Contracts Of Employment

• Contracts

A contract is a legally binding agreement between an employer and the employee, in a games design job you can be expected to work at least 35 hours per week. When you are sick you can still get paid but if it is not in your contract then you will not.

Within the contract you might be able to negotiate some terms depending on which job you are at and which terms you want to negotiate upon, upon reading the contract provided you can find how much you will get paid, how many hours you are expected to work each week or day, as well as you will find how many breaks and holiday you are allowed each year. Judging on which religion you are you may be allowed certain other holidays specific to your religion for example if you are Jewish you would be allowed to have Hanukkah off which does not apply to people that are not Jewish. Usually within a job you would get a maximum holiday of 28 days, this could be small holiday throughout the year with advanced notice, If you are a female and get pregnant you will be allowed to leave work at a certain point of your pregnancy and then come back after so many weeks which you would still get paid for regardless. Regardless what job you are working in you would be allowed something called compassionate leave. You would only be allowed this type of leave if the person that is sick is a dependant which is someone that you care for, for example your spouse, child or parents, as well as this there is no allocated time for how long you can actually spend caring for them and is entirely dependent on how much your employer wants to allocate you, but within this break you can be unpaid. Within the games industry your boss can actually force you to work overtime which is rarely done but they can if they feel the need to regardless of other things you may have planned on that day. Within a contract there is usually a clause that does not allow you to make separate games during your own spare time, but this may not apply to everyone and you would definitely have to check your contract regarding that.

• Employment Contracts

Within the employment contracts there will be numerous details that are inside, this can be different for each job you are working within but I will only be talking about the gaming industry. First of all the main thing within the contract most people concentrate on is the amount you will get paid each week or month depending on how the company wants to pay it to you. You will also get a variety of other bonuses such as a health insurance. Whilst working for any company there will be a part of the contract that is specifically for health insurance and what you will get once you are working for them, and if you get injured whilst at work what you will be expected from the company. You will also get retirement bonuses which are what you get from the company once you retire, this will include a payment package throughout your entire time of working with the company and the total sum will raise depending on how long you have worked there.

Within the contract there will also most likely be a confidentiality clause so that you cannot discuss the game or anything you are working on whilst at the company, if you do violate these terms and get discovered about it you will get fired from the job and most likely sued by the company for violating there terms.

• License Agreements

License agreements only really are applied when a developer wants to create a game based on a film, TV series or even a book. Within this license the developer would need to get several things such as the main story line, main characters and the title of the movie so that they can use it for there game. If the developers and designers use something that is not specified within the contract the deal can be cancelled or the company making the game can even be sued. 

Another thing discussed within the contract is how much the rights will cost a company to purchase them for.  More often than not there will be a payment given first to guarantee that they are serious about making the game, as well as if the game does well there will most likely be royalties which means that they will be getting more money depending on how much they both agreed upon.

• NDAs and Confidentiality agreements

NDAs are non disclosure agreements and a lot of gaming companies use this form of contract, this only applies when you have a huge secret that you do not want anyone else knowing other than the people that are working on the project within your company and they would all have to sign these confidentiality agreements so that if they do disclose information they will be prosecuted. In order for this contract to actually be started a secret within the company has to be told to the employees else there is no point in enforcing it. The employees working on the project or even if they are not yet know about the project would have to sign a confidentially agreement so that they are not allowed to talk about the project without any punishment. If they do agree upon the contract then they cannot talk to anyone outside of work about the project else you can be sued and fired from your job. In some cases when people breach the agreements they have to pay a large sum of money in order to compensate for the damage they have done to the business with releasing disclosed information without authorisation.

