Joysticks and books: Studying to be a game producer

Myoung-Jin Kim

Two months ago, the business administration graduate went back to school. He is now completing a training program as a game producer at the Games Academy in Berlin. Yet his workload has not been reduced. “But at least I’m only doing what I enjoy and what makes sense for me,” he says.

Although the video game industry in Germany is still at an early stage of development compared with the United States and Asia, it is growing very fast. Some 5,000 people are employed in 50 development studios and at three dozen publishers. The most famous developers are at Crytek, the Frankfurt am Main-based firm that is currently celebrating the success of its top-selling game Crysis. Recently, Mediadesign Hochschule für Design und Informatik, based in Berlin, Munich and Düsseldorf, began offering a six-semester study program in game design. The pioneer in this field, however, is located in Berlin, where the Games Academy – founded five years ago – became the first specialist school for computer and video game production.

The German capital has also become a major center of the gaming world. It is the home of a large number of ambitious young people who, like Myoung-Jin Kim, have discovered their passion for the virtual world and want to make money with video games. And their prospects are excellent, because, according to the German Federal Association of Interactive Entertainment Software (BIU), the German market is Europe’s second largest for computer and video games. In 2006, a turnover of roughly 1.12 billion euros was achieved in the gaming software sector (excluding hardware sales) – and this figure is rising.

Located in a loft in Berlin’s Mitte district, the school is rather unassuming: there’s a display cabinet with clay sculptures and a seemingly prehistoric room-filling games console dating from the early 1980s, some posters of characters from video games decorate the walls and a solitary drinks machine stands in the corner. At the school, creative ideas flower in the minds of the roughly 120 students who are training to be producers, 3-D programmers, game artists and game designers. The school is proud of its team of lecturers – international big names like game designer Ernest W. Adams or Richard Huddy of chip manufacturer AMD. Rector Thomas Dlugaiczyk has also managed to bring companies like Microsoft and Nintendo on board.

In addition, a cooperative partnership has been established with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD) in Rostock in which staff from both institutes aim to develop new, marketable solutions for video games. This will involve technologies that are still very much in the future: for example, they are working on means of detecting emotions. The researchers hope this will enable them to measure the quality of games and develop new versions that will respond to the player’s mood. These features could eventually be introduced into other computer applications.

The strategy of the prestigious private school is based upon practical work and a high level of self-responsibility. Myoung-Jin Kim is already discovering this in his first semester. He is able to benefit here from the business administration know-how he gained at university and his previous work experience. As a future game producer he will have to ensure that his people – the artists and programmers in his work group – will be able to design a new computer game as planned and complete it on time without exceeding their budget. “It’s my job to keep the group together and motivate them. That does not only require commercial and strategic expertise, but also a certain amount of sensitivity,” he says. “After all, you have to deal with artists in a different way to programmers. And when I offer our game to a publisher, I will have to behave in a completely different way again.” His study schedule includes not only classical game theory, technical background knowledge and basic programming, but also business communication, law and project planning. In coming semesters he will be covering interactive storytelling, conflict management, personnel management, project finance and financial control.

Myoung-Jin Kim is maintaining his business contacts with Asia. He doesn’t want to lose the ties he has already made. “I would like to make it big there with my group. That’s why I will make every effort to show publishers what we can do here in Germany.” This dream is certainly not unrealistic. Last year, for example, a former student, 26-year-old graphic artist Felix Leyendecker, worked on Crysis, the most expensive video game of all time. For the time being, however, Myoung-Jin Kim is enjoying student life with its casual dress code and, of course, lots of “gaming”.