all right we are uh oh hold on we got some people coming
in all right we are live
and back for the final installment of the
fall 2021 queen’s podcast lab learning series
uh and today we are going to be talking about the business or the field of video game
creation with our we have an in-house expert you might not know here at queen’s college
uh rob garfield james is he’s listed as james on a lot of the communications rob
james rob garfield from queens college’s center for teaching and learning
is a video game creator and a learning expert here at queen’s college
and uh we are meeting with him today to learn about the ins and out of the video
game creation world if if you’re like me and you love
gaming and you know you got a taste for programming or game design and you’ve ever wondered what what goes into video
game creating you know what skills do i need to acquire is there any way to make a living out of it well
luckily we have someone with first-hand knowledge of that space so uh welcome
rob to uh the learning series thank you joe it’s good to be here
uh maybe uh can we start off by uh uh getting you to introduce yourself maybe
what you do here at queen’s college in your background in in video games
sure um my name is rob garfield as just said i work at the center for teaching and
learning my title here is instructional technologist and designer
so um i work with uh with faculty to help them
use technology purposefully in the pursuit of teaching and learning in the classroom
awesome and and how so you’re you’re in you you’re you you help faculty learn to
use technology to uh get better learning outcomes and you
came to this position from the world of video games yes um
there was there were a couple of stops along the way so um i originally started
when i started my professional career i was in publishing i moved to new york and i was in publishing i’m a poet as
well as a video yeah i’ve been through a number of different things although poetry is a line that
continues to this day um and i was working at publishing for a
while and i needed to get a job that paid more money i was living in new york city
and i ended up getting i had a friend who worked for a bank and the bank hired
me as a technical writer i had no tech background really at all and
i started at the bank writing technical literature user guides and
things like that and started absorbing technology and i’ve always been a gamer i started
you know when i was fairly young playing dungeons and dragons with my friends and
i wasn’t as much of a nerd as that sounds but pretty nerdy um
and i i my family is very much into games i played board games card games uh
competition was a big part of my my upbringing and um
and uh i when computer games started
getting big um i found them fascinating and very
interesting and when somebody finally translated transposed dungeons and dragons
into the computer gaming world i was hooked and at a certain point i decided hey
maybe i should take a look at this and and see if i could uh
if i could get into the industry and i had no idea i didn’t have a podcast like
this to introduce me to to how it was that one got into the industry so i ended up going to a an
entertainment arts college that had a game programming
track in winter park florida and i got a degree an associate’s degree
out of that and went into worked in the industry for
a bit of time then went back to to that school and taught
game development for a couple of years and then moved into
the creation of simulations and i created simulations which is the
gaming industry really it’s just the re you know for the real world and um and i missed academia
and i was moving back to new york and i got a job at ended up getting a job at
columbia doing educational technology and i’ve been doing that ever since
so when you boil it first of all it’s interesting you did not come to video games from a programming background but
from a writing background which is kind of interesting because when you imagine
what goes into video gaming you think of coding uh but there’s there’s more to creating
a game than coding well what else is involved then what do you what do you need to
create to create a game so i mean there are all sorts of different so i i actually
even though i came from a writing background in a you know a humanities background
um there are i did go into programming okay but there are other options in the
gaming world i mean games these days are um especially what they call aaa titles
are made by over four or five years by by teams of a hundred
right um they are programmers in that group lots of them they’re people who make uh
three-dimensional assets uh models and things like that people make two-dimensional assets
textures uh backdrops um ui
elements things like that there are animators who take the 3d or 2d models and animate them and
make them move realistically if the game calls for that there’s sound design
so there are audio people involved art people programmers and people who do what i
would call they’re sort of virtual architects level designers
they create the spaces and the worlds that you move around in but on on the flip side you know i see
very very popular text app games that like required virtually on the on the
flip side there are people who appear to have made a ton of money on video games
that have no no digital assets just about um
yeah i think you know the computer games started with what they call muds which
are multi-user dungeons and they were kind of like uh the text-based version of our
