OPINION

Video Game — Product Management Internship Assessment

Internship application for gaming product management

Plan to learn about the game market — AI characters, User interaction, enjoyable mechanics, features implementation affect gameplay, focus on creating games with dynamic, intelligent computer-controlled characters and huge, allow gamers to lose themselves in another world.

The best way to learn more about what the market wants to see in future games is to look at a game that players widely praised, and which is still being played years after its release (continued play suggests players like the game enough to keep coming back). It’s useful to read reviews from players to find which in particular of its mechanics or features they find most enjoyable and to play the game, or at least watch others play it, to get a firsthand perspective on how these features are implements and how they affect gameplay. For example, do players go out of their way to use these intriguing features? Is anything getting in the form of their use? Etc.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one top-rated video game widely praised for being highly immersive and visually beautiful. Its characters have a relatively advanced AI. They have conversations between themselves and react to things that happen in the world around them. For example, some NPCs attempt to steal stuff from stores and are caught and chased by town guards.

The sheer scale of the game makes the player feel as if they’re exploring another world, which is almost as real as the one we are currently living. It makes sense to emulate its success by focusing on creating games with dynamic, intelligent computer-controlled characters and large, freely explorable environments to develop games that will allow gamers to lose themselves in another world.

Needs — Art concepts, a storyline, marketing, and others to be successful, impartance to hire good artists, writers, and business people to support the development of the game.

Game developers have to balance logical, technical thinking such as choosing the most efficient algorithms to use to render the game’s graphics or which file format is best to store game assets like 3D models, with more creative thinking to make the game they’re working on the fun to play and a compelling simulation of the real, physical world. They also must be able to operate in a corporate environment with deadlines and many layers of management to please. Game developers are usually avid video game players themselves, so they often bring much passion for their jobs and are driven to create the best game they can. They take it as a personal point of pride.

They need a working environment relatively free of distractions and micromanagement, support from management to acquire capital to produce games (computers to develop on, development software, and others), and things that every worker needs like excellent benefits and salaries. Additionally, they need good non-developer teammates. Games require more than code, and they also need art concepts, a storyline, marketing, and others to be successful, which makes it essential to hire good artists, writers, and business people to support the game’s development.

Foundational beliefs that will allow a video game product to win — NPCs should have spontaneous interactions with players, other NPCs, and their environment: attention, and excellent physics engine.

Games seek to create a digital facsimile of the real world (or perhaps a more fantastical version of it). Therefore, developers should do their best to make their games very finely detailed and realistic. NPCs should have spontaneous interactions with players, other NPCs, and their environment (Ex. have conversations with each other, be excited when they find an item.).

Attention should also be given to making sure that the game has a good physics engine so that movement and collisions result in realistic effects on players, NPCs, and objects. The player should be able to interact with as much of the environment as possible (for example, allowing players to harvest resources and use them to craft items and structures). The player should feel like they have a real effect on the world.

Solving the universal human problem — Boredom for the people, and highly optimized codes that handle and are runnable on a wide variety of graphics cards

On a broad scale, developers try to solve a universal human problem- boredom. On a micro-level, they address the more widespread problem of boredom by first explaining the myriad technical issues that must be surmounted to create a video game. Many people play video games as a primary form of entertainment, as well as to socialize via multiplayer games. Video games can also be educational. They may require the player to learn new skills (such as how to read a map or perform a calculation), manage resources (resource management is a particularly prominent feature of strategy games), and they can also help expand vocabulary.

They must write code that handles the game’s graphics, which can be a difficult task because this code must be highly optimized to run well and to be runnable on a wide variety of graphics cards. They also need to know about AI to make the characters (known as “non-player characters” or “NPCs”) able to interact with the player, their environment, and other non-player characters. However, they must also be able to assess whether or not the code they write creates a game that is immersive and fun to play, which requires them to be able to qualitatively evaluate their work so that they can predict whether or not an average person would enjoy playing it. Issues like long loading screens or strange NPC behavior can make a game less realistic and engaging.

Product changes or additions you believe might be valuable — Non- scripted, uncanned responses, more dynamic and lifelike would be a significant improvement, formulate reactions to events that didn’t anticipate happening in the game.

More focus on “atmosphere” by making NPCs responses to their environment and the player’s actions more realistic and nuanced. NPCs often have highly scripted, canned responses to player actions and environmental changes, so finding a way to make them more dynamic and lifelike would be a significant improvement, mainly if developers could find a way to give NPCs the ability to formulate reactions to events that the developers didn’t anticipate happening in the game. Making the characters in games closer to pure artificial minds would make them more realistic and exciting to interact with.

Avoid rushing Deadlines before releasing a product, later delivery if needed improvements for better quality, Measured goals by the quality and the content delivered

Put the game into an open beta when a stable release is ready. Use the beta to solicit feedback from players, and put much weight on it when implementing new features/ revising what’s already been coded. Many developers fail to put adequate pressure on the opinions of players, kowtowing instead to executives. It’s essential to be willing to change directions if players don’t like an aspect of the game. Developers should also avoid rushing their work, which decreases quality m. Deadlines are important, but most players are willing to wait longer if the game is excellent.

Risk — Players’ taste changes, It’s ok to add more content to the game after release, continue putting out patches for the base game to fix bugs, additional high-quality content should be a part of the base game, or at least free.

The video game market is fickle; players’ tastes change rapidly. A genre or format that is popular one year may not be the next. For example, classic first-person shooters such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been losing ground recently to “battle royale” style shooters like Fortnight.

It’s also easy to get too greedy and alienate players with purchasable auxiliary content (such as “in-app purchases” and “DLCs”). Players, rightly, often feel that they’re being “milked” for more money by game studios. It’s ok to add more content to the game after release, but studios should make sure to continue putting out patches for the base game to fix bugs, and any additional material should be very high-quality and add something to the game. Many developers try to create “additional content” that should be a part of the base game (or at least be free- for an example see the disastrous “Horse Armor” pack for the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” by Bethesda Game Studios, which was widely decried as a blatantly greedy cash grab), or at least free.