HijiNKS Ensue - Westwood College: Tightening Up the Graphics on Level 3 since 1953

Originally published at HijiNKS ENSUE. You can comment here or there.

1953? That’s impressive. I didn’t know you could tighten up the graphics on punch cards. Why beat this horse corpse when the internet has delivered such a resplendent flogging already? Joystiq just posted an article from Game Career Guide that prompted me to remember how shitty those commercials were.

An anlysis encompassing both the Gen1 (or O.G) Westwood commerical and the Gen2 (with the spinning robot model on the projector).

• Even if you were developing a game for the PSOne, your don’t program it with the controller. I can’t explain how many different ways that this is just wrong
• Your boss isn’t a moderately hot chick who needs you to finish programming this game because she needs you to program another one. Again, too many levels of wrong to elaborate on. You don’… you can’t….ugh. It’s pointless.
• You don’t view the game you are “coding” on a wall sized projector screen.
• You dont “add the sound effect we used in the last level” with an 8 channel instrument mixing board with some XLR cables plugged into it. They might as well have been “injecting” the sound effects with a turkey baster.
• And lastly, sing it with me, “There’s no such thing as tightening up the graphics on level 3!” Thats like saying “we just need to reverse entropy, then we’ll be done.”

I don’t mean to rag on the students of Westwood. On the contrary, I feel for them. It seems like they are spending 10’s of thousands of dollars to get set up for disappointment. Real gaming studios don’t take these colleges-in-a-box that seriously. You have a much better shot of landing a game job by learning 3DS Max at home over the summer. Studios are interested in demonstrable skills. Develop some then use them to get a job at the bottom of the ladder (tester). Then work your way up (to pizza-go-getter).

Westwood college’s view of the gaming industry is a lot like seeing the internet through the eyes of Johnny Mnemonic or Hackers. The internet is not “surfed” via interactive 3d cyberscape, nor are games designed in a matter of days with duel-shock controllers in hand. I’m just waiting for a school to offer a degree in being a rock star.

“I can’t believe we got these jobs being rock stars”

“Yeah, my mom said I’d never get anywhere with my guitar and devil-may-care attitude.”

“Oh snapz, it’s the boss”

“Are you guys done recording that hit record? I need you to record another one tomorrow.”

“We’re almost done and we need to tighten up the awsomeness on track 3.”