPok? Or PikPok, as they say in Australia. Um So, this is me. Like I said, I'm the senior audio designer at PikPok. I'm also audio director at Awesome Sauce with my wonderful fiance. Um that's uh me in the middle and uh that's me in my dreams as the cat below. That's how I wake up every morning. It's my motivational speech. A little bit about how behind the scenes uh I was adorable as a child. I can't help that. That was my That was my genetics. I um I When I was I went through school, I was a band geek. I played the drums. Uh then I decided to join the army. Horrible idea. Sorry if you were in the army. Uh left the army and then I wanted to be famous and became a DJ and did some doof doof um in the bush and out and doing all this sort of stuff. Turned 30. Uh decided that everybody in the nightclub was at least 10 years younger than I am. Had a bit of a midlife crisis.

And uh I to be a sound designer, went to university, discov- um studied audio engineering at School of Audio Engineering and uh then moved into um YouTube because it would it would audio engineering school didn't quite help me and give me what I needed. And uh self-taught myself all the way up got a job at PikPok. Um the the uh picture on the right with uh the kiwi in the middle is myself and my fiance Brorgan. Uh we own own the business Awesome Sauce and also for PikPok which is uh and we also like I said work for PikPok who do Into the Dead 2 which is uh one of our Into the Dead 1 which is our most famous games. Um if you like killing zombies. Uh so a little bit about the team at PikPok. This is Jason. Um he's our sound designer one of our lead sound designers at PikPok. He's a bit mad like me which is great. You can probably tell from his face. And this is uh our little junior sound

designer. He just started uh this year, Tim. He's an amazing guy. If you ever need to um hire somebody my like um the reason why we got this guy is he turned up and we asked him if he knew how to use F-Mod and he went no and then when he started the job he was an expert. Not quite sure how he did that. He went away, he learnt. Uh last but not certainly not least um is Brorgan, my um fiance but also she's our and resident composer. Uh that's her with our son. Um His name is Rocket. He features a little bit uh in this talk. So, where do you start? I just I just let that go. It's kind of my favorite. So, what do I do? Essentially, what do I do? This next picture kind of really sums up everything. This is actually my cat Rocket. Um he's he's uh not trained. It was a It

was a one-off moment we got this photo. But I get basically I record weird sounds and then I make them into things. So uh I create living world in games through audio. I take everything I see in a game then make a sound for it and then I literally make pew pew noises with my sound. I'm very good at it now. The pew pew, see? It's great. So um why is it fun to be a sound designer in pictures? Well, I get to do cool stuff like this. I get to go hang out in awesome recording studios and pretend I'm cool when when I'm not actually. And I get to work with amazing musicians like Thomas Oliver, who's an amazing wisent horn player. If you don't know what a wisent horn is, look it up. They're absolutely incredible pieces of equipment. I get to get squeaky toys and put them into microphones and then I get to stare at people's backs for about 8 hours a day, which is the highlight of everything I get to do. Uh so squeaky toys are my fun. I get to write out awesome lyric sheets. Um this is literally the lyrics that uh

we wrote for a monster. I liked how there's a hm hm hm hm question marks there. So we get to do fun stuff like that. And uh it's a lot of fun. Um this is myself and uh Brogan. We go out get go out and do a whole bunch of recording, which is exciting. So we basically we uh go into rubbish tips or dumps and uh throw our bodies into them and make sounds. We get to go to rivers and splash in them like a child. It's It's like my dream job. We also get to sellotape microphones to your fiance's face, uh which is I highly recommend. Uh this was going to be a video um of me killing, well, not literally, but uh of of of a uh voice actor that we recorded for Into the Dead 2. It was the most epic death scene I have ever ever recorded. And it went for about a minute long and he fainted at the end of it. Sadly, we

don't have the video, but when you hit me up on Twitter, if you see on Twitter, I'll post that video and it's I tell you I recommend it. Um when working in sound, there's you have to work with a lot of hazards. There's a lot of things that happen such as this. Like sometimes it gets pretty tricky when you're working and you have a cute adorable kitten that lies across your keyboard. I know often have to um call my boss and uh say like I can't work today because look look at him. He's so adorable. Oh, let's just stare at him a little bit more. No. So, why get into sound design? Uh because being a little mad is fun. As you probably noticed, I'm a little bit crazy. And uh and that's what we get to do. We get to go pew pew and zzz and stuff like this and and get paid for it. I don't know why. Uh you get to make sounds for games. Let's just say that again. I get to make sounds for games. It's like I played games all my life. Now I get to make sounds with them. So, I can't go wrong. I be a part of a round people who are crazy about audio and in games. We're an odd bunch. You probably noticed. Um did

I mention pew pew noises? I probably did. Few times, so uh that's pretty much what I do. Make pew pew noises and make video for games. So, that's the end of our talk. Hit me up. That's me on Instagram and uh just a slight nod. We're hiring. Thank you very much. I cannot believe you guys were on time. Well done, everybody. I may have threatened them a little bit, but um so we do have time for just maybe one or two questions. Uh feel free to join us in the wrap-up room just across the hall. It's literally like we just walk out that way. Um so, any questions? Not even about my cat? No. Yeah, hi. Oh, hello. Sorry, I will have a question then if no one else is coming up here. Uh, what are

your thoughts on full motion videos in the industry and what's the potential for that in the near future? If you have any. Just to rephrase the question real quick. So your question is around full motion video and was that audio? Oh, yeah, sorry. Uh, just in general, uh, what are your thoughts um, or have you had any experiences uh, for the panel regarding full motion videos as a niche industry? Okay. Anyone? I've never used any. Um. Hello. I've never used any full motion videos. Uh, we even have some minor cut scenes for us. Um, yeah, anybody have any? No? No. Sorry, cannot help you, sir. Sorry. I'll I'll I'll put that person on the panel next year. Yeah, next year. Hello. Thank you very much for all of your presentations. Um, for those who perhaps just graduated and are trying to get a salaried full-time position but maybe can't get one right away, uh, do you all have any suggestions for like a temp agency or

