Here I am, 8 weeks since my last post and a month away from graduating a 4 year-long double degree in Games and Business. A lot has occurred in those 8 weeks, I have completed to capstone subjects, one for my Marketing major requiring me to work with an industry partner and another for BGIE in which I was producer for a team that finished and released a cross platform Mobile-PC game. I also found some time to add a small published mobile project to my portfolio to round myself out more as a professional and hopefully increase my odds in entering the workforce. Which has been known to be quite competitive due to the lack of jobs i comparison to the number of people seeking employment (Walker, 2018)
Overall I am proud of what I’ve managed to achieve personally and along side my teammates and peers during capstone, I think these have all been extremely valuable experiences that I will take with me into my professional career.
Reflecting specifically on my contribution to my portfolio with my small games project I have mixed feelings. On one hand I’m proud that I was able to solo develop a small game and actually publish it to the Google Play Store, which was something that I stressed the importance of in my first blog post.
“By publishing on an official storefront I gain important experience that developers like Adric Polkinghorne claim is essential to starting your career…”
Having published a mobile game is a fairly decent contribution to my portfolio and give me some sort of experience should I apply at mobile studios which are still some of the highest performing in the industry (Harrision, 2018; Brand, 2019).
However, I can’t help but feel like I failed to produce my best work and that I should have dedicated more of my time to it, in order to ensure a higher quality product and entry into my portfolio. For one, a lot of the goals and aspirations I had for my IGB400 project were not met as they were initially outlined, the game itself is a lot more simple than I had initially envisioned, perhaps due to over-scoping or a lack of dedication to the project itself in light of my other, at times “overwhelming” responsibilities in my other subjects. The fact that some people played the game on Game Jolt and responded by “liking” it is encouraging. However, I feel that I am capable of making a more compelling game with some more variation in gameplay as I originally planned.
That said, I’m also aware that in my final semester taking
on two Capstone subjects, one of which I was producer on, was a large task in
and of itself and I would be proud to have only achieved that this semester. So,
to have found the time to at least publish one small project outside of that I
can be somewhat happy with what I’ve achieved.
Additionally, I feel that not having done my best work on my IGB400 project
will encourage me to revisit it and perhaps add to and improve it. Which I think
would be a worthwhile learning experience in supporting a product after it’s
release considering a majority of work, I have completed in University is rarely
ever revisited or supported after its initial submission/launch.
Furthermore, I still feel as though there is something to be learned from the experience anyway and I have improved myself as a game developer. By participating in this exercise in solo development I gained a better understanding of what skills I am capable in, regarding programming and Unity Development. Because of this as a designer I feel I have a better understanding of what projects and tasks are within the scope of my skills outside of strict design, and that I may be capable of prototyping ideas in early design phases and so on. Having these skills should help me to distinguish myself as a professional (Kahn, 2019)
Overall, this has been an enlightening experience at the very least and I’m looking forward to expanding upon my portfolio in the near future.
References
Alex Walker. (2018, September 27). The Australian Gaming Industry Is Much Bigger Than We Thought. Retrieved August 23, 2019, from Kotaku Australia website: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2018/09/the-australian-gaming-industry-is-much-bigger-than-we-thought/
Harrison. (2018). IBISWorld Australia—Mobile app developers Australia. Retrieved August 23, 2019, from http://clients1.ibisworld.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/reports/au/industry/default.aspx?entid=5150
Jeffrey E. Brand, Jan Jervis, Patrice M. Huggins, & Tyler W. Wilson. (2019). DA20 Report. Retrieved from Bond University website: https://igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/DA20-Report-FINAL-Aug19.pdf
Khan, N. (2019, May 28). Getting Started with a Career in Mobile Game Development. Retrieved August 23, 2019, from Medium website: https://medium.com/swlh/getting-started-with-a-career-in-mobile-game-development-10a57b184918
Tom Hawkins 