Women in Games International is hosting a panel tomorrow night at the Los Angeles Film school. The panel is called “Your Career in Gaming: How to stay competitive and how to transfer into other areas of the industry.”

Everyone seeks recognition and advancement in their chosen career. Learn how to take active steps toward moving up in your team or department or moving into a different sphere of the game industry.

This is a great opportunity to learn how to communicate with management about your abilities beyond just doing a good job. To move up in a competitive industry like video games, you need to convince the chain of command to consider you as a candidate. While the game industry is full of smart people who work hard, we’re not always the best advocates for ourselves.

Be sure to present yourself in a way that shows off the diversity of your abilities, not only including the main parts of your job description. To move up, you need to show the brass you’re a great communicator who can work well with not only your team, but with vendors and partners.

Quietly sitting in your cube kicking ass at your assignments does not necessarily translate into the best person for advancement. In fact, managers like to make their jobs easier, and having great team members is the best way. You need to show that the company will be better served by putting you into a higher position.

Confirmed Speakers:
Alana Chan
Lead Producer
Disney Interactive Media Group

Kamalina Evans
Global Talent Acquisition
EA Interactive

Mark Vulcano
Studio Animation Director
Heavy-Iron Studios

Paul Cunningham
Co-Founder / CEO
CreativeHeads.net

Shannon Henry
Manager, Talent Acquisition
Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC

To RSVP for the event, click here: http://www.evite.com/app/publicUrl/XSAUXIECZAZQDARWZUFB/WIGIDLC3

At the last Women in Games International D-L-C-Drinks-Lectures-Community in Los Angeles on February 4th, 2010, the topic was Monetization in Gaming in the casual and social gaming arenas.

An impressive panel of guests talked about traffic being one way to create income in casual and social games, but virtual goods are an especially engaging and productive form of commerce. Players enjoy purchasing virtual goods because it’s a fun way to interact with the game world.

In order to improve quality in casual and social games, which in turn increases revenue, integration is the key. Transactions, advertisements, surveys, etc. need to be firmly integrated into gameplay. An interstitial is just going to be ignored, but if players can continue to play while buying, they will. Make monetization opportunities as seamless a possible—part of gameplay, preferably—to maximize player retention. Publishers also need to continue to put out high quality content, because these games have a short lifespan—customers can be lost if content doesn’t stay fresh.

Convenient payment methods need to be embraced by the industry—convenient for everyone, not just a certain segment. Some players may do best as subscribers, while others want to pre-pay. Internationally, this is even more true, as many players in foreign territories don’t have credit cards, but can afford to pre-pay for play and goods. It’ll serve the industry well to standardize online payments for games, allowing players to use one pre-paid card in many game worlds as well as transfer credits among games from the same publisher.

A surprising fact that came up during the discussion is non-paying users are an important part of the marketing scheme. Viral marketing is a huge factor in online gaming, and non-paying users generate income by referring others to a game.

The panel talked about good ways to play-balance casual/social games—not just for the fun versus difficult factor, but for free versus pay. How big of a divide should there be between free and pay gameplay? Of course, paid play better be superior to free play, but often, the line can be thin. Many pay players are highly involved with the game universe and the fun factor is important to them, therefore they’ll pay to play a better game.

After the discussion, the 75 or so attendees headed over to a restaurant for drinks and networking. Please see the Facebook event for pics! (Scroll down the page to “Photos.”)

http://www.facebook.com/belinda.vansickle#!/event.php?eid=259200612503&ref=mf

I’ve been working on initiatives for Women in Games International for four years and have recently been involved with some organizing for the rebooted International Game Developers Association Los Angeles Chapter.

To get some ideas for WIGI and IGDA LA, I attended the recent meeting for the IGDA’s Orange County Chapter. Held at the offices of Foundation 9 in Irvine, it was a fun event!

I’ve been in the game industry for 13 years, but I had never before participated in a game design contest. The attendees were split up into 10 groups of six to nine people and we had an hour to come up with a game design including a company name, game title, platform, game engine, main characters and game features.

Every team picked three random words out of a hat and was required to use two of the words in their game design. Our team picked two food-related words along with “toe ring.” We decided to throw out toe ring and starting planning a food fight game.

