Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Westwood College Job Fair


On Monday July 10th 2006 Forever Interactive attended Westwood O'Hares' 1st annual Job Fair. We were the only game company represented so I was cordially asked to speak to the students. I must say this school is small but very personable and has GREAT faculty who care ALOT about their students. I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of people turn up at the rumor of me speaking. These kids were eager to have someone take the time and talk gaming with them. They all had resumes ready and some had business cards. I wish more would of had some form of a portfolio to show but most were only in their first and second year of school. I asked to see some of the students work and was blown away at the talent they coming through there. They had 2D and 3D games to show me all of which were done very well. During my speech they all listened wide eyed and intently to everything I had to say and gave me some good questions that I hope I had answered to their liking. I had a wonderful time talking to all the students and look forward to recruiting from Westwood often as I can. The talent is definitely there. Thank you to the staff and student base, it was a pleasure, and I hope to be back real soon showcasing the talent of Forever Interactive to another batch of fine students and faculty.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Portfolio Night @ MATC



On Thursday the 11th of May FI attended MATCs Portfolio Night for its VICOM and Graphic Arts students. We had the opportunity to meet a few very talented individuals and discuss our Company with them. It's great to see such great talent coming from Milwaukee. Many of the students like what we have to offer and showed great interest in our endeavor. I put a link to the "Official Site" of MATCs Portfolio Night in the link above. Take some time to look over their work. Give them some feedback, it will be well received. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few candidates. Overall this was a great visit to a great school. I enjoyed seeing some of my old teachers and catching up with them. It's truly a wonderful partnership indeed. Until next time.......

Thursday, April 27, 2006

MATC Meetup


Recently FI had the chance to talk to MATC and its 3D department regarding the current gaming job market in the Midwest. This was an informal meeting of about 20 Faculty and students. The students seemed very eager to hear what FI has to offer to emerging students, current students, and proffesionals in the Midwest gaming industry. Roughly 10 of the students in the audience showed interest in the games industry and of those 10 half wished to remain in the midwest. It shows that if we had the jobs we could have the talent. FI also showed some of the demo reels of current applicants. Alot of talent from all stages in gaming are very interested in what we have to offer. Our business model shows how we are going to accomplish our goals. We are a group of UNPAID, entrepreneurs (investing $ into FI) all with a goal in accomplishing something magnificent in Indie Gaming. FI offers individuals a chance to own the company they work for, while gaining experience in running a studio and completing a game. All without the publishers breathing down your neck and telling you what game to make. We offer potential to learn other areas of creation than what you may be pigeon holed into. This allows you to grow as a student of game creation. FI is a very unique endeavor and can potentially be very rewarding. MATC welcomed FI with open arms and is committed to harboring a bridge for its students to cross over into gaming. Currently that gap is filled with either becoming a game tester or unpaid internships where you most likely will be learning how to grab coffee with no potential reward other than maybe landing a job. This opportunity warps students right into the position and accelerates the learning experience. We are all here to learn and use FI for that purpose. MIAD has also joined us in partnering with its students of art and our company to establish a bridge between art students and gaming in the midwest. Milwaukee is an untapped region for great talent that no other developer has a care to nuture. FI hopes to change that. Some of our other applicants come from MO and MI. We are amazed at the amount of feedback and response we are getting from people who need this opportunity and we plan to make the best out of it. We also discussed FIs current project "Infernal World". The ideas that we shared were received with great enthusiasm. We see a great need for working with students to become better at their skills while trying to break into the industry and it seems others do too! We would like to thank MATC and MIAD for partnering with FI. Thank you for giving us the chance to make a difference in the Midwest. Please check out our event media video in the media section of the website its short but is proof of our commitment.

Friday, February 17, 2006

IGDA Meeting Blitz "The League"



Hello everyone! This week we attended the IGDA meeting at Depaul University. Midway Games recently finished their title Blitz "The League" and came to share what went wrong and right during the production. I am here to share some of my thoughts on the meeting so that some of our team, who could not attend, may have some insight into the event. Autodesk "3dsmax" was on hand as well to give away some nice stuff and info on the latest 3dsmax 8 release. My old teacher was a beta tester for them prior to its release and I'm sure it will be well received.

Midway returned to the classic arcade feel that made the game fun in the first place. This required them to frontload gameplay to ensure this was a fun game. Gameplay over graphics once again holds true.

They maintained a shock factor that made you say "oh shit!" multiple times throughout the game. After watching the trailer I felt and said that on a few occassions myself. They went against the grain and the NFL. This made them answer to noone but themselves. I never knew that Midway dropped then NFL license 6 months before EA games bought exclusivity rights. They maintain that even though EA did that, it helped their campaign by becoming this anti - establishment underdog that people can rally behind. I believe it worked.

The game took 1 year to complete with a team of 40 people. Some of the pitfalls recognized by them are a need to write the story early before production. It will dictate what you'll need for production and any changes will slow you down significantly. Know the tools needed based on the writing. This will tell you how you want your scenes to be played out and what tools you will need to create them. The large team created a "hurry up and wait" scenario on various occassions. The production pipeline needed to perform more efficiently. They blamed frontloading gameplay as one of the factors in this. You can always tweak gameplay during production. They also said at the same time, that doing that, made the game more fun.

Games never are what you first invision them becoming. They evolve as they are created and will tell you what it needs to be.

Use of visuals to rally the team really helps. They used signs that told the establishment to, get bent! The theme they had from launch was also the theme the press was using for their articles covering the game.

They censored themelves to eradicate too many "F" bombs thus becoming more mature than juvenile. Adding LT to the staff may have helped credibility to the game as well.

A more specialized team base helped with production times but they were always searching for that go to renaissance man at crunch time to get things done. I will be locking our teams for the April meeting so that we have a clear vision of our recruitment goals in June.

Finally! Plan for failure early so that you can make that 1 great success. Expect failures and you can thwart it to your advantage.

After the meeting they held a raffle for some Blitz League hats and some Autodesk backpacks. Every attendee received a Blitz League cheerleader calender upon departure. See you next week as I finish the website and new splash page with our LOGO!

Attendees: Joe W. & Emil H.

Some tools used by Midway Games for this title:
Maya 6
3dsmax 7
Renderware
Z-Brush
C++

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Beginnings

Welcome to Forever Interactive Times! Stay tuned! More to come.......