Nick Kage

i was so off of my game stevens, but it goes to show even at my worst... im still the best.

I read an arcticle on some gaming site once(I forgot which) and it basically said that writing/story for a lot of games is basically a dirty word for a lot of companies. How much truth to this? some companies have no writers, alot depends on the game. i mean does madden need a writer? or what about Rainbow six? some comapnies do some don't Blizzard has an entire department for their "lore". people who write the over all story for our games. my project has 2 writers, they desgin the story and "quests" and how the quests will move you the player through the game and overall story. it all depends on what type of game and who the company is. a lot of fantasy games have writers and story is important.

Is a job in the gaming industry something that you would have to consider right away to get into or could you make the switch from another industry into gaming? depends on what you did orginally, for me i was an artist. being an artist transfers over easily to what i do now. but if say i was mechanic, well that may be harder. if anything is always best figure out what you want and put 100% effort to get it. but if say you go into computer programming for a tech company, transfering to games from that as a programmer would be easy.

Here is a good one Kage. Are there any type of jobs in the field for a guy like myself, IE the guy with the vision,what he wants how he wants it. The best example I can give is Corey Ledsama, he doesnt look like he does anything yet he is in charge of making SVR as anti fun as possible for the hardcore gamer. Desginers are typically the guys you come up with the ideas. the lead desginer is the main man. to be a desginer there are schools you can go to but i highly doubt someone will walk into a company with no experience and get a desginer job. desginers need to have good ideas, need to problem solve, need to be motivational, need to know how to make their vision happen, and they need to knwo how to work in a crunch to get that idea made. there are schools all over you can go to to be a desginer

If i have no artistic talent, is there any other jobs at a game development company i could do, and make good money? are you good with scheduling? producers can make good money. they basically keep the schedule on track to make sure we will reach our deadlines. if your hand with tech stuff the IT depratment is good (that fix pc's order parts and keep our tools and workstations up to par) there is also QA which is a great doorway into games, you basically test the game all day to find bugs and glitches... pay starts low but if you move up in position, or move to a new position it can be good. So how many hours do you put in a week, regularly? When you have deadlines, do you put in 80 hour weeks or more? right now i work 40 -45 hours a week, during crunch time i can possibly double that to about 80 hours a week. but we do get paid ovetime and time and a half. So do you sign on to each deal, or do they tell you what your workin on next? in games you typically sign on to the comapny as a staff job, and you work on the project you are hired for. Once that project is done you will just move on to the next project that company has. Games have pretty stable jobs. so as long as i dont get fired and as long as blizzard keeps making games i will have a job.

Me and you air are opposite side of the brain type people, i think i am more right sided and you more left? but good thing for us it takes both kinds to make website/games/movies!

As a former "soccer" player what game do you think is the most realistic simulation of the sport? Pro Evo Soccer is so far the best soccer game out there. Fifa 08 seem kinda promising, Fifa 08 will be the frist fifa game i pick up in years but so far you cant beat PRO EVO. the 360 version of pro evo was lacking in alot of areas but their gameplay is spot on. What games that aren't out yet do you know that are actually good? starcraft 2 wow expansion "wrath of the lich king" madden 08 and Nascar 08 (friend of mine works there) Rachet and Clank PS3 (former company) CoD 4 (i have from some friends it really is amazing.) i played crisis on PC and if then can fix the framerate issues it will blow your socks off. i heard tabula rasa (PC MMO) is really bad.