We initially intended to publish our game for the Wii console to take advantage of the motion controls for a simulated food fight in a school cafeteria. But a “publisher representative” came along and said they wanted our game to be a PSP title. It kind of screwed up the whole motion controls aspect of gameplay, but our team was able to move forward with game design.

We ended up with a game where players start in kindergarten and progress through the grade levels to eighth grade, improving food fight skills, earning better weapons (food items) and using coins earned to customize their player with clothes and protective gear.

At the end of the hour, all teams had to present their game to the group and the “publishers” decided on their favorite. I thought our game was a marketable idea, but a game about drawing with a marker on passed out peoples’ faces with at a party won the competition. The publishers wanted to “play that game right now.’

I’ve spent my game career making packaging and other game marketing materials, so this was my first time brainstorming with a team on game design. It was a lot of fun and I really admired our team’s ability to work together, compromise and roll with the punches of random publisher changes.

I’m not sure WIGI or IGDA LA are the right audiences for a meeting of this type, but I definitely got a new perspective on creating chapter meetings and events for video game professionals.

Way to go IGDA OC!

The International Game Developers Association Los Angeles Chapter has begun a reboot to revitalize the chapter, encourage networking and have a monthly educational gathering for members. Last night was the first of monthly meetings on the second Thursday of the month.

The meeting was held at Rich Media Institute in Venice and had 100 attendees. There was a roundtable discussion called “Beyond Facebook and the iPhone: The Future of Casual Game Development” and had four panelists including Quinn Dunki – Founder, One Girl One Laptop Productions; Zack Ford – Co-Founder & CTO, Zero G Games; Christopher Ulm – CEO, Appy Entertainment; and Cynthia Woll – Founder & CEO, Cul de Sac Studios.

One of the most interesting things I heard last night from the panel is “Facebook is an MMO,” but it’s a “stealth” game—one where users don’t really know they’re playing a game. They think they’re just checking in on their Facebook friends, checking their crops in Farmville, networking or socializing, etc. And this concept of “stealth” games is very good for the video game industry to expand our market and get more and more people playing our products and paying our salaries.

A long-held definition of casual games is “no commitment.” You don’t have to commit hours of time to play the game. You can spend five minutes between other tasks just for a short break.

I don’t believe that definition is still true. Games like aquarium or environment building may be considered “casual,” but they require a commitment to keep the gameplay going. Your fish, your crops, your village will die if you don’t keep up on maintenance and such.

I sincerely believe the future of casual game development is very exciting and will be extremely lucrative for the game industry. And what’s even more exciting is the potential expansion of the industry in so many ways. We’re going to start partnering with even more facets of the technology industry to bring gameplay to every mobile device, every social networking site, to many more product and brand sites as well as to new hardware coming out such as tablets and other computing devices.

Casual game development also will bring a lot of new blood to the industry—more women, more types of artists and programmers, more marketers and PR people as well as senior management from the channels we’re moving into. This means more opportunity for jobs as well as more opportunity for current game industry vets to expand their skillsets and portfolios.

I’ve been a “hardcore casual gamer” for going on 20 years, but my 13+ years in the industry has mainly been focused on AAA console titles. It’s every game worker’s dream to make the kinds of games they like to play. I’d like to move into casual game development and use the experience I’ve gained to expand that market and its offerings.

It’s been reported that the video game industry brought in nearly 70 percent more income than film (including box office and DVD sales) this past year in the UK.

It was many years ago that I learned that the video game industry brings in far more income worldwide than does the film industry. But this is still impressive news, especially since the UK film industry had its most successful year in nearly 30 years.

What does this mean, other than it’s really cool to work in video games? (Especially for someone like me, who originally wanted to work in movies, but instead ended up in games, and there are a lot of us!)

It means it’s way past time for the game industry to get its due from the public, the financial industry and governments. There are US states and foreign territories that are offering tax and other incentives to the game industry, but there are still many states and foreign countries that are trying to ban some video games and strictly regulate the rest of the industry–far exceeding the standards applied to the film industry.

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Money talks. B*llsh*t walks.” The game industry has proven for more than a decade that we can generate the money. When are the politicians and the media going to give credit where credit is due and recognize the power and influence of game companies?

