The Games Industry

Today in Writing Games Analysis we had 2 guest speakers during our tutorial and lecture slots.

Gary was our first speaker who runs a game/toy shop in Limerick city. I've actually been in there before and it's quite a cool place! :)
He spoke to us about the Gaming Industry and how broad it is. He pointed out that there are many oppertunities out there which aren't just in mainstream games development; how there are many jobs out there in support, others which would appeal to your artistic side, modelling characters, objects and worlds for both movies and games. Marketing was another one mentioned. Before today I hadn't really thought of anything beyond just mainstream games development, It was nice to have my horizon broadened a tad! :)
Personally I'm unsure about what exactly I'd like to get into when I leave college, but I'm going to give myself a year of work and travelling to figure that out! :)

Our second speaker of the day was just about to start a PHD on games and learning which caught my interest!
One of his points was that he could forsee the death of the console and the further rise of online gaming soon. I'm not sure if I would agree or make the same judgement as I see consoles as part of almost every family household these days, and I can't see that changing for quite some time. I think consoles will continue to become more powerful with even more unimaginable capibilities and take up some space in our houses for quite some time. It was interesting to think that more and more things can be stored online now and I agree that this will probably lead to a huge leap in online gaming...but I don't think that this will lead to consoles dying out altogether in the near future.

I do think that there are a lot of "clone games" out there. What I mean by that is that there are so many games which are extremely similar to others which haven't added anything new to the genre, or type of game....

I'll come back to this...I'm being kicked out of the CSIS labs...