Category: News

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Calabasas, California

External publishing producer focused on delivering on time, on budget and to a high level of quality. The Senior Producer will be required to handle several projects releasing on multiple platforms.  Responsible for ensuring that core development principles are followed, removing impediments from their teams and constantly improving production process and procedures, reporting to their Executive Producer.

Key Responsibilities

Project Management

• Work with development teams to produce entertaining games on time and on budget and to a high level of quality.
• Work with developers to create Milestone Schedules, including key project deliverables.
• Effectively track all milestones or other deliverables, ensuring focus is always on risk mitigation and proactively addressing the needs of the project. Communication of project status throughout the organization and key stakeholders is expected.
• Manage licensor relationship in regards to all product approvals and development communications.
• Manage multiple language sku’s in all territories worldwide and helping with 1st Party submissions in all territories.
• Work with QA Manager to assure proper quality and timeframe of QA testing.
• Manage any post ship game development or support needs, including live service and DLC updates
• Supply all materials needed for 1st Party submissions for concept, evaluations, relevant age rating materials, pre-cert and final submission approvals. 
• Coordinate with submissions team on any concerns or questions from 1st party, including approval/waive issue information needs.
• Partner with Brand/Marketing to acquire any needed information for 1st party brand/marketing approvals.
• Work with Brand Management and Development teams to define the creative vision of the games. 
• Effectively communicate the core experience of the game to others including Brand, PR, Sales, Executive management, press and partner companies.

Business Development

• Review new products from Business Development and provide review report on strengths and weaknesses.
• Conduct onsite due diligence for potential new developers and produce a site review report on their strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and risks.
• Experience in contract review and amendment processes, including negotiations to best drive results while ensuring company interests. 

Continual Process optimization

• In coordination with VP of Product Development, create and implement new processes and procedures across PD and throughout the organization, maintaining a continual improvement process.
• Manage and mentor other Production staff. 

Essential Skills and Experience Requirements:

• 5+ Years of game production experience. Must have managed multiple titles through the entire production process, including post launch game and content updates.
• Expert knowledge of game genres and game industry conventions
• Extensive experience with legal contracts and forms
• Experience with and understanding of console submission standards
• Must hold current Passport and be prepared to travel internationally as required
• Bachelor’s degree in computing, art, design, or related fields

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

“The goal, to put it simply, was to beat you-know-who.”

– Sonic the Hedgehog 2 art director Yashushi Yamaguchi explains how the origins of Sonic involve Super Mario Bros. 

Shmuplations has shared another translated article from its archives, this time featuring a collection of developer interviews about the creation of the original Sonic the Hedgehog.

The compilation collects conversations with a number of Sonic developers, including programmer and team leader Yuji Naka, designer and art director Naoto Oshima, planner Hirokazu Yasuhara, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 art director Yasushi Yamaguchi and touches on how the idea for Sonic came to be, as well as how the game’s development progressed. 

In one interview, Yuji Naka explains that he had actually wanted to make a racing game and that the idea for Sonic had been fairly low on the list of games he wanted to create, but Sega was eager for a game that could challenge Nintendo’s mustached plumber mascot. 

“I wrote up a memo that was basically a ‘next game I want to make’ list, and showed it to my boss. But the one that caught his attention was the very last entry on the list, which said ‘an action game to challenge Mario,’” recalled Naka, laughing. “I tried to object, saying ‘Actually, I wrote them in order of which ones I want to do…’ but he didn’t listen to me at all. (laughs) So we got started on the Sonic the Hedgehog development, with 3 or 4 members.”

Sega’s urge to compete with Mario pops up a few other times in the interview collection. In one instance, Naka explains that Sonic’s speed was an answer to the repetitive nature of starting a game like Super Mario Bros. from scratch. He explains that he wanted Sonic’s speed to be used as a way for experienced players to run through the earlier levels every time they booted up the game, unlike with Super Mario Bros. where each playthrough required players to progress slowly through the basic, early stages. 