massively multiplayer online role-playing games today and those were networks they were they
were glorified chat lobbies in a certain way you know and when i say glorified i’m
underselling it because you know that somebody wrote hundreds and hundreds of pages
of uh content and and the logic that made the content
intelligible so yeah there’s all sorts of stuff there are people um
there are other models for this too right they’re they’re the the um solo game developers
i don’t think there are a whole lot of them but they some people who are really just sort of
you know renaissance people with lots of different talents who know about all different aspects
of game development and our programmers and can create games on their own and they create games on a
on a level that does not have the same kind of production value as a triple a title but it’s often
you know you get the more hardcore gamers are into that sort of thing because these
people tend to be more interested in really engaging
so i i have a gameplay true there are young people who uh dream of
creating a game uh and if they came to you and they said you know i’ve always wanted to create a
game i’d like to try my hand on it where do i start what do i do how do i get started what would you say to them
uh well you’re gonna you’re gonna want to um you’re gonna wanna learn programming and
and to my mind i would uh recommend learning a programming language that’s
fairly low level like a c or c plus plus um
you can do things in python and things like that but they game games tend to be pretty demanding
on your system especially if you have lots of fancy graphics
or you need to load a lot of things into ram things like that um
so i would learn i would learn how to program and how do you learn how to program so you have a
number of different um avenues to doing that one of which is the sort of auto
avenue which is to become part of online communities of programmers
you know work on developing your skills uh taking on projects working you know with
what we call passion projects you know working outside um on
on developing things i would say work on set yourself a goal of work of making a
game i think the first thing that i did was i made pong in windows
and then i you know i fancied it up i guess it’s also like
i would imagine that there’s such a wide range of games that the way you get started depends on
the type of game and the type of strengths you bring to gaming right like so for example if you’re a storyteller
and you have an rpg a role-playing game or an adventure game that tells a story then i guess you work
on a script uh whereas if you want to make an action game then i guess you’re
trying to think of like how to program i don’t know the physics of a game or
like a an event simulator or things like that sure you you need to you need to under if
you’re making a game that’s real time it looks like the highest level of this is this there’s a
what you might call turn based and then there’s real time and a real time game has what the what’s
called a game loop that’s constantly running right so you have to learn how to program a game loop what is that
and um i mean i think even turn based games tend to have a game loop just
um lower and simple some folks definitely yeah but i i would say also
um i wouldn’t i would have in mind when you’re first starting out i would have in mind what
you what you want to do ultimately but i would also make sure that whatever you start on
um it’s creating a game and that game is complete
and you do it and you finish it and you start your portfolio because what you’re going to want to do
to get into the industry is show people that you can complete things that’s one of the most important elements of
getting into the industry from a production perspective there are
lots of people who can program right but are you the sort of person who can manage
their time well enough um and are passionate enough about it to
finish projects so the smart move to be like maybe start making some text games some text-based
games just to sort of get get started and and create and then just sort of build out from there is
that sure if you’re starting from ground zero i would say don’t take on the real-time game loop to begin with but just
start creating interactions you know interactive experiences you can even do a browser-based
setup if you want um but i would start by picking a
a programming language like c or c plus plus in fact i would pick one of those two try to start learning it
you could go to school for comp psi there are also
schools that like the one i went to which
specifically teach you how to program in a certain way
and one of the big things that i understand is going on now is people are going to programming boot camps
where you sort of you program for 10 hours a day for
two weeks to a month or something right and i actually have to say my experience of learning programming i
feel like that that’s a really effective way to learn it you really want to be in order to become a good programmer you
need to be immersed in it we have a question for you from anthony
borrelli anthony from uh wqmc hey guys how you doing um i’m enjoying
the conversation i just wanted to ask a question you were talking earlier about how
um if you want to get into this you’re going to need a nice setup like a nice pc
hard drive good fans in your computer you’re going to want the works
as it’s going to take a toll on your computer is there
uh what would you say to help people who might not come from a household that have access to that