• Collaboration Agreements

Recently a lot of people and small companies are building indie or hobby games. It is extremely pivotal that they come to some sort of agreement in compensation and ownership of the games creation due to the amount of risks of creating a game that is not currently considered mainstream. The majority of indie and hobby games tend to fail in someway due to the ownership and how much they can expose the game to try and get it to be a success but if it does fail they need to make sure they know who is going to get what. Using a collaboration agreement it sets in motion how the entire project is controlled throughout the creation process and the games life cycle if it is made. It also states clearly who owns the IP, how the game is intended to be used within development and how its going to be released as well as how any possible income is going to be handled within the owners of the project. This agreement would also include how the termination process would happen if the owner wanted to do so. 

https://www.gov.uk/employment-contracts-and-conditions/overview
http://www.inc.com/encyclopedia/licensing-agreements.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement

Game brief

The Darkest of days

The survey to my brief is here if you would like to answer- https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5BJHR3J

• Storyline

The main storyline behind this game is that there has been an apocalypse of sorts where it has created zombie type characters, as well as several blood thirsty animals such as dogs, foxes and wolves. You will be able to create your own character and design him how you want and as you go through the game you will be set small tasks that show you what you are supposed to do and how you should do it, like skyrim in a way when you learn how to make a weapon and armor for the first time you have a task from the blacksmith you meet. But unlike skyrim the game will be entirely up to you and without a script but with very minor missions that you can complete in order to get extra items but if you do not it will not effect the game at all. Your first real objective when you start the game is to get resources so that you can build yourself some clothes in order to survive because the weather is always changing and can give you huge effects that will effect your stats such as stamina, hunger and health. You will play with the character you made and try to stop the apocolypse from happening(doesnt work) which then turns pretty much everyone into these zombie type characters and you are just trying to survive whilst helping people you meet throughout the world that will give you side missions to complete. But overall the main storyline is to survive on this planet that has been infected with a disease that is ripping the planet apart and due to all of the power going out and buildings collapsing there are very few safe places which means you would have to build a base overtime and try make it secure because at night time hords of zombies will come out all over the map, you would also have to level up your character which would give you points to unlock new items that you can make with certain resources that you get around the map as well as giving you a single point to increase one of your stats that help you survive within the game.

• Gameplay

As you rank up and unlock new items that you can make you will have to get certain items will be required in order to make these items. For example to build the different stages of armour you will need to get these items that are harder to get and find, the first piece of armour you can get only needs simple materials such as fiber and thatch to build which is very easy to find.

• Game description

The game will be in a third person perspective but with the capability of being changed to first person if you would prefer a different angle within the game as it may favour some scenarios that pop up in the game. It will also be an open world game that has the capability of playing online on a server full of players with the max being 100 players in one server, if you didn't want to play online however there is still a solo mode where you can choose the map you want to play on and then play by yourself.

• Goals within the game

As you level up you will be able to unlock new items that are exclusive until you reach that level, this is a goal that will be accomplished no matter what you do because you can get XP from several different objectives. But the main objective throughout the entire game is to just purely survive and build a base where you feel safe, the game doesn't have a set end as there are tons of things to do and countless bosses you can beat in caves, and lost mountains throughout the map. Another small objective which could be classed as a main objective is to find other survivors that are friendly and team up with them and try build a tribe and base with them.

• Controls

Since the game can be played on both consoles and PC's there are a lot of controls that need to be implemented within the game. obviously on pc to move around you would use the normal movement which is w,a,s,d(forwards,backwards,left,right) and in each direction the letters correspond, you would also look around with the mouse and click with the mouse to hit things. To pick things up off of the floor it is E, to interact with various people or functions it would be f, to access inventory would be the tab button, to sprint you would hold down the shift button and to crouch and become quieter when sneaking it would be ctrl and z is to go prone, when playing on a multiplayer server and to enter the chat it would be t. When playing on console there arent as much variation in the button system, but still can be quite complicated. First to move around would be using the left analog stick in the direction you want to move and whilst doing so if you want to look around you would move the right analog stick in the direction you want to look or turn. To pick things up around the map you would use the L2 or LB button depending on which console you are playing, to interact with people and things around the map you would hold the triangle button or Y. to sprint in the game you would press down the left analog stick and press it again to stop. to access the inventory you would press the triangle button or Y instead of holding. to crouch on the game just simply press the circle button or B, or to go prone you would hold it down, also to jump within the game would be using the x or A button. to enter online chat if you are playing the online aspect of the game it would be the touchpad and L1 or the options button and LT. To shoot with you weapon it would be R1 or RT and to aim it it would be L1 or LT.

