Ben Ward
This week our guest lecture was Ben Ward, he is the Creative Director at Inner-Freak and he visited the university of Bolton to give us a presentation on his experiences in the games industry. His talk was very interesting and eye opening when he spoke about how he managed financially and about his company where he is the founder Supergonk. His lecture was interesting because it gave an insight to us upcoming game designers that it’s not plain sailing and it is a lot of hard work and effort needs to be put in place if you want to be successful in this industry. The point which really piqued my interest was when he said that ‘everyone at the first company he joined was better than him in terms of skill’. He then went on to say it is key that you keep learning and never stop because there is always something new around the corner and you have to be on top of it. This really resonated with me as having the knowledge and knowing how to execute that is a vital aspect in any work environment.
‘studios will often reject you because you either do not have enough experience or your skills are not good enough.’ (Ahmed, 2012)
What this shows that you need to proficient with how you utilise your skills and keep learning and gaining new skills that can aid you in your future endeavours because at the end of the day it is you who is going to benefit from gaining these skills and there is no such thing as a wasteful skill. By acquiring a plethora of skills in your arsenal you are going to excel in your field because you are constantly learning and therefore up to date, this ties it back to what ben ward was saying in his lecture that you have to keep learning because in this industry everyone in better than you just have to keep learning and push forward to be there at the frontlines.
References
Ward, B. (2009). February). Ben Ward. [ONLINE]. Available at: https://twitter.com/benjamesward?lang=en [Accessed 13 February 17].
Ahmed, Zuby. (2012). How to get ahead in the video games industry. [ONLINE], Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/careers/get-ahead-video-games-industry [Accessed 12 May 2017]