Posts by Furyo

  • Square Enix reveals Eidos bid

    Yeah I read that, and was like "Ok consider it done now". Warner Bros was the only company even remotely likely to make a counter offer. This one is in the bag.

    And that's the best thing that could happen to Eidos too. Really excited to see what comes of it for the industry in general and Montreal in particular.

  • What "Level Designer" means in our industry

    At Ubisoft, you would typically only handle gameplay as a level designer. Level artists will work hand in hand with you to make your level come alive, while you make sure your intended gameplay is as good as it can be. You may also have to script certain things, but the intricate cinematics and cameras would be handled by specific level scripters.

    On the other hand, I picked up something as trivial as making the credits for Prince of Persia. That's the extent of the flexibility of your work as a level designer, you may very well end up doing things that fall way outside of your usual job spectrum simply because you may be available at the time. There is this constant belief wherever I go to work that level designers are always the most flexible, the guys on whom you can just dump whatever and expect things to get done regardless. Good thing I like to keep on learning new things and techniques...

  • Crunch Time Podcast

    Quote from kleinluka

    i think the industry hasn't really felt the impact of the crisis yet. as for the projects at ubi, yes this may be true for designers but artists need to actually submit a portfolio to their new project and they do get turned down from time to time. i know some guys who sat around doing nothing for 6 months (!!!) and then ended up being "let go" because "we cant find a project for you"... how ridiculous is that, they cant find a project for an artist in a 1500 man studio? this doesn't have anything to do with the company giving you the choice really. its just bad resource management. i wonder if similar things happen at EA or comparably big studios.

    And what's the full story behind this? Was this guy actually any good? Did he turn down projects himself being all too happy to be paid doing nothing while waiting for the next big thing? There are also this type of persons at Ubi Montreal, so he may have fallen in that category. I know I couldn't even fathom to go to work to do nothing for two weeks, so I would go out of my way to make sure that didn't happen.

  • Crunch Time Podcast

    Regarding Ubisoft Montreal, I think I should add my own grain of salt in the conversation.

    Yes we are a very large studio, and there are many different projects. But it's not true that you HAVE TO interview for a new job. People that aren't high on the demand list (generally those who haven't really made a dent on their current project) will generally wait around a little bit as the high profiles are themselves filling in the first spots on the new projects' teams. Yes some of them will wait up to 3 months before they land on a new project, but it's because Ubisoft gives you the choice. They will generally be presented with projects, but they have a choice to turn them down, which only makes them wait even longer. And when we're talking about interviews, it really is only a meeting with your future lead to see if you get along. You won't be tested or anything. If you do get along, you WILL get the position

    I arrived here in Montreal to work on PoP, then naturally continued on and have been asked to join the Assassin's Creed 2 team even before I finished Prince of Persia. So no I won't have to interview for a new position, and I know a ton of people who are in the same case.

    As for the crisis. I think you either lost your job and have been impacted by it, or haven't lost your job and haven't been impacted by it YET. I know Ubi has already learned lessons from their results this year, shifted their internal policy and we know where we are going for the next year. Like any other company outside of Nintendo, I think it's fair to say the sales weren't as high as we all wanted them to be, so we'll have to readjust that this year. We'll see in early 2010 where we stand.

  • making money with custom maps !?

    I am one of very few examples I know of people who have actually made money making custom maps. However I never went about it the way you are, which I think is totally counterproductive, and results in you shooting yourself in the foot on the long run.

    The first time I made some money was for making a map for someone /a group. I had absolute freedom over the entire map, didn't even have to have their name somewhere in there. The whole thing was just because they wanted more custom maps for DoDS (in its infancy then) and were ready to pay some mappers to make them some. It was 50 bucks, so you'll understand this was entirely symbolic. 4 other mappers were given the same amount, I was the only one to finish the work, everyone else took the money and ran.

    The two other times I did make some money were from contests. The first one organized by this very same group, which netted me another 100 bucks. The third and final time I did was by winning a contest with one of my maps, which got me 3,000 bucks and a G15 logitech keyboard I'm typing this message with. That contest was organized by a sister site of TurboSquid, so it clearly had more financial means, and the jury were industry types.

    All of this to say, custom maps players will never get you anything, they live by the standards set by so many mappers out there, that is that everyone does it for free, either for fun or to get noticed (or both). That's a strong feeling about custom maps that I really don't think any attempt on your part would overcome. Just look at how many people in an online group are willing to donate money to play on the server they rent. They're all too happy to live off the donations of another member.

    There is a strong bias in the gaming culture that erects the purchase of a game and the machine to run it on as the ONLY barrier to entry players face. That dates back to Pong and the start of gaming, and multiplayer gaming hasn't been around enough for that to change. That's for the Westernized countries we all live in. The state of the Asian industry is much different, and in countries where buying for every single addon is the norm (you buy the empty shell and micro transactions do the rest) you would have a lot more success. Only problem is the types of games we generally make maps for are close to non existent over there.

    So, to conclude this, simply enough: To make money off custom maps, they need to be bought by the game makers or win contests made by pro sites. In both examples, the money you get represents what is believed to be a fair representation of the value of the work you produced, seen by industry folks. The main difference with the general public is they have an entirely different view on that, and often don't realize the amount of work that goes into it.

    Either way, luck played a huge role in these occasions. I answered a forum post for the first two times, and was sent an email by that company once they had entered my map without asking me....So I might have never even known about the contest had they not done that.