• Dlc and in game currency

Throughout the life cycle of the game(presumed to be 2-3years) there will be an extensive amount of dlc throughout the time, new additions would consist of new types of zombies, new objectives, festive updates and new animals within the game. But there will also be new maps every four to five months depending on the amount of updates required throughout each 5 month span, the new maps will contain new islands that you can explore, new bosses and new waves of zombies and animals. Also in games currency will be a form of coins that you can spend on armour upgrades, weapon upgrades and new items that are exclusive and you can only get them using these coins that you can find in raids, and caves throughout the map.

Assignment 2- james

Understanding the games industry- financial issues

Introduction

during this blog i will be talking about several financial issues of the games industry, and how a game destined for great success can actually end up to be a huge failure and what they could have done better to ensure that there game would not be a huge flop. As well as talking about this i shall be talking about games that have done really well and how they have done it.

Last year the games industry in the UK alone really took off as well as worldwide with things such as Esports getting a lot bigger and a lot more revenue coming in from the gaming industry alone. Statistics show that over the past three years the revenue from games being sold in the UK alone has increased slowly with each passing year. In 2015 alone the statistics show that the revenue from the game industry was reported to be worth around 4.2bn which was an increase of a total of 7.4% from the previous year that reported it was worth around 3.94bn. Currently the UK is rated as the 6th largest video market in the world in terms of revenue and sales, with other huge countries taking higher placings such as china and america being at the top of the list. Overall being 6th on the list for UK is actually quite an achievement as games arent judged to be as big here as other countries like america so it shows how much an impact the UK have on the games market in terms of sales.

Costs when making a game

Despite many people thinking that games are relatively easy and not that expensive to make it actually is with all of the behind the scene things that have to take place for every interaction to take place, such as the campaign within the game alone would cost quite a fair bit of money depending on what sort of voice actors you have and the sort of graphics you want to go for.
A list of all of the costs included when making a game-

• Production and development costs

first of all their would be all of the developers salaries that are included for them being part of creating the game, and they are obviously not going to work for free so you have to make sure you account for them when deciding how much of a budget you have when creating a game. Then there would be the voice acting as i previously mentioned which would cost more money else the story will not make sense, as well as if it is a multiplayer game there are usually smaller and small call outs or catchphrases throughout the maps or levels. As well as those two huge costs alone, you would also have to hire or pay for a soundtrack for your game which would  cost a lot especially to get all of the rights to use that song if you do use an already made song, if not you would have to hire a band or a singer in order to record a soundtrack for your game which would actually cost a lot of money. As i briefly touched on there you would also need licensing for everything that you use which would cost a fair amount but not as much as getting sued if you use copyrighted music and images.