equipment like what do you think are do you think there’s a way for
people who don’t have access to or have the money to go out and buy that technology where do you think that they
should start and do you know of any programs or any uh
anything that could really help them get going in learning about this and learning about the subject and how
to go about making video games or just coding in general
okay so first i want to roll back the i don’t think you need
incredible equipment to get started and um i think that if you’re going to
if you’re if your thought is to make a graphically intensive game
um then you probably need a good computer
with lots of ram and a decent graphics card but i don’t think that’s necessary for making games
you do need to have
i think that you do need to have a computer that you can work with you need to have
a modicum of ram that you can use but you can still be making creating interactions
i think that what i was trying to say is that is that you want to start with a low
level programming language like c or c plus plus
java maybe even you want to be starting with something like that because games can be intensive
and programming in those languages gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of using
your computer’s resources so that’s what i would say as far as like
i i’m not really up on what the best programs are right now for learning how
to code um i think we could probably put some resources together for people who are who are interested in that
i think one thing you you need to assess if you’re starting is like how much time do you have when is that time
um is it something that you could integrate with what you’re doing right now for example are you an undergrad at
queen’s and taking computer science classes if you are are there projects within those classes where you could make a
game um if not you know
when can you could you do a boot camp if you don’t have the money for that uh how could you get involved with um
let’s say free code camp or something like that online to get
free tutorials can i introduce just in my own experience uh
for programming i in data science uh o’reilly books
and stack overflow are the aspiring programmers two best friends and when i teach i i say go get
one of those easy reference guides and then just run small projects and
actually problem solve and like i’d imagine a video game programming is like data analysis then
the real way to get good is to make a hundred games you know just make a just make game
after game after game uh that leverages whatever you want to focus on like if you you want to make
choose your own adventure stories by all means or you know some type of you like making
simulations or things like that you know what i was thinking about though rob there’s there like video gaming is very
complicated and there are roles in the video game creating world that don’t have a lot of uh
that might not have that much computer programming if you want to take a certain role like for example there there’s a big board game creating you
know enterprise or there’s aspects of creating uh dungeons and dragons story that can be completely on paper
um uh can you speak to any uh of that aspect of it do you have any
contact with that are you do any story writing are you more of a programming and simulation guy
i’m more of a programming and simulation guy but i do have that background in dungeons and dragons and i did um
i hooked up with um so the school i went to dave arneson
who’s since passed away taught there and i became friends with
him and and i helped him convert some of his modules
between different versions of dungeons and dragons you know how the the new versions will change the rule sets
radically like between two and three rules that change radically
dungeons and dragons is a good sort of entry way into gaming though because it acquaints you i was also a dnd kid and
it acquaints you with like random number generators and how those can be used
and you get used to very elaborate rule systems which i guess is also part of it so there’s a lot of the dungeons and
dragons experience i think that sensitizes you to the back end of what would be involved in creating a game
experience of that sort an rpg adventure game experience yeah especially if
you’re really into dnd and you you you like research you know how to optimize your character
and things like that you know make the best two-handed fighter or whatever
that that is the sort of thinking that goes into developing rule sets and understanding
how rules get implemented and make a game fun yeah anthony uh did you have something to say
yeah also thank you for answering my question earlier i wanted to bring up it’s a little a
little off not off topic but um somewhat related there’s these things now called
alternate reality games args that i don’t know if you’ve ever heard of them but it’s like
um you know when a movie is doing a marketing thing
and they’ll have you going a scavenger hunt on the internet it’s kind of stuff like that like i just watched this whole
there’s a filmmaker online online named alex uh bailey and he makes these spongebob theories
conspiracy theories about the show it’s very goofy but it’s also a part of this film series he’s doing where there’s
some kind of horror monster controlling him and there’s multiple youtube channels connected and you go and watch
them and make the connections they have a discord with a google docs like
uh uh um archive of everything that’s happened so far and there’s code hidden on websites
