Steve, 37, is a Creative Director at game developer, Krome Studios.
What do you do?
As Creative Director, I'm responsible for the look and the feel of the games that come out of the company in general - the general artistic direction of the company. I look mostly after the visuals, but also the game play.
Part of my responsibility is to look at all of the games coming out on release. I also deal with the publisher and pitch the titles. I make sure the games keep a high level of visual quality and game play quality. I need to make sure the creative team is running happily as well.
We have multiple projects on the go. At the moment we are dealing with four projects at any one time - that's a big deal. Projects last anywhere from a year to eighteen months to two years if you are really lucky.
On an average day a lot of my work is dealing with the different team members and what they need, looking through the games that are being made, giving critiques on the direction the game is going. It's a hundred and one meetings a day sometimes. It's a lot of communicating with people.
The number of people I'd be responsible for would be about 50 or 60 people directly, but the company has about 220 people, so technically as Creative Director I'd be responsible for most of those people.
How did you get to where you are today?
I sort of fell into it because there was no industry in Brisbane when I started out. We had to start our own company. So I was basically doing all of the work from the ground level artist up, and having done all that, I moved into the role of the Creative Director.
I started out doing graphics and games design as well, but as the company grew, it needed someone to be responsible for all the creative output. It's grown from a single person job when I first started out fifteen years ago to managing other people doing what I used to do. The company has just grown that way. This is pretty much the only company I've worked with.
What skills are necessary for you to do your job?
Most important is being able to communicate with the staff and other people. This involves being able to convey your ideas to them; being able to look at other people's work and critique it but in a fair way; keeping up to date with information in the industry like current trends to know what's going on and technology, and basically just keeping creative.
You don't necessarily need technical skills yourself, but I think it helps if you have the ability to know what's happening on a technical level. The more you know the better basically.
How important was your education/training?
I started out as an animator, so in my case probably not that much. I did a course the Queensland College of Art. It was a three year bachelor degree. It was a 2D animation course. I learnt a lot from that - art history, film history, a lot of theory, but it helps in what I'm doing now as well. But, it's not necessarily needed for what I do. I didn't do any programming in the course. I did that in my spare time for fun. A lot of stuff I learnt in my spare time - I did some programming, art on computers. But as the whole industry got bigger you need to specialize and I specialised in graphics more than programming because I had more of an artistic background.
Where do you see your career going?
There is not really anywhere else to go [said smiling]. It is pretty much either more of what I'm doing now which is good fun, or retiring maybe. The business is pretty big, so I will just keep going. What I'm doing now is fun so I could keep doing that for a long time.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to enter the games industry?
Work out exactly what you want to do in games and work hard at being the best you can. People will say you really can't do it. Ignore them if you really want to do it. It's a lot of hard work so you have to be prepared to work. Study. All of the things people usually tell you is pretty good advice.
To get your foot in the door, now-a-days there are plenty of places out there where you can learn. Definitely try to get into a course - they are not easy to get into but they are worth doing. If there is a games industry in your area, try to get into quality assurance - get your foot in the door that way. That gets you into the building, it gets you interacting with the teams and how games get made, and from there you can either continue on as QA or move to another part of the industry. That's probably your best bet.
