The Mod Community Needs to Wake Up

Interesting survey:
http://www.hourences.com/book/surveyresults.htm

It's very skewed by the nature of the places where the survey originated, from the mod community. The interesting aspect for me is the disparity between what the mod community considers level design to be and what the actual job entails.

There is still the firm belief within the mod community that the level designer does the visuals as well as the gameplay. This is just not true anymore. Artists in the vast majorty of cases are responsible for environment art. The designers concentrate on gameplay only.

This belief led me to a rather dismal experience when trying to hire from the mod community not long ago. I'm from the mod community myself - the 1997 - 2000 era of mapping when BSP was king and the level designer was responsible for visuals. The attitude I came up against in the mod community was disbelief and even anger that we would not consider that part of the role.

Worse still however was the expectation of being able to work from home in their native country on a console project. It's just not a feasible proposition - for a start there is the sensitivity of the material being produced, procuring dev kits - but most of all modern development teams are just that - teams. The design role especially really relies on them being together in one place and having quick and easy lines of commincation. Notably most mod projects fall to pieces within months when they find it difficult to comminicate at the right times, or fall out because they misunderstand each other.

When this was pointed out to them the reaction was indignant anger. Why should they have to move? How dare I ask that they come over to the UK and be paid for a job they love to do?!

The mod community needs to wake up and smell the coffee a little bit. If you want to turn your hobby into a professional vocation then you have to understand that there are certain ways that things are done in the professional world.

Maybe the truth (as the survey suggests) is that the mod community is mostly made up of teenagers. They need to do a little growing up if this is something they want to pursue as a career.