• Marketing and promotions

Within making the game you would have too advertise your game extremely well in order to hype it up and get a lot more exposure for it, this can actually cost quite a fair amount. The main and most popular advertisement would be the television advertisements which is where you make an ad as good as you can expressing all of the good features in your game to try and lure people in, but this is actually very expensive because you would have to pay for what channel you want to be advertised on and what time frame you want to be in. Also there is print advertisements which has things like posters within it and you can do these pretty simply and it would not cost a lot you would just have to hire an artist to create you the best poster possible and pay for it to be placed within popular stores to get the maximum exposure possible. As well as there is online advertisements which are small trailers or a small picture on the side of the website or on a web page such as facebook, you can choose the website that you want your game to feature on and depending on how popular the website is and how long you want the advertisement to feature on there for, this would also make the price of the advertisement vary because a high calibre website like youtube would cost a fair amount to have an advertisement feature where as if it was a smaller website that doesn't get as many views and isn't as popular it would cost considerably less. Finally there would be events and launch parties in order to boost the games publicity and try get more more fans to come and see the game as it is developing over time. These events could be things such as E3 or gamescom where tons of gamers and developers go to see games as well as try get there own more out into the public eye. In order to get into the bigger types of events you would want a ton of gameplay or at least a small snippet for people to play and get a taster at the event, you could also have a video playing in the background which would show people walking by you game. there are also smaller events that would not require as much preparation but either way it will most likely cost quite a fair bit in order to get all of the posters, videos and everything working smoothly as well as transportation costs.

• Manufacturing and distribution

First of all regardless of what type of game you are making you will have a good idea of what type of product you will be sending it too such as console or arcade, both of these will cost quite a lot in order to make due to the excess amount you would need to make. In order to make a arcade machine game it would still cost you quite a lot of money even though they aren't as popular as they used to be and would result in money loss unless it was a huge success. The arcade cartridges cost so much to develop because they must be able to programme it into there current machines or you would have to make a whole new arcade machine purely for that one game and if you do that multiple times for several arcades and they aren't hugely successful you will already be at a money loss. Also the price is around the same for a console game due to the amount of risk you are taking on it, the risk factor comes in due to the amount of games that are already out for every console available so theres no guarantee your game will be success unless it is being published by a big named company. The main amount of cost with this game would be the amount of discs you would order in advance of the games release judging on how many you are predicting to sell.

• How can a game in production be funded?

The first thing that comes to most peoples mind when they even think of creating a game is how it is going to be funded due to most people not having a lot of money to spend on developing and creating a game from scratch. You can still fund the game you are creating yourself though, I wouldn't recommend this if you didn't have a bunch of money due to the amount the overall cost would be and there is no guarantee you will ever see a penny back from however much you spend on the game, it still as benefits if you do decide to go with this though however because you would not have to convince anyone or rely on anyone else to fund your game as you are doing it yourself as well as all of the profit that you make from the game will go mainly to you due to you doing everything and not having any third parties helping you finance it along the way. You could also take out a bank loan which could be very expensive depending on if you can pay it back within the time frame as well as it not being completely reliable due the fact if they do not think that your idea is going to be successful enough for them to get there money back plus tax over time they will not give you a penny. But if you are able to get a bank loan they will give you substantial amount that will help you a lot with the creation of the game and will most likely be enough to carry you over for quite a while depending on how long the game takes to make and how much you are spending on staff and things I have previously talked about. You could also get an investor if your ideas are enough to convince them that you game is worth making and will actually make them a large profit on what they have already gave you, but like the bank loan you would have to convince them and they are more than likely only going to give you the amount you need in small doses due to the risk factor and if they feel that the game is not going anywhere they can pull all of the money straight away whenever they want which is very bad., As well as when the game if actually on the market they will take a large cut f the money due to them being a big investor. But the main advantage of this would be that they would be helping you get bigger as they would also want to be making a profit from the game and want it to do as good as possible. And they will try and get you into events and give you honest feedback and regular funding if you require it. As well as you can have numerous investors so you can get a ton of money overall if you need it but in turn it would be hard to convince them to invest in the first place. Then finally you have crowd funding which is where you create a page online such as on a website like gofundme or on kickstarter. Both of these websites get a ton of money donated to worthy causes if people actually want to see the end product, kickstarter is the main one for games because I believe the main game on there that got the most funding purely from the public was star citizen with 23million dollars in total, but this is also risky because you cannot always rely on the public helping you and you never know if they will, but it would be very rewarding if they did because like I said prior you game get a huge amount of donations which would also kick up your popularity rating overall.