you know there’s people going scavenger hunts and use code to figure things out there’s a whole channel called inside
the mind that delves into these args and it’s one of the coolest things i’ve
ever seen because it’s like a mix of filmmaking it’s a mix of writing it’s a mix of coding and gaming and all of
these people are having so much fun in this communal thing that affects the story it progresses it
along and the filmmaker gets something out of it too uh i definitely recommend looking into one or two or just looking
them up in general it’s one of the coolest things i’ve ever seen and uh the rapper
and artist donald glover childish gambino when he released his album because of the internet or because the
internet he did he was uh going on tour not tour
going around for like interviews for the release of the album talking about coding
and he coded in on youtube a whole movie that ties into his album
and people had to go searching for the code so there’s many other uses and uh
as you’re talking about dnd i was thinking about this because you’re right games games don’t just mean video games like
you can do so much with that as a concept and there’s so many possibilities it’s really cool just uh
yeah they’re my two cents in there yeah that’s that’s fantastic thank you for mentioning that there’s the
whole uh augmented reality element to um i know people design tours
that you can go through on the internet and in real life or and physical space and things like
that and and all augmented reality has been with us in museums for decades so
you see people walking around with the headphones on we got a couple comments here josh
barnes uh is here with us says love turn-based games especially the
earlier final fantasy games i’m with them on that one i love final fantasy sunk a lot of lifetime hours into the
final fantasy franchise jason twogar writes i had the d and d phase two
there’s a d and d plot in my memoir the one the the one you get it really gets into your consciousness i
still think about it that’s jason and then we have a question from ryan
sperry how do you think that streaming services like twitch of affected video gaming
that’s a big question i’m not really sure i i mean one thing that the
the explosion of of communication around games is done is
is um it’s changed the way that people play them in particular
i mean games that might be difficult or extensive um
i think about uh mmos because we brought it up a little while ago um
but these are these are games that are intended for people to play in perpetuity right and
they’re often set up one of the major business models is the subscription model and so you pay x number of dollars
per month so there’s a pressure there’s a motivation for the player to optimize their journey
through the game and twitch streaming and um
and other ways of sharing information on the internet have completely changed this
around so you look at the way that world of warcraft i think it came out in 2004
and but just recently just a couple of years ago they released
blizzard the company blizzard activision the company that makes the game they released world of warcraft classic
so they they set up a whole bunch of servers they they all they did was update the
graphics everything else was the same and so you went back and you played the first version of world of warcraft
and and watching the way that people played now versus the way they played in 2004
through six it’s pretty it’s pretty intense it’s pretty done um people got to the end game so much
quicker people were consuming all the content so much quicker because they knew the optimal routes they interacted
with each other and things like that yeah
so yes so that’s that’s a really cool um i mean twitches and other streaming services
brought all sorts of games to people to the attention of people that become marketing tools that’s probably the
biggest thing that they’ve done and um they’ve created a whole new market which is the gaming broadcasting
market and esports and things like that so that we have a whole new
um area of with lots of money in it and you see some of the top streamers are
really really making a lot of money and they’re getting paid by game
companies to basically advertise their games and um by playing them
i think video games have assumed such a huge place in our culture now that it’s
natural that there’d be a whole media that grows up right it’s like sports right people love the yankees people
love world of warcraft and i bet you the world of warcraft
audience is probably a lot bigger than the yankees audience so it makes the yankees are better than
world of warcraft there’s no great well i guess a bunch of guys our age might say that
right [Laughter] anyhow are there other questions for rob
garfield rob i have a question so you’re sure let’s you’re a queen’s college student
and you’re totally into gaming uh do you like what do you do where what
what do you do you you say put out some games just throw your hat in the ring take some comp psy classes
yeah i i would say that the other big thing and maybe the biggest thing is
is to become involved in gaming communities game development communities so pay
attention to what’s going on in the industry i i still think that places like gama sutra
certainly the idga which is the international igda excuse me
international game developers association and places like that are still the go-to’s um
gamasutra i think is called game developer now i actually went looking for it in preparation for today
and uh and i think it’s called game developer now but uh these are places where you can
