Random, Fun, Interesting Links

Here are some cool and extremely random links to things that have popped up over the last week or so that relate (in some form or another) to NinjaBee . Enjoy!

Random Link #1: NinjaBee has a public profile and a great relationship with Gathering of Gamers, a social networking site for gamers. A few NinjaBees appeared on their GOGCast (a community podcast) season finale a few weeks ago and talked about A Kingdom for Keflings, life at NinjaBee and a few other interesting things. The podcast is pretty long, so if you just want to hear the NinjaBee stuff, it starts about 12 1/2 min. into the show. There's also a special audio clip right at the end, about 1 hour and 20 mins. into the show...:)


Random Link #2: Here's a cool YouTube video of a guy who covers XBLA songs. This rocks!




Random Link #3: Jeremy Throckmorton, one of our designers, was interviewed by Genesis Device, a cool gaming website. Check out his interview here. Here's a fun snippet from the interview (that just happens to go with the above video!):

Genesis Device: Where did the music for Kingdom come from? It's completely addictive!

Jeremy Throckmorton: Eric Nunamaker is a long time friend of ours, and a very talented composer we contract for many of our projects. We decided on a style and feel for Keflings and presented it to him. He is really, really good at making music to match our odd requests and abstract concepts. The soundtrack to Keflings is a testament to that.


Random Link #4: Michelle, the cool girl who made the A Kingdom for Keflings web comic has made a Doritos Dash of Destruction one as well.

Do Something (How to get hired by a video game company)

DO SOMETHING.

Sometimes I'll be interviewing somebody (let's say, a programmer) who says he wants to make video games more than anything else in his life. So I say "Great! What have you done with that passion? What have you done outside of school, in your spare time? Full game projects? Cool demos? Technology experiments?" And he says "oh, nothing, just my school projects". And I want to CRY!

If you want to be an artist, draw stuff, all the time, starting right now, and work at getting better. Take classes. Go to life-drawing sessions. Learn to draw the human figure. Stop drawing robots and anime characters.

If you want to be a programmer, write code, all the time, starting right now, and work at getting better. Go to school and take game-related classes. Work on some technology experiments and demos. Write a simple game on your own. Get an internship at a game company. Work your way up.

If you want to be a designer, learn to write. Write stuff, all the time, starting right now, and work at getting better. Write designs, write stories, write reviews of other games. Read books about design, and play other games as much as possible, including games that are not normally your cup of tea. Figure out why they're good or bad. Figure out why other people think they're good or bad. Pay attention to popular culture, and figure out what people like.  More than anything else, make some games! (pen and paper table-top game, card game, first-person shooter mod, flash game, anything to show an actual product, not just documentation).

Collect all these things you've created into a portfolio, and when you get a chance to interview at a game company, show it to them and say "This is what I want to do!" If they don't hire you, find out why, and fix it.

And if you really want to do this more than anything else, then be willing to work your way up. Get in the door with a smaller job and start proving yourself. That's how I started, and that's how most of the people here got started.

Do something.

Whew.