• The problem with being a small developer or creating a small indie game

The main problems when creating game when your a small developer would be the fact that it is very hard for you to get your game out into the public and make it extremely popular, this is mainly because there are tons of titles that are out for every gaming system and pretty much every genre has been covered by big named company's that have already made a name for themselves. Another problem within these two categories is that you wouldnt not already have an established audience supporting your game as well as it would be a lot harder for you to get a loan of the bank due to you having pretty much nothing other than an idea which would not always be enough in order to win them over.

• Conclusion

In conclusion i think there a lot of things to take in consideration when you are thinking about creating a game, and make sure that you are financially stable throughout the entire process of making it. Also there is a ton of risk involved in making a game too due to the fact that anything could go wrong, and there is no guarantee that your game is going to be a huge success with people. Overall i personally wont be creating a game anytime soon due to the amount of money required to even make a start as well as all of the costs within the production of it, also it is far too risky to partake in right now as i am not in a position where i can guarantee that i could create a game and still have money left over to live on within the process.

Electronic Arts inc.

Electronic Arts

What type of company are they?

Electronic arts are both a publisher and a developer because they help develop a lot of games or create them completely such as more recent games like FIFA, NBA and madden. They also have many partnerships with a lot of different producer company's and help them publish their games or get them to help them develop and improve current games. Such as companies like Dice have partnered with EA because they help create a lot of hype around a new release of the game such as battlefield 1 due to how big of a company EA is.

The history of EA

EA is an american video game company that is situated in Redwood city, California and was first founded on may 28, 1982 by a man called Trip Hawkins. The company was a pioneer of the early computer games industry and was notable for promoting and developing many of the designers and programmers behind the games. The company began developing in house games and first supported by consoles in the early 1990's. EA later then grew through purchases of multiple successful developers. By the early 2000's,EA decided to move towards direct distribution on digital games and services with the acquisition of a very popular gaming website called pogo.com in 2001. EA had grown to become one of the worlds leading third-party publishers. On may 4th, 2011 EA had reported a $3.8 billion in revenues for the year ending march, and then in the following year on January 13th the company had exceeded $1 billion in digital sales. And then in 2011 EA launched Origin. An online service to sell downloadable games directly to users, there is also a "on the house feature" that allows you to download full versions of some EA games for free. This site is also used for multiple big titles games for the function to play online and interact with friends, such as FIFA with the online aspect and battlefield with the battle-log feature. After sega had published the successful title of ESPN NFL 2K5 had grabbed all the attention away from EA's dominant madden games in the early 2004, EA decided to make multiple large sports licensing deals that included an exclusive one with the NFL. EA's success is due to it being one of the first companies to release sports games such as Madden, FIFA, NFL, NBA live and tiger woods.

What games have they produced?

The big games EA have produced would definitely be the sports genre games. The first one would be Madden because this was the first major sports game released and was an instant hit. At the time this was the biggest sport game around. They then published and created a lot of different sport games such as FIFA. FIFA is still a huge hit today and remains as the biggest selling football game outselling its rival pes with the most recent game by 40 times more. They also released NBA which has no rival and sells extremely successful every year due to the amount of people that love NBA and cant play it anywhere else really.

What are they like to work for?

A couple of reviews from previous workers i found online:

The deal is: employees also get a lot out of working for EA. I did, at least. There are lots of very talented people at EA, and (usually) opportunity to ‘craft’ your own career. Working on blockbuster titles, for the latest consoles, is fun stuff. Hardcore engineers (like me) love having access to the equipment – and the opportunity to make significant contributions to a high-profile product. 

EA has the coolest and some of the smartest bunch of employees I've seen at any Silicon Valley/Bay Area company. This is also true for employees at other offices (but I can't speak to how they compare locally). If you're an outgoing, young person, you'll make a lot of great friends that are smart, fun, and hard working. You won't make much money, but that's ok.

How is the company perceived?