find out what’s actually going on in the industry i know that igda has communities that you can join online and
people are talking about game design and game development all the time and i highly recommend that
the other thing is to get involved with communities of modding modding
tools development and or content creation it depends on
what kind of what thing is your your uh your your shtick um i had when i went to
school i had uh there was a guy that i worked with who was he wasn’t a particularly great coder
he’s very smart guy but he wasn’t a great coder but he was so fantastic at level design and he was working in the
unreal engine and he had developed levels for all sorts of different games
that before we even graduated he was hired by raven software
and he’s still in the game industry i’ve looked him up recently just to say hi he’s still in the game industry and one
of the top level designers around so he was just doing that on his own
and he was creating levels because he loved playing and he loved the idea of
you know virtual architecture he taught himself all the tools necessary
and participated in the community and people knew his name and raven came a call-in i saw i saw somebody
who made a mod for skyrim eventually spun that mod off into a very very
successful uh independently published game i wish i had the i have a good i
have an interesting question this is uh uh from paulo uh lellas are there any uh
wysiwyg type platforms that you recommend for gaming or simulation creation i’m interested in this for the
purpose of workforce development simulation trainings perhaps even for prototyping these simulations before an
instructional technologist is brought onto a project do you have any
recommendations or do you know what the industry standard sort of front ends or
wysiwyg uh platforms are to do this type of stuff yeah so i mean the the unreal engine is
still a big one um and the unity engine is also really big
and i think unity is free right you can download unity for free so that’s well there you go um and lots
of games actual games and you know that are being sold and marketed now are being
developed with unity um so these are i you know these are things that i know about but i’m not
sure you know how you know uh
you know what the learning curve is for them i think probably there’s a there’s a way well with unreal you can just jump
in and start creating levels it’s not that it’s not that hard to get going it’s hard to get good but it’s not
that hard to get going unity and unreal were the two industries
standard engines and an engine for just people who’ve never heard of it an engine is it’s a platform that takes
that sort of makes it easier for you to make games yeah so an engine is is uh something
that’s sort of it’s like the uh the equivalent of blackboard for a game
okay blackboard to a course is an engine to a game
um engines will uh they tend to have baked in with them the
game loop they have tools for creating levels they have tools for
a scripting tools for creating logic you know like if i do this then why then
that happens you know they have physics engines so you don’t have to
you know you can just tap into those things that are there
uh yeah i’ve got a question from jason tuca jason
hey rob hey jason how’s it going um i have a question since
here at queen’s college we have tons of students interested in the idea of working in the gaming
industry but and and i have actually had a couple um get involved it and find a way in but
most of them i think find it pretty hard to find a route into the industry
and i always just think i don’t know i’m sure off the top of your head you’re not going to know this but
wondering if you would have advice for people in uh who want to find internships in
the gaming industry and then i’m wondering kind of like more pragmatically i wonder if we could set
something up with the career engagement office to bring people in from companies who
you know host internships yeah i think that that’s the thing that’s one of the things that i’m not so
in touch with anymore certainly at larger companies
they’re going to be internship possibilities so electronic arts has
offices all over the country and there will be an internship opportunities there are they paid
internships i don’t know the games industry is notoriously difficult on its workers
really because yeah because a lot of people want to work in it in the games industry it’s intensive
um it’s a volatile industry so yeah we don’t get exploited yeah so i think that yeah
that’s so that’s one thing that i would say um there i would just say that if if you are an
individual from the individual’s perspective you can reach out to companies and ask
them if they have internships possible and that’s something that you know if
something was set up at queen’s college in the career center or whatever um there could be somebody here who did
that and compiled a list yeah that’s great i can talk to them about that the career
center does offer internship stipends for unpaid internships so ah
great yeah that’s a good idea okay cool thanks yeah but as as you know i’m sure
much better than i do that it’s not just the unpaid it’s making sure that the
students get valuable experience as well that they’re not spending all their time at chipotle getting people yes
for sure anthony
yeah um on your point about how volatile it is
there’s a lot going on right now about that there’s a whole issue with triple a studios like ea
and um activision and that’s they all
like rockstar gets in trouble a lot because they put out these very dense video games filled with content but they