Kage...inquiring minds want to know.... 1. Why the fuck aren't you working for THQ, or at least developing some ideas for a Wrestling Engine on the side. THQ is a publisher, they have small studios like Yukes/heavy Iron/and many others companies that actually produce their games. As much as i love wrestling, working a game as an animator that is mainly mocap.. is a nightmare.. Your basically doing monkey work, nothing creative. I do not want to look at mocap data all day and clean it up. so alot of sports game are kinda off limits for me because of this. I was offered a job at Tiburon in Orlando to work on Madden 07 and the Superman the movie game... Glad i turned that down. I would much rather be faced with the challenge of creating movement on my own then use mocap. Its much more artistic and much more rewarding to make something move from scratch. 2. I have two friends that both have degrees in some sort of gaming design. They attended a school in Orlando. I know of their struggles. Congrats that you made it! We once talked about opening a gaming studio. If you had the right people and experience, what would stop a "Nick Kage" from opening his own company on the side? It takes money and talent. Im sure if you had 3-4 smart guys (a programmer/artist/desginer type people it may be done on a small scale.) If you keep yoru ideas small in scale and you produce a solid experience and make a great small product then funding can come in to make a bigger scale product, I knwo Xbox used to offer dev kits and people could produce demos and if Xbox liked it you would get funded to make a game. not sure if they do it anymore. But on PC if you buy and engine or are lucky enough to get a guy to code an engine from scratch you can do it. its all bout the scale of the project and how much time you can invest to it. i make a good living and my freetime after work is spent with my wife or playing games or doing real life stuff. after you work on a pc and game stuff all day when you get home you dont really wanna work on more. plus my creative passion for making a game of "my own" is not really lacking as Blizzard allows for me to be pretty creative in my day to day tasks 3. What games are you currently working on for 360, I'd be interested in checking out your projects. I work on PC games for Blizzard. I cant talk about what I am working on becasue it is un-announced and secret and projects change here, what i was working on 5 months ago may not be what i am working on now. and untill it is announced i cant speak on it. the only console game i worked on was Resistence fall of man for ps3

So instead of doing another article about OCW or OCW related stuff, I figured I would open up my forum to you guys. We all love games many of us have played games since we were kids. I remember my mom yelling at me all the time because even though i was active and I played a lot of sports I loved playing video games. Little did we all know I would be making them professionally… Seeing as I am lucky to have such a great career, why not share my knowledge to you guys, my OCW family. I'll give you a brief history on how I became a Game Developer. (It’s a brief history I had my fair share of low times and struggles as well as sacrificing and rejection to get to where I am today.) I was always artistic. I always was drawing as a kid and in high school I was really into my art classes and soccer more then any other classes i was in. So when it came time to pick a college I decided to go to the savannah college of art and design originally as a comic book artist but I then changed my degree to illustration. I picked SCAD because that not had the art degree I wanted but they had a division 3 soccer team. After graduation I moved to NYC where I did freelance illustration until I found a fulltime job as a texture artist for a small startup 3d house. I realized that animation was what i wanted and after work I would come home and teach myself how to animate. Soon I had a demo reel and I started looking for work in games. I soon left the sinking ship and went to Boston and worked on 2 games Dungeons and Dragons online and Lord of the rings online for PC. I then moved to LA and worked on Resistance fall of man for the ps3, and now I have found my home at Blizzard Entertainment as a Senior Animator. Enough about me more about the article. Every so often I’ll post a thread so you guys can ask questions about games what it takes to make them and other things you my wonder about Then I’ll respond to one or two of the questions I pick as best I can, hopefully you may get some insight into what it takes to make games and answer some questions you may have wondered for some time. Hope you will find this interesting. If not fuck you. -kage.

nice show

watch it deano might get excited at seeing The fallen angle lick his lips like that.

if i saw guy coming to hug me.... i would assume he is really trying to measure me for a paladin suit in a reallife dungeons and dragons fair he is having in his backyard... LIGHTNING BOLT LIGHTNING BOLT!

we need a name for that spear.... your a racist, and a sexist.... hmmm

racist and sexist.... damn nate

very intresting.

what you got to say now ccw?

I do however mark for s bombers song. nice way to get yourself over.

first

he means your a VET EX DIvision Competitor.. not your were an EX COmpetitor

v3 in full effect! lets set this fucker off! ppv time bitches.

pro wrestling with starman and the amazon!!!!!!!!