The games industry seems to be doing very well at the moment; you have Nintendo reclaiming the Develop 100 top spot, Ubisoft’s Just Dance becoming a huge sleeper hit by selling over 1m copies in the UK and EA dominating the charts with Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and FIFA World Cup 2010. Then there’s Activision. Thanks to Call of Duty, Activision has had a very successful start to 2010, with CoD: Modern Warfare 2 helping the publishing giant reach better than expected financial results. Not only was CoD: Modern Warfare 2, the number one title in the US and Europe for the first quarter of 2010, but the Stimulus Package DLC broke Xbox Live records, with one million downloads achieved in its first 24 hours after release.
Include the fact that Activision managed to sign up Bungie to an exclusive deal, and things couldn’t be going more smoothly for the publishing studio.
All of this is evidence that the games industry is indeed growing.
So what does this mean for Train2Game students? A successful industry will lead to more jobs going around. When an industry grows, it has to expand or otherwise it will become stunted. This means there will be a continuing trend of developers looking for designers, developers and artists while publishers will be keeping their eye out on a studio that shows a lot of potential.
Another factor to consider is that even though the gaming industry is continuing to be a successful industry, there is a shortage of talented people (the key word is talented).
Train2Game projects like RoboBuddy, Light the Skies, Project Blast, Redemption: Grave Betryal and Galoop show that the course has talented boys and girls who can take advantage of the opportunities that the thriving industry could present.
Just looking at any news item on gamesindustry.biz shows studios advertising for new talents; Realtime Worlds, Rockstar North, Blizzard Entertainment and Ubisoft are among those looking for people with skills to join their ranks. You would think that these high profile companies have all the talent they need, and yet their advertising shows that as the industry is getting bigger, they are growing along with it.
So it’s a good time for Train2Game students to start promoting their stuff to companies and even landing work experience is a valuable step to their future.
You can check out the full story about Activision here - http://www.train2game.com/Games-Design-News/Gaming-Industry-News/Activision-profits-boosted-by-Modern-Warfare-2$19767684.html