work their employees to the bone for a product that’s gorgeous and
amazing and sometimes it takes that level but there is some exploitation in the field and um
i just looking at other people and knowing people who do this would say going independent in the
beginning right now especially might be your best bet independent games that don’t have even
like among us was huge last year especially during the pandemic because everybody got together this was like a
mobile game basically it cost five dollars on steam and it blew up so just taking chances on
your own and even doing basic things and then updating and working because you could put out
which is something aaa studios do a half baked product and people still buy it because of the
name and the company they complain about it it gets updated updated updated they’re putting out unfinished it’s like
putting out half a book and then saying all right we’ll put out the rest of it when you guys complain enough but
independent studios and just producers in general have
steam they have which is if you don’t know what steam is it’s a video game uh
platform where people can put their video games up to be purchased and bought it was made by valve who make half-life and portal and
a bunch of other games left for dead they made so many but they shifted from video games to a video game platform for
people and content creators to put their stuff up people go on there and they put up their alphas they put up their betas
they put them up for one dollar two dollars for free you can put up your games for free it’s a great place for if
you’re practicing with unity if you’re practicing with an engine and you’re making something put it up there and you
get feedback that’s what a lot of people do and then you can either take it down
rework it go back to it or just keep updating it while you’re going along it’s something that if you are new to
the industry there is a small there’s a lot of volatility like you said in the community so you might get a lot of
negative feedback but there is a core group of people who will look at your thing and say okay this is what you
could do this is what you need to do they’re very receptive and open to people
from my experience and and people i know who want to help you get good but i also
have a cousin who graduated from rutgers university with a computer
design degree a computer animation degree and he has yet to find work in his field
so it is tough so that’s just something you have to if you want this you have to put in the work you can’t just expect a job
right out of college even with an internship you have to have like most creative fields uh a portfolio
and evidence like you said before rob you need to show them that you can do this
i think that’s why and thank you so much for saying all that i agree with it
i think that’s why it’s easier in a certain sense being a programmer starting out even though there’s more
competition for the jobs but it’s easier to create games now if you’re an animator or
modeler or modeler animator or a texture artist
then you have to be in order to build up your portfolio you have to really be in on other projects
a gaming portfolio but that’s what’s going to get you somewhere is so your friend who just
graduated from rutgers lots of lots of luck to him
but once he gets that first job then then things will change but if if
you are a texture artist you can do mods right like mods are probably a nice way to
uh practice your art and show that you can get downloads and stuff like that
and if you’re a if you’re a uh a modeler and uh animator you can do
machinima type things um which is you know taking taking models and
turning turning them into like little skits oh i’m sorry anthony i see i graduated
years ago and it’s in news television now video editing yeah so it’s it’s it’s still i mean it
still doesn’t make it easy uh to do it you know but that’s a that’s a great
outcome like you know we’d all love to be novelists or you know video game
visionary speaking at e3 or whatever but like if you can find a great job
ultimately where your bills are paid and you get to you know still operate in the world of
stuff you love that’s i think that’s a win in the game of life so
you know yeah working for news is not so bad and so back to the volatility thing um well
you can think about it so um a company a big company invests
millions and millions of dollars into a game and the game bombs and they’re out millions and millions of dollars
and so as it sort of
makes sense over time that as the market rises the uh the bigger companies are taking
less and less risks and you’ll see the more innovative stuff happening at
i don’t want to say lower levels because that sounds pejorative but at you know at the
at the lower resource levels and that’s why that’s what i was saying before you have those hard
hardcore gamers are really look to that layer for
the best their best their favorite gaming experiences not to uh you know madden
45 um yeah where
assassin’s creed 752. you’re right
all right well thank you very much rob garfield from queens college’s center for
teaching and learning we’re going to end the live stream but don’t hang up so to
everybody who’s on the live stream thank you very much for joining us in our
inaugural season of the queen’s podcast lab learning series
uh if you uh stay tuned uh for our spring series which we’ll eventually put
together uh and in the meantime uh hope to see you all around on the internet so
goodbye to the live stream and take care