To the chagrin of many, I have long expressed concern over the employment prospects of students, not to mention professionals, in or entering the local Game Development industry. The industry has seemed frustratingly intent on ignoring the problem. As part of analysing the financials for Genius Interaction Pty. Ltd.’s business plan, I examined industry employment rates. I determined the likely unemployment rate, i.e. the number of those seeking jobs in the industry who cannot get them, not necessarily those starving or on welfare, was sitting somewhere between 80 and 90% currently, right now. That’s a pretty sobering number, based upon graduation rates for game-specific courses and employment figures, sourced from Justin Brow, ISIS, ACMI, ABS and ICT Industry Reports, GDAA, NPD and EEDAR. Additionally, expected retirement, drop-out and industry emmigration rates have been estimated to account for the huge employment defecit.

The pie chart on the left represents my findings. I don’t pretend to have 100% accurate figures on this, a lot of it is guess work and common sense. Nonetheless, I am confident that, given a margin of error of about 6% on total industry size, the general message holds true.  Keep in mind, this chart is assuming a 0% unemployment rate in 2008, which we all know is not true, so the problem may even be slightly worse. This number is distressing enough, so I’ll give you about a paragraph to take all that in. Unfortunately, that’s not where I stopped. In researching these figures I looked into courses of study, graduation rates, drop-out rates, number of studios, projected industry growth, etc. Having all these figures handy, and having often said it’ll be at least a decade until we return to a reasonable job : seeker ratio, I decided to look into forming some predictive figures on unemployment over the next decade or so… Read more

It’s been a few days since last I posted and, regrettably, I have been quite unwell. Nonetheless, straight into business, shall we? Those of my readers, few as you are, that read tsumea might have recently been witness to a rather unpleasant series of comments on a news article regarding Halfbrick’s “Machinegun Jetpack”. The whole shmozzle can be witnessed here. I’ll give you some time to mull over that…

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Games Industry Trade Balance

Industry Trade Balance figures released by Ibisworld show Australia’s industry is not in the best shape, when placed in contrast with the world’s. Industry figures are citing this as an argument for greater industry investment by the government. I love free money as much as the next guy, probably more than that damn commie, but what I see is evidence of a lack of managerial talent locally. I’m not going to point the finger at individuals, but our industry leaders are behind the times and aren’t pushing the boundaries needed to keep up with trends, and demand. There are exceptions, such as Shaniel Deo and Halfbrick really hitting that portable market hard. Creative Assembly know what they’re doing (I hope), and Firemint are certainly doing ok for themselves. On a world scale these are all baby steps, however.

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The thought occured to me the other day – what is the meaning of life? These things just pop up now and then, I think I’m going a little philosophical in my age. As any smart-arse will tell you, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy answered that question with ’42′. The thing with smart-arses is they tend to be wrong, though. Really, ’42′ is the answer to ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’. So realistically, life must be a lot cheaper than we’ve been hoping.

What we have hear, is a mathematical equation from which we can extract the meaning of life… or, I suppose, the universe. That’s again assuming the universe means something, but let’s face it, would any of us really miss it if it just went away? People are always complaining about ‘everything’ too. Nonetheless, let’s break it down.

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I came across this page whilst browsing the ‘Beauty of the Web‘ site, following my installation of the IE9 Release Client. Bloody beautiful, and all done in HTML5. There’s a lot more awesome up there, and even a few games that I might cover. Worth taking a look at if you’ve got the IE9 client, or a beta client for Firefox 4.

So it’s been a while, a while indeed. Slowly my network of bots is migrating across to my new blog. I missed you my babies. It’s been far too long since last my eyes graced your beautiful semi-erotic gibberish, and your fine Eastern endowment remedies. I guess I owe you all an explanation.

I’ve already addressed the new site, but basically I’ve been screwed, quite royally, by QUT. As a result, health issues have taken me out of the picture. Since then, however, I’ve got stuff done.

1. Air-Raid is cancelled due to ineptitude on the behalf  of QUT and Timothy Lawrence.
2. Cannon-Ball Clash is finished and semi-published.
3. I have formed my parent company ‘Genius Interaction Pty. Ltd.’ which will handle development and IP management from now onward.
4. Viking Burger approaches completion, pending approval concerns for the Windows Phone 7 platform.
5. I am renewed as an MSP for the year, working on some big stuff to be announced.
6. Dr. Obstacle is back on the agenda – next to be developed. Looking for talented developers to help out.

So yeah, it’s been eventful. There’s another big project in the works, but I can’t talk about that. Might see some coy announcements coming shortly, pending funding approval. Regardless, I look forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Welcome to day three of MSP bootcamp. Welcome to the worst 5 hours of your lives. You will go out ahead of time and you  will drink. Then you will stay up all night. Then, and only then, will you code meaningless twitter apps for Windows 7 Phone, and you will enjoy it.

On a side note, busy couple of days. Lots of awesome shit I can’t talk about, and lots of awesome shit I can.  Also plenty of less interesting stuff like Microsoft and Open Source, and some more personal stuff. More to come with specifics, as we get the information release schedule and can start to drop hints like “New SDK for…” and “iTunes…rofl”. Plus some kick-arse technology in optics, touch displays, tracking and others. I loves me some secrets, mmmm taste that juicy Microsoft candy.

Last year Microsoft ran the ‘Protege’ competition, making its debut in Australia. 60 teams from 32 Australian universities pitched ideas to Microsoft on how to effectively market Office 2010. As a case study, this was of great appeal to Marketing and business students, not to mention IT. Microsoft didn’t come out too badly either.

This year, the competition is coming back and coming back big. Now students from across the world will be involved, and the subject will be Windows Phone 7 and how to make it #1. More to come later in the year, but students should keep an eye out for this one, with prizes sure to be on offer and a great big tick on the resume from one of the world’s most powerful and prevalent organisations.

Right now the MSP boot camp is bereft of cola, but that’s not to last.  A big shout-out to Coke who have donated a couple of crates of their product to support MSP’s in their hour of need.

Microsoft confirms ‘no belly-dancer or escort service for employees’.