Mackey McCandlish - Infinity Ward (part2)

This is the conclusion of Infinity Ward's talk, Mackey had 5 personal rules of the industry to share:

• Don't fall prey to new behaviours (new challenges) - Time constraints can easily be overlooked when experimenting.
• Find the simplest solution - When faced with a gigantic project quick fixes save time and money.
• Don't delete what is already good enough  - When you have produced something and get a sudden revelation on how to improve it do not delete the original, again time constraints do hold us back.
• The "Big Picture" outweighs the small problems - stemming from the simplest solution ethic, the little things can be overlooked and fixed quickly to save the project as a whole.
• The real work comes after the dialogue (scripting) - tweaking always takes longer than you plan it to, the general blocking of the scene lays the foundation.

A brilliant set of tips there, From experience I have seen what results of not having these rules in place on a project and deadlines get missed.  Breaking into the industry was the next topic with an emphasis on "How to approach people".  Firstly you can't afford to be shy, working on your communication skills is the way to go.  throwing yourself into uncomfortable situations and highly communicative events will desensitise you to the nerves of first meetings. If you don't put yourself out there no-one will know you, networking allows you to meet influential people and work your way up to plugging your talents after a few conversations.

An interesting point was that any interviewer will want you to do well at interview, after all they want to fill a void so sell yourself, show you're passionate and enthusiastic especially if your aiming that positivity at the company itself.  Researching the company is therefore pretty useful and being able to reference their inner workings with your proposed effect on the company could help.  In any position once you get it, you need to prove yourself and earn trust.  start at the bottom of the ladder and working your way up the ranks and it will pay off.

A strong portfolio is diverse in styles and ideas as this helps companies envisage you working on any of their projects. Game specific portfolios can contain X+A Indie Development, Game Scripting, examples of levels with engines such as Little Big Planet.  Modelling for games requires well thought out low-res geometry with texture mapping to compensate.  These portfolio's differ greatly from the film industry as their detail needs to be much greater.   After questioning Mackey on the move from film to game for an animator/ modeller he explained how it was relatively common for film industry animators to work in games however the move from games to film is much more difficult. Infinity ward were talent scouting although he did stress that being in the USA this would mean working VISA issues for us Brits so we'd have to be petty darn good for them to want us.

Still it may be worth pursuing a job with them if you have what it takes, Mackey did mention that programming experience with C++ would be preferred whichever role.