Guest Lecturer - Jonathon Reilly

Our guest lecture this week was presented by the very talented artist Jonathan Reilly, who is the creative director at Inner Freak, he was the first artist of our guest lecturers and he mainly talked about his career and the steps he took to get the role he has today.

One of the main points Jonathan was putting across in his lecture was the importance of personal projects and how filling up your spare time in doing these projects can be crucial in getting a job in the industry. He also explained that because he taught himself software and learned new techniques out of work he became skilled in working at a fast pace which he prided himself on and I found it very impressive. Learning the extra skills he did helped him get extra work and progress in the industry and without those skills he could not have achieved that.

Jonathan talked about working in the games industry and what might have to face when we get there, he explained that reputation is very important as everyone knows everyone in the industry, if you are not a good employee then everyone will know. Jonathan also talked about the hours in the industry and how difficult it was for him to balance work and family life together as the hours he worked was overwhelming.

I did some research into the hours of work in the games industry and I found out that Jonathan was not wrong, one article I read was about game development the ‘humane way’ which talks about different developers feelings on working crunch times. It talks about how crunch time has become part of the culture of game development, a quote I found really interesting was from Raphael van Lierop who said, “People almost wear it like a badge of honour. 'Oh yeah, I put in 120 hours last week and I didn't see my family because I was at the office the whole time.' Personally, I find it an empty, silly way of measuring anything.” It really shocked me that this is a common practice in the industry but from research and understanding I feel it makes sense, it has not put me off working in the industry though as I feel the outcome would be worth all the work.

References:

Brendan Sinclair. (2013). Game development the "humane way".Available: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-09-18-game-development-the-humane-way. Last accessed 8th May 2015.