something like that that could get you work in the in between times? So just to reframe real quick, uh, any recommendations from the panel on new grads and how to find work within the industry? I mean if you're capable of making I don't know what you might have went to school for but like I know it's not paid but game jams are really awesome or hackathons. Um. Regardless of whether you end up with a job right away after those sort of things, you meet people and that's how you get jobs in I think in this industry. Uh, you meet people and you find out I can work with them. I generally have a connection with them and once you create that connection with a person, they want to help you, too, cuz like we generally want to help everyone in the game industry. So, that's kind of my suggestion. Work with someone on a hackathon or a game jam or just hang out with people and try to be

their friend. Don't try to necessarily beg them for a job, I think. I don't know. Anyone else? go to events like this. Um some of the best uh connections I've made have been at game events, PAX, you know, TwitchCon here. Um and network, but like not like network like "Hi, I'm this and this is what I do and I want a job." Like network in like actually making real connections with people, make friends. And cuz like she said, that's how you end up getting that job you want because someone will know someone will know someone and they'll remember "That guy was really cool and he does this and I'm going to remember him." Yeah, agreed. And just off of that, follow people on Twitter. Uh Twitter is actually one of the most accessible places for just reaching out to random game devs. It can be there's a little more friction in adding somebody on say LinkedIn. If I don't already know you, I may not accept it. But I'm on Twitter 24/7 and I love helping people and I've seen that consistently across the industry. People just like to help each other out here. Tyra likes to help us all up here on this panel. She's been amazing. I can confirm that. Um I would also say uh

don't get a job in like I mean, no, do get a job. You need money. Um but like uh my general kind of thing, especially in Australia, is uh you work at a pub or like work somewhere else. Like make you know, if it's not often that you'll get a job and you'll get a salary and then that's it. It's just like, you know, you'll need to sort of figure out yeah, connections and where you fit in the industry and when what you kind of want to particularly go towards. And I find like the the happiest people that are sort of in that scene uh working at a bakery or a pub or somewhere and they just, you know, like their work is over here and then they use their free time to sort of network, to to jam, make games, work on their portfolio, and just figure out, yeah, where they're where they're heading sort of thing. Um without the financial burden of I need to get a full-time job or I'm done. Um and also then you end up in industry and you've got experience of things

aren't just video games and, you know, you can yeah, that's really actually valuable to have like just experiences of random jobs and uh yeah, that kind of stuff when you get in to video games. It comes in handy. I can vouch for that. Cool. Thank you so much. Hi. Um I wanted to ask about uh kind of getting into the game industry with in a roundabout way, potentially focusing on something that's less visible. Uh my personal example would be I am very much focused on cybersecurity and I would like to look at potentially anti-cheat when comes to video games. The thing is it's very it's a bit less visible in my opinion and um I was I was hoping to get you guys's opinion on, you know, potentially breaking into that breaking into that side of the industry without, you know, that doesn't look like game design or isn't that flashy. Okay, so the question's around breaking into a fairly niche role, so more around cybersecurity.

Um I'll kind of recommend again the network side of things, but if you can identify companies that are doing something in that realm and then you can identify who works there and reach out. So like for example, I know that two hat folks do a lot of stuff around like player safety, uh secure spaces, etc. If that was in line with what you're looking to do, I would find out who's at that company. I would try to find them at events. I would reach out on LinkedIn. I'd reach out on Twitter and just start to build that relationship because those people will be critical to pointing you in the right direction. Okay. And, you know, just don't be a dick. Like, that's that's baseline. Don't be an to these people. Always say thank you. Yeah. Yeah, don't be a dick, bird. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, I just wanted to say thank you all for this presentation. Each uh presentation was spectacular. And I was just this was more of a specific question, but uh I'm interested in uh

narrative writing. So, uh do you have any pointers or tips for getting into narrative writing? Do you have to make some stories first? Do you read a lot? Like uh Uh yeah, well, both of those things, I think uh the most important thing today would be make a game uh either at a game jam with other people or just download something like Inkle or Twine, and you can start making things today. Um and then don't just make the game, get other people to play it and test it. Start to learn how to uh work with feedback, um improve your work. And that way, when you're in a position to interview for a position, you'll have already uh like a substantial portfolio to show people. Thank you. I think we have time for one last question as long as it's quick, and then we got to go to the wrap-up room. Okay, yeah, quick question. First of all, thank you. Um as a person that is still a student, um I really have a I really want to do something multi-

multi-disciplinary in regards of having a positive impact on people. So, I was wondering as someone that's Hello. Hello. Yeah, exactly. Hi. Um I was wondering what are some, you know, some other, um you know, curriculums I could be looking into outside of game design currently? You know, some other courses, you know, that you think would be beneficial for someone that is wanting to get into a multi-disciplinary side. Yeah, I I think it's a great intention knowing that right at the beginning that you want to be in that space in between. Um it's really I don't have any specific course um Yeah, I meant like examples. or advice, but we can talk afterwards. That'd be great. um I think the thing is um just still similar that answer, make connections with people who are kind of in that similar space and connect with them and have a look at what their path was because it's all even though it might be similar uh ingredients, you know, with the disciplines, uh each of us are kind of walking slightly different paths

anyway. So, seek out your people and your community and just talk about what's really worked for them and and maybe what's not been so beneficial. Okay, great. Thank you. Let's chat. Yeah, awesome. And again, thank you all for joining us today. We'll be over in the wrap-up room and uh have a great rest of your GDC.