EA are perceived very badly because for numerous years in a row they got nominated the worst company in america by Forbes. The review from the actual article is linked here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/#724400d816d2

Who works at the company and whats their role?


Andrew Wilson- CEO
Ken Barker- SVP, Chief accounting officer
Chris Bruzzo- Chief marketing officer
Blake J Jorgensen- CFO
Joel Linzner- Executive vice president
Laura Miele- Executive vice president
Peter Moore- Chief competition officer
Ken Moss- CFO
Samantha Ryan- SVP, Ea mobile, maxis
Jacob Schatz- SVP, General Counsel, Corporate secretary
Patrick Soderlund- Executive Vice president,
Gabrielle Toledano- Executive vice president, Chief talent officer

independent studios

Independent Studios

Braid

Braid was developed by a relatively small company called "Number None Inc". The game was made and designed by a man called Johnathan Blow in 2008.

Fez

Fez was developed by a company called "Polytron Corporation" and published by Trapdoor in 2012,

World Of Goo

World of goo is a puzzle video game that was designed and developed by the same company which is 2D Boy.

Minecraft

Minecraft was originally made by a Swedish programmer called "Markus Persson" but then further developed and published by Mojang.

Flow

Flow is made by multiple developers, the main developers being Super Villian Studios.

File extensions

Level 3 

Unit 78: Digital graphics for computer games

File Extensions

See at the bottom of this page: http://domyorks.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/computer-game-graphics.html

Compression

Data compression is a set of rules for packaging data into a smaller slot. While allowing the original data to be seen again. Compression is a two-way process: a compression algorithm can be used to make a data package not as large, but can also be run the opposite way to decompress the package into its original form. Data compression is useful in computing because it helps save a lot of disk space, or to reduce the bandwidth used when sending data via the internet.

Image Capture

Image capture is the process of getting a digital image from a vision sensor, such as a camera. Usually this entails a hardware interface known as a frame grabber, which captures single frames of a video and converts the analogue values to a digital, and feeds the result into the computer memory.

Optimising

Optimising in imagery is where you reduce the picture file size too as small as possible whilst also making sure it maintains the graphics it needs to serve a certain purpose. Through this method it ultimately reduces the download time and the size making it easier to display on the browser. It also reduces the bandwidth.

Storage of image assets

A storage of image assets is where you would give things name so that you do not get mixed up. You would save the documents as a PSD so that they remain open and able to edit if you are working with other people and send them the files. You would name them something obvious relating to what they are such as if it was a bin you would call it "bin" then save and send it using the PSD file. You also need to make sure that your computer is up too date enough so that you can edit or create the game as well as making sure you have enough storage on your memory stick or hard drive since all of the files would take up a lot of room.

Pixel

Pixel

Picture Resolution 

Picture resolution can be used when you are taking a picture with a camera and trying to convert it into your game. For example if you want to make a photo realism game you would have to have quite a high end camera too be able to take a picture suitable for that purpose.

• How many pixels are shown within our image from top to bottom
• File size of the image
• You find out the number of pixels by multiplying the width and height of the image. 

Image resolution (Quality)

Image resolution could be when you have drawn a picture with a pen or pencil and trying to put it onto your computer without trying to lose any of the quality of the original drawing. You would have to use a scanner and make sure you have quite a lot of dots per inch so that you have the best quality possible with the drawing.

This means the quality of an image

As the resolution increases the image will slowly become clearer

An example of image resolution would be the difference between a very low quality picture such as a 240p image and a 1080p image.

Pixel Values

Describes what the colour will appear as or how bright it is.

to show colour values you must seperate the red, green and blue parts for each individual pixel. 

one bit number showing the background or the foreground.

The most common pixel format used is the byte image where the number would be stored as an 8bit image giving it a huge range value from 0 - 255. Usually 0 is black and 255 is white. The numbers in between the two are what makes up the different shades of grey.