Bottom line, the video game industry should have the influence, freedom and economic clout of the film industry—where it counts—in regulation, taxation and creative freedom.

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/game-revenue-surpasses-movies-in-uk/

It has been a very long and arduous road, but WIGI has finally incorporated as an independent non-profit organization serving the video game industry. We have one hurdle to go–we need to file our 1023 within the next 18 months, so there still is work to be done.

However, this hurdle enables me to renew my efforts with other aspects of Women in Games. We plan a “reboot” of the organization for 2010 with new events, programs and especially, new blood! We’ve got lots of new volunteers with great ideas and contacts.

We’re going to need a lot more help in the coming months, so stayed tuned to the WIGI Linkedin group for updates. But for now, we’re accepting any and all submissions for our re-defining WIGI process.

You’re assignment: Use the acronym “WIGI” to come up with your own meaning, hopefully somewhat related to Women in Games International’s role in the video game industry. However, this is the game industry, and we love fun, play and a sense of humor.

Email your ideas directly to me, post them as comments to this blog post, or post them to the WIGI Linkedin group.

So far I’ve got “Working In Games Incessantly,” but I think we can do a lot better than that!

Thanks in advance for your help!

Digital distribution is growing in the video game industry by leaps and bounds. I’m in agreement with many analysts that brick-and-mortar stores have years of life left in them and actual packaged games with manuals and other inserts will be here for years to come.

However, it behooves people like myself who create game box & docs to stay abreast of what’s going on with “packaging” and “manuals” for digital game distribution. I keep a very close eye on game industry trends in terms of online documentation, and honestly, there’s not much out there yet other than PDFs.

As we move more into digital game distribution, I hope manuals will improve from the current PDF model. However, currently, most games that are solely digitally distributed aren’t those with big marketing budgets and therefore a very limited amount of time and money reserved for documentation and packaging.

My hope is as more triple-A titles are distributed online, publishers will want to create more robust online packaging. I think one of the main obstacles to this advance is to convince publishers it’s worth the money—that interactive, updatable, link-based box & docs are worthwhile and can add value and life to a product.

Links in online box & docs to other avenues of title monetization are probably one of the strongest arguments for robust online packaging. Dynamic “in-game” advertising added to online packaging and documentation is another revenue stream that could convince publishers to move in this direction.

Bottom line, I think it’s useful technology that can benefit the consumer and add value to games distributed online, but it’s a matter of convincing those who pay. . .

I’m co-leading a roundtable discussion called “Contractor, Freelance or Employee?” at Monday’s Cas… less than 5 seconds agoI’m co-leading a roundtable discussion called “Contractor, Freelance or Employee?” at Monday’s Casual Connect Leadership Dev Forum. Say hi if you’re there!

The IGDA has found someone to replace longtime director Jason Della Rocca. Joshua Caulfield, who has experience in association management, has been chosen for the ED position.

I think it’s a really good idea for the IGDA to choose someone with this type of experience. It has been a flaw in the game industry for many years that senior management is often staffed by people who moved up to those positions from within game design and production.

Our industry has suffered from having really great, smart people with little management experience in top positions. As the industry has matured, we’ve been seeing top people recruited from outside video games.

I first saw it in 1999 at Activision when many packaged goods people were brought into senior positions at the company. As a gamer and an industry vet, I was flabbergasted at the time, but Activision has since become the biggest video game publisher in the world under the tutelage of management from outside the industry.

The ESA recently recruited someone from outside video games in their top position. When I heard he had never been to E3, I cringed. But then again, that’s exactly how I felt in 1999 and I was proven wrong.

The game industry needs to continue to mature and realistically and objectively analyze our strengths and weaknesses. And industry vets need to swallow their pride a bit and find the skills they need wherever those skills are held.

Let’s welcome these new people to the industry and open our minds to more collaboration with other industries and skillsets. It’s vital for our future!

I just got an email from Marvin Smith at Microsoft recruiting. They’re looking for artists, programmers, game designers and others to join teams developing for Project Natal.

The jobs are in Redmond and look like a fabulous opportunity to be a part of how games will be played in the future.

Click here for details: http://www.microsoft-entertainment-jobs.com/go/Introducing-Project-Natal/150565/?utm_campaign=IEBNatalIntro

Let me know if you get hired!