Personal Thoughts on Video Games Development

This is actually my written assignment report submitted for my Games Technology subject in my course just recently . I just feel like wanna post it up here , maybe I just wish to share my thoughts with anyone that are reading my post . So, enjoy;p

Personal Thoughts on the Games Development Talk

Indeed when it comes to games design , or how to truly develop a video game that would sell well , or even be able to attract other people’s interest to play it , I still have a lot things to learn until I am able to make my passion into my dream career in the future . I knew this path isn’t as simple as playing a game , well , I actually don’t think playing game is such an easy task from the beginning anyway , but what I really wanted to say is that to make a game and to play a game are two completely different matters .Yet , this is the path that I have chosen , and I intend to walk till the very end of it to fulfill my dreams .

I actually missed the talk which was held at the college on last Thursday (30/7/2009) , it was such a great loss to me personally ,however I did managed to learn the topics that were being mentioned over the talk , thanks to my fellow course mates , though it was all in a brief and summarize point . I noticed that some of the topics mentioned during this talk ,were quite similar to the ones I heard from the Casual Games & Mobile Games Workshop organized by MSC Malaysia at Nikko Hotel , a little while ago .Though the target audiences of these two talks were definitely different , one is aimed at the students that are still studying , and the later one was aimed at the already graduated young game developers out there , but I realized that topics mentioned such as the trend of video games in Malaysia ,as well as how is the current market over here and some others were pretty similar .After all ,it’s the same Malaysia that we are all living in ,how could it be any much differences ?

Here’s my understanding towards the video games industry in Malaysia so far ,based on the information I have gathered from both the workshop and the talk mentioned above ,as well as other personal observations I’ve made so far .First of all, I agreed about the fact that the Malaysia market are still pretty huge ,and has lots of potential that could generate billions of revenue for the country ,not only in video games ,but other IP related sectors as well .However ,it’s safe to say that the market in those sectors are still in a newborn state ,still pretty immature and lack experiences in our country ,as compared to other countries , say ,like our neighbor country , Singapore, which has gone way up ahead than us in these industries.

Secondly, the trend in South-east Asia, our country as well, is pretty different than the trend in America and Japan , two leading video games giants in this world . Over there , all those hardcore games as well as console games market have their own stand , and their developers were given much more budget to do bigger projects , not to mention all those leading big game companies are in there . On the contrary , Malaysia developers are more into the casual games ,mobile games and online games developing ,as these type of game would sell much better over here , and it’s the very reason why the local investor would willing and interested to invest for . Indeed , the PC games market are much more bigger than the console market in Malaysia , as more people are having a PC in their home rather than a console , the same goes to mobile phone , as almost everyone in the cities have at least one mobile phone on their hands , so it’s not hard for those game publishers to figure out which trend to follow , so that they could gain maximum benefits out of these .

So that is the trend in Malaysia , I hate to admit it , mainly because as a hardcore console gamers myself ,I rarely touch any of these PC based games , whether offline or online , as well as all those casual games and mobile games , and thus I never think of wanted to develop any of these games on these platforms should I become a game designer in the future . But I’m afraid my naïve way of thinking should come to an end soon , as this is the reality and current situations of the Malaysia game market . Should I wanted to start a career over here ,I’ve no choice but to follow these trend , Otherwise , I would just have to go to overseas ,to the country where I always wanted to go, Japan , the country where video games has been revolutionize ever since , and fulfill my dream to make a video game masterpiece , just like what Mr. Hideo Kojima, the creator of the epic Metal Gear series has done . But that’s probably just a fool’s dream , even if the current trend in this country doesn’t suit to my interest , but the path to Japan is simply almost impossible to be reached . I really wonder what kind of game designer I would be become in the future ,or rather should I asked myself ,would I even be able to graduated and be a game designer at all? Only time will tell I guess .