However, playtesters had other plans and would just sprint full-speed from beginning to end. In response, Naka implemented Sonic’s ring system, “where as long as you had even one ring, you could still play recklessly and get through ok.”

It looks as though Microsoft may have plans to release an accessible Xbox One controller soon, based on an image that was leaked today. 

As reported by The Verge, Twitter user WalkingCat seemed to be the one to leak the image, which features a controller with two oversized A and B pads, a d-pad, and the standard Xbox button and navigation controls. 

A three-light LED seems to suggest that some of the functionality could be customizable, and a USB port on the side might make programming relatively easy for users.

Microsoft has shown an effort to be more inclusive in the past, with the inclusion of wheelchairs and prosthetics for Xbox Live avatars.  

While there’s no information about a release date, it’s been reported that the controller will be revealed during Microsoft’s E3 presentation this year. 

[In this extensive interview, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and artist Andy Chang answer questions about the creative intent of Rage by describing exactly what the team hoped to accomplish from both art and design perspectives.]

Rage marks id Software’s first major release since 2004’s Doom 3. It’s been in development for a long time, and features the company’s own engine technology, id Tech 5, which has gone down some different technical paths than the majority of engines used in game development in 2011.

Gamasutra already spoke to legendary id programmer John Carmack about how he made the decisions when creating the engine, but that is, of course, not the whole story. In this feature interview, Gamasutra speaks to id artist Andy Chang and CEO Todd Hollenshead about the creative decisions the development staff made for Rage.

When it was first announced, the post-apocalyptic and wildly successful Fallout 3 wouldn’t be released for over a year; Borderlands showed up a year after that. Does Rage have what it takes to compete in what has become a thriving sub-genre of the current generation? Do decisions made years ago bear fruit, or are they evolutionary dead ends?

In this extensive interview, Hollenshead and Chang answer such questions by describing exactly what the team hoped to accomplish from both art and design perspectives.

What do you personally feel is the unique element of Rage that’s going to get people really playing it?

Todd Hollenshead: Well, the game has a number of things, but I think it starts off with — as most games do — with “What does it look like?” And when you look at Rage, regardless of what platform you’re playing on, it is a game that doesn’t look like any other game. It’s the only game that has uniquely textured environment, it’s the only game that’s using id Tech 5, and visuals go a long way towards like, “Okay, this is something.”

But we go beyond that with combining, I think, the classic elements of the shooter genre that we invented, with other elements as well, and when it’s put all together — as you play the game, the whole game is sort of brighter than the sum of its parts. And it’s that element of putting these things together, as opposed to, “Well, we have this, and we have this, and we have this,” and go down a check box list of features, or “We have this, and another game doesn’t,” or “we have that, and another game doesn’t.”

I don’t actually feel like it looks unlike every other game. It does kind of look like Borderlands or Fallout to me. I mean, I’m sure, when you really get into the tech, it looks different. But it does have a similar kind of look and feel.

Andy Chang: It really came down to the approach of how we constructed the landscapes and stuff. Rather than using procedurally generated mountain programs or stuff like that, we developed our own technique of making unique geometry, and used the stamping system to make sure it didn’t apparently look like things were tiled, and stuff like that. So that’s kind of the approach we took to making it unique.

Do you think people will really notice? I mean, on the consumer side?

AC: We notice, and we’re gamers. We make an effort to make sure it’s visually excellent, so that’s pretty much my train of thought on that.

Driving around the environments, I noticed these bandits are incredibly artistic. They’ve got art up on the walls, they’re building structures and sculptures, and things like that. I feel like I’m going around and murdering an artist colony somehow.

AC: Yeah. Someone pointed it out — he asked me if any of the artists had ever been to Burning Man. And I was like, “No, but we looked at lot of Burning Man pictures, so we tried to get in the heads of these guys.” And you’re right, they’re probably found artists. They found garbage and they thought hey, this looks light enough, let’s take it to our place and decorate with it.

Within the mythology of the game, is there a reason why these guys are so art-inclined?

AC: It’s because they were made by guys that were art-inclined.